Rosie Selvaggio - Mental Health & Business Ownership: Winning While Prioritizing Mental Health

summary

Rosie Selvaggio, owner of Hocus Pocus Cleaning, shares her journey of starting and growing her cleaning business. Despite initially planning to close the business after finishing grad school, the demand for cleaning services during the COVID-19 pandemic led to rapid growth. Rosie emphasizes the importance of hiring the right people and outsourcing tasks to alleviate burnout. She also highlights the value of joining a mastermind group and learning to analyze business data. Rosie and Branden discuss the challenge of balancing high standards and empathy for employees' mental health. During this part of the conversation, Rosie Selvaggio discusses how her cleaning business, The Cleaning Witch, gained more customers through word of mouth, strong branding, and organic SEO. They also talk about the importance of Google reviews and how they use NiceJob and Jobber to automate the review process. They share insights on hiring and onboarding employees, emphasizing the need for documented systems, values, and interview questions. Rosie mentions her plans for expanding the business and enhancing the branding. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the importance of delegating authority and trusting others to make decisions.

keywords

cleaning business, growth, hiring, outsourcing, burnout, mental health, standards, empathy, cleaning business, word of mouth, branding, organic SEO, Google reviews, NiceJob, Jobber, hiring, onboarding, systems, values, interview questions, expansion, branding, delegating authority

takeaways

• Starting a business that aligns with your schedule and priorities can provide flexibility and opportunities for growth.
• Hiring the right people and outsourcing tasks can help alleviate burnout and drive business growth.
• Joining a mastermind group and learning to analyze business data can be game-changers for business owners.
• Balancing high standards and empathy for employees' mental health is crucial for creating a positive work environment. Word of mouth, strong branding, and organic SEO can help attract more customers to a business.
• Having a system and process for getting Google reviews is crucial for business growth.
• Documented systems, values, and interview questions are essential for hiring and onboarding employees.
• Delegating authority and trusting others to make decisions is key to freeing up time and growing the business.

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:01.388)
Hi everybody, I am Branden Sewell. I am the owner of Seal Pro Painting located in central Florida. I am also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast. We exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. Today's guest is Rosie and she is the owner of Hocus Pocus Cleaning. Rosie, welcome to the show.

Rosie Selvaggio (00:28.161)
Thank you.

Branden Sewell (00:29.694)
Awesome can you tell the listeners just a little bit about your business your background how you got started and all that.

Rosie Selvaggio (00:37.037)
Sure. So I own Hocus Pocus Cleaning. We are based in the Lehigh Valley, halfway between Philadelphia and New York, up in Pennsylvania. We were established in 2016. I was a returning adult student. So I was going back to college with a then two -year -old. So I needed a job that would provide me flexibility to not only go to school during the daytime and in the evenings, but also be a mom.

So we created Hocus Pocus Cleaning to align with that type of schedule. Plan was to finish, I wasn't gonna keep it open after I finished grad school in 2020, but we all know that in 2020 the whole world shut down and everyone needed cleaning services at that point. So it got to a point where we were up, I think like.

800 % in a year or something like that. And there was people telling me, you know, you'd be really, foolish to walk away from this. So here we are now and we employ 23 people total. We service almost 300 client homes on a recurring basis. We provide residential and commercial services. So not just office space, but also in the home space. And yeah, we're an all women team and

I'm out of the day today for the most part, which is difficult, but fun.

Branden Sewell (02:04.638)
That is pretty impressive, I have to say. just in a few short years, you know, went from getting started up and, you know, now having quite an amazing company to be proud of. So share with me this, 2020 comes, was there a change to the services that you guys were offering? I know like a big thing in the painting world was like people wanting to

get sanitation services so they were like these sprayers that you could like go in and you could you know spray and sanitize like a commercial space or whatever residential space. Did you guys get into any of that or was it mostly just like going in and cleaning and sanitizing?

Rosie Selvaggio (02:53.436)
Interestingly enough, think Pennsylvania was kind of on the more reserved side with allowing businesses to continue operations during that time. So we actually got denied despite being sanitation and disinfecting from March to June. So we weren't open for three months that year. But once we did reopen, we bought the COVID sprayers and we had the machines that you could like hit services with remote controls, light fixtures, stuff like that. So

Branden Sewell (03:24.7)
So I think home services space in general saw a really big uptick in business through 2020. I mean, I know we did. Most of the people that I talk about grew exponentially during COVID. And I think it was just the nature of like everybody's home. You know, everybody's like seeing all these projects that have to get done, just more aware and

Yeah, it just it was a boom. I know a lot of people say if you if you didn't make money or you didn't grow during COVID, then you probably shouldn't be a business. Like I've heard people say that. So but that's really cool. So 2020 changed everything. I'm assuming. Did you finish and up finishing school? OK, so. OK.

