Episode 5: Step Up Your Business While Embracing the “New Normal”

Episode 5: Step Up Your Business While Embracing the "New Normal"

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:
What is up everybody? Welcome to the Profit Cleaners podcast. It's another new podcast. And another exciting day joined here with my cohost Brandon Condrey.

Brandon Condrey:
That's me!

Brandon Schoen:
And I am Brandon Schoen and we're here with another exciting episode. Today is actually a little bit different because we're going to be doing a really cool kind of behind the scenes under the hood insider episode with our partner and mentor from Colorado. So he's the guy that we started the business with many, many years ago, only three years ago, but, uh, you know, we've come a long way and we're going to be doing more of these calls. But I think the really cool thing about this call is you guys get to see kind of a sneak peak behind the scenes.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah, this is kind of what it's like to run a cleaning company very seriously. And then talk about it with someone else. Who's been doing it for almost 20 years. So this was a, it was a zoom call. It was a group call between the owners and the office staff of both companies. And we've got you some sort of choice audio clips from that. So you can kind of hear what we discussed back and forth, and we covered a lot of topics. Um, you know, this is kind of, we're recording this when the pandemic is kind of winding down. States are easing state Home restrictions and restaurants are opening and stuff. So we covered a little bit of what we did during the pandemic, how that affected each of our revenues, how we both pivoted for marketing efforts.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, absolutely marketing, uh, what, we're, what we're doing, you know, procedures, new and old, um, some talking about some tools and different things we're doing there. We're talking about team, uh, procedures, systems and just techniques and things like that. So lots of really exciting stuff. It's all over the place, but it's really, I think going to be a fun lesson for you guys to just listen in on that and kinda hear what that might be like to, to be in on another cleaning business listening what's going on and how we're dealing with things. And, um, yeah. So it's going to be an exciting episode. You guys wanna check it out?

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah, let's do it.

Brandon Schoen:
Let's jump in. Um, we kind of started the audio recording a little bit late, but we kind of just jumped right in talking about, uh, after we talked about revenues and we'll go from there.

Brandon Condrey:
Sure. Sounds good.

Brandon Schoen:
Awesome. So enjoy guys.

Brandon Condrey:
Alright, thanks.

Corby Felsher:
One of the benefits of what Blanca has done and what we've this implementation of periodically having Blanca go and spend time in each team. It's not so much to change what they're doing, but to mine from them, some of these awesome techniques that they've come up with to get through a process, and we grab that technique and talk about it and bring it to the rest of the teams and make that part of our systems. That mining is so valuable. I say it's more valuable than trying to get all the teams doing exactly the same thing, which we're pretty close. That sort of shaping is easily done by Blanca without getting them upset. But also she gives those teams like this is sweet. This is a great process. Let's, let's talk about this more.

Corby Felsher:
So yeah, when we're moving folks around to keep, uh, Lisa did a great job of, you know, giving everybody ours, that was, uh, we knew it'd be costly, you know, giving people new houses every single day that they haven't seen before and new partners. And that was an experiment, but we got through that part and we're onto profitability. I think, uh, I think our future, I'm pretty optimistic about it and that we've positioned ourselves and have a good marketing campaign right now. And people basically know who we are, but we're really letting them know who we are, what we do. Some people have heard of Stapleton Services, we're making sure that all of them, at least most people in Stapleton really know who we are and what we do. So we've got a video out there. We've got our new website up and running. A couple of ad campaigns is pretty consistent with Facebook and Instagram. We're laying off right now on any new marketing on Facebook and Instagram until this hopefully a black lives matter settles down a little bit. That's a, we're not trying to jump on any of that right now and let that just kind of flow through and not add our message to that really important one. So, but it's, I believe I'm confident that by spring of next year, we'll be very close to a hundred percent. I don't believe that we're going to, so let's call it one year from now, as far as customer count and profitability, I'm fairly confident in that, but I don't believe it's going to be a very fast flow. I think we're gonna have to put all of our effort into it with marketing and consistency and follow up and sticking to our systems. And one benefit of the current situation is I believe we're going to keep our employees. I mean, our employees are not going to leave. And that situation that we had before, you know, a little bit of transient this before a little bit, I think that part goes away. And with that comes a little bit more profitability and little bit more with that consistency and a little more customer satisfaction. I think we're, we're positioned to take on competitors better than before, and that folks are focused on price and we're going at house then that housekeeper world we're some of these Stapleton save on residents, have the money to spend, but they really like to save the money on the housekeeper and, you know, work the housekeeper and tell her what to do, leave lists and in this new world with COVID I think that some of those folks with our campaign and with the understanding of how this disease works, might be willing to spend a little bit more money and go with a quality systemized clean like Stapleton Services.

