Podcasts about cleaning coach

 Josh Melton has been a friend of mine in the industry for several years. We are both Christian husbands and fathers with a heart for men's ministry. Outside of cleaning, Josh has been involved in many side hustles including a coaching program to empower and strengthen men. Likewise, I am an author and was involved in a coaching program to help Dads. Can you see why we'd connect so well? How about this one. Josh built his commercial cleaning business to the level I'd like to attain, which is 6-figures of profit without having to clean. But he did that to earn his freedom to focus on other projects he felt more called to lead. That is also me 100%. During this interview, Josh and I share our stories and ultimately how God has been trying to turn our eyes toward Nineveh. What does that mean? Here's the short answer. Read the Book of Jonah in the bible or at least watch this short cartoon summary. It's great! Jonah was sent by God to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. He chose to turn away from God and go his own way. Essentially, God ran away from God's plan. This decision met Jonah with adversity and destruction. Yup, this is the story of the man that was eaten by a whale! That's Jonah. Eventually, Jonah turned toward God and went to Nineveh and all was corrected. Jonah lived out his life in blessing. Josh and I talk in this podcast about our common cleaning roads to Nineveh. It really connected Josh and I even more. I loved this interview and I know you will too.Josh Melton is the co-owner of the Athens Cleaning Company and the co-host of the Entrepreneur Adventure Podcast.Resources: In this episode, Josh mentions the janitorial software Swept that his company uses and loves. He also endorsed the book, "Traction" by Gino Wickman.

 I have been fortunate to interview several visionaries in our industry over the past year. This interview with Ricky Regalado was different. He is such a visionary that he inspired me to do greater things in this amazing industry. Take the time to listen to this one all the way through and then listen again. You will not be disappointed. The first portion of the interview covers Ricky's upbringing and deep family ties. This is where you start to feel the deep sense of connection that he has to the blue collar workforce in America. In the second portion of the interview, we shift gears and talk about the cleaning industry and where it's going. We covered the integral values of  hard work, grit, and perseverance that founded our country and is not being taught like it used to. In the final portion of the interview, Ricky shares his vision for the cleaning industry and how we can be a part of rebuilding America.Here are a few notes and quotes that stand out from this interview."If we were going to make this work, there wasn't enough time to have a social life because we had a vision. At some point, we'll be working on this business and not in it."​"Love it or hate it, you don't get a 10x return on a blue collar business. You get a 10x on a technology company or an invention.""A trend isn't a short amount of time. That's a risk, a high risk and can turn around on you as fast as it went up."Where does this generation learn grit and develop a backbone? We learned it from our baby-boomer parents and grandparents, who watched their parents and grandparents survive the Great Depression. We learned it from our immigrant parents who scrapped for everything they had. We learned it from our single moms who had no other way but up.This industry is so poised to keep growing. We're foolish not to capitalize. Ricky is getting letters from private equity firms all the time offering to buy his company. These firms see the marketplace and see commercial cleaning as recession proof and pandemic proof. For the first 5 years, Ricky didn't like being known as a cleaning service owner. It wasn't glamorous. Now, he shouts his business with confidence and excitement. It generates responses like. "Ooh, I need a cleaning company."There have been 30,000 new cleaning companies formed from 2006 to 2018. That number nearly doubled in 2020 to 52,000 and 2021 is likely more than 2020."I feel like they need to know what it is to walk in the shoes of a cleaning technician before any other thing cause then they'll get that humility." Ricky requires every employee of the company at every level must spend their first 30 days in the field cleaning. "The greatest generals started with basic training."Ricky's Business Growth (Year to Year)2012 $80k Coverall2013 $250k Coverall2014 $600k Coverall2015 $800k Coverall Sold, $0 Rozalado2016 $1.8M Rozalado2017 $2.4M Rozalado2018 $4.8M Rozalado2019 $6M Rozalado2020 $9M Rozalado2021 $10M++ RozaladoRicky's Vision for our IndustryRozalado is currently at the top 1% in our industry. 9% of the general labor (blue collar) workforce comes from cleaning & maintenance industry! Think of it this way. 9 of every 100 blue collar workers in the US are working for cleaning & maintenance companies. That is mind-blowing. Ricky believes very deeply that he can make a sizeable impact on the American labor force by strengthening cleaning companies. It goes back to the way of life he grew up in. All Ricky knew was blue collar and now he is able to raise the standard of living for the very people he represents through the most unlikely of businesses.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Clean

 John Disselkamp is the owner of First Class Commercial Cleaning in Louisville, KY.  John was born and raised in Louisville and had a hard-working mentality. This suited him well in his early corporate life and propelled hiim to a bank executive at a young age. John won the prestigious "40 Under 40" Award during this banking stint. In this interview, John shares his transition from corporate to starting a commercial cleaning company in 2016 and growing to six-figures per month in revenue and 50 team members in under 3 years. He then lead his company to $5 million in revenue and 230 team members 3 years later. John is an American Success Story! First Class Revenue StoryYear 1 - $90kYear 2 - $350kYear 3 - $950kYear 4 - $1.4MYear 5 - $2MYear 6 - $2.4MYear 7 - $4.8MYear 8 projected- $9-$10MJohn has accomplished all of this with mental illness. Since childhood, he struggled with mental depression and anxiety. "We were in growth mode and growth sucks cash. We had intentional moves to make sure we could scale a company." John believes that investing into your business is more than just the supplies to fill an office cleaning location. It's in people and in culture. He made sure to keep relationships first, which he learned in corporate, to fuel First Class's culture. John believes that the culture he created is why First Class excelled through Covid and a labor crisis since 2020.He joined the Strategic Coach Program to up his leadership game. John was challenged with the concept of the 4 boxes that is taught in that program. John early career was spent in the box that represents something that you're good at, but don't enjoy. This is where most careers go to die. John wanted fulfillment and has found it in his cleaning company. He's good at it and enjoys it, a rare combination for adults in the working world."What makes a smart person smart or an intelligent person intelligent? It's not knowing what they know. It's knowing what they don't know. And that's always been something that I've taken to heart." "It's a pretty simple business. If you treat people well, you work hard, you do what you say you're gonna do, you're halfway decent at communicating and building relationships... You're better than most and I've still found that to be true 6 1/2 to 7 years later."John had a playbook for how to start a cleaning company and couldn't find it. He was going to St. Loius with his future wife and decided to cold call a local company to see if he could learn from then. He called Spencer Commercial Cleaning and a guy named Scott Bader answered the phone. Scott met with John for over two hours to mentor him. John is so grateful to Scott for helping to launch First Class Commercial Cleaning. John still uses the contract templates, pricing strategy, and a few other systems that Scott has taught him. Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 Michael Brown is the founder of Swept Janitorial Software, which is an all-in-one app that integrates employee scheduling, tracking, customer supplies, and quality control. As many of you know, Josh Melton has coached me from solo to a team of commercial cleaners over the past two years. Josh personally uses Swept and introduced me to Michael a few years ago. I've been following his journey and had to get him on the show. Michael is brilliant and I couldn't wait to listen to his mindset. I also have to mention this. We've now used Swept personally since 2021 and there is NO way we would have been able to to take 2 month-long family trips to Florida in the middle of winter without this amazing tool. As of the time of this interview, Swept had over 40,000 users in a market of 1 million janitorial companies. They have a lot of space to grow and they will! In the first portion of this interview, Ken and Michael dig into training up our kids to be life-long learners and critical thinkers. Michael shares a story of a local friend with a large security guard company that designed a program to "give them their brains back". He found out the unique talents and skills of his workforce and utilized them. This made the employees enjoy their work more and it saved the company from investing in specific job functions and roles. Michael encourages other employers to look outside of the typical roles to find gold on your team."People will overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten." - Dan Martell"Dream Manager" book is a favorite of ours. Michael says it was based on Mary Miller's janitorial company Jancoa out of Cincinnati. This company has an incredible culture that the book was based on. Michael grew up in rural Nova Scotia with no money in the family, so he sought to earn through his own businesses at age 8. He has been a life-long entrepreneur. His dad was a government worker with an incredible work ethic. He was work-oriented and that really shaped young Michael."If you have nothing to lose, you can take risks." "People will give you the advice they would take." His first business was a rain gutter business in college that he built a million dollars and sold it. He started a commercial cleaning company  in 2014 and struggled as we struggle. Michael started Swept for his own cleaning company as an internal tool to support the growth of the company. The software grew from there to where it is now at over 40,000 users worldwide."Everything that we want to do is already in us." Michael finds his big ideas and plans while out in nature without devices. Being away unlocks these ideas. "We, as humans, have the ability to figure it out.""There is a difference between a Leadership Mindset and a Survival Mindset. One is scalable and the other is not." "I'm fascinated by people. They want the end state, but don't want to do the pre-work. Some would rather risk the money than take the time to validate it before they spend the money."Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 We discuss a wide array of topics in this podcast episode anchored on our belief system. What is the underlying characteristic that has helped Debbie Sardone succeed in each of her businesses? It's her belief and conviction that what she is doing is right and is helping people. This conviction creates the self-confidence to take massive action and the massive  action leads to massive results. It's this simple. You hear this woven all through Debbie's entrepreneurial journey that spans multiple decades. You hear this conviction rise up during the pandemic in the metaphor of the cow and buffalo and in helping cleaning company owners through the Valley of Despair. Here are some quotes from the episode.  "That's when I realized that there is a solution for everything. But you do have to go find it, you need to invest in it, and you need to follow it. And that's what I did. I'm a very good student.""The fear was always worse than the reality. You can borrow my confidence until you have it.""If you believed you could do it, you would pursue it."At the end of the episode, Debbie and I referenced a mutual friend, "It's Grace for a Reason with Kevin Smith".Debbie Sardone is the Founder of several companies including Buckets & Bows Maid Service, Debbie Sardone Consulting, and her non-profit Cleaning for a Reason. Debbie and her team at CBF are offering an incredible deal to listeners of the Smart Cleaning School. Are you scaling a residential cleaning company to $1 million or would you like to learn how? CBF Live is the largest residential cleaning training conference and will give you the boost you want. This event on April 12th, 2023 in Dallas is $697. Go to CBFLive and enter the code "KENHALF" during registration to get half-off the ticket price! 

Recently, a listener to the podcast took me up on my free coaching call option on my website. Niki Kempf of Custom Cleaning in Dyersburg, TN had some pretty big questions. Niki was close to pulling the trigger on a coaching program for $10,000+ and decided to hold off. She left that situation discouraged as her family has big dreams and no idea how to get there. Our call was awesome. I didn't ask her about her business or what she wanted her business to look like. Instead, I asked her about her dream. She shared an awesome vision. First of all, she is recently married and Niki and her husband want to grow their personal ministry to help people coming out of rehabilitation programs. She wants to mentor them, possibly hire them, and definitely donate to organizations that support them. She wants to get her husband out of his job to help her in the cleaning business. This lit her up! Then she told me something amazing. They have a dream to give away 80% of their income. Whoa! I shared the JC Penney story and how he was known for giving away 90% and living off 10%. This is the opposite model of the church/tithing model where the Christian tithes 10% and lives off 90%. Niki loved this. Then I built her dream as I shared a story of a cleaning friend doing something similar. Jessica comes from a rough situation where she dealt with abuse. She has a huge dream to help battered women in her area. She wants to hire woman coming out of the shelters to get them back on their feet. Then she wants to start a non-profit where her cleaning business funds a portion and both the cleaning business and non-profit could be in a commercial building that she buys. Jessica would have a building for everything she wanted to do and the income to do it. Niki LOVED this even more. That's when I shared the Home Depot story. "Niki, let's say you wanted to hang a picture in your living room. You walk into Home Depot and find a worker. You ask him where the tools are for hanging pictures. Instead of telling you, he asks you a question back. In fact, he asks several questions. How large is the picture frame? How much does it weigh? Is it fragile, made of glass? What type of wall are you hanging it on? Is it plaster or dry wall? If it's plaster, how thick is the plaster and is there brick behind it? If it's drywall, can you locate the studs or will you be able to use studs? You would look at this Home Depot employee like he had two heads. You'd wonder why that all mattered as you simply want to hang the picture frame and need the tools."Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 I want to thank a listener of this show and new friend, Megan Combs of Combs Commercial Cleaning in Las Vegas, NV. She had fantastic questions to ask me and even more outstanding takeaways about my podcast. I can't wait to share them. Thank you Megan! You have a bright future in this business!She extracted something out of me that I used the phrase, "a dime a dozen". This is used to reference something very common. For example, people graduating with a degree in business are a dime a dozen. Out of 12 people, a dozen, 10 have business degrees. Those numbers are not actual but the connotation or meaning is that the business degree is very common. It's not specialized. They're not set apart. Those candidates are going to have to work harder to get a good job. Megan stated that she was a good cleaner. I thought about this and said that being a good cleaner in a solo cleaning business is a dime a dozen. Here's what I mean by that. Most people starting cleaning companies do it because they like cleaning or think cleaning would be a fun business for them because they've done cleaning. Maybe they love cleaning. From my experience, most cleaners enter like this. It's common to either be good at it or like it. That makes sense. But what makes you succeed in a cleaning business? Is it how good you are cleaning? The answer is no.Cleaning business owners that have a entrepreneur's mind or a business owner's mindset set themselves apart at a high level. They understand people and can communicate well. They know their Why and have dreams. They are self-motivated and inspired. They understand business goal-setting and strategy. They understand investing over spending. They understand delayed gratification. They are disciplined and understand that no is on the path of yes. There are so many business mindset factors that contribute to a winning business. This is what I explained to Megan. Then I thought about it more and realized something extremely exciting. This podcast, the Smart Cleaning School is 175 episodes and growing of business owner mindset and it's ALL FREE to you! In fact, this podcast is my free course on how to acquire the entrepreneur's mind to set yourself apart from the "good cleaners" to become a "great cleaner". How do you like my course so far? Are there topics that you'd like added? Please email me at ken@smartcleaningschool.com to let me know.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website 

