More Than A Side Hustle
More Than A Side Hustle
Inside Our Private Coaching Call: Q&A on Business, Hiring & Scaling
This episode dives into the nature of entrepreneurship and the obstacles commonly faced by business owners. We highlight a community call where we answered pressing questions and addressed real-life experiences. Listeners will gain valuable insights into navigating the complexities of running a business and the importance of community support in overcoming challenges.
• Introduction to the importance of community support in entrepreneurship
• Discussion of common hurdles faced by entrepreneurs
• Insights on handling late shows and promoting quality control
• The significance of establishing multiple streams of income without losing focus
• Real-life stories that illustrate the struggles and triumphs of being a business owner
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What's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the More Than A Side Show podcast, where we help 9 to 5ers create more impact, income and influence outside their jobs, and today is no different. This episode is going to be a snippet of one of our community calls, which went over for more than an hour and a half, of just pure Q&A, pure game, just pure conversation. That was happening, in my opinion, some of the most frequently asked questions that we get either in the community or online or social media, and I took those clips and I put them inside of this episode. So what you're going to hear is a little bit of Q&A, and we even dove into some of our personal lives, where one of the questions was about entrepreneurship and being hard and going through a difficult season, so I spent a little bit of time talking about that. But this episode is going to show you the type of questions and comments and concerns that people have even when they are running their business. So you're listening to people who are truly running online remote cleaning businesses, but also people who are just in entrepreneurship, asking questions on how to launch, what to do here. What happens when there's a fire not a literal fire, but a fire in your business, right? So we talk about those types of things. So hopefully you guys tune into this and if there's anything that you find to be exciting for you or you just want to support us, please leave us a five-star review. It helps the podcast grow. It helps us reach more people and create a larger impact. So, without further ado, let's dive into the episode Peace.
Speaker 1:The gem that I got was that he wants to set up seven streams of income specifically for his cleaning business, and I know a lot of times people talk about having seven streams of income. Seven streams of income only works if you do one thing fairly well. Start with one thing grow that in scale. He said I want to grow my cleaning business. I want to grow my YouTube for my cleaning business. I want to create products and services for my cleaning business. I want to create offers for my cleaning business. So all the seven streams of income that he was talking about stem from his actual cleaning business.
Speaker 1:So one thing we don't recommend is you bringing external parties together and by external parties two different cleanings, two different companies, two different people working together without knowing who they are. We have never, so we don't recommend anyone doing it. And we say that because who is going to be the leader of the actual cleaning If something goes wrong? Who you reach out to If something happens? Who do you reach out to If something is? Who do you pay? Do you pay both of them? Do you pay one person and someone wants more than the other? Like, how does that work? So I can't think of any instance where we have done that.
Speaker 1:So the other question is going to be if you have a large job, what do you do? We only send teams. So meaning there is a person who has a team that they will send out to the cleaning. That one person that we interviewed that spoke to that we background check. They have a team, they have a business they have, they have people on. They might send multiple people, right, but all those people are going to be working for them. So in those instances where we send a team, there's only one point of contact. If something goes well, something goes wrong, who do we pay? That's the only instance where we are sending quote unquote a team.
Speaker 1:So so you could do book call versus closed call. Just move them over and it will show you that on the opportunity tab If you don't wanna do that. Simple Google Sheets, simple as that. And the way you wanna think about the KPIs from that aspect, think about the entire customer journey. So new lead. Did that new lead call email text you? How did he get to you? Did they book a call, yes or no? Or was it via text message?
Speaker 1:What was the next step from that call? If you got them on the phone, what's the reason they didn't book your services? So what was the objection? Price is too high, spousal objection. I got to get back to you Not understanding your services. You would categorize those as well. That's another KPI I think everybody should be tracking as well. So why aren't people booking your services? What's the objection that they're coming across? So again, price too high, price objection, spousal objection. Have to get back to you or NA, not sure so that you can start tracking those metrics and KPIs as well. From there you go to book cleaning and then from there you could go to reclean or follow up. How many cleaners or contractors do you think that we should have before we start advertising to clients and getting our website launched and ready to go? Great question Number one I want to commend you for not waiting until you get everything done on the website side before you start interviewing, because that's the longest you're going to be interviewing.