Brandon Condrey:
You're basically seeing the exact same thing. So we've gotten a lot of calls from people that their housekeeper bailed, like when things got weird, they just stop in and we're like, well, I'm not doing this. So see you guys later, our sort of chief competitor in the green cleaning side of things is called a Green sweep. They voluntarily just shut their doors. They were like, we don't want to do this. We're closing for three weeks. Um, they're back in operation now, but we picked up some customers from that when they stopped. But the thing I think that sold people on our end is that we put out a bunch of videos as things were getting weird and let people know like, Hey, this is how we're going to handle it internally. And so what we've settled on, what sells the new people coming in now is that they're wearing shoe covers gloves. We had a bunch of fabric masks made. And then when they come in the house, we're checking temperature, right? When they come in and building in the morning, we're checking temperature, blood oxygen levels. And we ask them if they've had a change in their sense of taste or smell. So the taste thing and the oxygen is ideally to pick up asymptomatic cases. So if you're not having a fever, but you still are infected, you have an oxygen level drops. So we use pulse oximeters for that. And that level of detail on just kind of policing everything as made a lot of people comfortable. We've gotten new customers that are like in their eighties that don't want to clean, but realize they're at risk, but they're comfortable with the degree to which we're taking things. So that's been good. And then we have two Facebook ad campaigns running right now. One of them is focused on healthcare professionals. So we're doing a $75 off the first Clean if you're a doctor or a nurse. And that one I think is our highest converting ad campaign at the moment. So that's been pretty good as well.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah, that's great.

Brandon Schoen:
I just wanted to say like, yeah, same with the Corby. Like, I think a lot of people are not, I mean, we're still selling cleaning services, but people are buying certain Timor and they're buying more of that peace of mind that,

you know, this is helping stop the spread or whatever, just keep, keep them safer, you know? And then, yeah, like you said, too, just the branding. It's a really great time for branding to just get your company's name out and do whatever you can in the community to help anyone, any business. We started cleaning offices more. I'm like Brandon said, just, we put out that video on Facebook, which has done really well. I think it's gotten like 60,000 views or something now. And, but again, just even if we didn't get any customers from it, it's a great Brandon piece makes people laugh, you know, keeps a little more peace of mind or whatever. We can give them to bring some comfort during all this craziness. So, so that's really good. We're about to switch that offer the $75 off has been working really well, but we just gotta change it. Cause we're starting to see the same people being targeted in our local market for that. So we've got to switch it up and keep it fresh. But yeah, I think it's all picking back up, which is good for the most part. Yeah.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. We did a campaign kind of using our PPP flow to give away. We gave away 30 free clean to any of our Stapleton residents on the front line. And that was a pretty good campaign, a lot of reposts of that and good press. And you know, I was talking to Lindsey and Lewis about that as to, Hey, and they're saying that now four of the 21 that we've clean so far have turned a regular customers so can turn kind of a costly.

Brandon Condrey:
We did the same thing. So we did free cleaning. So we do those cancer patient claims. That was weird because they're immunosuppressed and we didn't want to be responsible for killing someone on chemotherapy. So what we did instead was we did free cleans for the staff of the hospital and we got a bunch of those and I'd sell them, did convert to customers as well.

Brandon Schoen:
That's cool. Yeah.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. That's been a good one. I think we might extend that a bit. The MCA, the Stapleton MCA has given us an offer to give them an ad and to post on their Facebook and to send an email blast as part of their normal newsletter. So we're gonna take advantage of that. And the MCA has been featuring Stapleton residents and their Facebook and giving a little bio of some of these frontline people. So we're going to tap into that and maybe give away 20 more. We're going to talk about that, but kind of take advantage of that and ride their marketing capabilities and their floats they've got going already and that every single resident sees it. So we're going to continue that for a little bit longer. And then yeah, it looked for the next sort of opportunity to get ourselves in front of, uh, the folks and keep pushing the message that you need to go with us. If you're gonna go with anybody, it's the only way to go. That's our message hidden inside of all of our advertising.

Brandon Condrey:
Inside. There's a subliminal message in the background.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah, exactly.

