7 mistakes I’ve made in my janitorial career

And you can bet dollars to donuts, I won’t be making them again

One of my fundamental principles: Admit to, and own, your mistakes.

I get so frustrated when I hear people make excuses, or try to explain why the mistake was not their fault. It especially bothers me when people who are “leaders”, whether by role or by self proclamation, blame others for bad things that befall them, their team, or their company.

News flash, Mr. Leader: you are responsible for the outcomes of your life, your team, and your company.

Obviously, you cannot control every outcome. In fact, all you can really control are the inputs. What you can control is how you react and respond to the outcomes.

In my life, the people I’ve respected the most are the ones who understand that bad things happen to everyone. They don’t blame anyone but rather take full responsibility.

It’s much easier to lead a company when the people that work with you respect you.

• Fastest way to earn respect: say you’re going to do something and do it faster/better than you said.

• Second fastest way to earn respect: admit to, and own, your mistakes.

• Third fastest way to earn respect: own the mistakes of those that you are responsible for.

A lot of people can do the first one. The second is hard to find. The third seems increasingly rare these days.

Our goal, as a family and organization, is to build a 9-figure business. I believe that if we can create a culture where our people do the three things outlined above without hesitation, the road to 9-figures will be easier and faster.

I am not a fan of the old-school rule-with-an-iron-fist culture. The “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions” culture. This is archaic and goes against the culture we are cultivating. I want to know where the problems are, who made the mistake, and why they believe it was made.

The best way to create the culture you want is to be the culture you want. Which is why during our monthly town halls, I highlight any mistakes I’ve made recently. Like late last year when I misquoted a high dusting job and cost us $10,000.

Shit happens. We’re all humans and we’re all fallible.

Only hearing about the good doesn’t help anyone learn. You learn the most from the painful moments. If people are afraid to speak up and share the bad, we lose out on valuable knowledge and experience. Knowledge and experience that we can use to create lessons and teachable moments.

Also, we can ensure these problems are nipped in the bud before they become big problems. Sometimes there are annoying problems that can turn into catastrophic problems because someone tried to cover it and solve it themselves, and it turns into a death spiral.

Example: Enron

The only way to avoid mistakes is staying in your lane and not taking any risk. That ain’t me and that ain’t the company I’m trying to build. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my career and I guarantee I’m going to make more. I can also guarantee I am not going to make these seven mistakes again…

Excusing poor communication

I can forgive bad cleaning. I can’t forgive bad communication.

This might seem like an odd belief, considering we’re in the cleaning business.

But I believe our ability to communicate, fast, frequently, and friendly will dictate a lot of our success moving forward.

Also, most clients understand that the odds of something being missed once in a while is normal. It’s inevitable in a business that is so reliant on humans. Reminder: humans are fallible.

Bad communication can get old, and frustrating, quickly.

I am relentless in my drive to make us the best communicators in the cleaning industry.

Meetings without metrics

Every leader and team in your company sees the world from a different lens, and likely speaks a different language. Not literal language, but their business language.

If you ask three people in your organization to define what success looks like for your organization, you’ll likely get three very different answers.

Numbers are a universal language. They’re also fairly objective.

Almost all of our meetings used to consist mostly of updates, news, and opinions. Now our meetings mostly start with metrics and numbers.

We start every management meeting by reviewing various dashboards that we’ve created. Each leader is responsible for their numbers. It is up to them to keep their dashboards up to date. At each meeting when the numbers change, it is up to them to highlight the ones that have had notable changes.

That is where the conversation starts and has improved productivity and understanding amongst the leadership team.

Meetings without metrics are a good way to waste time and talk in circles.

Roles with no incentive structure

One of my favourite quotes: “Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.” - Charlie Munger

Bonuses and commissions are good and they’re important. But if you can put the right incentive structure in place for each person, it usually benefits the individual, the team, the company, and the owners.

If money makes the world go round, then incentives dictate the speed in which it rotates.

This should come as no surprise: when you give your employees a piece of the upside, they will work harder, and often smarter.