 Welcome back to Solo Saturday! Hey solos, what do you think of this new monthly feature? What do you think of the new vibe of the podcast? I'd love your feedback. Please connect with me through my website or email to ken@smartcleaningschool.com. In this month's edition of Solo Saturday, I will provide a sequel to the popular "Excellence Vs. Perfection".Are you a perfectionist? Do you take way too long cleaning a single house? If so, please go back and learn the difference between excellence and perfection. It may set you free! In that episode, I touched on the mental illness of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I didn't address it much, but trust me. I know all about it. I am diagnosed with Tourette's and OCD. Most of my mom's family has some form of OCD, eating disorders, tics, etc. I have seen and experienced this and don't take it lightly. If you heard my first episode and still can't get over your perfectionism, I want you to listen to this one. Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, psychiatrist, or mental illness professional. Nor do I guarantee that ERP will help your OCD.I'm a regular guy that has dealt with this illness my whole life. And now, I have someone very close to me that is struggling with OCD. It breaks my heart to see the struggle.I will keep the name anonymous, but this person could not control their OCD and suffered tremendously. They needed real help and it was found in the form of Exposure Response Prevention (ERP). This is a form of therapy that wasn't around for me in the 80's and 90's, but it has shown tremendous results in tic disorders and OCD patients without the need for medication. This individual didn't want meds. They wanted to solve the problem, not band-aid it. In ERP, the counselor and/or psychiatrist goes through a 20-week program to identify the sources of OCD, address each one, and replace the habit with something better. It's grueling, but life-changing and freeing for so many. I have learned a lot about ERP. It's fascinating. One thing that I learned is that the OCD patient has to accept the uncertainty. I learned this from an ERP counselor. She told me this. People with OCD struggle because the compulsions never seem to stop the obsessions. There is no closure, thus the cycle repeats over and over again. One of the first things they have to teach themselves is that it's okay to accept the uncertainty. As an example, I don't know is a full answer. It's uncertain, but final. A person with OCD will want I don't know to become a yes or no. They will obsess on something out of their control. However, when they train themselves that I don't know is a complete answer, they can move on. ERP teaches them how to do this. Once they get comfortable with uncertainty, they experience a reduction in their OCD. As I said, I'm no doctor. I'm just fascinated about this breakthrough therapy and wanted anyone listening to this episode to have hope.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website 

This is the first Solo Saturday episode. You are still my people. I'm a solo cleaner and have always been one. This monthly Saturday solo show will guide you along my ISO Model. In this first episode, I'd like to start with a 15-minute clip from a recent Optimizer's Workshop I did with Heather Parke from Heather's Housekeeping in Roy, Utah. The Optimizer phase is the final part of my ISO Model. Over the years, I have developed a tool to examine and analyze a solo cleaner's business. It's called an Optimizer's Workshop. I did this workshop with Heather from the Solo Cleaning School Elite Membership as a perk of her membership. We spent 90 minutes together on Zoom to map out her business to see if she was an Optimizer yet. My goal is to show you the analysis needed to properly assess your solo cleaning business. I also realize that this workshop clip is harder to understand without seeing it. Therefore, I have also included the video on my Smart Cleaning School YouTube Channel.

 On August 4th, 2017, I was running my first optimized solo cleaning business in Upstate New York. I was earning over $50,000 profit on 2 days per week without employees. This is when I dove into the world of online courses and coaching in our industry. I was working on the ISO Model Course while I was in the midst of finalizing the optimization of that first solo biz. I also started a YouTube channel called Smart Cleaning Biz and released weekly video blogs to help cleaning company owners. They didn't get many views and I didn't do much in the way of promoting them. I was learning, just figuring out how to help others in the industry. On August 4th, 2017 I was happy and content to be a solo cleaning forever working a few days per week. Little did I know that only 3 months later, the Lord would open the door for us to sell the cleaning business and move back to our hometown in Montgomery County, PA. I dug deep into the archives to find this gem I will share others from this era of the Smart Cleaning Biz circa 2017- 2019. It's a short message, I was teaching solo cleaners that wanted what I had. They were looking for all of my optimizing tricks. I was still developing the ISO Model and used this lesson to teach solos that they are doing it all wrong. They need to initialize and stabilize before they could optimize. Stabilizing requires people skills and business savvy and cleaning science knowledge. I was encouraging them to follow the I-S-O Model. Many that I encountered were doing it backwards. They would start by initializing. You have to start there. They would try to optimize what they had and then attempt to stabilize it. This doesn't work. They were doing the I-O-S Model, which I called Apple. We're not Apple. Don't follow their operating system. Follow mine to do what I've done. That message has grown over the years, but is fundamentally the same. It is taught in the Solo Elite Membership powered by the ISO Model Course. I encourage you to check it out. 

 I was listening to the Tim Ferriss Show again and found another amazing clip... again. This one is from Episode #638: Seth Godin on The Game of Life, The Value of Hacks, and Overcoming Anxiety (Repost). At the 20:00 minute mark of this conversation, Seth shares a teaching strategy on learning how to juggle. I listened and then listened again. It is profound and yet so simple. How do jugglers learn how to juggle multiple balls? Here's that portion of the conversation in transcript form from Tim's website.  "Seth Godin: So I've taught more people to juggle than most. I'm not a great juggler, but we're not talking about figuratively. I'm talking about actually juggling. So let's talk this through, because I think it's a useful lesson. If you've ever seen a juggler on television or on video or in person, what you notice is that they don't drop the ball. Not dropping the ball is perhaps the driving force of what makes someone a juggler and, if you are enjoying the show, you are willing and wishing the balls not to drop. So if someone says, “You want to learn how to juggle?” you might say “Yes.” This is what always happens when I teach people to juggle. They grab three balls. I say, “No, no.” They grab three balls and they throw the first one. This is easy. They throw the second one, and then they go to catch it because they know catching is the key to juggling. By the time they get to the second ball, they have to lunge for it. Once you lunge for the second ball, you're out of position for the third one, and then you're done. It's all on the ground and you give up on juggling because, if juggling is about catching, you're terrible at it. What's the alternative?Well, the way I've taught people how to juggle is simple. I give them one ball and we spend between 20 minutes and 30 minutes throwing the ball and letting it hit the ground, no catching. Then we add the second ball. Throw, throw, drop, drop. No catching. Throw, throw, drop, drop. If you do that for 40 minutes total, you're going to be really good at throwing. If you get really good at throwing, the catching takes care of itself. This is the part about divorce from the outcome because all we care about, if we want to learn to juggle, is to learn to throw. The metaphor I cannot escape which is, getting better at throwing is what we have to do to build resilience, and it's what we have to do to live in a world that's changing ever faster.""If we try to anchor on outcomes and control results, we're in the catching business and then we're really in bad trouble."Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

Let's continue the Control Series! My first episode was "You Must Let Go of Your Control", where I shared a few major breakthroughs in my recent ability to let go and trust others. It was an important therapy session. I continued this recently with another breakthrough about your business is not you and viewing trust and control like a rope. Check out part 2 of the series called "The Trust Rope". This is the 3rd part that goes the complete opposite direction! Are you ready?I shared a Facebook post in early January that got a lot of comments and it wasn't because I did a good job. It was because I did a bad job and owned it. One of our largest customers dropped us. They accounted for 10% of our monthly revenue. It was painful. Their reason for dropping us was quality. Apparently, one of their bathrooms developed an orange film on the sink and our company left it there for weeks. There are so many angles I could take this. I could tell you about the onion principle, but I'll save that for another time. Instead, I want to take their reason at face value. They cancelled service because we didn't meet the quality specifications they required.In the first 2 episodes of this series, I honed in on breaking the control and perfectionism I had over me for years. It didn't bother me when I was a solo cleaner, but it reared its ugly head when we tried to grow a team. I had to change and I did! I gave some rope and then some more and then some more. I was checking the quality of each of our locations each month to maintain quality and keep our customers happy. But something happened that is scary. I got careless and allowed some buildings to go unchecked for more than a month because I had other things  I had to do. Somehow, I pulled a total one-eighty going from an obsessive need to check every building every time to not checking at all. This wasn't true for all of our buildings, but it was for this one. After getting fired, I realized that it had been 3 months since I inspected the quality. 3 months! I could have seen the orange film if I simply would have done 1 measly inspection. 45 minutes of my time could have prevented the loss of 10% of our income. This was a tough pill to swallow. I gave away all of the rope and it cost me. Let's talk about two words. Quality and control.  Quality is simply the level of performance or service that meets spec. It's not perfect, but it does meet expectations. That's quality. Control is the process or system of maintaining something. Put these two words together and you get a vital component of running a successful cleaning company. Quality control is the active feedback loop that maintains the expectations of the customer and keeps them happy. I used to be obsessive on QC, ensuring 100% compliance to every detail, every time. This was unscalable. In late 2022, I went to the other side where I nearly stopped all forms of QC, which is a slow death to any company. Here's the simple lesson. Don't operate on the extremes. Define quality in your organization. Train it. Inspect it. Maintain and work to exceed it. This will give you the balance to keep your rope light, burden-free, so your cleaning business can grow.I offer free coaching calls to listeners of this podcast. Do you struggle with quality control or perfectionism? Book a free coaching call on the Smart Cleaning School website at www.smartcleaningschool.com to talk about it! You can also check out the many free & paid resources available on the website as well. I look forward to helping you!