Brandon Schoen:
I think more than ever right now there's less pushback. And like, you already mentioned the pricing, but I don't know Brandon you could probably speak to this better, but I just kind of see that this is going to be like a wave that, you know, it's all happened. A lot of people stopped cleaning all together or did it themselves, or just canceled for awhile. But then it seems like it's going to be a wave that just comes back. Not only the regular people, but now all these other people that are more conscious and aware of just a cleaner environment. And if we have a better, like you're saying a more systematized approach that makes people feel great about what we're doing, they can put their trust in that. Then hopefully a lot of the people that will, would have normally gone with, you know, a smaller, cleaner, or someone that doesn't have those efficiencies will come to us and someone like you guys, I think it's less pushback on price and less pushback than normal and people more like just adopting it. Cause they're like, we just need this more than ever, you know? Yeah.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. I haven't had any pushback on price that used to be a thing where people wouldn't try to negotiate or like I'm not going to clean the basement. How much does it, if I don't clean the basement, people have stopped really objecting that much to it, which is kind of nice. And then we have had a wave of customers that kind of paused that came back this week in particular, I think is going to be a turning point. So on Monday they opened restaurants for dining service at 50% capacity with the tables spread far apart, you have to leave your phone number when you come in and see someone. I got them. So they can tell everyone that you were exposed. So I think the general sort of consumer confidence is going up as a result of that. But like Jim's opened the, state's working on getting all these summer programs in action. So I think a lot of the cancellations, we had an, the positives were people that were at home with their young kids and there was just, where are we going to go when you guys are here? And so those are the ones that hit the pause button, but all businesses are back open if they want to be in the state right now at certain capacity requirements. So people are kind of going back to work. They're figuring out what to do with their kids. Summer programs are open. So I think the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty big in terms of customers coming back. So yeah.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. Lyndsey. Can you say what you said again? I didn't hear that. I think it was the birds at my house.

Lyndsey:
And I think you guys are having a hard time hearing us that we're noticing that same kind of upward tick in customers right now. Also I'm having a lot of people coming back who are finding ways to be out of the house and who are maybe starting to go back to the office that were having an uptick. And then even with the frontline workers, we haven't cleaned all the 21 that were scheduled yet. And I have many quotes out. I'm still anticipating that. We're definitely seeing people start coming back and there's a lot of activity and a lot of people are asking what we're doing and I'm sending them this video we have, and I've gotten a lot of really positive feedback from them.

Brandon Condrey:
That's great.

Claudia Knight:
The same on our, on our end, I'm tracking the customers. I have a spreadsheet per month. So March, April and May, and then unfortunately, June, cause we have had a few, even this month who continued postponing. So they're going to wait another month to come back. But then as they come back, I'm marking down the date that they return. And it's about two a week that I'm getting back right now, three last week to this week. So I think it's going up and then schedule wise, I'm booked through next Thursday. So I feel like that's positive too. We haven't booked all our nurse cleanings. We've only done about 17 of them. So we have some in just sitting there waiting for me to send out a free clean. So that's a potential, you know, New biweekly customer. Cause the nurses they're like on the same, same wavelength as you guys, they're busy. They want to give me a key. They're not there. They don't care. You know what we're doing. They just want us to come in and do it. So I really want those nurses to be recurring. And so we're hitting them up with, it's like a three step system. When I contact them to let them know that they're going to get a free clean, that's a text message. And it explains how they're going to be made aware of everything else. Then once I reach out to tell them I have a free clean I have This like paragraph they send out that tells them what to expect. A team of three that were re all the PT East stuff is on there as well as tell us how we're going to get in. You don't have to be there. I mean, it's just super cool. So we send that out and then prepping them for you're also going to get an estimate. The estimate will tell you what recurring service costs. Then I send the estimate the same time that I booked the appointment. So I'm not having to follow up again later. Then Elmie, the person that we have in the Philippines that helps she sends a followup the next day, checking in, Hey, did you love your onetime free? Clean this is how much, you know, just a reminder of the estimate that they got. So I think all of that is going to help us snag those nurses. But like I said, I'm running out of open spots for them. We might, I don't know how long we're going to spread the love to them.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. It's a good problem.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. That's a really good process there to utilize and well, and the same flow to those nurses. That's a great idea that way. It's you're not getting for them to ask, Hey, what does it cost? I think we should get that team on our side to get them immediately. If you were interested, here's the situation I liked that.

Claudia Knight:
I'll share it with you guys.

Corby Felsher:
Thank you.