Unlikely we ever go back to a world where our roles lack incentives.

Software with no measurable ROI

We’ve probably wasted well over $250,000 on failed software implementations. Some examples:

• Time-keeping clocks

• Consumable sensors

• Workforce management platform

• CRM (various)

That money was wasted because we implemented these platforms without knowing what we were trying to solve. I’m certainly proud of the fact that we’ve been a first mover on almost all of the major technologies in the janitorial industry over the past decade. But early on we did it for the sake of being a first-mover. Or because we thought: “let’s get technology because it will drive efficiencies”. WRONG.

Never again will we implement a technology without understanding the following first:

1. What pain are we solving?

2. How big is that pain? (in measurable dollars)

3. How will the software help us capture back those dollars?

4. How long will it take to capture back those dollars?

Thankfully, we now have a very sound and successful software stack. But it took a lot of trial, error, and frustration to get here.

Delegate software implementation

If we’re implementing something, an owner has to be involved.

As owners, we’re quite opinionated and meticulous about how we like things. We also view our company from a different lens than non-shareholders.

Building on the point above, only the owner(s) of the company will have a true understanding of the pain the company is currently feeling, and how it affects the bottom line.

Once you’ve identified the software that will solve that pain, it is imperative that you remain involved in the implementation process. You don’t need to do all the work. But you need to be involved to ensure what you bought is being deployed for what you want solved.

Every software that we have implemented, that either my brother, sister, or I was not involved with in some capacity has failed and been ripped out.

Alex Hormozi also highlighted this during his workshop. He has done 4 CRM implementations: 2 he was involved with, 2 he delegated. Guess which ones failed…

Industry-bound BD hires

I will never hire a Business Development person that has spent their life in the cleaning industry. There are many reasons. Here are a few:

1. They’re not effective at cold outbound (no experience in top-tier sales environments)

2. They avoid cold calling because “it’s disruptive in the office” (it’s not)

3. Most of their tactics and strategies are outdated (if they have any at all)

4. They expect most of their comp in the form of base (red flag!)

5. Spend most of their time “building relationships” (euphemism for long lunches)

6. They move to a new company every 2-3 years

I’m sure there are good biz dev people in the cleaning industry, but they’ve probably stuck it out with the same company for many years, because they’re good at what they do.

In my 20 year career, I have interviewed a lot of BD people that spent most of their life in the cleaning industry. We’ve never hired one. I have friends that hired those same people we passed on. They proceeded to fire them within the timeline outlined above. Some lasted even shorter.

I’m going to write a separate newsletter on the topic of BD and Sales, specifically how I’m approaching it moving forward. If you’re interested and think I should drop it asap, give this newsletter a like below.

Discretionary bonuses

My guess is most employers love discretionary bonuses. You get to ‘use your discretion’ on what you pay out as a bonus to your people. Meaning, at the end of the year you can pay them whatever you feel like.

I hate them and I think they’re unfair. They’re unfair to both the company and the employee.

As a leader you should be able to set an objective goal/target for each person in your company. The goal/target should be tough but attainable.

Example: If you want your General Manager to retain 95% of revenue then tie their bonus compensation to that goal.

This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to transition to non-discretionary bonuses.

I want our people to know what success looks like for their role. Know how to achieve that success. And know that if they achieve that success, they will be able to take home $XYZ at the end of the year.

This might cause slightly more stress at work, because their performance dictates their compensation. But it causes less stress for them at home. If they are exceptional at what they do, they’ll get their full bonus and they will know this before the year end, and can plan their life accordingly. Win-win.

I’m sure there are more, but these ones are top of mind because I've experienced them one too many times and they are painful.

Mistakes happen. No business is perfect. We’ve been cleaning for 70 years, and we’ve scaled our company to over 1,000 cleaners. Despite all that experience we’re still discovering newer and better ways of doing things every day.

I have no doubts that the road ahead is littered with many mistakes to be made. But, if there is one thing I will bet dollars to donuts on, it’s that I will never again make any of the seven mistakes outlined above.