Secret #3: Hire the right team
As a maid coach, I talk to a lot of cleaning business owners and not many have figured out how to have a business that runs itself AND makes a lot of money. Most of the people I talk to either don’t make enough, or work too hard, or don’t make enough AND they work too hard. Guess what? To be successful, you do not have to work day and night.
3 key things
As a reminder, there are three key things I’m covering in this series. Once I mastered these three things, I realized I could create a cleaning business that runs without me and pays me very well.
- The right mindset
- The right systems
- The right team
I’ve covered the other two in previous articles, and today I’m focusing on having the right team in place.
The right team
I touched on this earlier in the staffing piece of Secret #2 (Right Systems), but this goes beyond just hiring better.
Having the right team will make-or-break you when it comes to having the freedom to step away from the business and have it run itself. You can make money with the wrong team in place but you will end up paying for it with your freedom and quality of life.
With the right team, you can enjoy your business plus enjoy days off, or even never working in the business at all. The right team will enable you to let other people run your business for you long-term.
Don’t settle for hiring C-Team players, it’s a waste of time. The first time you had an inkling to fire someone, you were right. Fill your company with A-Team players. Spend time and money creating a culture that attracts these top performers.
We hold structured, agenda-driven business snapshot meetings every week which reveal who’s doing great and who’s not keeping up or trying. Poor performers can’t hide in this transparent environment for long. These weekly snapshot meetings allow me to know exactly what’s going on in my company without having to work day-to-day in my company. The reports shared is very telling—the numbers they own, the problems they solve. It highlights top and bottom performers easily.
Here’s something I’ve learned over the years: when two people do exactly the same job in the office, neither of them own it. The best team members own their job—they become employees who act like owners. Make sure your roles are clearly defined and don’t overlap. You can cross-train, but be sure roles are distinctly different. For example, we have three trained sales team members who each own a different part of the sales process.
That’s it. Whew! Your head might be spinning with too much information now, and you don’t know where to start. If you have the wrong mindset around time and money or if you know you have too many of the wrong systems in place or if you have too many poor performers in your company, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Next step: find a mentor! Whether you work with me or with someone else, find someone to mentor you. Read great books. Learn, learn, learn. Are you ready to grow your business and get out of the field? Do you want to join my mop-free millionaires club? Join my Cleaning Business Fundamentals group and take the first steps towards freedom.