Brandon Schoen:
Cool. Alright, so everyone's going back up.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. I was going to add up Matt, add on, but change the subject a little bit. Not the subject, but we were talking yesterday. I was thinking, you know, we were at about capacity for our nine teams of three and when things shut down a bit. So, and now if the numbers we're looking at correctly are we're look like an 18 company and a little bit less than that. So right now we're in a flow of doing these one-time cleans and there's some move out cleans, but we're talking about how do we, in the short, let's say in the next 30 days to 60 days, how do we react to that? Assuming we'll grow at a clip of five a month at best could be more, but I'm not expecting that operating a nine person team. As you know, when you're operating and cleaning less houses per day per team, it's less profitable. So we're starting the conversation as to do we knock it back to eight teams and plan on a ninth team growth in the future to are what we call district seven. So have two teams in district seven, which is the North of zone. Or do we stick with what we've got and just try to fill the bill and work on marketing, just focus and stick with it and maybe a little bit less profitability for the next six months, but stick with the three team, uh, the nine teams, that's kind of what we're discussing now. Would you guys have any, anything like that?

Brandon Condrey:
So we're kind of, I'm on the opposite track there. So we're expecting a big bump when things kind of get the all clear, like when restaurants go back to full capacity and dangerous and all that stuff is back, we're expecting a jump arise. And so The way that we structured the PPP loan that we got, so we use the PPP loan to pay a hundred percent of payroll. So we didn't use it on rent or anything like that. And then, you know, we were only down 80% of revenue, so we still got 80% of our normal income. So we put up a plan for what to do with those funds. And so what we've done is we invested in some new equipment that is on insane back-order, but hopefully it comes soon, but it's a contactless electrostatic sprayer that is commonly used in gyms. And so it's like a little gun. They hold, they have these tablets, they get dissolved in it. It's environmentally friendly and the electrostatic makes the they're like three micron drops that stick to everything. And so you're able to offer a contactless sanitizing and the difference between what we're doing now, and that is that this can do it works on fabric like curtains and carpet and couches. You know, we can't mop a couch and sanitize it, but we can with this. So we're waiting to get that piece of equipment and to kind of see if that is, and then it'll just be an add on service that we have for people like, Hey, for 99 bucks, we'll come and do this like whole surface disinfecting thing. And that will be, you know, appropriate for COVID stuff, but also going forward in the future, like, Hey, did you have a loved one with the flu? Like we'll come spray down all this stuff. So there's that. And then the other part of the funds that we did, we upgraded the microfiber across the board and we just got that all shipped in yesterday. So it's the same samples that got sent to you from new fiber. And we're switching to these mops, these pocket mops that are really easy to change fast and they have these rings on the outside. So when they're up in corners and like baseboard, it's kind of scrubbing the vertical surface and the corners as well. So we did that. And then the other thing we did is we're buying a car, we're getting a car for TV seven, even though we don't have it and we're going to get it painted and put the graphics on it. And it's just going to be there. It's going to be ready to go. So if the wave actually comes in, like we're are expecting, we should be able to fill team seven pretty quickly, I think. And I think this will end up being our best year in terms of revenue and customer count. The advertising stuff we're doing has been really well received. And then Brandon Schoen lined us up with this marketing company that specializes in cleaning companies. And so they have designed our Google ad funnels. They're doing some SEO stuff on the web page. We've got a new webpage coming out. So we just kind of took the downs to focus on improving the business, like across the board, trying to just adjust things everywhere that we could make it. We got some new computers and stuff to make people more efficient. And we got standing desks for the office downstairs. So Claudia has got a standing desk. We also hired, um, Kristen, I don't think you guys have met Kristen yet. She's not in until the afternoon, but that's our Lyndsey and the Wesa pair is Claudia and Kristen. Yeah. So things are looking up.

Corby Felsher:
That's great news. We also put just a couple of the sprayers were waiting. I probably on the same exact shipment as you right. Coming from China. Yeah. We bought a couple of the guns in a backpack for Stanley, but I'm not quite sure how to, I believe that'll be a great, it adds a different type of business, which I've always been hesitant in doing like carpet cleaning. It kind of requires a bit of expertise and somebody that's good with it. So you need kind of a hired gun if you will, does it separately on a separate schedule. So I'm kind of, I'm working through that mentally as to what that looks like and having it to having those $1,500 guns to just any employee, you know, there are a lot of maintenance to keep them up and running their reports on them are, you know, mixed as to if you keep them clean and perfect. They work great. If not, you're fucked and they're down and I've got a gun for six months.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. So what we've talked about, I know that you guys had a field supervisor at one point. And then if I recall correctly, she voluntarily bailed out of the job because he didn't like how the other employees treated her as a supervisor. Like she didn't enjoy the authority position. I think that what happened there,

Corby Felsher:
Louis, you want to check?

