What's that process look like from when you start to, as you're growing the business, to be going from like being super hands on to getting to a place where you're not as hands on I wouldn't say, won't say full flesh hands off, right, because you still have to oversee and delegate and things of that nature. What is that? What did that process look like for you and on average? What does it look like for some of your students as well, coming into the business?
Speaker 2So I think it depends on you and what you have going on, right. So we became I know you asked about gradually, but we became fully hands off when our baby came. Ok, like a month before. We're like all right, it's time to get operations manager in place, we need not to be involved at all. And that was between go month, year five, to six, right, did it need to take so long? Absolutely not Right.
Speaker 2So I think month seven is when we started to get a virtual assistant just to answer the phone, because at that point it was like we're both working and if we're losing calls we're losing money Facts. So we needed to at least do that. Now they're just answering the calls, we may deal with other. We probably were still dealing with the contractors hitting us up if they had an issue, and then gradually we hired a virtual assistant company to then take care of. Like, all right, call the company if there's an issue and they'll transfer the information to us. And then gradually we're like OK, now we need an operations manager to kind of handle that, to the point that we meet with the operations manager hour a week. And so we're, we don't.
Speaker 1And they do everything.
Speaker 2They do everything. Got you. We also have, like before, we've brought in virtual assistants to work with our company now too, so we have two of those and then her and then it's us.
Speaker 3So, but it took us it took us five, six years to do that Right.
Speaker 2But it doesn't need to take that long. I think we were just holding on to it, because we're like you know, a lot of times you think, well, nobody's going to get to understand. How do I train them all these things? It's like it ain't that deep Like they can understand. You can teach somebody to do what you're doing.
Speaker 1Was that why it was so hard and took so long for you guys to bring people in? Because that's a problem I think most entrepreneurs deal with, right, like your business is your baby, right? So naturally we all come in thinking nobody else is going to be able to do what I do as good as me, and we try and wear 15 different hats, yep. But it on the flip side, it's like you can only do that for so long before to where it gets to the point where you're actually hurting your business more than you're helping it, right? So was that the biggest reason for why it took so long for you guys when it's like I don't know, you're second guessing it?
Speaker 3It was. I think a lot of it was just us being fearful that nobody could do it like us and I think, a lot of like even in the cleaning companies we work with mom and pop shops. They don't ever grow because they have to have their hands on everything. It's like no one can clean like me. That's an absolute lie because you're not that good Number one, but it was like they feel like no one could do it.
Speaker 3And if you have a seat, you have to have a CEO mindset. Where, as a CEO, if we all worked nine to five and if you haven't worked in a nine to five, just think about this. So, ceo, maybe at one point he did do your job, maybe, maybe Most of the time they have never done your job. So, if you call out today, will the CEO leave their office and come sending your seat and do your job today? Absolutely not. So why can't we think about that as being a business owner and an entrepreneur? As a CEO is like we don't have to be able to. We don't have to do everything and keep everything to ourselves.
Speaker 3So let me tell you what happened after we left the business. So our daughter was born. We hired an operations manager. In the very next month. We had a highest month in the business ever. Ever. The very next month Crazy, we released the reins, we allowed her, we allowed her control. That was amazing and that was it, but it didn't take it. It had to take us five years to get there. We were just so afraid. It's our first business.
Speaker 2No one can do it like us and I think also it's two of us, so we kind of like, all right, you can handle it, you can handle it, it ain't that bad, we can manage it, and so that that played into it also. Yeah, but now any business, I'm like, okay, we put somebody in place to win, because the point of a business for you not to work the way you were working at a nine to five? Right, you know what I mean? I don't, you're not supposed to. Yes, you're involved, but not to that point. You can work another on other tasks.
Speaker 1Right. So, yeah, beautiful Once again. Like I said, I think that's, that's a message. Somebody needed to hear that right, because there's somebody that's like I don't have to do everything, I'm like bro no you actually don't right and to your point the fact that literally a month after getting just one person in and resulted in your highest, the highest grossing month at that point in time, yeah, at that point.
Speaker 2Yeah, so last year she was born February 28th.
Speaker 1So March or April?
Speaker 3Crazy, and that was like I think we did 60,000 that month Crazy, and it was like we didn't have to wait that long to not even just the revenue that we did that month, just the time back. It's like we're only meeting one hour a week and that's only because, like, I still want to meet with you and I'm at some point we may just scale that up a little bit more, just kind of see what's happening and help her get the help that she needs. And I saw from that it's like it just took us too long to get there. Took too long to get there.