Rosie Selvaggio (04:04.303)
Hahaha.

Rosie Selvaggio (04:13.126)
I did. I'm a part -time mental health therapist, but yeah.

Branden Sewell (04:19.012)
That's awesome. Well, one of the things that, you know, obviously we talk about all the time and even jobber, because I know before the show, we talked to your jobber user. So you've probably heard of their blue collar trades report and, you know, just how they talk about how there's such a deficit of like people who are willing to go into the trades or like home service businesses. And they don't think that there's any other option but to go to school or to go to college and

I think it's really cool that you had this opportunity to become a business owner and the opportunities that it's probably opened up for you and created. that's really interesting. So talk me through your growth process and what it looked like. Obviously we're all about trying to help home service business owners get out of the field, off the ladder, whatever. There's so many different terms for it, off the truck.

But really teach them like the things that you have to do in order to make that happen. And there's so many things that we could talk about. But talk about your experience in that, you know, how did you go from being out there? I'm assuming doing the cleaning yourself to getting to a point where you have 23 employees and not having to be in the field as much.

Rosie Selvaggio (05:43.206)
That's a loaded question. yeah, I think at one point back in like 2021, just to kind of put it in perspective, when COVID shut us down, March of 2020, we had like 15 total recurring houses. By the end of that summer, we had like 60. By the following year, we had over 100. So there was just like this very rapid growth. And with that rapid growth, I was like, burnout.

Like Christmas vacation came that year and I didn't get off the couch. Like I couldn't get off the couch because I was the marketing team. I was the office person. I was still on the field cleaning all the time. I was wearing all these hats and with wearing all those hats and all of that quick growth, I was exhausted. So I think acknowledging early on that you can't do it all yourself is probably putting your pride to the side and you know, just you can't do it all yourself.

Branden Sewell (06:12.575)
Okay.

Rosie Selvaggio (06:40.516)
So having the right people in the right seats to be able to help drive the business forward, think is extremely important. I think that 2022, I realized that my background in mental health and psychology isn't business associated, right? So.

I ended up joining a mastermind group and that's like something that helps with support. It of feels like you have your own board of directors built in there. You have a coach that kind of, I think that she has all the answers. She won't tell you that. But that really also helped me learn how to read my numbers, analyze the numbers, look at the data. What's missing here and why is this number this? Or this is too much here, so maybe we have to do something over here.

So that was probably the biggest game changer outside of like, you know, hiring and outsourcing marketing to a marketing company, hiring a bookkeeper, because as much as I want to pretend that I know about QuickBooks, I really don't know anything about QuickBooks. You know what I mean? So realizing and swallowing my pride and, you know, putting people in the right places for the right things, I think was probably the biggest shift in the growth that we've had.

Branden Sewell (07:59.034)
Yeah, and I think every business owner is like, there's like an emotional connection to your business, right? And like what you're building. And obviously there's like that same connection with your customers and the level of service that you offer. And you have this expectation and standard, right? Of like what you're gonna put out there in the world. And so to let go of that control and

place it in somebody else's hands who obviously doesn't have the same, you know, investment and invested interest in your business is challenging, right? Because you're you're really having to risk, you know, a lot to say like, okay, I'm going to hire employees and entrust them with my business and my reputation. And at the end of the day, like your name is on that. Right. So I think a lot of people face that challenge of being able to just let go.

and say like you know i can't do this i can't control everything and if i do i'm going to limit myself and you know ultimately be like you know probably perpetually exhausted so it's i think coming to that place that you did is like a huge pivot point where like most of the people who are listening to this who aren't there yet are probably wrestling with that and

I like to think that it's more of a mental game than it is like anything else, right? It's like just getting over that mental hurdle of of like, okay, this is actually possible, you know, because I think we tell ourselves lies like I'm the only one who can do it. You know, if I don't do it, it's not going to get done right. You know, I can't find good people. And I think those are like all of the lies that we tell ourselves. But the reality is, is like we can.

delegate to other people we can find great people people can be trusted they can do a good job we just have to get past those like barriers in our mind would you agree with that.