Louis:
Yeah. That's exactly what happened. He just wanted to step down. We're all leaning in to hear you. Do you need to lean in more and that's what happened. She does a step down. We still don't have a trainer. What, right now, actually I'm using with her supervising, going through all the emails for one week and working in one week, everybody's doing the same process, but we don't have an official supervisor. Even the trainer. She does don't want that.

Brandon Condrey:
Right. The reason I brought that up is that's one of the things that we've contemplated doing. It wouldn't be our trainer if we did it and she would have her own vehicle and drive around and check on people. But that would be the person that we trained on the sanitizing thing with the gut. We only have the one that's kind of a trial to see if it's going to work. And then we'll kind of see what happens if that's gonna work at all. So it's a beta test.

Brandon Schoen:
And Corby another thing you could do. Lyndsey and Lisa, we have a company in town that we just actually an old friend of mine. He reached out to me, but they have several of the electrostatic gun. So if our one gun goes down, he's already told us, like, you can borrow his, you just have to coordinate it with their schedule and when they're not using it. So that's another thing you could do is just work with other collaborate with other businesses that have them too. Cause I think a lot of them, if they don't already have them, one of the flood companies and those kinds of companies have them soon.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. I mean, I love the idea of, I mean, it makes sense to me, even for a cleaning method to spray your cleaning, to have it electrostatically wrap around everything you're spraying. That is a fantastic, yeah, we bought three. So we have our backups, but again, just going to work you're like you guys are, I mean, regarding the, uh, one of the best moves we made was not having the field supervisor. And let me explain why we ended up relying on the field supervisor kind of as a crutch, as what we know she's out there picking the teams and this and that. And it was costly and it's a little bit tougher to track the, what that brings. And once we had, did not have that, we had to put our systems in place like you are operating right now to work without a supervisor, to have all that information flow only through Louisa and only through Claudia. Once you add that other layer to it, that person who you believe is handling it perfectly, is going to leave you. And then that has that. Now that void is there and you've relied on this crutch of all these things and maybe allowing some teams to do a little bit, you know, to get away with a little bit more some, because she likes them more or other teams who don't like her, it ends up being kind of a personal thing because it's really difficult for humans to take direction from somebody. They don't completely respect. They all respect Claudia. I believe that a hundred percent when you put them in the field and you have, yep, go ahead.

Claudia Knight:
Well, we had, it's funny because you're basically talking about a situation we had this morning where the person that we want to send up to training with Louisa and is our field supervisor, trainer person is having issues with employees. So there she's not treating them respectfully. They're not respecting her. I'm out of the loop. I'm taking information from her trusting that it's accurate. And it turns out not to be because they're all not getting along. So I kind of agree with you before having that spot where I was the one that heard everything and there wasn't that telephone game where the third person gets a different story than the second person. So as of today, when we chatted with her, we eliminated that part. If there's a, you know, a problem with teams or a problem with an employee, they come to me directly instead of coming to her, I'm moving forward. But it's interesting that you felt that too. And I want to hear more.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. I mean, the person ends up being, even if you take them out of that loop and they're still kind of in it, then she's just a nark and they'll all assume that anything that goes on that you come back to them with you go back to a team say, Hey, listen, this situation. Well, how did you hear about that? Well, from the narc, of course, that's what they're going to assume. The narc meeting your trainer. And they're going to assume that no matter what you say to them, they'll assume that hater for the rest of your life. They will never take words from her again. And they'll just kind of do their own thing and push the limits of it. Hell it's only a $15 an hour job. They're willing to risk it. And that's what happens. It just becomes a negative. And I don't know a human out there that can take that job and do it right. Unless you personally were to quit your job and go out in the field and only do that. And you were in charge of all the employees. That's the only way that works taking an employee and moving them up to a supervisor, just creates more. They're like a, they throw a fuel on little fires. Then two, they ended up being kind of God. And it's hard to resist. It's hard to resist that from human nature.

Louise:
We haven't ready. A few. We have tried more than once. And every single time, it's hard to be with one piece in the office, him and one feet on the field team, then team and the patients, their message Julie and then here, they're trying sometimes to make things look good for the feel that that way they get them to like them. And it ended up being, they always leave the company. They always in bad terms. It hasn't never been a good experience like right now, what do we do with Lanka. She is the trainer, but he is nothing more than that. Like even right now in the training process with all the teams to make sure that cleaning process is good. But if Lanka find out anything else, he doesn't get involved in drama. She doesn't have to report anything that all the teams know that that way, all of that I'm handling that directly.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. But doesn't Blanca come back and report stuff that she's thought while she was, you know, cleaning like related to, I mean, related to the cleaning, like they're doing this wrong, you're going to correct them on site. Did she report that back to them? You just let it know.