I was asked to share a business showcase in my local networking group a few weeks ago so others knew more about the cleaning services I offered. On the day of the showcase, I didn't have a presentation or notes or handout or sales material. All I had was a picture of my family, a slide of our 5 Levels of the C3 Experience, and my full story. I recorded this showcase and wanted to share it with you. Thanks to my new Google Pixel 7, I have a transcription which I am also sharing in the show notes. After I was done, I received the greatest compliment possible from fellow member Shelby Leight of Keller Williams Realty. "Great job. This type of presentation guys, and how Tom had done it. You need to know who you're referring and you need to feel a comfort level of what your integrity is. And I thought that this was a phenomenal presentation because we now know what your passion is and what makes you tick. We say it all the time. How many freaking realtors do you know? But at the end of the day by knowing a true story, you can match those people accordingly to who they are. So I'm really glad that you did this presentation."Shelby is stating a known fact in human relationships. We only refer people that we know, like, and trust. This business showcase increased my know, like, and trust! I am not sharing this to brag on my ability to tell a story. I am sharing it to encourage you to do likewise in your community.Are you enjoying the Smart Cleaning School Podcast? For the last 3+ years, I have released 2 new episodes every week in hopes that you would implement what you've learned and grow. It's a free course and that's the beauty of podcasting. Thank you for listening! I LOVE doing it. It's a labor of love and it helps so many. But it isn't free to do and it does take a lot of my time. That's why I brought on advertisers last year that I personally endorse and I'll continue adding more. My biggest struggle going forward in 2023 is that I have TOO much content! I have been trying to figure out HOW I can share the extra hours of amazing teaching from each interview guest and entire unreleased interviews and bonus content from Smart Cleaning Tribe Expert Calls and clips from my ISO Model Course and other resources that I discover along the way. I have enough for a second podcast! I would love to share this with you ad-free, but I can't do it for free. I believe this firmly. Those that want to level-up must have skin in the game. To play at a higher level, you have to pay a higher level.  That's where the idea of the Smart Cleaning School Premium Podcast came from. What if I took this premium content and offered it for $10 per month? Would this be valuable to you? What content would you be most interested to listen to? Would you pay for something like this? I would greatly appreciate your feedback. Please go towww.smartcleaningschool.com/premium to submit your feedback and potential interest for this new learning track in the Smart Cleaning School. Again, thank you so much for listening. I look forward to hearing from you.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 I have held this story for several months. I am going to share the story of a young man that applied for a part-time job at C3 last summer that had all the signs of a potential leader. Let's call him Larry.  One of our core values is ownership. I look for this quality in our applicants. Are they reliable, dependable, trustworthy? This is the foundation of the second core value of excellence. If they take ownership, they will work with excellence. The final core value is safety. If they are a person who takes ownership and works with excellence, they will not let safety slip. I look for this and have a strict filtering process for C3 hiring. It's obvious when an applicant is lazy or not willing to work. My dad was the hardest worker in his gas utility crew. But there was a guy named Hector that always managed to do the least amount to not get fired. He never pulled his weight. Others in the crew including my dad had to do his work. Hector was overweight and lazy. No one liked Hector, but Hector was just fine because he had a cushy job that paid well and others did his work. By the way, that guy managed to retire from the utility company. It's incredible that the leadership of this company allowed 'Hectors' to survive. They kill morale. It's obvious when a Hector shows up in your applicant pool. They stand out.  But what about the other extreme?  Larry applied to C3 and completed all of the steps to earn an interview. He was enthusiastic about cleaning. He has been working in cleaning for years part-time with his family. He was passionate about our company's mission and values. He was off-the-charts ambitious. He had young kids and had big goals and dreams. He listened to several of my podcasts and was excited to work for me and get mentored. He wanted to grow his own cleaning company. Larry had an aura around him that rang the bell I was looking for. As quoted in one of my favorite movies of all time (you can guess it)... "That brings us to Larry. Oh yeah. I had to chance to speak with Larry today. That guy is a straight-shooter with upper management written all over him." I saw the potential in him to not just become a cleaning team member. I saw him rising quickly to become my first supervising team leader. I saw him rising beyond that to join the leadership team I will build. I saw all kinds of potential. Have you ever met a Larry? He stands out just as much!Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 The topic of letting go is universal across all business and family and relationships. Have you ever heard the rope metaphor in parenting? We use this with our kids. "Hey son, I'm giving you a rope. In the beginning, it's very short so I can pull you back in quick. As you take responsibility and ownership and make good decisions, I will give you more rope or trust. When you make poor decisions that put yourself or others in harm, I take away some rope. When you blame others and shirk responsibility, I take away some rope. My goal is to eventually give you the rope so you can pull me whenever you need me." As I just read this, I get a little emotional as my oldest son is 18 now and is close to getting his rope. This concept of the rope has helped us raise our kids and I fully believe it helps with our employees as well. In "You Must Let Go of Your Control", I shared the breakthroughs that allowed me to emotionally let go of perfectionism and control. It was a therapy session for me. I have a follow-up episode to further help you breakthrough your deep, dark emotional control over your business.  I solo cleaned for 16 years. I was my business and my business was me.  If I got a new customer or made one happy, it made me feel great and raised my confidence. If I lost a customer or broke something, I took it personally. I was an emotional yo-yo at times. Can you relate? My business rises and falls on my effort, performance, and abilities. Therefore, I needed to control every aspect of my business. I also profited over 85% from the revenue my business created, so obviously more control equaled more money! Do you see the danger in the solo mindset that I had? I believe this is a cause for many solos struggling with perfectionism. At this time in our entrepreneurial journey, I couldn't conceive of a company where others would clean and I'd manage or even step away. Why not? Here's my therapy session, part 2. I used to work for GE, which was at the time one of the 5 most admired companies in the world with over 300,000 global employees. Thomas Edison wasn't running the business. He was dead. Yet his creation outlasted his life. I worked for an entity (GE) and earned an income based on my contribution to that entity. If GE had a bad year, I didn't get upset as I was just a small piece in a large machine.  But I also knew that if I messed up, I'd be out! GE had a high-performance culture and my mess up would impact my contribution to the entity. I did, in fact, mess up and was fired in 2005. I've already covered that story. GE's culture created a need to do perfect because I was fearful of making a negative contribution and losing my job. I was unable to trust others and preferred to do every aspect of the engineering job myself as only I could do it right. I brought this into solo cleaning in 2005 and it remained until last year.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 One year ago today, we arrived back in Pennsylvania after the most epic month-long family trip to the Gulf Coast of Florida. It was a dream and we actually achieved it. Our family lived a full month in another location while the family business operated back home.  In this "best-of" replay, I wanted to convey the mindset Teresa and I had when we left Florida. We didn't want to leave, but we knew we had to. Listen all the way through. I said this statement toward the end. "We both moved from sad to leave to excited to come back." Here's that episode replay.  Are you new to the Smart Cleaning School Podcast? If not, please bare with me. I started as a solo apartment cleaner in 2005 and moved into real estate presentation cleaning in 2006. This opened up the doors for solo house and small office cleaning in late 2006. I grew and optimized my first solo cleaning business through 2017 to a 2-day per week cleaning job earning over $50,000 per year in profit. I loved having 5-day weekends to spend time with my family.  Check out the introduction episode to hear more of my story. We sold that business in 2018 for $80,000 so our family could move back to our hometown closer to family. I have fully detailed my selling process in the double episode, "How I Sold My Cleaning Business I & 2". We started and grew a new business in the Indian Valley of PA from 2018 to another optimized solo business working 2 days per week and earning $70,000 per year in profit by early 2021. This podcast documents that entire process if you'd like to learn how to do it yourself.  Everything changed when we got our "New Freedom Vision", which was followed by numerous monthly calls with Coach Josh, and culiminating with the victory episode called "The Fight was Worth It". Here's the short version. We desired as a family to take the ultimate trip. We wanted to go to Florida for a month in the middle of the Pennsylvania winter. It was a fight, but it was worth it. I encourage you to to back and listen to the episodes I've mentioned. I believe it's important to walk beside me as we scraped and struggled to build the team that would allow us a month away. In this episode, I want to hone in on one statement my wife Teresa said to me as we were packing up on the last day in Florida. Read the rest of this episode at the Smart Cleaning School website

I originally started this podcast for solo cleaners because I was a solo cleaner. I was the solo cleaner's champion to show that you don't have to scale to win. I had optimized 2 solo cleaning companies to $60,000 profit on 2 cleaning days per week without employees. I was also mainly in the residential cleaning world. At the time of this episode, I was growing my second company and really felt that the vision of moms helping moms helping moms would connect with so many women in the industry. But Ken, you're not a woman. That's quite obvious. But I was in an industry dominated by women, so I wanted to relate more. I have been married for 20 years. I have a daughter and 3 sisters. I'm not totally clueless. Would you like to talk about anything in your business. I am here to help. Book a free coaching call on the Smart Cleaning School website at www.smartcleaningschool.com. Make sure to check out the many free & paid resources available on the website as well. I look forward to helping you!

 I attended my chamber's Fall Forum event at a local theater with four business leaders sharing on the state of the economy and business. For the purposes of this podcast, I'll keep the panelists nameless, but will share their backgrounds. Their backgrounds were the following: an analyst from the FED, a chief lending officer from a local bank, a machine shop owner, and the owner of a construction engineering company. I listened to each of the men talk on the state of the economy and business and the lessons they've learned and implemented. A theme emerged in my mind.  The construction engineer noticed that customers in residential real estate were more interested in energy efficient homes than ever as they wanted less expenses to operate the home. In past years, people didn't care about this as much. The machine shop owner struggled to get good tradesman to work for him. He was reluctant to take on new work. Therefore, instead of growing the bottom line, he focused on taking care of what he already had. He focused on his existing team and doing the work he could handle. He gave increased compensation and benefits and intangibles. He focused on relationships with his team and his vendors. I thought this was incredible as his culture is now booming and morale is way up and it's more desirable to work for him than ever before. All of this happened because he couldn't grow. The loan officer shared the point of view from his customers that he lends to. He notices that businesses are doing more tightening of the budget and watching their expense lines. They are watching their cash flows also to make sure they can handle what's coming next with increasing interest rates. He mentioned one customer that normally would do a single projection for the next 12-24 months. That same business owner is doing 3-5 projections at any point similar to a meteorologist tracking a hurricane on weather.com.  I really love how businesses are tightening up and getting efficient in their finances. I love how businesses are placing high value on building relationships and culture in their teams. Obviously this was triggered by the tightening of the economy and the inflation and rising prices. As I pondered these answers, I asked myself the questions. Will the lender observe his customers still doing multiple projections and managing cash flows when the economy is booming? Will the machine shop abandon the culture growth when hiring is easy again? Will the construction engineer be doing energy-efficient homes when energy is abundant again? I stood up and asked this question when I had the opportunity to the end. The answers were awesome, especially from the loan officer. He shared an example about his grandparents in the Great Depression. "Those that experienced the Great depression continued to operate as if they were in the Great Depression, even when things got booming again. Those that went through it, don't forget it. That mindset continued. But then the next generation who didn't experience the Great Depression had no idea. And therefore took no precautions when things were good. And these are the ones that got wiped out when it got bad." Our chamber director had a great answer. "A week economy makes businesses stronger and a strong economy can make businesses weaker." The loan officer continued by saying, "the businesses that have gone through these last 2-3 years will not forget and will continue to operate as they've been . They will stay efficient even as they grow in a better economy." He gave a warning. "It's the next generation that concerns me. These are the businesses that never experienced the pandemic like we have."Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 The Smart Cleaning Tribe has been a fun membership to run these last 4+ years. Our founding members have grown significantly as they set goals and hold each other accountable each month. Every month, I bring a subject-matter expert into the Tribe to resource the members. Our very own, Kate Sloan of Chicka Chicka Broom in Montgomery, MN, stepped up to lead the call in September 2022. She has a superpower of utilizing standard operating procedures (SOPs) so well in her business. Kate has been such a resource to the other members. We were all grateful for her sharing so much that day with us. This clip is the first 25 minutes of the 100 minute call where Kate describes her business at the different stages. It's very helpful and encouraging. It's sort of like the 45-year-old without a retirement plan yet that suddenly puts it all together at 50. That's me by the way! Ha! That was Kate as well with SOPs in her business. This 25-minute clip is a SOP story with Kate Sloan.If you're interested in leveling up your goals each month and having a tribe to hold you accountable as you achieve them, the Smart Cleaning Tribe is for you. Check out the videos and testimonials on our Tribe page and apply to join the 1% Club! You can also book a free coaching call on the Smart Cleaning School website at www.smartcleaningschool.com. Make sure to check out the many free & paid resources available on the website as well. 

 Coach Josh and I use Marco Polo to communicate during the week. He allows me to send questions as I have them. He listens and responds when he gets the chance. I'm very grateful to have Josh Melton in my corner as we grow C3 to the next level in 2023, which is to add the second building block and earn over $100,000 income from the cleaning business.  Josh and I had an exchange on November 8th and 9th of 2022 that was so interesting to me. I've never heard it talked about before in the cleaning groups or other podcasts. I had to cover it here. Cleaning is a business, but a business is not merely a ledger with a list of transactions. It's easy to pull up a profit and loss report and see all of the income and expense transactions. It's easy to see the text and numbers printed on the screen or page and assume you're looking at the cleaning business. I don't believe a business merely consists of transactions. A business is relationships. A cleaning business is a group of humans cleaning for other humans, all of which have personalities, beliefs, families, interests. It's easy to measure a business in transactions. That's what our accountants do. It's not easy to measure the relational strength of our business.Josh poses an interesting point in his Marco Polo to me. "I believe that you can trust someone that you don't respect. But I don't believe you can respect someone you don't trust." I agree with him. I can think of people right now that I could allow into my house around my family, but I don't respect them. Therefore, respect is greater than trust. How do you earn trust? I've talked about this a ton. On the "Optimizer's Workshop with Dave Reeks", I defined the 3 C's to build trust as a cleaner. You've got to have excellent character and be the type of person that others can trust.  You've got to provide an amazing cleaning service. In other words, you've got to handle the transactions of cleaning with excellence. This includes the cleaning itself and surely the transaction of invoices and payments. You've got to be consistent in your cleaning service and everything you do in dealing with your customers. If you show up with great cleaning and character over a long time, you will develop trust. Another way to build trust is to give it. Others won't trust you if you don't trust them. Trust is mutual. I'm going to add a fourth C. You've got to have compassion for other people and not be selfish. This is so foundational. Show love for your fellow human. When you put this all together. Start with compassion and character. Become a great cleaner and cleaning service. Handle your transactions with excellence and trust. Give trust. Do this over time. This will earn your trust from your customers. Keep doing it consistently over time and that trust will turn into something greater. It's respect. When your customers respect you, they will want to do business with you for a long time. Most clients will grow with you as you grow mutual respect. However, some clients will only ever think of you as "just the cleaner". Become a person of trust and respect and you'll attract the right ones I absolutely love this mindset and it thrills me to build this type of cleaning business in my community. Everything hinges on relationships, not transactions. I hope you enjoy this interaction between Josh an I on Marco Polo.