Rosie Selvaggio (10:07.133)
definitely agree with that. think that at one point, when I was considering when you guys call it off the ladder, we call it mop free over in the cleaning world. And the whole concept of being mop free, I'm like, my god, the clients are going to cancel if I'm not cleaning, no one can clean their house the way that I clean it. And then, you know, it's all of these prefixed ideas where it's like really like

Cleaning is definitely a skilled trade, but I'm not the end -all be -all at the end of the day. And, you know, if the girls are trained properly to go handle the houses, they'll be all right. My dog's also making a guest appearance here. Yeah.

Branden Sewell (10:42.184)
Yeah, that's no worries. I'm sure our guests will enjoy that.

Branden Sewell (10:49.526)
So, you know, I think that ultimately I think what's really cool too is like you have this mental health background, right? Do you think that that helps you as a business owner on like overcoming some of like, I don't know if you would say like, I don't know if there's like a specific term for it, but like self like doing that self reflection and then like maybe even being able to like

realize like, okay, I'm I'm responding in this way because of like this, like, I don't know if I'm making sense. But yeah, like, I'm like, yeah, like being so help, it helps you, I would assume, like, it would probably help you to be more self aware, right of like the mental hurdles that are involved in business, like if something like if you notice like a pattern.

Rosie Selvaggio (11:29.576)
like you analyze yourself and you have that reflection, that ability to.

Branden Sewell (11:48.911)
of thinking like coming up, can probably and I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but I would assume you would be able to like kind of self diagnose and say like, okay, that's not reality. This is like whatever causing me to like think this way. I know for me a big hurdle that I had to overcome was like in my business. Like almost creating

scenarios that weren't true and allowing those to just get me super anxious and panic and then the reality was like nowhere near what I was. Yeah like for example I'd like. Be like super stressed out because you know just to give an example you know you have all of these employees you have all of these projects that are going on you have payroll and it's like OK.

Rosie Selvaggio (12:30.044)
as bad as you think it is.

Branden Sewell (12:47.465)
Today I've got us, you know, for us, it might be on a little bit of an extreme because we have to pay for expensive material. But let's say there's like $4 ,000 going out, you know, to pay for material. Plus I have like gas and insurance and all this stuff. So like there's just all this money going out and then I have payroll to make this week. you know, you're like, you're just before payroll ever gets there.

I'm like sometimes I like be telling myself I'm not gonna make payroll. It's gonna be where like all my everything's gonna fall apart and Then I sell like four jobs in one day or something and it's like why was I even worried? You know, like what you know, so anyway, I'm just curious like if you feel like that if your Experience or should I say like your your area of study does that help you?

Rosie Selvaggio (13:20.923)
You're gonna quit.

Branden Sewell (13:43.149)
have like a mental edge do you think?

Rosie Selvaggio (13:46.052)
think so. Because, I, like I said, planned on, know, stopping this to go be a full time therapist. And like, now I kind of like, look at my education as like, I didn't see myself using it for this purpose. But it seems like it helps a lot. Not just so much with like myself and looking inward and saying like, you know, there's like the irrational side of thought versus the rational side and

if there's an issue arising or something, or there's a problem among a client's house or something like that. We tend to get stuck in that like all or nothing thinking where it's like, this person's canceling and you know what, the business is going to fail by the end of the year and everyone's going to quit and I'm just going to be over here wondering what happened and blah, blah, blah. like, it's like, how many times have we gone through that thought process as the owner only to realize that like, it's never as bad as we think it is, right?

And then on the flip side of that, it's like I've actually trained myself after, you know, the past few years of like, okay, we've been through worse or we've been through something similar. It always ends up working itself out. It's always figure out a bowl. So I'm thankful for the, I guess that comes with experience. Like, okay, we've seen this before. It's not as bad as you think it is. It could be worse. It could be this. So, but I think also with

Branden Sewell (14:41.476)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (15:00.654)
Mm

Branden Sewell (15:05.507)
Yeah.

Rosie Selvaggio (15:07.799)
the mental health background, being very aware of burnout among the team, my operations manager, my office manager, being ahead of it before it actually happens. We also take like a lot of pride in like giving our employees like a really solid work life balance where like they're not overworking themselves and missing out on like, you know, their kids soccer games or dance recitals or whatever, whatever's involved. Just because

I don't want to be that boss. It's like, no, you can't go to your kid's recital. No.