Louisa:
No, she tells me things. I get, we're gonna change this process. For example, if you find out team five, who's doing this until you like it better than we implemented to all the other teams like, Hey guys, we find out that this way is better. You can save time. And if you help this person doing something different on the master, like sample, then we've got to change that for the whole company. But then she fixed the problems with somebody doing wrong with our meat, find it out. It's definitely something really bad, but normally it's just little details that you just make it because everybody. And then she tell me everybody's cleaning almost the same, but this little detail that I'm changing from them.

Brandon Condrey:
Right.

Louisa:
I don't get who, why in anything? Because if not, then I get involved in that one and trust her anymore.

Brandon Condrey:
Hmm. All right. We've got to tweak that. Speaking of which we're still highly interested in having gender is her name come up and kind of, you know, get a little bit of coaching from Louisa on what that role is supposed to be in terms of not getting involved in the drama, but then also to kind of gain Blanca and see how it's done. Really that's I think our biggest weak spot at the moment is how we're utilizing Janet in the trainer role and you know, what we should be doing differently.

Corby Felsher:
I think I would have, I think the role that Louisa has put Blanca in to is excellent in when there is no way that people can be upset with her, the way that it's an organized. And if you're hiring somebody, I would have them just go spend the next six months going from team to team, into team. After they understand the process, know it very, very well. And just mine. One of the benefits of what Blanca has done it with this implementation of periodically having Blanca go and spend time in each team, it's not so much to change what they're doing, but to mine, from them, some of these awesome techniques that they've come up with to get through their process. And we grab that technique and talk about it and bring it to the rest of the teams and make that part of our systems. That mining is so valuable. I say it's more valuable than trying to get all the teams doing exactly the same thing, which we're pretty close. That sort of shaping is easily done by Blanca without getting them upset. But also she gives those teams like this is sweet. This is a great process. Let's, let's talk about this more and makes them feel without any, I don't know if we give them any benefits, any financial benefit of that. We talked about it, but at least we bonus them at all for any of these things. I'm not sure.

Louisa:
We give them more, the public recognition that everything know who created and why we love it and make them feel special because they were super good creating this new system and make that all public.

Brandon Condrey:
Right. Okay.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. I'm assuming that that happens from the WhatsApp's there backing up a little bit. Can you send me some information on the mop specifically that you discovered they hit those edges? I'm always interested in, in the tools.

Brandon Condrey:
Louisa, do they send you a mop? The one that has that bottle on it, and then the bottom kind of comes up like a pyramid and falls flat to put the fat pad on it.

Louisa:
Yeh. It's the blue one.

Corby Felsher:
How do you utilize that spray bottle?

Brandon Condrey:
So when you just fill it with the diluted two arms for mopping, and we, I thought that was going to be a no go. I was like, they're going to hate this. And then we ran it with a couple of teams and everybody loved it. So you just squeeze the, I think it's the controls at the top. It's like a little ball. You like lift it up. And all it does is just like squirts them out in front of you and you just kind of like run over it. So instead of them bringing out my pads or anything like that, they do that one until it's saturated, you inject it, get the next one and just keep cruising. And so it does speed up the mopping, not by a lot, like a little bit, but overall they're not, you know, they're not having to like bend down so much and bring things out on a mop bucket. It's just all done in kind of one swift movement. So yeah.

Claudia Knight:
One of our complaint drivers is corners. So we're customers think we're mopping and just the center because the corners aren't getting done well. So that's what we hope that mark will help with is getting the corners. Cause if they are missing it, but it's because they're not bending down.

Brandon Condrey:
Corby you're on mute, Corby.

Corby Felsher:
Thank you might like the old man, you know.

Brandon Condrey:
I like to the profile talking off into the bushes and know exactly where do I look, I'll find it. I'll send you a link

Corby Felsher:
With the mopping we use. Yeah, that'd be great. We did try that method for years. We use the, um, it was a 3m mop that had inside the tube was the chemical. You actually filled the handle with the chemical and you spritzed it out. That way, the mops are fairly expensive. And what we found with that usage with, well, at least with the mop pads we're using is that it didn't get the floors as clean, cause you're not rinsing out and changing over with, are you getting the mops wet first and ringing them out and then putting on the bottom? Or are you only soaking in them with the chemical, the court chemical you have? How does that work? Just to deepen the process, but.