 Have you ever had a customer or an employee that ghosted you and you didn't know why it happened? When this happens early in your business, it really affects your confidence and your heart. Some of you may have had this happen with a first girlfriend or boyfriend.  It makes you question whether you should be doing what you're doing. It's natural. Rejection is very difficult.  By 2016, I had optimized my solo cleaning company after 13 hard years. I was very confident in what I did. Later that year, I started coaching others how to do the same. Rachel was my first coaching client. I helped her every week and it felt great to help someone else. Andrea was my second coaching client. I coached her every week and it also felt great. I was really on to something. Maybe I had found a niche that I loved and also way to create a secondary income from anywhere in the country. That was very exciting! My third coaching client... Let's call him Ron... That's not his real name. I want to keep him anonymous. I coached him two times. Ron was working at a factory and had started a side-hustle cleaning company that he wanted to use to get out of his job. I saw some issues with the way he was building it and gave him some hard advice. After our second call, Ron ghosted me. He never gave a reason and he never responded to any of my follow-ups. I emailed him or messaged him probably 10 times over the next 6 to 12 months. I didn't understand what happened. Since this happened,  have moved on and added more coaching clients. I met Debbie Sardone who encouraged me to create a course. That course is called the ISO Model Course which is included in the Solo Elite Membership still today. We sold that first solo business, moved to PA and did it again. I added a podcast and memberships through the Smart Cleaning School. I scaled the second cleaning company with a team and took my family to Florida for a month.  We're growing and striving to help as many people as possible. But that third customer named Ron ghosting me really affected me early on.I questioned whether I was doing the right thing, or if I was too hard on people, or if I was too easy, or if I was really qualified to be coaching at all? I had to work things out internally and emotionally build my confidence back up. Thankfully,  I was able to help Rachel and Andrea quite a bit, which boosted my confidence. This infamous ghosting happened in March 2017. About a month ago, I decided that I wanted to reach out to every former customer I've had in the coaching business and anything related to Smart Cleaning School memberships. I just sent a simple email checking in with everyone and thanking them for their trust in me and wanting to see how they were doing in their life, family, and business. I sent any email to Ron as well. It was the first contact or follow-up I had done in probably 4-5 years. A month later, I got a free coaching call set up on my calendar. I offer these on my website and mentioned this on my podcast. A guy named Ron booked a call. I looked at the answers to his reasonings for booking the call and it said this. "I just wanted to call and apologize to you."Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 I met a young lady named Brittany Holter on a Zoom call in December 2022. Brittany is a mom, military wife, and new cleaning business owner. She is growing fast and starting to struggle with the good problem of too much work. Her niche is in AirBnB. Brittany reached out to me by booking a free coaching call on my website. Our conversation was wide-reaching and I certainly asked her permission to record in case we talked about anything that could help other listeners like herself.  Brittany agreed and we did! There were 3 topics that we touched on that I wanted to share in one episode. They are how to deal with hazardous material or HazMat, scaling, and the do's and don't with 1099 subcontractors. I have included a clip from our hour-long free coaching call to give you the highlights.  HazMat - This is a classification of cleaning that you need special training and PPE before you do. Don't be a people pleaser and agree to clean whatever is left, especially in an AirBnB scenario. Either decide that you don't do HazMat or get the proper training and equipment and charge the specialist prices. Otherwise, you're losing time and money and you're putting your health in jeopardy.Scaling, W2's, and 1099s - It's hard to scale. That's why so few do it successfully. The best ones build strong systems and hire with W2 employees. They train and trust. I shared a brief summary of my experience with Brittany which I capture in this clip. The lazy and quick-fixers just hire helpers that they call 1099's. They do this and have no idea what that even means. The IRS highly regulates the 1099 subcontractor vs the W2 employee. They don't want to get short-changed in taxes. Many cleaners think they can just hire them, call them subs or 1099's, avoid all taxes, and treat them like employees. You can't have it both ways. You either have to hire an employee that you can find, employ, insure, pay taxes for, uniform, train, equip, inspect, correct, and so on. Or you have to outsource the work to a third party independent contractor that has their own supplies, insurance, training. They have their own business with their own customers. You are simply outsourcing work to them. There are do's and don'ts that the IRS highly regulates. Here's an article from the IRS.1099's Do's and Don'ts, Pros and Cons - I'm adding this as a bonus to the call with Brittany. I am not the expert here, but I did take courses early on in my cleaning career through the experts at Service Magic (now HomeAdvisor). I will refer you to the expert. Ed Selkow is a friend. His double interview on the past, present, and future of the cleaning industry is fascinating. Ed runs the Janitorial Subcontracting Network Facebook group and so much more. Ed knows subbing! Here's the basics from Ken.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 This is a powerful follow up to my last episode, Building Blocks, I shared a story about Legos and building your cleaning company in blocks that are duplicatable. I had developed a building block as an optimized solo cleaner, but there was no scaling needed. I shared in Building Blocks that we created our first scalable building block in 2022 which was comprised on 16 commercial locations and 8 employees. This block earned my family $40,000 income on $166,000 in annual revenue. This is not a good percentage to keep because the first block is very unprofitable. The second block nearly triples our income. There is something vital that I did not mention that really deserves its own episode. How was I able to trust others after being a solo cleaner for 15 years? How was I able to delegate, create systems, and get others to do just as amazing a job cleaning as I did solo? Do you ever find yourself asking that question? Here's the simple answer. You must let go of your control or you'll never succeed with a team.  I had lunch with a new friend of mine. Randy Moyer is owner of Moyer Specialty Foods in Souderton, PA. They sell trail mixes and all sorts of goodies that I was so thankful Randy sent me home with that day! I had posted on Facebook a few weeks previously that I was scaling my business and the E-Myth was a big help. He commented that the book helped him successfully scale past $1M several years ago. We had some common friends and decided to meet. That lunch was amazing. Randy is a very interesting guy with a lot of personal freedom. I consider him a new mentor and am thrilled to have the opportunity to highlight his amazing company.  Randy mentors many entrepreneurs. There was a point in the lunch while I was telling my story that Randy stopped me and said this. "Ken, that right there is why so many solopreneurs and small businesses fail. You figured it out. You have already overcome the most difficult thing. Now all you have to do is grow." Would you like to know what story I told him? Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 My boys love to build Legos! It's one of their favorite things to do. You should see the look on their faces when they open a brand new 3-in-1 set on Christmas Day. It's even more awesome to see my 5-year-old building that same Christmas Lego set on the kitchen floor a few hours later while his brothers are working on theirs. Once and a while, I'll even help them if they let me. A few years ago, we got them Ikea furniture for Christmas. Boring, right? Nope. They each got 9 pull-out organizer bins with a table top for their Legos. Oh my, did they run with that one. They spend hours taking every Lego and carefully placing them into the right color-coded bin. It was a win for the boys as they could build their own projects easier with the organizer like a true Master Builder and it was a win for mom and dad as it kept their Legos in one place...sort of. Legos are kind of like a virus. They spread. Legos end up everywhere. Since getting them the Ikea organizers, my boys have used all available flat space on the family room hard floors, kitchen table, and certainly their bedroom tabletop areas and floors to construct massive Lego ciites. They combine other building materials like Duplo and wooden blocks from games we have like Giant Jenga and Kapla blocks. They bring their stuffed animals and plastic animal toys into the creation and then play for hours. It's mesmerizing. Boys love to build.  We went to Lego Land last year as well for a day. This was heaven on earth for a then 4, 8, and 10-year-old boys. The 4-D theatre, ride, and laser challenge were highlights. The part that I liked the best was the giant Legos. While the boys were playing in the 3-level playground, I found the pile of rubberized Legos in the parent waiting area. Each block is around 4-by-8 inches and they had a lot of them. I wanted to relive my Lego glory days and impress my sons when they got done in the playground. One thing or block lead to another. After 30 minutes I had constructed a 4-foot tall enclosed structure with entrance and roof. My boys saw it and immediately the youngest ran inside. "Wow, Dad. This is cool. Did you build this?" Oh yeah, my ego was satisfied. I got pictures of all 3 of my boys inside my castle. In fact, other kids were in line to do the same. They thought my house was part of Lego Land. "Actually, I built this."... "Really, you did this?"Oh yeah again, double boost to my ego.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 Action Unlimited Story: "Our founder, Alan Glazar, joined the Marine Corps at age 17. Wounded in Vietnam, the Marine Corps trained him in heating and cooling where he worked for the remainder of his service. While he didn't enjoy working on HVAC systems, it exposed him to mechanical skills and a field where he was involved in inspections, repairs, quality control, and maintenance. After leaving the military, he became a janitor for a company that distributed cleaning supplies. His responsibilities quickly expanded from sweeping floors to making coffee, adding up invoices, and calculating daily profits. One day the owner said, “Kid, I want you to go out and sell.” That day Alan discovered his calling—helping customers. And boy was he good at it. The competition soon noticed and another company grabbed him. Throughout his time at the company, Alan rose to fill the shoes of general manager, purchasing manager, and sales manager before eventually running the company as the right hand for the owner.  In 1982, Alan founded Action Paper & Chemical Co, a company founded with the mindset of a salesman on the street with a simple guarantee: 100% Customer satisfACTION! As time progressed and our product line expanded, a name change was necessary. Today, as Action Unlimited Resources, we are still family-owned and operated and we continue to handle customer needs with a sense of urgency – just as Alan founded the company.  Today, Alan's son Aaron runs the company. They are located just over an hour away from me in Wilimington, DE. In early 2022, I was introduced to a company sales rep, Lynda OLear through one of my local networking friends. I had never heard of Action Unlimited and therefore was not aware of the size and scope of their operation. I asked my friend and Smart Cleaning School guest Kelly Jones about Action. She was emphatic. "They are a great company! I use them personally for all of my supplies. In fact, they are currently making me a product." A few months later, I made arrangements for a site tour or Action and a chance to meet Kelly in person for the first time. It was a great visit. Company rep Becky Eppig was my personal tour guide. She walked Kelly and I around the warehouse and offices at Action. I was very impressed with the operation. The highlight was meeting company CEO Aaron Glazar. He was enthusiastic about his company and had a magnetic personality. I definitely wanted to get Aaron on the podcast to promote his company and, more broadly, to educate cleaning company owners on the chemical supply industry. Aaron gracefully accepted.Action Unlimited Resources is the recipient of the following major awards:Marvin S. Gilman Superstars in Business Award (August 2022)- The Delaware State Chamber of Commerce honors Delaware businesses each year for displaying the highest ethical standards and their model approaches to business and management. Action was one of 4 businesses named in 2022.Inc 5000 Award (2002) - This ranks all privately held companies by overall revenue growth over a three-year period. Action ranked #4,689 with a revenue growth of 91%. Great Place to Work 2022 - This certification recognizes workplaces that give all employees a consistent positive experience.This interview with Aaron Glazar takes us into his background, heart, and vision for the company. He also shares the overal industry outlook so anyone in the cleaning industry can make better choices where to buy their supplies. Read the rest of this article at the

 This episode has turned out to be one of the most important in my entire podcast episode catalog. I had just joined the Indian Valley Chamber of Commerce after meeting with our Chamber Director, Steven Hunsberger in "I'm the Only Cleaner". A few short months later, I was sitting with new Chamber mentor Ken Byler of Higher Ground Consulting.  Ken is a leadership coach and amazing listener. I was asking him how I should approach my chamber membership. In this episode, Ken tells me the best advice I've received for the C3 business. "Ken, get a name for doing." It was a selfless strategy to build a reputation in the chamber and business community as someone that cared, that got involved, that made a difference. I took that advice and applied it. Now, I serve on the chamber membership committee and have an outstanding reputation with the membership and leadership team. This reputation has also increased our local commercial cleaning business revenue by over $25,000 per year directly and probably another $40,000 per year indirectly. I highly encourage each and every one of you to soak this episode in and take action! Carfagno Cleaning is a corporation with various divisions. We have a this podcast and the Solo Cleaning School. I serve team cleaners in the SMART Cleaning Tribe. This all falls under my 'consulting' division. My main division is my own solo cleaning business that I am rebuilding in the Philly suburbs after sellling my first one to Ian Traynor of Albany Pure Cleaning. I hope you've been enjoying this podcast and the journey I've taken you on. This week was a short one as Thanksgiving cut off 2 days and my family was traveling to New Jersey for a long weekend. I started the week with a meeting with Ken Byler of Higher Ground Consulting. I met him and really connected at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon a few weeks ago. This was a fun meeting. I am used to asking questions and listening, but I met with a greater master than I. Ken skillfully got me to talk the whole time and then asked how he could help me. I literally ran out of time to help him. You got me, Ken! Anyway, here's the answer I gave him. "How do I best use or network in the chamber?" Ken's answer floored me. He said this. "Find out the available Chamber committees and see where you can help. They meet once per month for an hour. Pour into it and show your value. This builds relationships with chamber members and raises your level of trust. From here you will Get a name for doing and contributing. Others in the chamber will want to connect 1-to-1. Set the meetings and connect more. This will lead to lasting relationships, leads, and it helps the community through your chamber leadership efforts." This was a drop the mic answer. Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