Branden Sewell (15:39.958)
Yeah, yeah. So let's let's dive into that because I find that even though I don't have like a mental health background per se, as a business owner, I have found myself being able to just kind of evaluate like a bigger picture of life and like what's important and what's not important. I've also have a work background or a history where I worked for somebody where I felt like I didn't

You know, like my family didn't matter, you know, like at the end of the day, it was like, this is what has to get done, even if it's at the expense of everything else. And I can say for myself, when I would when I started my own business, I was 100 % convinced and on board that I was not going to be that. So.

But the challenge is, so now I have these employees and I have these customers and work has to get done. And then you have these customers who have like these crazy expectations, but you're trying to create this standard for your employees that you care about them, right? That you understand, like I understand 100 % that

my employees families like their mental health their health matters more than my business right and so I always try to tell them like I want them to know like take care of yourself like if you need to be there for a family member be there for a family member if you're struggling like talk to me about it don't just like feel like you have to suffer at the expense of

Rosie Selvaggio (17:10.688)
Right.

Branden Sewell (17:28.477)
you getting a job done or something exactly. But obviously like. That's challenging because their sacrifices that happen right so like maybe a job was supposed to get done and now the profits not gonna be as good because you like you know for me that's important like I would put my employee before my profits right. It's challenging right because not everybody has that perspective like I have some.

Rosie Selvaggio (17:48.327)
job, right?

Branden Sewell (17:57.071)
Other employees who you know maybe they don't share that same perspective. But even though they would expect it for themselves right it's like well if it was me like yeah I would love that but like you're treating this person you know a certain way and because they're going through this right now I just I feel like people are different right everybody's different I just don't feel like it's fair to put this like.

blanket expectation on everybody to like just brush over their mental health or like, you know, at the expense of, you know, their own well being. So I don't know, like, what's your perspective? Like, do you have to find a balance? And how do you find that balance between like, having a standard and having an expectation versus like, realizing like people matter and their like mental health matters? Like, I'm just curious to hear how do you

How do you manage that?

Rosie Selvaggio (18:54.167)
I mean, I think that having SOPs and policies and stuff in place are definitely helpful because it gives you kind of this blueprint to work off of. There's always a gray area depending on what the circumstances are. But for us at least, we've noticed that if it's becoming a recurring pattern of behavior.

Branden Sewell (19:02.501)
Mm

Rosie Selvaggio (19:16.759)
Maybe not so much like mental health related wise, but I'm talking more like policy of, you know, being there for your family members. Like, you know, how many times is your grandmother going to die in a year? You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. So it's like once you start seeing that pattern, then yeah, probably it's time to part ways. But I mean, within reason, you know, we offer bereavement pay for something like that. Or like if someone's, you know, struggling mentally and they feel like they're burning out, it's like, OK, like, do you want us to remove one extra day a week? Like, do you not want to work?

Branden Sewell (19:27.13)
Sure, sure.

Rosie Selvaggio (19:45.84)
five days a week, like trying to meet them where they're at. And I think that empathy is like a huge part of being a business owner. And I think that that kind of sets us apart from the owners that, you don't take into account what their employees are going through. I try to, I always tell the girls this too, like I always try to be the boss that like I didn't have growing up. Because how many times do you work like, just for an example, like a restaurant, like they don't care.

It could be three feet of snow on the ground. Your grandmother could be in the hospital. You could have the flu and they'll be like, all right, so we'll see you at what time? Four or five? You know what I mean? So yeah, we just try to be reasonable with, you know, even tardiness.

Branden Sewell (20:14.173)
Mm

Branden Sewell (20:21.525)
Alright

Branden Sewell (20:28.108)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's the place where I always try to be at. And, you know, I think my kindness kind of can get the best of me sometimes. But at the end of the day, I just think it's like you said, trying to be that boss that I never had and is important to me. I will admittedly say, like, I struggle with that that balance of like holding a standard of like, hey, this is what's expected.

But I like how you put it. It's like, it's almost like you can have empathy and have a standard, but you also don't just like let them off the hook of having some accountability. So you use the example of saying like, okay, maybe you feel overwhelmed and, you know, maybe mentally exhausted and burnout. Well, I can you can work four days, you know, instead of five, but don't expect to get paid for that fifth day, you know.

Rosie Selvaggio (21:24.888)
Right, right.