Speaker 1:In any business you are always hiring. So that's number one. Number two what's the number? There is no number. So we started advertising when we had one, maybe two. That's totally fine. I don't say you have to wait until you have three, four, five different teams, because at the end of the day you'll be waiting forever and I think it's just a way for us to kind of procrastinate by perfection. And by perfection we're going to say we need two, three, four, five, 10 different teams, and that's not the case. So if you got one and you feel comfortable with that one person, start advertising. We did, we were totally fine. The first person called out that's fine. You have two, that first person calls out Now you might have a backup, but at the end of the day that person's not available, then what? So I would say one to two, if you feel comfortable with that. If you want to go with one, you feel froggy, time to leap, let's do it. But do not wait until you have two, three, four, five people, just so that you can feel comfortable, because you will never feel comfortable. You will never feel confident, I promise you, until you do it.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest fears people have and ask us all the time is what happens if someone doesn't show up. And I like to ask you guys what happens if you do not show up to your job? If you do not show up to your job, does the CEO of the company come and sit in your seat? Samara, that wasn't for you, that was a rhetorical question, but the CEO of your company does not come and sit in your seat. Well, you might say my manager comes and does my job. Does your manager stop everything that they're doing and then come, does your entire job for the day? No, then you might say okay, my colleagues and my peers pick up some of my slack. If all your colleagues and your peers pick up some of your slack, that means some of their slack starts to slip as well. So at the end of the day, something's getting dropped somewhere along the lines. The problem is, we just think that the buck has to stop with us. So, at the end of the day, the CEO of your company is not going to come and sit into your seat when you call out what you have called out and it happens.
Speaker 1:When you call out what you have called out and it happens, and it's not a fear that I can help you get over, it's not a fear that you could help yourself get over. The only way you get over that fear is by doing it. And a person calls out and then what? You call the client and say, hey, my person is unavailable today. We had snow in Dallas. Do you think all the cleanings got done today? No, do you think I left my house? No, you call the client. You let them know. Hey, it's snow outside, we can't get to you. Okay, cool, when can you get to me? There we go. Or, hey, you guys are a-holes. I'm gonna give you a one-star review. We can't get to you because it's snow outside. I'm sorry about that. I'm still giving you a one-star review. Same thing we could do to make it up. No, okay, we get the one-star review. How about we come out on Thursday or Friday? Okay cool, that's all we could do at the end of the day, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Jasmine said what kept you going when business was difficult in the beginning? So great question. So what kept us going? I think one of the biggest challenges for us is that when we started the business, we never really needed it, so it was like that's what makes it harder. People think about entrepreneurship as being hard because you need it. The difference with us is that we don't need entrepreneurship. We can always go back to our jobs.
Speaker 1:I'm an excellent employee. I follow rules, I follow instructions. I am very good at following what I'm supposed to do. I was great in school. Most entrepreneurs are like oh, I was bad in school. In schools, most entrepreneurs are like oh, I was bad at school, I dropped out. Oh, I was bad. As a nine to five employee, I dropped out. Not me. I was an excellent employee. I was very good at what I did. So entrepreneurship is that's the biggest. That's the biggest challenge. Like you, we don't. We know we don't need it. So we're actually choosing this difficult, rough, hard battle to go through every single day. But we know, for example, alani has an ear infection and then she has an ear infection right now and she has the flu. She's been out all week.