My boys are really into rap music and my second son Kolby has a legitimate passion to become a rapper. He's 11. Kolby is writing, composing, and performing his own material now and wants to get better. We've began studying other successful artists in the Christian rap genre to learn what they did to reach the pinnacles they've reached. These rappers include Lecrae, NF, Andy Mineo, KB, TobyMac, and others! Personally, I'm a big fan of Lecrae.  Recently, my oldest son was playing a Lecrae song while we were working in the basement together. It's called "Take Me As I Am". As soon as Lecrae starts rapping in that song, I immediately heard 2Pac. It was like 2Pac really came back, converted to Christianity, and dropped this SICK song! And yes, I like rap too. I have gone through so many seasons of music including infatuations with the Beatles, heavy metal, and rap. I've listened to everything. I was a big fan of 2Pac in college and used to play in my frat room. Yup, you just learned that I was also in a college fraternity. It was all before I personally accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I have no regrets and made so many friends during this time in my life. Let's go back to the basement. I stared at the bluetooth speaker totally mesmerized as a podcast idea and teachable moment was forming in my brain. If you ever wondered, this is how it usually happens. I told Kenny. "This is Lecrae. You've probably never heard of Tupac Shakur (and he had not). This Lecrae song sounds exactly like 2Pac. I knew it within moments of the song. 2Pac's rap music was so unique in his style and delivery that I'd know it anywhere, any time because I was a fan of his music. I know 2Pac's unique signature. The best rappers and musicians ALL have a unique signature that separates them from the mainstream and makes them memorable." Kenny thought about that and got it. He rattled off 4 other musicians including some rappers that he would know within moments too because of their unique style and sound. Another Christian rapper that has blown up recently is NF. At first, you would think it was Eminem. Their sound is so similar, yet NF has gone beyond the similarities to create his own sound and signature. Lecrae has as well. I was already doing  research on rappers for Kolby, so I found some articles on NF and Lecrae. It was no surprise to me that NF was heavily influenced artisticly by Eminem and Lecrae by 2Pac. In fact, listen to this excerpt in a May 6, 2016 interview with Revolt.TV. "For an artist who often gets pigeon-held in a box as a “Christian” rapper, Lecrae lays it all out in his new memoir discussing everything from domestic abuse, feeing lost in life, an abortion and Tupac's influence serving as sort of a surrogate father figure in his life. Lecrae states in “Unashamed” that “without any constant male role models, hip-hop artists became my heroes” and “Tupac became my second parent.”Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 Do you remember Claudia Adriazola of CMA Cleaning and Organizing in Onalaska, WI? I did a free coaching call with her, which became "The 4-Week Rotating Schedule". Claudia took my advice and implemented it quickly. Then she joined the Solo Elite Membership and began my ISO Model Course. I offer quarterly coaching in this membership, so Claudia and I were back on Zoom for coaching. She had changed so much since our last call just a month prior. She added 8 new clients at higher prices and sent out price and schedule changes to others. This lady is on a mission to change her family's future. I'm so blessed to get the opportunity to help her. It happened again. On this coaching call, there was a portion that I asked permission to share. She was struggling with how to present a price and schedule change to a longer-term customer that has referred her multiple clients. I really felt her options were great wins for Claudia, but losses for the client. This is where I asked to press record and teach how to use the art of the Win-Win in price increases. Claudia now has a document that she can be proud of sending. She presented the client with possible win-win options and put the ball in her court. If she agrees to the changes, they both win. If she passes and fires Claudia, it's not big deal either because Claudia has already replaced her with a higher priced new client. Enjoy the mindset in this behind-the-scenes coaching call with Claudia.Are you a new or struggling solo cleaner wanting to create financial peace from your solo cleaning business? The Smart Cleaning School has resources for you! Check out the ISO Model Course and the Solo Elite Membership on the Smart Cleaning School Solos Page at www.smartcleaningschool.com/elite. 

 I've been in the cleaning business for 17 years. I was a solo cleaner for 15 of those 17 years. As I was first exploring the cleaning groups in 2016, I got the impression that solo was viewed as "so low". We are just trunk slammers that buy our cleaning supplies at Walmart and advertise our services on the laundry mat tack board. We are amateurs without any real knowledge of how to run a business. In fact, we aren't real businesses at all. We have cleaning jobs and yet we say that we own a company. A solo cleaner is thus a lowly title to many. If this is you, you're not alone. There are over 50,000 new cleaning companies entering the industry each year right now. In all likelihood, probably 40,000 or 80% are new solos. There are definitely companies that start with the intention to build teams from the onset as well. My point is that we are an army and for the most part feel like we're alone and the minority. We really feel like we're below the other companies. We are SO LOW cleaners. Do you relate? I know you do because I surveyed over 100 solo cleaners in 2019. I found the top struggles then to be #1 lack of money & time, #2 loneliness, and #3 feeling so low.  This was tough for me too. I was a highly educated mechanical engineer and part of the corporate leadership team at one of the biggest companies in the world from 2000-2005. I seemed to have it all from the outside. But I wasn't happy. I felt so low there. This caused mild depression and ultimately lead us to start our first side-gig businesses. A few years later, I was fired from my engineering job and fought each day to put scraps on the table and drops in the gas tank to survive through a new job of cleaning houses for a profession. I was embarrassed. I felt so low and I was. My friends from high school and college were buying houses and I was barely able to afford rent. My friends were becoming managers in their companies and I was cleaning toilets. I even ran into old work colleagues looking for house cleaners. I felt so low. Why would I go through this? Why would I sacrifice the prestige of the corporate life for the so low life?The answer is simple. I wanted freedom. If you're listening to this podcast and you feel like I did. You have a really good job by the world standards. Your family is proud of you, just like my grandparents and parents would brag about their son and grandson working for GE in his big time job. But if you're also like me with all of that status and accomplishment you feel trapped. You don't know what you want to do, but it's not what you're doing now. That was me. I never knew I would ever in a million years end up in the cleaning industry. But I did. I went from an engineer to a solo cleaner. There wasn't a lot of money in the solo cleaning business in the beginning. I tried to go back to my engineering degree a couple times with no success. Even though my income was about half as much as my corporate job, I had something I didn't have before. Choices. My children were young and I didn't have to go to work at 8:00, 5 days a week, bring my laptop home and do more at home. I didn't have to think about the job on nights and weekends. I didn't have to ask for time off. I called the shots. I made my own choices as to when I wanted to work and which jobs I wanted to take. I traded income and status for a small dose of freedom. Was it really so low? Not at all. As I started gaining more choices and freedom and income, I started feeling more hope and excitement on the potential of this solo business that wasn't so low anymore. I stopped caring what others in my family thought of what I was doing for income after nearly completing a masters degree in mechanical engineering.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 I grew up with a mom that corrected all of my spelling and grammatical mistakes. It was painfully annoying, but she taught me that sending your draft is not what professionals do. Professionals send the edited and final version of their work. This was taught and backed up in my schooling too. I always checked my work and would be embarrassed if my work that I turned in had spelling mistakes. Enter 2022 and the age of social media, instant feedback, communication through a gazillion devices, and automatic text correctors. Many of these communication formats still rely on the written word and professionals are caring less and less on accuracy. I am totally guilty of this and so are you!  How many times have I wanted to send response to a message or text so quickly that I hit send before I re-read it? It's embarrassing the stuff I've actually sent and then apologized for. We all do this now as I have received messages from just about everyone with mistakes... and yes... even my mom! It's the great irony of the times we're in. First impressions are still as important as ever. Let me share this simple example. I got a resume from a candidate looking for part time cleaning job. I only hire professionals with resumes that want a side-gig cleaning the professional offices we serve. This candidate is very professional, working as a case-manager and touting communication skills on his resume. His initial communication to me was this. "Hood afternoon." This is super silly. I know what he means. Do I give him a pass like I do for my friends and family? Well... let's think about it together. He is applying for a job that requires the small details to be handled with care. There are many opportunities in cleaning a professional office to miss an important detail that could make all the difference. If this candidate is sending his first impression email to me with "Hood Afternoon", how many other details is he not double-checking? Don't let this happen to you. How about the funny papers story I shared in this episode? That young man didn't impress me with professionalism. He was eager and that's a great trait, but he had no questions for me and I want someone who can think, figure stuff out, take ownership. It's a core value. Here's another example. What if I spent hours and hours for the opportunity to do a walk through estimate for cleaning with a top-tier wealth management company and then sent a professional proposal asking them to spend $1,000 per month with C3 and my email started with "Hood Morning." They may overlook it, but they may not and I could end up losing thousands of dollars because I wouldn't double-check my work. This is something that I've been working on more and more in this fast-paced culture. I am a professional and I use spell-checker. I'm like Santa and check my list twice. It takes moments to check yourself, yet the rewards versus consequences for not checking are huge.This episode was meant to be short and sweet. Slow down in your communication and impress with being different by being accurate. It mattered in 1963, 1993, and it matters in 2023. 

 Recently, I had the opportunity to share an educational piece with a local networking group. It was a follow-up to a talk I did a few weeks prior on setting new habits that would transform their lives. It was 2 weeks later and I started out purposely finding out how accountable the members were to their new life-changing habits. The outcome was encouraging as over half had taken action. They were accountable and for a local group of successfully run companies, I was not surprised. These members knew I was doing a second talk 2 weeks later and perceived that I may ask the accountability question. They were prepared. I have done this same talk in other venues. The overwhelming #1 habit people want to change relates to their health. I observed a similar result. The groups that I returned to had over 50% implementation and accountability. The others had less than a 10% rate of implementation. Accountability is vital. Let's link this back to "Goal-Setting IV - The Accountability Roadmap" Only 17% set goals! 3% write them down and less than 1% have accountability around their goals. The success rates are as follows: 10x for goal-setters over non-goal-setters, 30x for written goals over non-goal-setters, and 100x for accountable to goals over non-goal-setters.  In the spirit of accountability, I'll share a short update from my life. I set several goals in "2 Rewards and 1 Consequence". Here are my stated October 31, 2022 goals:C3: Add 4 locations (to 20) or add $2,500/month revenue --> We added 2 locations at $1,925/month revenue and lost 1 small one totalling $200/month.C3: Add 2 Team Members (to 6) --> We added 2 Team Members and lost 1, so we have 5 total.Health: Do my 3x3 workouts weekly, be 90% gluten-free, complete a 10-day water-only fast, and sleep 8 hours per night to achieve 165 lbs, 20 chin-ups, half-mile treadmill at 9 mph, and 100 calories burned for 15 minutes at resistance 10 on the rowing machine --> I CRUSHED every one of these health goals!Teresa and I celebrated with a 3-day getaway to Amish Country as our reward! Now, we're going for the next 90-day goals sprint to secure our 2nd month-long family trip to Florida! What are you being held accountable to? The Smart Cleaning School has a great resource for you! It's called the Smart Cleaning Tribe, where the 1% of the cleaning industry meet weekly to create goals and hold each other accountable to achieving them! I'd love to connect with you and potentially invite you into this Tribe!Here's a clip from that talk I did with my local networking group for you to hear the interaction in the room.Check out my interview with the T-Bag Company Founder, entitled "Respectful, Reliable, Responsible with Damon Washington". You can purchase any of the T-Bag products at a 10% discount through the Smart Cleaning School Resources Page at smartcleaningschool.com/resources. 