Branden Sewell (21:25.915)
Or don't like, don't expect me to like give you a raise, right? So like, it's like, I'll let you stay on the team, I'll be flexible on your work hours. But don't come back to me and be like, Hey, I want leniency, but I also want five more dollars now. You know, to make up for that. So anyway,

Rosie Selvaggio (21:46.286)
Right, right, right, right.

Branden Sewell (21:50.906)
I could go down a rabbit trail with that mental health is really important to me I find that we talk about it a lot on here so I like to hear your perspective especially since you have that professional background in it. Let's let's kind of rewind a little bit so marketing. You know your business blows up and you said you grew you know exponentially in twenty twenty what do you attribute that to what kind of things were you doing to to you know.

bring on more business was it a lot of like word of mouth and referrals or were you guys doing other things can you give any insight there.

Rosie Selvaggio (22:29.091)
think that COVID and when we blew up, it was kind of like a perfect storm kind of thing. We were listed on Google My Business, our branding strong, our logo. it speaks to two different generations of people, like Hocus Pocus, like the 90s Disney movie with the witches. But then the logo kind of falls in line with the witch from the 60s.

You get the boomers in one hand, then you have like millennials, Gen Z and another hand just based off of the branding. But during that time, we had already been putting a huge focus on our Google reviews. So we have like a lot of organic SEO when people were looking during like the.

you know, housing boom, there was a lot of people moving here from New York City because no one was working in the offices anymore up there. So when they were Google searching for cleaning companies, ours was popping up first with like no paid advertising or anything. So we got really lucky in that regard. But then we also kind of do like a referral program where, you know, like someone refers somebody, they both get a pretty nice discount on a cleaning service for referring the person. But yes, I guess it was like, you know,

Word of mouth being one, strong branding being another, and then like that organic SEO being the last.

Branden Sewell (23:49.476)
Yeah, I and to me I like when I think I'm like, you know, some of this stuff is just like a no brainer. But I guess for some people it's, you know, a little bit harder to grasp. But Google, like I can't tell you how many episodes we talk about how important Google is like and just getting consistent reviews. And like we use so I'm going to talk about two things we use. We use call rail.

Which is like a. my goodness, my brain just like blanked call tracking. So it's a call tracking software, so essentially we can go in and we can create phone numbers for like every different campaign that we use in our business, whether that's you know, our GMB Google LSA. You know Facebook ads. You know printed.

media whether that's like flyers brochures business cards yard signs our shirts everything has a separate phone number and then what call rail does is like when somebody calls that phone number then inside of call rail we can look and we can see like what percentage of our calls came from which marketing campaigns the overwhelming majority of our calls

come from our GMB. And that's, you know, even with doing Facebook ads and Instagram ads and, you know, doing Google LSA, like, most of the business comes from our GMB. So what is that attributed to? It's like having a really strong GMB that's constantly updated and you're always getting reviews and like, I don't think that can be, you know, stated enough. Like if you're trying to get

Rosie Selvaggio (25:17.418)
Mm -hmm.

Branden Sewell (25:41.695)
out of the field like obviously you gotta bring in enough work and have enough demand to keep teams busy but one way to do that is obviously through your GMB. Now we talked about this before the show I believe but you guys have a process for getting reviews correct?

Rosie Selvaggio (25:57.897)
We do. We use NiceJob on one hand. think Jobber also offered this thing where it automatically sends out a text asking for a review. We also have a bonus structure for the team every time that they get a five -star Google review mentioning their name, they get like a bonus in their paycheck. across the board, we're just pushing the reviews all the time. And we're coming up on 300 at this point. So it's all working.

Branden Sewell (26:07.501)
Mm

Branden Sewell (26:25.965)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, we do the same thing, so I have to shamelessly plug nice job, cause I am a brand partner with them. So nice job. We use it and I don't know if you're aware of this, but you can integrate it with jobber. Yeah, so like as soon we have it set up where as soon as the customer gets invoiced, a review request goes out to get a review. So you know jobs completed.

Rosie Selvaggio (26:41.692)
Mm -hmm.

Branden Sewell (26:53.675)
customer automatically gets that review request. And our reviews, once we started using NiceJob, are the amount of reviews we were getting just skyrocketed. So if you're a home service business owner listening to this and you're struggling to get reviews, I think there's two keys. One, you need to have a system and process for it, and then you need to be consistent. So what's nice about

Nice job is that it does both of those. You know it's there's a system you put in place and it's consistent so it's always you're always going to be asking right it it it does it for you it's automated and you know so all of our team members know to like mention that to our clients and you know yeah we've gotten so many more reviews after using nice job.