Speaker 1I think a lot of it was just fear. I'm curious to know. 2020, that's when the pandemic happened, right. How did that affect the business? Because for me, cleaning is a need-based business, like everybody needs something clean, right. So for me it's like all right, either your business took a little bit of a slump or I was, probably. You know some of the best performing months that you guys have had. Talk to me a little bit about whether it was you, whether your students, what that was, that experience was like as you were navigating through that.
Speaker 2So at that time we didn't have students, by the way. Oh okay, gotcha, gotcha. So no, at that early point of COVID we didn't have students. But yes, the numbers went down, but we lived in Dallas and so Texas didn't keep stuff closed for too long. Let's be clear.
Speaker 1Gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 2The wear closed in March. I think it was back open to May. So, yes, business slowed down. We took a dip about two, three months later. We went back up in May. So it was a dip in for two months. But it also was considered a what was it called A central business? A central business, cleaning was considered an essential business so you could still be in the roads and doing things. And I know a lot of people thought, well, I would assume you guys were doing COVID cleaning type of thing, because that became a trending thing.
Speaker 2And we're like one. We work with contractors, so I don't know what you have like supplies. Wise too. What is a COVID cleaning? What?
Speaker 3does that mean really, they were just making it up at?
Speaker 2that point. It really meant you just kind of spraying things down Like in a big motion. So yeah, we took a punch for maybe about two, three months, but that just meant like we paused our virtual assistant stuff. We paused like we're like we can answer the phones because they didn't ring in much. Really, and the way that it works with contractors, they only get paid when they do jobs, so we weren't losing money in any shape or form. Yeah, that was really it.
Speaker 3And then one of the things we did was, once they gave us the green light for being essential workers, we turned our marketing back on.
Speaker 3Yeah, so we turned it off when they was like, no, I could work.
Speaker 3In March, in April, we turned our marketing back on and I don't know if you it was this article, it was either Louis Vuitton or Gucci or something and one of the worst things they did during the pandemic was turn their marketing off, like their ads and everything off. And they it was Louis Vuitton, one of those big companies. They was competing against each other and they turned their marketing off during the pandemic and so they haven't been able to catch up since. But one of the things we did was we turned our marketing down and then we turned it back up during the pandemic. So once you realize that, I think we had a right. After we turned it back up, we had like a $50,000 a month and we were like, okay, we got something here. We're still going strong with the business is still growing, and that's when we said, okay, we can start teaching people this stuff. We started hopping on live and started just sharing a game, but that was one of the shifts we made.
Speaker 1I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. I want to switch gears here because, like I said in the introduction, this is tmfs history. I've had I've had married men on here, I've had married women on here, but I've never had both Never, I think that's um anthony's thing.
He feels like we should do almost everything together because he's just like it's beautiful One okay, yes, it's beautiful Okay. But outside of that he just like I feel like we're just so much more powerful together. And yes, there's couples that operate together. He's like but that's not a lot, so we can stand out in that way as well.
Speaker 3So different perspectives. I'm more vague. Let's go get to work, let's do it. And she's like I don't know if we need to do that right now. So now let's trucking.
Speaker 1So so watch this right. Let's talk about that, then, because what I've come to realize in my experience and just Seeing how the best partnerships work whether it's in business, or it's platonic, romantic, whatever, maybe it's usually when you have two individuals that come together and their skill sets are your strengths, are the other person's respective weaknesses, and vice versa. So, for you two, I'm curious to know what are your complementary strengths that fill his weaknesses and what are your strengths that fill her weaknesses as well?
Speaker 2And that's the biggest thing that we say of how we're able to work as business partners. What you just said, strip, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, right? Um, so for me, my weaknesses would be the technology and Anything with that, and he's the IT guy, so it works out perfectly. One I don't really have the patience to learn it. I probably can, but I just don't have the patience and I'm like, oh, he knows it, so why? Why do I even bother? And then the other part of it my strengths would be being a people, person and, um, taking that part on. So when we were running the business, he would handle the website and then he technical issues, that stuff. Like that. I would handle all the contractors and angry customers Because he would be like, all right, so you want your money back? Fine, I'll send it back. That's him. What are we talking about?
Speaker 3And I'm like wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait.
Speaker 2First of all, I ain't saying nobody, they money back, you ain't getting a full reimbursement, but let's find out what the issue is, and so, um, that's how we kind of operate, with me being more of the people person and I want to say behind the scenes, but just more of the technology. Thank you for tapping in with us again. As you know, we always ask, if you guys can, please, please, go ahead and leave us five star review. Go ahead and write something. If you're enjoying what we speak about, if you listen to us week to week, please be sure to let us know that helps us to continue to grow and for other people to listen to our show as well.
Speaker 3We appreciate it.