 These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun! This was a breakthrough week for the Big Picture of what I'm doing. I have business SMART goals that I set for my solo cleaning business on 1/1/20. I share this mindset in my goal-setting series (What is Your Why, Why Set Goals, Make Your Goals SMART, The Accountability Roadmap, and Kill Parkinson). The lessons and reminders from this week in business forced my hand to create a 6th installment to this series.As many of my podcast listeners know, I have other streams of income. I run the SMART Cleaning Tribe for team cleaners. I host this podcast and the connected Solo Cleaning School Elite Membership for my students to learn my ISO Model to hit their goals.  I am also at the beginner stage to consulting large cleaning companies with employees that would like to scale with optimized solo cleaners or Solo Teams. I'm also a published author of an interactive book for fathers to read to their kids called "Arctic Land".  In past years, I have struggled with holding it all together and being productive with multiple irons in the fire. This year is different. I have figured out a way to prioritize and follow through. I call it reverse engineering your dreams and I hope this podcast will help you find a similar system that works for you! I knew (prior to COVID) that this year needed to be our breakthrough year. We needed to build a new solo cleaning business to become an optimized part-time 6-figure income. There were multiple reasons for this:To teach our kids the "family trade" by working with dad, earning income, saving, giving, spending, and investing.To show YOU (the listeners) that my ISO Model works by building and optimizing a second solo cleaning business to the same level as my first in a fraction of the time.To earn a main income source in the schedule I was willing to clean that would provide everything our family needed too thrive in 2020 & beyond, not relying on any online income.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun! I'm calling an audible to my original plan. We started this now 5-part series with Goal Setting I "What is Your Why" and talked about the most important aspect of goal-setting. It's your reason for getting up and doing what you do. The "5 Why's" exercise is an effective way to peel back the layers of your reasons to get to the core of what makes you tick. We are not robots, but emotional creatures. Mike Michalowicz, in his epic book "Profit First", shares why rational accounting doesn't work. He uses an example of plate sizes. Do you know that the average size has grown from 9" to 13" in diameter. That's DOUBLE! Over the same time period, the average American male's weight increased from 160 lbs to 190 lbs! Why? Mike goes to say that humans consume everything they are given. It's human behavior. They also use every available amount of time to finish a project and every dollar to fill their budgets. This is why Americans don't have 'extra' savings on hand or 'spare' time or 'uneaten' calories. There is a name for this. It's called Parkinson's Law.Parkinson's Law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." We have to fight against this human behavior to win and learn how to Kill Parkinson!Our SMART goals are subject to Parkinson's Law too. If you set a SMART goal with a 'T' of 3 months, you will either miss the goal or make it just in time even if you could have done it faster. This is human behavior. I want to encourage you to set goals so that you can complete them in the beginning and get the wins. However, you need to get more aggressive as you progress. I'm going to use this example. I interviewed my friend Courtney Wisely of Rescue My Maid Service on a FB Live to help her set a SMART goal. She wanted to complete a technology course for cleaning service owners to help them be more productive and automated. I asked her if she could get it done by December (12 months away). Her answer was "Heck, yeah!" Then I asked if she could have it done this month. She said, "Heck, no!" I asked about June, which was 6 months away. "Um... yes." She wasn't as confident, but knew she could. Then I said April or 4 months away. She was very uncomfortable, but believed it was possible. I encouraged her to set her SMART goal for April. Here's the psychology behind this and it looks at the 'A' in SMART or 'Attainable'. I pressed Courtney and discovered she could achieve this massive goal in 4 months. However if she set the goal like most people for 12 months, Parkinson's Law would kick in and she'd allow the work to expand to fit the time. That would waste 8 months of potential goals or create a huge Opportunity Cost. Courtney won't do this. She will set the goal for 4 months and kill it this year. Just keep in mind that Courtney is a hyper-focused goal-achiever. We're not all there. So start where you are. The 'A' in the SMART goal has to be defined by YOU depending on where you are in your goal-setting journey. What's barely attainable now will be a joke in a year, so you cannot continue to set the same goals. Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun!  We're at part 4 of our goal-setting series. You should have a great handle on your Why, why you set goals, and how to create a SMART goal. These are all vital steps in getting traction and achieving. However, there is more to the equation. Let's talk about an accountability roadmap. Think about a huge map of the country. There's a car off on the side of the map. Where do you want to go? Well, that's a silly question. We first need to know where you are now on the map.Step 1: Know Your Numbers! You have to know your business numbers, which includes your key performance indicators (KPIs) or scorecard, profit & loss, and where you want to go. This will help you assess exactly where you now compared to your goals and allow you to have the measurables to set solid SMART goals.Step 2: Know Your WHY! Now that you're car is off the side and on the map in the location of where YOU are, you can pour the fuel into the vehicle and set the direction you would like to travel.Step 3: Determine Your Route! You will need a series of milestones every 90 days in the form of SMART goals to create the dotted line on your map to get you from where you are to where you want to be. Step 4: Put on Your Wheel! You need wheels to make your gassed-up car to roll to its destination. My friend Courtney Wisely of Rescue My Maid Service uses these 5 areas to measure the health of your cleaning company: Human Resources, Operations, Marketing, Administration, Finances. I added a 6th area and that is Goal Setting & Accountability. We can place these 6 criteria as 'spokes' on a wheel. Simply segment the spokes with 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Then grade yourself on each to start your journey and connect the dots. You can see this exercise done on my FREE SMART Goals Masterclass. You will need to create a circle so your 'wheel' can get you to your destination.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun! Goal-setting is a science and an art. We covered some of the art and the emotion of why to set goals. Now it's time to dive into some science. The S.M.A.R.T. Framework is a methodology of setting goals that allows you to measure and track your progress. Without a system like this, your goals are likely just wishes. Check out my free "SMART Goals Masterclass" to get a great recap on the Why of goals and for an in-depth explanation of the SMART Framework. In this episode, I want you to grasp that each letter in SMART has a greater purpose. However, I don't think the letters are in the right order. For the purpose of an acronym, SMART makes sense. The true order should be RASMT.R = Relevant - This is the most important letter in the goal. It must get you closer to your Why! It must be relevant to your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)A = Attainable - The Slight Edge requires slight inputs. You need to get the ball rolling with small wins. Set your first goals small and always make sure they are realistic otherwise, you will not do them.SM = Specific & Measureable - This combo makes the goals easily tracked with numbers or scores. As they say, "What gets measured gets managed."T = Time bound  -This ties it all together and makes it accountable by giving your trackable goal  a deadline. Without a deadline, nothing happens.SMART Examples: To grow my book club to 25 members. S, M, A - This is NOT relevant to your cleaning business and there is no deadline!To grow my book club to 25 members by 1/31/20. S, M, T - We added a deadline, but it's not feasible to add 25 members in a week. It's not attainable. And by the way, this isn't relevant at all to your cleaning business!To grow my cleaning business. A, R - Now we have a relevant goal, but it's too vague. It's not specific or measurable and there's no deadline. By the way, you could literally pick up the phone and call one prospect, get a no, and say you took action that "grew" your business.To grow my cleaning business by $1M by 1/31/20. S, M, R, T - This is the first goal that seems to have the whole package, except one thing. It's not attainable! Thus, it's not SMART and you won't get traction!To grow my cleaning business by 5 new biweekly clients. S, m, A, R - This goal is relevant and specific. It's also attainable. But, there is no deadline and it's not fully measurable. It's not productive to keep a scorecard and only measure the results. Adding 5 new clients is a result. You need to understand the entire process from the initial marketing to the first message to the estimate and sales. Do you know the level of marketing activity to achieve "5 new biweekly clients"? Once you do, swap in the actions and your goal will go from 'm' to 'M'. If you control the actions, you can control the outcome!To create 25 cleaning leads (for 5 new biweekly clients) by 3/31/20. S, M, A, R, T - Bingo! We finally have a goal that is SMART. Do you understand why? Read these notes and listen to this episode until you do!

 These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun! This is our second lesson on goal-setting. The first was "What is Your Why", where we saw the importance of finding what makes you tick and use that to keep you inspired. In this lesson, I want to prove to you why you need to set goals if you want to succeed. In fact, I'll let the well-known Harvard Business Review study tell you why!83% of people do not set goals.14% of people do set goals and succeed 10 times more than the 83% that do not set goals at all.3% of people have goals and write them down. This group succeeds 3 times more than than the goal-setters that do not write them down and 30 times more than the non-goal-setters.In a separate study of people that set goals and write them down, 40% do not go back and look at their goals! This is a remarkable finding. Out of 100 people, only 3 write down their goals and less than 2 (on average) write them down and review them on a regular basis. Furthermore, it is my guess that 1 out of 100 write down their goals, review them on a regular basis, and are held accountable to someone they respect to complete them.Which of these 100 people would you like to be? If the goal-setters succeed 10 times more than non-goal-setters and the goal writers succeed 30 times more, how much more successful are the 1% that go all-in?!I want to be a 1%'er. How about you?Reference: The verse I quoted from the bible is Habakkuk 2:2-3Then the Lord answered me and said:“Write the visionAnd make it plain on tablets,That he may run who reads it.For the vision is yet for an appointed time;But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.Though it tarries, wait for it;Because it will surely come,It will not tarry. 

 These initial episodes were done before the 2020 pandemic. They were important then and I believe they are even more important now.  We need to have  purpose in what we do or we'll never have the passion and commitment to see it through. In this replay episode, I help you identify the Why in your life so you can jump onboard the goals train! Have fun! We are starting 2020 with a 4-part podcast series on Goal Setting. Recently, I was asked by Courtney Wisely of Rescue My Maid Service to be an expert on this topic. I did a live training through Zoom to 8 growing cleaning business owners in St. Louis to identify what topics connected the most. Then I refined my presentation to record a 60-minute masterclass on Goals & Accountability for Courtney's Maidivation subscription boxes. Since this content has been received so well by cleaning companies with large teams and growing businesses, I knew it would connect with my solo cleaning family! Surely, you can go to my website and watch my free 60-min masterclass or just listen to all 4 parts of this podcast series.Why does the Why matter so much? Let's just say it this way. Simon Sinek has built an entire company, platform, and brand on helping people and companies figure out their why. In his book, "Start With Why", Simon shares the concept of the Golden Circle where the WHY is in the center and the How and What flows outward from it. His experience with thousands of individuals and companies show that those that truly start with why, achieve the most success and significance. The ones that just go for the details, tend to lose their way. Without the Why, the How and the What doesn't matter.I learned a great exercise in San Diego at Social Media Marketing World. It's called the "5 Why's". In this exercise, you peel back the onion until you get to the real & true heart of your why. This is the vulnerable and most cherished part of you. It will create the fuel of inspiration verses the  outside need for motivation, which is more of an air pump. This concept really connected with Courtney's Rescue Retreat attendees. In fact, let me share an example from the retreat."Why are you here at this retreat?" RESPONSE: "To get my systems in place.""Why?" RESPONSE: "To be able to automate my business and get to go back to Mexico for 4 months of  the year."Why? RESPONSE: "Well, really to have my business fully run so I can go back to Mexico and start a  family?""Why?" RESPONSE: "My 1st marriage didn't work and I want to start again and be a mom.""Why?" RESPONSE: "I've always wanted to be a mom and raise a family and travel."As you can see, the responses got deeper and more personal. This woman wants her cleaning business to provide the income and  time freedom so she can live her Why. By the time you get 5 Why's deep, you should have something that is highly emotional to the person and is highly likely to light their own pilot light for inspiration verses outside motivation. The light of inspiration will never go out.Go to my Resources page to see my recommended book list including "Start With Why" by Simon Sinek. I also referenced my good friend Josh Melton of Athens Cleaning Company in Athens, GA in the Funny Papers. He co-owns this commercial cleaning company and helps other commercial cleaners nationwide get to the 6-figure income mark.

Courtney Wisely is the founder of Magic Maids (Festus, MO), Rescue My Maid Service, and Spotlight Community Theatre (Festus, MO). I have known Courtney for over 4 years including a few years where we were in a mastermind together. Courtney is relentless in her work ethic and service toward others. She has achieved a very high level of success in her community and the cleaning industry. She has achieved her dreams and enjoys freedom with her son and daughter. This interview deconstructs her success from her highly dysfunctional roots in Bellville, IL and every where in between. After this interview, you will absolutely believe that if Courtney can do it, I can do it.Here are some quotables from the interview:"Why give validation to someone that is failing at life about what my future is going to be like. That's insane!"I asked. "You had a horrible childhood. If you could go back and change anything. If you had an eraser, would you?" Courtney responds. "No. I would be someone different person and I love who I am."Courtney's favorite book series outside of "Harry Potter" is "Runaways (Orphan Series)" by V.C. Andrews. These books gave the young Courtney the hope and encouragement she needed to escape her childhood. Her favorite professional book is "The Four-Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferriss. This taught Courtney how to work to live vs how to live to work. She lives this life today.She found her life mentors at Cold Stone Creamery, where Courtney spend most of her 20's. They allowed her to be creating and perform within the Cold Stone culture. This also moved her family to Missouri."People are inspired by honesty and inspired by people that actually live their truths and don't care what others think. That's what people want to do, but are too scared to do."One of the biggest lessons that Courtney learned between doing free Rescue Retreats to charging for her services. "A very important lesson to learn as an entrepreneur. People are going to pay if they actually want to take things seriously.""I didn't try to force a team together. I let it naturally happen.""I built what I wanted, so that I could live my dream of living musical theatre."Thank you Courtney Wisely for your willingness to share your story in such a honest, transparent way. You have done here exactly what you said in the interview. Your honesty has inspired me and definitely many that are listening to this right now.  Stay tuned for Courtney's upcoming book called "Relentless". 