Rosie Selvaggio (27:51.377)
Yeah, I'm a huge fan and like automations like it's just like, okay, you could set it up and you could I don't want to say forget about it. But like, it's just one less thing that we have to stress out about as the owner, right?

Branden Sewell (28:01.542)
Yeah, and I think as you grow, it's hard to say stay consistent with the things that matter so much and make such an impact on your business. So, you know, the old way that we used to send out a request for review is in my phone and my notes. This is way before nice job in my notes in my phone. I had a like little script and so I would copy and paste that script with like a link to our Google page.

and I'd send that out to my customers by email and text, and then I'd ask them for reviews and thank you cards and all of this stuff. And, you know, that takes time. Now, when you're smaller and you have that time, you know, that works, I guess. But as you grow and you're it's not efficient, that's for sure. But as you grow, you know, your time is so valuable and you need to be able to take the time to focus on.

Rosie Selvaggio (28:48.228)
I guess.

No.

Branden Sewell (29:00.504)
You know things that are gonna help you grow and maintain the business so. You know something like nice job with an automation taking care of that for you it just eliminates another thing you know on your to do list that's why i love it so much and any type of automation at that anything that can. Automate a task that i was doing before is huge and that jobber i don't know what.

plan you guys use on Jobber, but for me, we've been on the grow plan for almost the whole time we've been using Jobber and we use every single automation that is available, right? So it creates a better, I think it creates a better experience for your customers, but it also creates a better experience for your team when you're organized and like you're able to eliminate things that they might have to do.

I think that's huge.

Rosie Selvaggio (30:00.708)
Now our team loves Jobber. I think I said this before we started recording. We had been through a few scheduling softwares, but with Jobber, it's just the amount of things that it does, the note system, like all of it, it's just, it's perfect. If it's not broke, don't fix it. Like we, I think we're also on the grill plan. That's the one that allows up to like 30 people, right?

Branden Sewell (30:22.371)
Yeah, it's just the highest tier.

Rosie Selvaggio (30:24.258)
Yeah, like I don't even think that we even started with like a lower tier. We just went right into it because there's the route optimization and you know, the GPS tracking and all of that stuff.

Branden Sewell (30:34.634)
Yeah, and you know, I think a common question that people have are like say is how am going to afford it? It's like to me, it's like you can't well, I think if you don't use it to you know the fullness of its potential, then it might be a dumb purchase. But if you're going to get on there and you're going to utilize everything that it has to offer, it's like you can't really afford not to use it right because it's going to give you so much of your time back and

Not only that it helps you to grow it really does there's so many different things that you know you can set up I mean from putting on optional add -ons onto jobs to increase your revenue to the now you have like the marketing campaigns you can do we've ran some marketing campaigns like through the email campaigns recently and it actually tells you

I'm not sure if you've done this yet, but it tells you how much revenue came from that campaign. So. Yeah, it's it's pretty incredible, so like we've ran. You know some email campaigns through there. I think like four to be exact and like. You know the first one we did. I think we ended up generating like 23 ,000 in additional business. The second one we ran we generated like 53 ,000.

Rosie Selvaggio (31:35.946)
Nice. No, I haven't used that actually.

Branden Sewell (31:57.952)
An additional business and then we ran another one and want to say it was like around 20 something again and then we ran another one it was like additional eight grand but you know to be able to see that and see like wow this email campaign generated this revenue it's it's like it's amazing so there's just a lot that jobber has to has to offer to help you you know grow your business and run efficiently so.

Another question that I have for you obviously growing a team like you have 23 members. That's pretty awesome but at the same time I know that having employees is very challenging so. Could you for the listener who is maybe like working in the field right now maybe they have like a couple employees who they're working with you know out in the field and they're wanting to get to this place where they get off the.

You said off the mop we say off the ladder or you know off the bucket Can you just walk through For somebody who is you know wanting to take that journey What are some of the challenges that you faced? Can you talk about the reality of like hey? This is this is where we started and we grew over time because I think we try to like jump

to like the end, like we want to just arrive at like, I'm the best person at hiring and onboarding. And the truth is, is you're probably going to suck at it in the beginning. So can you just talk about that journey, like how you went from starting out to where you are now?