Brandon Condrey:
We haven't put this into practice yet. So we just got all this stuff received yesterday. So we're going to have to tweak this process, but okay. Got you. Any advice you have on the previous attempt would be great.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. I mean, we changed it to is the ladies we found the ladies were going away from using they're using the spray periodically, but they just kind of ship candidate and just start soaking and ringing the mops again in the buckets and putting them back down because of getting the floors. Clean it didn't get him as it's like a swifter style is what you're talking about, where you're spreading the chemical out and moving the unit. Doesn't like wash the floors. It kind of half cleans the floors without a kind of a refreshing of it with enough liquid. And, and I'm always open to new process. I would like to look at it again. I thought that idea was great. And I do like the half full of mop. We used to use the Unger full mops, like that same thing. And then you can dip the mop and ring it itself and pull it back out. So I'm always looking for new methods and new SOS are custom. We have right now works really well. But go ahead. Sorry.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. So there's, it's not like the swifter kind where you're literally just getting a little like sprints out the front. It's three jets of liquid it's gravity fed. So there's no motor batteries on the swifter. Like you pull it and it just dumps this into liar, volume of liquid. So there's that. And then I sent you guys on WhatsApp, the product page for everything, but on there, the other thing that this guy tried to pitch me on that we didn't do, but you know, maybe we can entertain that too is they have these things. You don't get the mop that has the spray bottle on it. You get the normal handle mop and they have these buckets. They call them charging buckets. But like you put in all the mop heads you're going to need for the day and you fill the bucket up with the Clean chemical and they're already soaked and ready to go. And so like, you bring that into the house, this whole bucket, that's got a lid on it, it's water tight. And then they just take them out already loaded up with the chemicals, as much as you want. Like you can saturate it as much as you want. Then you just mopped super duper fast it's fully soaked. And then you just change out heads as much as possible or as much as needed, I guess. So that was another variation they had on the same sort of process. And so that's an option as well. We're gonna, we bought the mops. They, you know, they're not cheap, but we kind of feel tested it a little bit and it was received well. So we'll run it for a while and see what happens. And then, you know, worst case scenario, we just fall back to the old Velcro kind of number. Good. Alright. So you guys still good with the Denver trips? If people are going to come up, I don't know how you feel about that right now, or if you want to wait for stuff to tone down or whatnot.

Corby Felsher:
It would be better to wait at least a couple of weeks, but maybe the 1st of July and that we're still kind of working through a lot of things here. So adding another variable right now might be a little much, I don't know that that's up to Lindsey and the Louisa. What do you think Lyndsey and Louisa, what's your thoughts there? I think we waited a little bit.

Brandon Condrey:
There's no rush. Like we don't don't feel like you guys gotta do it just cause we ask whenever you guys are comfortable doing it, we're happy to do it. The nice thing now is that because we got Kristen in the office, we can go places. Claudia can come up with Janet at the same time. If you wanted them to do that, if you want to stagger it, I don't, whatever you guys want to do, we're trying to work around your schedule. Cause this is, you know, you helping us out.

Lyndsey:
Okay. Let, let Louisa and I talk about that and figure it out. I know the beginning of July Louisa is gone and then of course I'm gone in the middle of June. So maybe after the Richard and the in July, but let us talk about it and then we can follow up with you.

Brandon Condrey:
Perfect. Yeah. Sounds great.

Corby Felsher:
Where are you guys? Go on. Excellent. Well, anything else that we should discuss before we end this wonderful call?

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. Let's talk about the course, the next phase. And when we want to try and tackle that again with making that other product, the extension of everything.

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. We were talking about that a little bit. Yeah. So what do you guys think of first of all, how is that list that we've put together?

Brandon Condrey:
So we've tackled a couple of things Brandon in particular. We're on the list. Yeah. So Brandon can jump in here and kind of give you an update of where we're at right now.

Brandon Schoen:
Are you talking about the list from your visit in December?

Corby Felsher:
Yeah. The lists we put together, you guys took notes.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. I thought we were talking about different lists, so we're still in process. We were rolling away. Pretty good on that. And then, you know, the COVID thing happened and everything shifted around.

Brandon Schoen:
So we are pretty close to finishing, I think. All right Brandon.

Brandon Condrey:
Kind of, so like we're in process. So we got an ID printer, we've got quotes to rearrange the station and stuff and this warehouse in the back. And so we're going to move forward with that here, coming up soon, we're getting some new shelves put in the other room or we're doing the vacuum repair and then moving the vacuum repair out there so we can kind of separate. So all the shelves in the back or on the only the daily tools type of things, we are going to order a mannequin. So that's fun. We're going to do that as well. So yeah, we still have that list. We're still working towards that list. We're actually on the beat now funding wise where we can actually do it. So that's going to happen very quickly. But yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Schoen:
We just got like Your fiber is I think yesterday, right? Brandon Yeah.

