Episode 12: How the 2020 Pandemic Has Created a Disaster for Housekeepers Everywhere

Episode 12: How the 2020 Pandemic Has Created a Disaster for Housekeepers Everywhere

Brandon Schoen:
Setting up a true business, a true system that creates that freedom for you and your life. And also creates that sustainability. Like when some stuff like this happens and bumps in the road happen, you're going to be able to get through it. So it's not too late even if you guys were bumped off and lost some clients. Now's the time to keep growing. Now's the time to get back and get back into the game.

Announcer:
Grow your cleaning business, make more money, have more time. This is the Profit Cleaners podcast with your host Brandon Condrey and Brandon Schoen.

Brandon Schoen:
Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Profit Cleaners. I'm your host Brandon Schoen joined by my co-host..

Brandon Condrey:
Brandon Condrey.

Brandon Schoen:
Brandon Condrey. And we're here again guys, for another quick episode today, actually, to encourage you guys. Just wanted to share a quick, really interesting article that we came across this week on the New York times. I'm gonna have Brandon talk about, and I just wanted to kind of tie it back to why we're doing all this guys, why we're talking about all the things we talked about on this podcast, which is a lot of it's coming back to systems and things to do. It's not just to benefit you and your life at the systems that we're talking about and all this business stuff guys is to benefit your teams, that to benefit your company to impact your community. That's a much bigger picture that we're talking about here. And this quick episode guys today, we're going to talk about that specific episode, our article, which was housekeepers facing a disaster generations in the making and how we're doing things differently and just the impact that you can and should be making with your businesses, even amongst all this chaos and craziness. So let's jump in Brandon, let's tell them about this article that you sent our company last week and everybody was super impacted by it. And I think it's really amazing to share this with people.

Brandon Condrey:
So my wife had sent me this article, Brandon kind of gave you the title housekeepers face a disaster generations in the making, but the tagline there was ghosted by their employers. Members of the profession are facing a full blown humanitarian crisis, a depression level situation. We'll put the link to the article in the show notes so you can read this as well, but that makes it sound like house cleaning is doomed to fail. And so what struck me about the article is just how badly house cleaners are treated. So the article was about, for the most part, it was about independent housekeepers who had, you know, 10 or 12 clients that they keep up with and how they just kind of all got kicked to the curb during COVID.

And so one of the benefits that we had as a forward-thinking employer was that we were able to communicate with customers about COVID situation and why you shouldn't be panicking and why we're keeping you safe with masks and shoe covers and gloves and all the things that we did. And we put out a lot of videos when we did that. So, you know, these housekeepers, you know, it's just like a one-person show kind of cleaning a house. And so they don't really necessarily have the benefit to communicate to their customers. Like we do it through YouTube channels and stuff like that because they're not an organized company, but it was just interesting that it's a terrible situation, obviously COVID and the way that it's impacting house cleaners across the nation, especially if they're small and independent. But what was most interesting to me is that we were basically the exact opposite of what was in this article. So we were able to not lay anybody off. We grew during the pandemic, we hired more people. And so that's not a fluke. It's not that it was any better in New Mexico than it was anywhere else in the nation. We had it rough as well. And our business had a rough in the beginning, you know, dropping 35%, but we adjusted. And so I read that article. I was struck by it. I sent it out to our company chat and then we got a couple reactions from people that I thought were interesting as well.

Brandon Schoen:
When I read this, I was like super touched. And I just was like, man, this is again, the reason we're doing this is not even for monetary gains or, you know, also we're starting a business and it's successful like type of thing. Like this is the real reason we're doing it guys. And so here's the conversation again, like Brandon said, this is actually from our head office manager and she just replied back. Wow, good read. And then she said, I am happy. We can help the 25 we have here have a better life, life conditions and hope for a future, not a treadmill life, which is what this article really talked about is kind of this dead-end life that a lot of these, for the history of this profession, it's been really hard for these people. So she went on to say, you're changing people's lives Brandons. Giselle's buying a house next week closes on the 24th Janeth, Miriam, they would not have been able to do that without the increase in pay, by being hired by SGC (Sandia Green Clean), the bonus and yeah, we have no paid days off, but they can take them as needed, which isn't common in other companies. And I am proud to work for and be part of SGC.