Rosie Selvaggio (33:41.917)
Yeah, initially, because I was a full -time college student when we opened, I would bring friends with me and just pay them cash to come help. Eventually, we put those friends on payroll, but hiring friends doesn't really go over well. We're not friends anymore. There's a few of them, because there's me as the owner, but then there's me as a person, and they're two different people.

Branden Sewell (33:58.759)
You're right.

Rosie Selvaggio (34:08.07)
so then it went through this process of, you know, having a really crappy indeed, you know, posting, that had nothing to do with the business. was just like, Hey, do you have cleaning experience? Do you like cleaning? Click here. and then like that also turned into, you know, we didn't have interview questions that aligned with like our mission and values.

Branden Sewell (34:24.016)
Yeah

Rosie Selvaggio (34:33.373)
so that was another aspect and another hurdle to jump through because like there would be people that would go through like one interview and be like, all right, cool. You start tomorrow and then they wouldn't show up again on day two. and I mean, training and all of that onboarding stuff, like it ends up really costing a lot of money for the, like the company just because like you're going through like all of this.

crap and you're picking the wrong people because you don't have the right questions in place during the interview. There's just so many things that go into it. And even still with that, it's like if you don't have the proper training in place, the person's not going to last either because if they're not trained properly, you're setting them up for failure essentially and it always starts and ends with us.

so I think, the first thing that I would probably advise anybody to do is to have like documented systems and policies in place, whether that's, you know, the hiring onboarding process or the training process, or like what's your mission statement? What does that look like? What questions can you ask during your interview process to ensure that the person is responding to the questions the way that you would hope that they would respond to them? Because it would be really easy to figure out if someone's not a good fit based off of, you know,

if they don't align with your mission.

Branden Sewell (35:50.359)
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it took me, you know, a couple years to get kind of like that information that you're talking about right now. But those are some of the most valuable things that you can do. just to reiterate, like have a mission, have value, have your values planned out. like, you know, somebody who's interested in your company can, you know, kind of for themselves, vet your company and see like

are they the right fit but then also you know what you're looking for you know you're gonna and then structure your you know one your job listings around your mission and values and then secondly your interviews like so one of the greatest things that I started doing was having a set I have these set questions that I ask every single person and the whole purpose is to find out

Do they fit our culture? Do they fit our mission and values? Do they have the right character to be a part of our team? And so like if you don't have those interview questions documented and if you don't use them consistently, you're not gonna get the same results. If you just kind of wing an interview and you have somebody come in and sit down and you're like, what do I ask this person? Or you just like have a conversation that's aimless, then you're not gonna get the same results.

And then you know I love that you mentioned having like your policies you know for your company so we have a employee policy manual that we go through with everybody who's going to come onto the team and what I would say too is you can hire a fractional like HR person to do some of that stuff for you like to create a operations manual or employee policy manual to help with your.

on boarding process and hiring and all that. So good stuff. Having a system and a process for it is huge. So what do you think is the biggest challenge that you face then and even now in growing and scaling your business? And what are some of your goals moving forward? What do you want to try to accomplish in, let's say, like the next three to five years?

Rosie Selvaggio (38:13.732)
well, the next three to five years, I'm hoping to expand. outside of the service area that we are currently in, potentially adding services that set us apart from other cleaning services, but still help around the house. I mean, at this point with how the economy is and everything, everyone's working, they're working a lot, they're still struggling to keep up with everything. So whatever we can do to take like, you know,

some of the load offs, that would be great. I don't remember what the first part of that question was, but yeah.

Branden Sewell (38:50.152)
Just like what are some of the challenges that you're facing? are you, what are you, what do you think is like the next thing to overcome and where do you want to go? Cause I know like as you grow, it's obviously a challenge. Like, you know, like for us we've grown, we now have three crews and like for me, my next big thing that I want to accomplish for my business is not a rebrand, but taking our brand and like enhancing it.

Rosie Selvaggio (38:52.587)
challenges.

Branden Sewell (39:17.52)
wrapping all of our vehicles, growing our fleet, really focusing on strengthening our branding, like making sure like, I know it's, know, these might sound like small or silly things, but like, like everyone having the same uniform, like every single day, strict about that, like, you know, not deviating from that everybody, like everything is on brand. And so that's, that's going to be my next big focus, but.

I know that looks different for everybody, just curious to see what you think is your next ceiling that you have to bust through for your next level of growth, if that makes sense.