Speaker 1:We decided to stay in the bed with her while she was just laying there crying and we was like we don't have to rush and do anything. Those are the things about entrepreneurship that you don't see on social media. You don't see the. You just get to lay in bed with your daughter, right? If we both had to leave our jobs, we would have to call out of work. We have to take PTO. Oh, we're not coming in. Today we got a sick kid. Only one of us can stay home. Both of us can't stay home. Oh, we got to call the sitter. We got to call the nanny. Her, we got to call the nanny. We just both laid in the bed with her while she just cried and I was like this is dope.
Speaker 1:So those are the type of things that you don't really, you can't really, they aren't tangible. So it's not a number, it's not a metric. It's like those type of moments that always remind me that it's worth it to keep going. Hopefully that answers your question. I don't have a metric. I don't have a tangible part where it's like oh, you get to be your own boss. Because that's not true. Because now, instead of having one boss, you got 10,000 bosses. Instead of having a nine to five, now you got a 10 to 10, or you got a nine to nine, or something like that. So those are the things that people say is I don't want to have my own boss, I don't want to answer to anybody, but technically I have to answer to you guys. I have to answer to our clients. When my youngest brother passed, I still showed up for my coaching calls because I knew I had a commitment to you guys.
Speaker 1:So those are the things about entrepreneurship that we try not to glamorize. It is not easy, but at the end of the day it's those little intangible moments. What would I choose over this? So those are the moments that kept us going. And everything in life that's hard, everything that's worth doing, is going to be difficult If you really think about it. If this shit was easy part of my French everybody will be an entrepreneur. If everybody I want to make a million dollars, everybody would do it. If everybody wants to be a millionaire or a billionaire, everybody would do it. But the most difficult things are to actually make this stuff worth it, because if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. So that was my answers.
Speaker 1:What kept us going when business was difficult? And it doesn't stop being difficult in the beginning. It gets difficult now. So those are the things that you have to just go through. Entrepreneurship is not going to be easy. It's going to be difficult, difficult seasons, difficult moments, and it doesn't just stop happening. But you got to have that accountability. You got to have this before you have that people who understand what you're going through. I can't vent to my friends about this because they won't understand. Oh, you make money in your business. Yeah, I make money, but it's hard, it's not easy. If I don't work, we don't get paid.
Speaker 1:When do you typically fire cleaners? Is it after multiple no-shows, poor quality cleanings multiple times, or is it case by case? Nixon, absolutely case by case. We have a document. I don't know if I can pull it up, but let me see. I don't want to see that, I don't want to spend too much time trying to find this, but essentially we have a document that monitors every single F up that a cleaner has. So there are a lot of a certain amount of mess ups. I won't say mess ups in an amount of the time. So every single month we'll say all right, it's based on the amount of cleans that they have. So we say anything above 10% is a. It draws a red flag to us. So we'll see Out of the mess-ups. What type of mess-ups were there. Some of those are weighted differently. So, for example, being late multiple times might be weighted higher than being late due to snow or elements or something like that.
Speaker 1:Clients, let's say poor quality of work. Quality is subjective, so that is a very difficult one. Now the question is was the client extremely unreasonable or was there a few areas missed? If our team calls a client and the client's yeah, as soon as they walked in I knew this wasn't going to be a good cleaning and blah, blah, blah, I might want to use my judgment on that one. But if after a certain amount of cleanings let's say out of the month, let's say they have 10 cleanings and let's say two or three there's like clients are saying oh, there's missed spots and stuff like that, those would draw red flags.
Speaker 1:Especially in the beginning, when we're hiring. We set a very high precedent on our tolerance. So we're like, hey, after a certain amount of time we can't work with you anymore because it diminishes the quality of everything else, all the jobs the other people are doing. So when they come on board, we have more frequent conversations about check-ins, how things are going. Is there anything we can improve on as a business? Is there anything that you've seen that you didn't like? Or we always want that feedback and we give them examples of other time where we've gotten feedback from cleaners, so we let them know. It's a partnership so at the end of the day, they can give us feedback, we can accept it, we can reject it and we can give them feedback as well. So it's normally oh no-shows, that is a. That's the highest red flag, that a cleaner. We were like yeah, you know what, Everybody has those mistakes. You could have one or two of those, but most of the time those type of red flags, you should be catching them early and often and not having them continue, because if it happens multiple times, that is what's going to happen multiple times. So I would say it's case by case, but most of the time the no show is a big one, poor quality versus a couple missed areas those are case by case. Being late those are case by case as well. But big red flag is no-show, and poor quality versus missed areas are a big difference for us In the business registration phase.