 Let's wrap up this 2-part interview with my wife Teresa. She is the secret sauce and secret weapon in our family to keeping us healthy. I am excited to share her knowledge, so your families can benefit too.Resources mentioned by Ken & Teresa:Podcast - "The Model Health Show" by Shawn StevensonPodcast - "The Genius Life" by Max LugavereBlog - "The Wellness Mama"Article - "The Proper Way to Make Elderberry Syrup" by the Franklin Institute of WellnessCourses & Blogs - "Cold Care" by Learning HerbsCheck out my interview with the CBF Founder, entitled "A Buffalo Charges the Storm with Debbie Sardone". Debbie is offering free consultations to listeners of this show through the Smart Cleaning School Resources Page  at smartcleaningschool.com/resources to see if CBF could be the right solution for you. 

 My wife Teresa has been a mom for 18 years. She has always had an interest in wellness and specifically, natural remedies. I have always supported her in this approach. Over these last 8 years, I have seen her transform into a mom that knows how to treat her children and husband. She has been the secret weapon in our family to keeping us healthy. She is not a medical professional, so any advice she shares in these back-to-back episodes is general advise to our family. You should absolutely do your own research and consult with your doctor before any changes. Teresa has also learned and was mentored by medical professionals in the areas of integrative medicine, homeopathics, and naturopathics over the years. She reads books and listens to podcasts on wellness topics all the time. It is her hobby and she has helped every member of her family be healthier.I first shared my wife's knowledge in the episode, "Healthy Home Boundaries with Teresa Carfagno II" She touched on health topics and healthy eating for your family.  At the same time, my friend Dave Reeks in our Solo Elite Mastermind asked me to do an episode on solo cleaning longevity. I released a double. Here's the link to episode 1 and 2 of "Keys to Solo Longevity". These episodes focus on a multi-channeled approach toward caring for your cleaning machine to last a long time. Since we've only touched on the health topic and it was currently cold & flu season, I wanted to bring my wife back for a follow up. Our interview on natural remedies to boost your immune system and help to heal you of viruses went 40 minutes so I divided it into a double as well.  I hope you find these 2 episodes helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at ken@smartcleaningschool.com. 

 Before I even begin, let me first share the context of this episode. There are so many people struggling financially in America, which used to include us. I did not come from money. I have never made a lot of money. I am not currently a millionaire. "Ken, why are you teaching this topic?" In a matter of speaking, I am teaching it through my podcast. But the real credit goes to my friend Greg Shepard of Dallas Maids. His interview called "Sail Around the World" was a powerful example of how to think and solve problems in your business. Several months ago, I had the opportunity to hang out with Greg in Dallas for a few hours. Greg is a millionaire, many times over. He is very modest, so I clearly won't share his numbers. I will, however, share his mindset on money and becoming a millionaire. It was the simplest and most believable path I've ever heard to attaining wealth. His mindset is not unique. In fact, most money guides and gurus teach it already. Greg taught me 3 simple steps that every single person can take (no matter where they are from) to attain wealth during their lifetime. And that's the key  word... "lifetime". Wealth can be overnight and fast, but not usually. The prevailing mindset now on wealth now is that it's lucky and immediate... right place, right time. It's the lottery mentality. Greg taught me a powerful lesson that day in Dallas. I started implementing it and teaching it to my kids. Now I want to share it with you. This will rock you with its simplicity.  What do you need to create wealth? Let's reference the late, Napoleon HIll. You need to "Think and Grow Rich". There is a mental mindset you need to have on work, time, and money that allows you to conceive ideas that you can take action on. You need to believe that it is possible because without belief, you won't take the level of action required to convert an idea into wealth. You also won't be able to attract committed people to your vision that will help you accomplish it. John Maxwell says this. "A leader that lacks confidence has a team that lacks commitment." A strong mental mindset will produce the ideas. Strong ideas with action will build your belief. Results from your action will increase your belief. Increased belief produces confidence. This is where we need to get to. Now, I'll tie this back to my favorite quote in "Think and Grow Rich". "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." I love this quote... always have since the first time I read it in 2002. Now that you have a basic premise of what it takes to create wealth, I'll share Greg's very simple and practical advice that he has followed in his life.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 Another solo cleaner took advantage of the free coaching calls that I offer on my website. Claudia Adriazola of CMA Cleaning and Organizing in Onalaska, WI has a big goal to build her cleaning company with systems and a team to provide her with time and money freedom. However, her current solo business is a mess right now. She cannot optimize her solo business because she has no scheduling foundation. That's when I asked permission to record her coaching call so I could teach the four-week rotating schedule. She accepted. This is the lesson that I cannot believe I missed in 300+ episodes. It is so vital and foundational.  Every cleaning company builds a customer base on a schedule. The schedule cannot be monthly. It has to be a fully recurring schedule and the calendar is 52 weeks. First divide the calendar into 4-week blocks. This produces 13 time blocks in every year that are identical. Otherwise, you end up doing what Claudia did. She allowed customers to pick the frequency of cleaning that made sense to them. Claudia had to learn that she is running the business and offering the service. She will have to stop all tri-weekly cleanings and move these customers to biweekly or monthly, which is every 4th week. She will have to stop monthly clients as-is and move them to every 4th week. This will allow her and you to build a repeatable schedule that you can absolutely optimize and scale to achieve the future goals that you have!In this free coaching call, I also give Claudia 5 steps to completely transform her business with a fully automated schedule, working the same hours she is now, and to increase her income by $1,500 per month. I was thankful that Claudia allowed me to hit record as this was a lesson that should have been taught in the first 10 episodes. It's never too late!Are you a new or struggling solo cleaner wanting to create financial peace from your solo cleaning business? The Smart Cleaning School has resources for you! Check out the ISO Model Course and the Solo Elite Membership on the Smart Cleaning School Solos Page at www.smartcleaningschool.com/elite . 

 This original episode was a free coaching call from a podcast listener. Shasta had grown her initial business with low-paying customers on an hourly rate. She couldn't figure out how to transform that business into one that produced a livable income and time for herself to rest. I quickly saw her block. She had a scarcity mindset of thinking that there were no new customers out there. She thought her only option was squeezing her current bag of lemons until the skin started breaking. I explained to Shasta that there is no more juice in there and that she needs a brand new bag of lemons. This scarcity mindset is prevalent in new cleaning owners and especially the solos out there. 

This will be short and sweet. One of my favorite books is "The Go-Giver" by Bob Burg. Here's the excerpt. "In a brutally competitive world where everyone seems to be fighting to earn more and achieve greater success, 'The Go-Giver' offers an alternative set of business success principles built on giving and adding value to others."  This is a must read for all business owners. I have made it a must read for my kids as we teach them the value of entrepreneurship and service. They go hand-in-hand. You can't be an entrepreneur without serving others. About 2 years ago, I had a chance to be on a Total Life Freedom Community Call with Bob Burg. What a treat. He was so full of wisdom on building relationships in business. But it was this one-liner that moved me the most."If you sell on price, you are a commodity. If you sell on value, you are a resource."  This hit the nail on the head to all of the questions I've ever been asked. "Ken, how did you charge over $100 per hour cleaning houses?" This same question popped up so many different ways as I shared my story on social media and inside online cleaning groups. Many were in disbelief that I ever earned that much. To me, it was a simple process that I call the ISO Model. I have known that trust is at the core of this upward price trend. I have known that I needed to become the community specialist for cleaning. I had to be different and set apart from the masses to charge what I charged. This one quote from Bob Burg helped me take what I knew and put it into an easier teaching format. Let's try this out!What is a commodity? Let's define it from Webster. "An economic good: such as a product of agriculture or mining, an article of commerce especially when delivered for shipment, a mass-produced unspecialized product."Typically, a commodity is something  that everybody needs and uses. There are many who sell them and compete for thin margins. How many cleaners out there are treating their business like a commodity? They are selling or offering their cleaning service as the low-cost option. They are assuming that every cleaner is the same, offering the same, doing the same thing. Therefore, they need to sell on having the lowest price. This is a model that does win in cleaning, especially in commercial cleaning. It's the Walmart Model. Sell on price and create a ton of volume to make money.There is another option. What is a resource? Webster says this. "A source of supply or support : an available means, a natural source of wealth or revenue, a natural feature or phenomenon that enhances the quality of human life, computable wealth, a source of information or expertise, something to which one has recourse in difficulty, a possibility of relief or recovery, a means of spending one's leisure time, an ability to meet and handle a situation."Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

This episode is a follow up to "The Messy Middle" There was a place in between your initial goal to start your cleaning business and the place that you defined as success where things got messy. It got really hard to stay motivated. You weren't sure if you made the right decision. Your doubts and fears and condemnation crept in to try to steal your dream. This is the messy middle. I shared this truth about setting big goals and starting something new. "It always gets messier after you start!" I want to turn your attention to another destructive habit that can steal your dream. It's called anger. This will not apply to many of you, but for the ones that it does, please listen. I have personally listened to a lot of podcasts and many on cleaning and entrepreneurship. I have never heard one on anger. I was in the Messy Middle in our first New York solo cleaning business from 2007 - 2015 and from 2019 - 2020 in our second Pennsylvania solo business. I know what that feels like. If you've never heard me speak or share my story before, here's the nutshell. It took me a long time to develop my ISO Model for solo cleaners. In fact, it was the 8 years in the Messy New York Middle that I figured most of it out. This ISO Model allowed me to duplicate our first solo business in a fraction of the time. I want to dive into my 8 years in the valley, the mess, the pit. I was working so hard, going where ever I had to go to clean and make money. I was cleaning around the clock on many days. I injured myself by tearing tendons, meniscus, and even contracted Lyme Disease. I was often tired. I was often filled with doubt. I was often sad. And I was often very angry. Thankfully, I was walking with Jesus through this time to help me keep my peace. But even I'm no where close to perfect. I would lose my cool and freak out. I'd be late leaving the house and miss my shower. I'd have a foot of snow and ice on my car at 7am and 5 below. I'd get stuck in morning rush hour traffic and be even later to my first house. I'd trudge through the snow into the house. I'd bump into a piece of furniture with my cleaning gear or smack my knee or hip against a sharp wooden door or railing. I'd set down my gear and spill it all over the customer's floor because the duffle bad was torn from use in 3 places. I'd be vacuuming and suck up a carpet fiber that wrapped around the beater bar until the vacuum seized. I'd suck up a penny and seize it too. I'd crack my head on the shower metal or on a low doorway. I'd turn on the shower while cleaning and get soaked in the middle of winter. I'd break something in a house by accident. I'd be cleaning with spray bottles in each pant pocket when one would unscrew and dump a whole 32-oz bottle of cleaner on the customer's floor. All of these things seemed to happen to me when I was already struggling and mad. They would take me from mad to angry and many time angry to wrathful. I would literally leave the house and start screaming outside. I may even take my seized vacuum piece and either smash it on the ground or toss it in the bushes. Yes, it's dumb, but haven't you ever been angry?! It's irrational. I'm irrational when it happens. I would waste time, lose money, and lose belief that I was doing the right thing. Meanwhile, my friends from high school and college were all growing in their jobs, buying nice cars, having kids, buying them nice things, and living in nice houses. And we were driving old beaters and living in rented houses. I'd question myself all the time. I was angry again and again and again. Over the years, I learned my triggers and managed my emotions better. It wasn't easy, but I did it.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