Rosie Selvaggio (39:58.464)
Sure. Well, we are working on a rebrand right now just because it's like eight years and we want like a refresh and all that stuff. We want to make it permeable to if we were to open up other services, like kind of cohesion with the new branding. We just onboarded with a new marketing team that specializes in all of the miscellaneous tasks that I don't feel like dealing with, like blog writing and email campaigns and all of that stuff.

Branden Sewell (40:02.298)
Okay.

Rosie Selvaggio (40:28.617)
I'm not bad at it, but in terms of time, again, like I think time is the only thing that we're limited on. So if I can outsource another thing, please have at it. But I think also with, you know, anytime that you onboard with something or outsource something else, there's that like, you know, challenge of, you know, is it going to work?

I think advertising, we need to increase, we need to stand out a little bit more so on social media. So trying to get that message across to the new marketing company. Our brand's pretty edgy and not everyone likes edgy. I don't like, I mean, I'm more riskier than I am not. So it's like, no, let's just, let's try to, I want something that's gonna stand out. And trying to encapsulate that on social media or LinkedIn or whatever it's.

It's gonna take some time.

Branden Sewell (41:21.014)
Yeah, well that's good. Well, you know, I'm sure you'll you'll do everything that you're talking about. It's you know, it takes time. But you know, as an entrepreneur, you know, we all we just stay after it and have those goals and, you know, tackle them day by day. You know, when talking about branding, I don't know if you've ever heard of Dan Antonelli, but I would definitely like okay, you know who he is.

Rosie Selvaggio (41:43.112)
Mm

Rosie Selvaggio (41:46.673)
I've heard of him. I don't know him, though.

Branden Sewell (41:47.82)
Yeah, he does. He wrote up. He wrote a book called Branded Not Blended and it's a really powerful book on on branding. So that's really been like one of the big motivators for me to like take my brand to the next level. But anyway, we have just a couple of minutes here and be respectful of your time. If there was something that you value that you could leave with the audience, I just want to kind of like open up.

There's the last couple minutes for you to maybe share something from the heart that you feel could really help, you know, those business owners get off the ladder, something of value that could, you know, maybe something that you're really passionate about in business that could add value to them. Just any last thoughts you'd like to share.

Rosie Selvaggio (42:36.691)
Sure. mean, I think for all of us, I don't know if you have kids or not, but I think that, you know, growing a business, scaling a business, it's a lot like, you know, raising a child, right? So like you nurture it. It's just like a house plant. You need to make sure it has enough water, enough sunlight, like everything in your head. That's you put all of your energy into it. And, you know, once you're stuck in like the hustle and bustle of that day to day stuff,

You more or less created the business to have that time freedom and that sense of, you know, control over your time. So I think that one thing that I'd probably leave everyone with is like, you know, putting your pride to the side and learning how to delegate all of the stuff that we kind of talked about here today. Because delegating has allowed me to free up a lot of my time. I'm not in the day to day anymore. But then also with the delegating, there's the automation piece of it, too.

So between all of that, know, time's the only thing that we're limited on and you never know. So.

Branden Sewell (43:42.047)
Yeah, one of my favorite leaders, his name's Craig Rochelle, and one of the things that I've learned from him is that one of the best ways to delegate is to delegate authority and not tasks. And what he makes a point on is that when you delegate tasks, you just create followers who depend on you to make decisions for them, and you're not really freeing yourself up.

because ultimately those people are still depending on you to like make decisions for them and all of that. Whereas if you delegate authority, then you're you're putting your trust in this person and you're saying, hey, I trust you based on our mission, our values, how you're training that you have everything that you need to make the right decision in the moment in in in the best interest of the business.

the customers yourself you have that ability and so it's like entrusting that authority and that creates leaders not followers because then they lead in your absence not depend on you so. Just as you're looking to grow your team if you wanna have employees if you wanna get off the ladder off the mop all those different terms you gotta trust other people and delegate authority not task.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Off the Ladder podcast. If you're listening on YouTube, please like, comment, subscribe, turn on the notifications, share this episode with somebody else. If you're listening on any of the major podcast platforms from Apple to Spotify, and the list goes on, please rate and review the podcast and share your feedback so others can hear about it.

And lastly, if you have any need for any of the resources that we've talked about in this show, whether it's jobber, nice job, call rail, I have links in the show notes. I'll also have a way for you to contact Rosie if you would like to. And thank you so much for listening to the Off the Ladder podcast. We'll see you next time.