I thought that was just super touching guys. I was like, man, that's the whole reason we're doing this is to not just help ourselves, obviously it's to help other people help our community. So that really resonated with me. And I just want to share that with you guys and I remind everyone, and that's what we're doing this for. Is that the bigger picture. If we can just think about how we could get back to, like you said, man, doing the opposite of what's happening, which is again, coming back to having those systems in place, taking the proper communication, being organized and being more efficient so that you can sustain that growth and you can create more opportunities and more jobs when everyone else is maybe struggling, you know, you can be that source of support and opportunities or somebody.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. So we'll obviously post the article and read it yourself. It's a quick read. It paints a dire situation for immigrant housekeepers. They're independent. We have lots of immigrants that we employ. We're proud to do that. And I think part of the benefit is that we pay well. So we just did another round of hiring. We just got another car on the road and that's part of the growth that we're experiencing during COVID. Part of that was interviewing other people when they come over. And we had an employee that came from one of the franchises, she'd been there for four years and she was still making what she made on the first day, which was $9 and 20 cents an hour, which is the minimum wage for Bernalillo County where Albuquerque is located. That is pathetic as I'm just going to chastise the other business owners locally. That like that is just such a poor reflection on the work that she's done. She hit the ground running here and she's great. So we start off at $11 an hour, which is a probationary thing that they have for 90 days. And then we give them a bump to 12. There's always a bonus structure in there to kind of boost them up closer to like the 15, $16 an hour to kind of incentivize performance, but not many people are doing it that way. And when you get articles like this, it's showing that like a lot of people aren't doing it that way, that you are facing like this just wiping out of so many businesses. But at the same time, you know, like that's what makes the people that are paying attention and leading. That's why you're going to grow during this time is that if other people are, you know, just tucking another turtle shell and being like, this'll go away soon. Someone said, it'll go away soon. Yeah. That's ignoring reality.

So we got to deal with it. And we did lots of stuff in the beginning. I remember we set up a live zoom call with any customer that wanted to jump on and lots of them did. And they just got to ask whatever their primary concern was that maybe we hadn't addressed in the communications, what are they doing? How are you protecting us? We answered all those questions. I think everyone that was on that call ended up staying. One of them in particular was so crazy that they actually offered to keep paying for their cleaning, but didn't want us to come clean. So they were basically like helping out a business, giving us the cash flow to keep running and make sure that we didn't lay anybody off and they were building up a credit. And then when they finally were ready to come back, that we just subtracted from the stuff that they'd paid us, which was really cool.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. It's really cool. So guys, I think it comes back to if this did happen to you, even if maybe what you did have a really small operation, maybe it was just you or a couple family members or one or two other employees that you were cleaning with. And maybe you guys are still feeling that crazy impact from what's happened in our economy the last year. But I would just encourage you guys all to remember. That's why we're pointing you guys in this direction of setting up a true business, a true system that creates that freedom for you and your life. And also creates that sustainability. Like when some stuff like this happens or bumps in the road happen, you're going to be able to get through it and you're going to survive it instead of just wonder what happened kind of thing, which is what kind of happened. Unfortunately, a lot of these people, so it's not too late. Even if you guys were bumped off and lost some clients, like now's the time to keep growing. Now's the time to get back and get back into the game.

Brandon Condrey:
Absolutely!

Brandon Schoen:
Start building those systems and start getting them back on the right track.

Brandon Condrey:
So hopefully you guys find some good value out of the article and inspires you to maybe rethink some things that you're doing or reinforces the good things that you are doing. So this was a quick one. We just want to do this quick article review. So you guys could kind of catch some of the mindset that we got going on and yeah, we'll catch you on the next episode.

Brandon Schoen:
Catch you guys on the next episode. Take care guys!

Brandon Condrey:
Keep it clean!

Brandon Schoen:
Keep it clean!

Announcer:
Thanks for joining us today. To get more info, including show notes, updates, trainings, and super cool free stuff. Head over to Profitcleaners.com and remember keep it Clean.