  I have told this story so many times to friends and on other podcasts over the past 6 years since I've heard it. The Country Preacher teaches a powerful model for decision-making that I have used in the toughest of decisions.  Are you familiar with a Venn Diagram or the overlapping circles? Look it up if you're not familiar. Picture 3 circles overlapping in a way where there are 3 areas where any 2 circles intersect and only 1 area where all 3 circles intersect. Here are the 3 circles the Country Preacher used: Desire - Do you want to do it? Whatever the decision is, do you want to do it. Are you excited about the potential of i t working out? Are you passionate about going that new direction? Open Door - Is the opportunity available right now? Or is the door closed right now?Peace - How do you feel in your spirit about this decision? Does it give you anxiety or total peace?If you have a scenario where you have the desire and the opportunity is open, but there is no peace, do not do it.If you have a scenario where you have the peace and the opportunity is open, but you don't want to do it, do not do it. If you have a scenario where you have the desire and the peace, but the door is closed, do not do it. In this case, pray through the closed door until it opens (if it ever does).Let's use an example of a difficult decision our family faced in 2017. Do we leave 16 years of family and business roots we've forged in Upstate New York and move back home to the Philly Area? And by the way, I heard this message in 2016 and used this decision-making process to make this vital decision. We had a deep desire to go back to our hometown and be with our family. We missed Sunday dinners after church with my Nana and Pop-Pop after 18 years of living in other states. We missed my younger siblings having babies of their own and spending time with them. Yes, we had desire. After much prayer and talking as a family, we felt total peace that this was the right time to go back home. The kids were excited about it. We were excited. Sure, it was stressful to think how it would all work out. But that wasn't up to us to make work. We could only take action on the desire and peace we had. Was there an open door? Flashback. We wanted to go back to Philly just about every year we were in New York. But there wasn't an open door. This time there was. We prayed hard and long about this part. We'd have to sell the cleaning business. I'd have to replace myself as a Royal Rangers leaders. We'd need to find somewhere to live. In October 2017, we got the desire and prayed. In November, we were offered a free place to live with our family of 7 for a year with Teresa's mom. In December 2017, I replaced myself as a Royal Rangers leader. And in January, I took Ian to Dallas to a Debbie Sardone event called Speed Cleaning. Ian decided that he wanted to buy the cleaning business. There was the last part of the door opening. This one was hard as we didn't get the answer right away. We had to take action. The open door came. We've been out of New York for over 4 years now and it seems like a dream that we were ever there.  We are so thankful to be back home. We got to spend Sundays with my Nana and Pop-Pop for 2 years before they both passed. We have been to birthday parties and beach days with my 3 nieces and 1 nephew. We have seen and rebuilt relationships with friends and family members that we haven't seen in years. I am back in a position of leadership with the Royal Rangers and the new cleaning business is growing! This decision has been blessed because we sought after God's Heart on the matter. We made sure there was intersection of desire, an open door, and peace.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 I introduced a new Smart Cleaning School character in "I Can't Take Any More Customers" His name is Robot Bob the Solo Cleaning Machine. Bob doesn't eat. He doesn't sleep. He only needs oil and a battery charging station. This stud of a solo cleaner can leave his charging dock at 7 am Monday morning and start cleaning his first house by 7:30am. He cleans 3 houses without a lunch break. He doesn't stop to answer a phone call. He is a phone. He doesn't check the news or social media. It's all hardwired inside of him. Robot Bob just cleans and drives. Oh yeah, Robot Bob can drive because he has a self-driving electric car.  Robot Bob finished 3 houses by 4:30pm and earns $150 per clean or $450 for his house cleaning day. But he is not done. Bob stops back at his charging station for a 1-hour recharge and then drives to clean his first office. Robot Bob arrives at this first nightly office at 6pm and proceeds to clean 4 offices straight through the night because he is a Solo Cleaning Machine. Robot Bob finishes his 4th office at 5:30am Tuesday morning. He earns $600 in offices for the night. Robot Bob then drives to his charging station for a 1-hour recharge and is back to clean 3 houses on Tuesday. That's just one day in the life of Robot Bob the Solo Cleaning Machine. He cleans 3 houses and 4 offices from Monday through Friday, then he cleans 8 offices on Saturday and Sunday. Isn't Robot Bob a total stud?! He is creating $7,650 per week in revenue and since he doesn't eat or sleep, his expenses are very small. He only has to pay for electricity, oil, maintenance on his car, cleaning supplies, and insurance. Yes, even Robot Bob realized he needs to be a professional. These numbers are insane for the Solo Cleaning Machine. Robot Bob is profiting $350,000 per year!  Today, I was able to bring Robot Bob onto the Smart Cleaning School to answer some Q&A. Ken: How are you able to be here for this Q & A at 12pm on a Wednesday?Robot Bob:  Bob is cleaning right now. Bob am always cleaning. Bob has a built in computer and phone. Bob receives your questions and answers while cleaning.Ken: Wow, you are quite the Solo Cleaning Machine. What do you think of the humanoid solo cleaners who try to clean as much as you?Robot Bob: Bob laughs. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. No humanoid can clean like Bob. Humanoids need sleep. What a waste of cleaning time. Humanoids need food. What a waste of money and time. Bob only needs oil and a recharge. But Bob does wonder about the humanoid Chic-Fil-A experience?Ken: I'm sure glad that I'm a human...oid because those waffle fries and vanilla shakes are delicious! Bob, here's another question. Where is your recharging station?Robot Bob: Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Bob laughs at your humans. Bob earns $350,000 a year in profit.  Bob invested in a recharging station park with 100 charging stations. Bob uses one station and rents the other 99 to stupid humanoids to charge their Teslas.Ken:  Robot Bob the Solo Cleaning Machine. And now he's Robot Bob the Slumlord.  Last question for today. Robot Bob, do you have any advice for the solo cleaning humanoids who have the weakness for needing to eat, sleep, and see their families that say they can't take on any more customers because they don't have any more time?Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

I have a friend that I wish to keep anonymous. However, her story is one that I think many can relate to. Let's call her Abby. Abby is a single mom with 2 teenage kids that need her a lot. She also has a full-time job that needs her even more it seems. She can't seem to balance it all to get time for herself. Add to this that Abby was in a bad car accident as a young adult and suffered severe back injury. Thankfully, the accident was not her fault and she gets a monthly payout from the law suit for life. Obviously, it's not enough and can never pay for her back. But it helps her get by. The back injury has made sleeping virtually impossibly as she suffers every night with pain and discomfort. Many nights Abby will get to bed around 8:30pm and toss in bed sleepless with pain until 4:00am. When she finally falls asleep, her brain only registers an hour and a half to 2 hours of sleep because Abby has to get out of bed to go to work to pay the bills and take car of her kids. Somehow Abby has been able to function in life with little sleep. She gets her work done. She gets home to get her kids to and from school, feed them, clothe them, help them with their homework, and keep the house. Abby is a hero to those kids. All she wants is some sleep and some time for herself.  So she pays a big cable bill to have her shows to give her some peace before another long night of sleeplessness. Can you relate to this story about Abby at all. Do you know anyone like this? In a recent call with Abby, I learned some incredible news. She found a magic pill that one of her doctors wanted her to try. It enabled her to sleep through the night! Abby also noticed that she was more focused after getting good sleep. She could get things done at work faster. She didn't go through the day depressed or anxious. She had more peace, more ability to perform, more patience for others, more of a mom to her kids. This was incredible! I was nearly shouting through the phone! Just two of these pills and she could sleep. Praise God, right? Yes. But... it isn't free or part of a prescription plan. Abby has to pay close to $200 per month of money she doesn't have to afford the magic pills. She wanted help figuring this out. Abby has no money left over at the end of the month, so where was she going to find an extra $200? Since I'm a total numbers nerd, we dug into her budget and I saw the problem right away. The answer glared back at me. She was paying $275 per month for her cable bill, which included her internet. She also drove a luxury car which has average maintenance costs at $500 per visit to the shop. Everything else on her budget looked reasonable to me. I looked up her car compared to a similar Toyota model and found it to cost $13,000 more from purchase to maintaining for 5 years. This was an additional $220 per month in luxury car expenses. So I explained to Abby that she is also spending an extra $150 per month minimum for her high-end cable and internet service. Thus, I saw a potential of $370 per month in budget cuts. I compared that to the $200 per month expense that is changing her life with better sleep and productivity. I explained further that since she was asking my advice, that I would say it plainly. Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 I have been habitually late my whole life. This is not new news to long-time Smart Cleaning School Podcast listeners. In fact, I blamed it on my mom in a past episode. Let me first right a wrong. My mom declares that it was not her that was always late when I was a kid. Yes, our family was always late for events (all of them). But my mom has edited my blame from her to her husband, my step-father Paul. Sorry Dad. You're the culprit of lateness. I was influenced by this as a kid and carried lateness into adulthood. It wasn't until a few pivotal times that I learned some things that would change me. One is from the Royal Rangers Ministry that I am very invested. I've been to leadership training camps with the Rangers and hear this from the beginning to the end. "5 minutes early is on time and on time is late." The other is from my Pop-Pop. I shared in "He Built You a Clock" how my Pop-Pop showed me all throughout his life that being on time was important. It showed others that you value their time. I learned this on the weekends growing up and learned lateness during the week. At the age of 45, I can say that I finally get it. I don't want to be late anymore. I want to show people that I value them by being there on time. In fact, I want to be early. Does this relate?  How do you change? It seems so silly to ask, but let's break this down. You and I have been so programmed to leave the house at the exact time you need to get there on time. In many cases, we leave a few minutes later and believe we can make it up with going faster. We leave no margin for traffic, for forgetting something important at the house, for anything that could go wrong. In fact, we try a sort of inverse margin by leaving late and trying to miraculously make up the time. This margin is called a buffer. I want you to hear some notes from one of my favorite books called "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown. This comes from an article from mentalpivot.com.Chapter 15: BUFFER: The Unfair Advantage“A buffer can be defined literally as something that prevents two things from coming into contact and harming each other.”Buffers are effective strategies for dealing with the unknown and circumstances beyond our control.“The essentialist looks ahead. She plans. She prepares for different contingencies. She expects the unexpected. She creates a buffer to prepare for the unforeseen, thus giving herself some wiggle room when things come up, as they inevitably do.”Extreme preparation vs. ideal circumstances as illustrated in the story of Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott in the race to the South Pole. Amundsen build slack and buffers into his plan with food/supply caches, redundant supplies and frequent trail markers. Scott's planned for the best-case scenario and once external circumstances upended Scott's plan, his team paid the ultimate price.As a rule-of-thumb: Double your time estimates.Planning Fallacy: Human tendency to underestimate how long a task will take (even if they're familiar with the task and have done it before).Questions to ask when building buffers for personal projects:What risks do you face on this project?What is the worst-case scenario?What would the social effects of this be?What would the financial impact of this be?How can you invest to reduce risks or strengthen financial or social resilience?Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website

 This will be a fitting follow-up episode to "2 Rewards and a Consequence" I shared an elaborate goals structure for 90-day SMART goals. That's what I'm doing. I didn't want it to necessarily be what you're doing. Each of us is unique and responds to goal-setting differently. I know that I've covered these stats before, but listen to them again. 83% of people do not set goals. 14% set goals, but don't write them down. These 14% are 10x more successful than the non-goal-setters. 2% set goals and write them down. They are 30x more successful than the non-goal-setters. 1% set goals, write them down, and are held accountable to achieving them. This 1% Club is over 100x more successful than the non-goal-setters. The takeaway should be abundantly clear. Set goals, write them down, and get into accountability. If you don't, you'll wander aimlessly with the 83%. Let me also be clear. I never said the 83% were unsuccessful! Many of them do extremely well and many of them do not. These stats simply show that the average of the non-goal-setters pales in comparison to the focused few that have goals.  Now, I would like to introduce a concept to you. It's called the Messy Middle. I have referred to it in this podcast before. I'll describe it first outside of cleaning.  This is my wife's project right now. You are fed up with the state of your home. It's cluttered and full of 20 years of kids stuff, trinkets, unused furniture, books and more books, papers, keepsakes. This has been mounding up for years and nothing you do ever seems to reduce the size. It just grows. [Notice that I didn't say that the kids themselves were the clutter.] You feel tight and stressed every day you walk through your home and see it. Is this a Hoarders episode? No, this is no where near that. But it's bad and stressful and an eye-soar to you. You've finally had it! You proclaim a new goal! I am going to declutter this house. I am going to get rid of all the junk. I am going to create space. I am going to have peace back in my home. There's an "I've had it" moment. This happens in way more than just your house. It's in your health or weight, your relationships, your finances or debt, your business, your job. Do you relate? Back to this decluttering project.You've proclaimed your new goal. The thought of a decluttered and minimized home sounds like paradise. You get excited. In fact, you get really, really, really excited. You are ready to bag everything, tear down drywall, and personally lift dressers by yourself to accomplish this goal. Adrenalin is rising. It's the beginning and you have a new goal's Dopamine spike! Have you ever been there? You can see what it will look like in the end. You begin.You're a few days into your project. The work is getting cumbersome, monotonous. You're starting to struggle with decision fatigue on what to get rid of and what to keep. Do you keep this beautiful work of art from 12 years ago that simply says "I love you, Mommy" in green crayon on red construction paper. There's no date, no name. But you know who did it and now they are driving a car. Even though the work is getting to be work, you're still excited as you can see the finish line. You keep going.Read the rest of this article at the Smart Cleaning School website