Brandon Condrey:
So we got all the tools like that was part of, it was my things to have enough for several days instead of where we were at now with ragged microfibers and things like that. So that's all going to get transitioned out over the weekend so that we were going to make the move in kids like you guys used to do with all the old rags and bag them all up. So we use those for moving cleans and stuff with our old microfiber and vendors check them and yeah. So we'll switch all that stuff over, over the next two weekends, we're going to wash everything cause that, you know, I don't know we're at with these microfiber in terms of land or die. So we're just going to wash all the new stuff, just to get it into the system.

Corby Felsher:
Cool. I can hire the teams, stations, looking like their bathrooms in their cars and getting rid of all those extra kind of tools and things.

Brandon Condrey:
Probably can give you the detailed update, but we do patrol cars and inspect stuff. Like we found a team that had a metal wire brush the other day and big got reprimanded for that. The ironic thing is that we were not very good at cleaning the tools before, because we had kind of let it slip because we were stuck in the office so much with the sales process and stuff. And then when Kobe happened, one of the things that we made is like the pitch to the customers to keep us going, is that, Hey, we're going to sanitize everything, all the equipment right before we come in. So like outside of your house, they're going to wipe down the vacuums and the caddies and the spray bottle. So that literally all the stuff we're bringing in has been sanitized right before we come in. And so that has led to the equipment being much cleaner. We did get all the blue vacuums like you guys have. So we got rid of all the red ones. I can't get the people that sell the blue version of the mighty to Return our call to get that distributor ship thing set up. So I don't know if you guys are already set up, so I don't know if you guys can drop ship to us and we'll just pay you for the vacuums. Maybe we could do it that way, but we're still working with the old Eureka mines, but they're still here and inexpensive compared to the blue ones, at least a retail side of things. So, so yeah, the equipment side of things is much better. Um, I don't, I mean, I think we'll, this is basically what we should have been doing the whole time. We're building it to the customers as we're sanitizing, all this stuff, but realistically they should be wiping down the equipment in between houses anyway. So I don't think that part will go away.

Corby Felsher:
Good. I just know that part of the reason we did move forward exactly at that time is just to make sure that we're a little bit more in sync. And I know that Brandon was talking about, well, that should be part of the course. And what we're talking about is getting another company in sync and lockstep and learning from each other. And I'm okay with that. But I just want to see that we're making good progress and I figured things in slowed down with COVID. But yeah, with that new funding, you'd be able to get New microfibers in, but having a system again to then make sure that you never have to deal with that again, as soon as you get to a certain level, you just order more of them. It's not that you just stop that process. You know, you just, it just, you know, the old saying from Stephen Services is no systems ever stop ever. They can never fade away. If you put them in place, they can never fade away. That's one of the backbones of the making sure you can eliminate variables and the more variables have, it's just tougher to operate.

Brandon Schoen:
All right, you guys, so that is the call. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Um, shared a lot of cool stuff in there and a lot of nice little tips and tricks and things we're working on.

Brandon Condrey:
It's not our, it's not our usual episode. You've got a nice little stream of consciousness out of the whole, the whole crew there. So, you know, with that, that was it. That's what it's like when we are kind of a troubleshooting, some stuff and just doing a little bit of review with each other.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, absolutely. So kind of as Corby left it, what is in plan for the future? Well, lots of cool stuff is in the future. We've got a lot of cool stuff, planned, a lot of exciting stuff in particular, we're doing our current live weekly masterclass. We're still doing that. That's right. It's working really great. We're going to keep doing that as long as it works. So hop on there and learn some stuff. We're talking about some cool secrets you can get in front of more customers convert those customers and a really cool trick. That's going to 10 X, your cleaning best.

Brandon Condrey:
So one weird trick and you can learn more about that at Profitcleaners.com/masterclass.

Brandon Schoen:
So yeah. Check it out guys. It's going to be packed with all sorts of cool stuff. You're going to learn a lot. So check it out. If you have any questions, guys, reach out to us. hello@profitcleaners.com. Check out the website for all the future episodes and until next time.

Brandon Condrey:
Keep it clean.

Brandon Schoen:
Keep it clean.

Brandon Condrey:
Nice talk guys.

Brandon Schoen:
We'll see you guys. Bye.

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