When you just start your first business, you know – well, pretty much nothing! You aren’t ashamed of that – generally, you are too busy trying to not go broke. You are learning everything you can – like a sponge, soaking up all the advice you can and working as much as you can to make it happen!
Flash forward, 5 years later and some degree of success and everything is different. Maybe you’re at $500,000 in revenue by now and hopefully not about to go broke anymore. Not bad. Congrats, you’re no longer a “newbie”. You’ve kind of made it. You actually know something and hopefully know enough somethings to keep on moving forward and grow your company to a million dollars in revenue.
You have learned how to clean homes in a quality fashion and in an efficient manner. You have learned how to hire (and hopefully how to fire). You know what hire slow and fire fast means. You know how to get clients (and hopefully how to keep them). You go to all the conferences and are in all the right Facebook groups.
But have you forgotten how to take advice…
Specifically your own advice?
At this stage in the game, if a newbie on Facebook asks a simple question like “Hey, where do I post ads to find cleaning techs?” and you’re like me, you’re probably annoyed by this person wasting everyone’s time. However, if someone who isn’t brand new asks a more seasoned question like “What is the best way to fire a tech w/o getting sued?” or “How long will you put up with this, that or the other?” you probably jump right in and want to offer advice based on your experience.
Your advice is good – after all, you’re successful, right?
But I wonder…are you taking your own advice?
Let me explain. When you’re in a Facebook group and you see a question, often times you know what you would say whether you respond or not. The right answer is often clear – or at least generally so. It’s easy for you to comment on what you would do if you were them (since, well, you aren’t them). But I wonder, how often are you not doing what you tell others?
How long are you going to keep that crappy tech who is dragging down your quality scores? When are you going to fire that person with an attitude problem? When are you going to start keeping yourself to a schedule? Why haven’t you fixed your broken hiring process (when you have given advice to someone else to create their perfect system)?
Sure, there are probably plenty of reasons you have not. But try to be objective when evaluating your business and ask yourself “What would I tell someone else if this was their problem in their business?”
Maybe it’s time to take your own advice…
For my business I have put off addressing our attendance problem. I basically know what needs done, would freely give a fellow cleaning business owner advice on how to fix “their” attendance problem and yet I haven’t acted on my own. For me, fear has been holding me back. It’s just plain stupid at this point and it’s time to take my own advice 🙂
Historically we haven’t had a major issue with attendance. We’ve always had a clear attendance policy but have been a bit lax in enforcing it over the past six to twelve months. Now we have a problem. It seems staff know that we do not actually fire people on their fourth call out and we’ve created a non-enforcement culture. Now is the time to take my own advice and address this problem head on! So I have typed up way too many warning notices and have started having conversations with staff explaining where they are and what the next step will be if they call out once more. Yes, it’s going to be painful and yes I fully expect to have at least one tech quit in the next sixty days BUT this is what’s best for our company and I am taking my own advice!
I would encourage you to take an objective look at your business and take your own advice. I wonder – where would your business be (and more importantly, where would your life be) if you took your own advice?
Chris Fuhrman
Owner, EverGreen Maids Philadelphia, Inc
EverGreen Maids Philadelphia, Inc
For more articles, subscribe to our newsletter!