Speaker 1:At what point in your business do you suggest delegation and task on the back end? That's a tough one. I don't think you should delegate until you understand the business. I don't think you delegate until you understand what you're delegating to the person. So one of the things that people always talk about is I want to delegate the phones, because the phones are the least enjoyable part of the business, no matter where you are. I'll pick up the phone today. I absolutely am going to hate it. So that's one of the things you want to delegate off your plate as early as possible. But the problem is you don't understand how the clients work. You don't understand what problems they will have, what challenges they will have. You won't understand the things that you could do to actually appease them. You won't understand the things that you could do to make them happy on the phone until you do those phone calls. So I don't recommend you delegating too soon. For us we waited way too long. So what's the good mix between doing it too soon and doing it way too late? I think five years, when you're about to have a baby, is way too late to delegate your business back in support tasks.
Speaker 1:I think earlier on, if you have the I want to say financial means to do, I would start delegating little tasks. So it might not be picking up the phone, it might be managing the KPIs of the business, so the key performance indicators. If you're like, hey, I want you to just document every single phone call that comes in. What the what was the objection that the person had? Why didn't they book our services? Those are the things you can start to delegate. We did a community call on delegation before you hire a VA as well, but those are the certain tasks I would have a VA or operations manager do before I started giving them the big things, the phone calls, the complaints, the challenges I recommend you do.
Speaker 1:If you have the financial means, do it as soon as possible, but make sure you're doing it in a way where it is bringing you either more time back in your business to grow it, or it's just that, something that you absolutely don't want to do and it's not something that's going to grow your business. So one of the challenges we see is people delegating too soon and they don't have enough work to keep the person on board. Now it's like we got to fire them because we didn't wait long enough till we actually had enough work. So, before you delegate, find out the tasks that you want to give to them and seeing how many hours you can actually supply them. So you should do the task first, finding out how many hours it takes you to actually complete those tasks, and then we go from having those tasks on our plate to giving it to somebody else.
Speaker 1:How many hours do you suggest a VA to work per week, starting off including cold calling, appointment setting for the commercial side? I can't tell you what I do. It's a tough one. Again, it just depends on your financial means. We have VAs that work with us full time more than one. So we're talking about 40 plus hours a week. But when we started we didn't need anyone for 40 hours a week. So I would say I'd rather you start off on the lower end and work your way up, versus starting on the higher end and having to work your way back down.
Speaker 1:So if you're saying maybe five to ten hours a week to start and then you like, alright, as I give you more tasks as we scale up, you're gonna give them more. You're gonna give them more hours, more time, versus saying I'm gonna give you 40 hours and we're you know what? We don't have 40, we got 30. You know what? We don't got 30, we got 20, because now you're playing with someone's livelihood. So I think that's something to be mindful of.
Speaker 1:But another thing you could do is, when you're interviewing them, you could find out if they have any other jobs that they're currently working alongside of yours. So if they're working 10 hours for you, that means they have 30 other hours to work with someone else. If it's a flexible job, you could do your thing with them. But let them know, hey, my goal is to eventually scale you up to have more work. So you let them know that from the very beginning you have that conversation with them so that now you could say all right, we're at the 10 hour mark, they're every day. They're clocking out at the right time. I got some more tasks for you to do. Can we bump you up to 15 hours? Can we bump you up to 20? So again, I'd rather you start at the low end and work your way up, versus going from the