This episode of Smart Business Moves is a little different than the normal episode with a whole plethora of guests joining, including Debbie Sardone, Elena Ledoux, Heather Canning, and Trisha Lake. This super powered episode is special because it is about the Juno Summit which is a cleaning business summit designed to teach about the industry with speakers and presenters from across the country. This video helps understand what kind of information will be shown at the summit itself.
The summit was formed to help Laura Smith's 8 year old daughter with her battle with cancer. The funds raised will go toward helping with hospital bills and anything else the Smith family needs during these hard times.
The Juno Summit
What it is. Elena, who led the project, said the summit raises money for Juno, the young daughter of cleaning business owner Laura Smith. Juno was diagnosed with leukemia, and her treatment is extremely expensive. The summit was originally planned as an in-person event in Fort Collins, Colorado, but moved online because of COVID. Elena said it isn’t a teaser for a later event. It’s a full summit, with each speaker recording an in-depth presentation, often with supporting documents and forms. Elena said about 20 speakers are involved, all donating their time.
How to join. Registration is at junosummit.com. Attendees click “Count Me In” and donate to Juno’s GoFundMe campaign. The summit opens September 15. Tom noted the website still mentioned booking flights and hotels from the original in-person plan and would be updated.
Laura’s business package. Elena said Laura is also giving donors a package of her entire company’s systems, including forms, scripts, and automations. Liz said Laura spent about 40 hours compiling it while caring for Juno in the hospital. Elena compared its value to a franchise, which might cost about $50,000 to buy and about $80,000 to have a consultant build. Liz said she would gladly have paid $10,000 for it when she started her business. Elena explained the access rules as follows, though they’re a little unclear in the transcript, so please confirm them before publishing.
- Donors who had already given would get the package regardless of how much they gave.
- New donors before the summit opens would need to give the full $3,000 suggested donation to receive it.
- After September 15, the package likely won’t be available. Elena mentioned a $10,000 donation level for later access but also said she didn’t think it would be offered.
The presentations themselves will be available for any donation amount.
The presenters on this episode
Heather Canning. Heather will present the interviewing and hiring process she’s refined over three and a half years, including the mistakes she made along the way. She said she hasn’t had trouble finding qualified applicants during COVID. Tom thought she used Trello to manage her hiring workflow, but she said she runs it entirely within Indeed. Liz said members of her mastermind group who’ve adopted Heather’s process have seen much better results.
Trisha Lake. Trisha joined from her car, which she called her new office, after getting the keys to her third location in Grand Forks and doing a radio interview. Her second location is in Detroit Lakes. Liz said Trisha appears to be in North Dakota. The transcript introduces her as “Tricia Lakes,” which may be a garbled name, so please confirm it. She will give two presentations.
- Unique advertising and marketing. Trisha promised cheap, unusual tactics that generate leads. She said she puts much of her advertising budget toward good causes, which comes back tenfold.
- Winning large new-construction cleaning jobs. She said she has cleaned buildings up to 200,000 square feet and eight stories, including four at once. She will cover the mistakes to avoid and what owners need to know before bidding on large jobs.
Debbie Sardone. Debbie’s talk is “How to Overcome Growth Plateaus at Every Level.” She’ll explain why she was stuck at $1 million in revenue for about 20 years and share five principles for breaking through at any level, from $300,000 to $2 million. She cited Napoleon Hill’s laws of success, saying that successful people invest in their minds and give back, and that the summit does both. She said none of the presenters are paid.
Tom Stewart. Tom’s presentation covers what he calls the MaidCentral Profit Paradigm, built on four metrics he abbreviates PPPE, for pay, price, productivity, and efficiency. He said many companies clean a lot of homes without making money. His session includes an Excel calculator where owners enter their own numbers to see how to earn more from the homes they already clean. He said the model comes from Foundations and from data collected through MaidCentral. Liz said his talk and Debbie’s would be powerful together.
Elena Ledoux. Elena’s talk, “Be the Buffalo, Not a Cow,” covers how to survive 2020’s combined storms of a pandemic, civil unrest, an economic crisis, and climate change. She said it’s a practical toolkit, including how to analyze your way through a crisis and what your numbers should look like. She admitted she often feels like the cow, worried and unsure, but chooses to move forward anyway.
Liz Trotter. Liz said she’s giving two presentations.
- Getting the best from your current employees. Liz said owners should stop focusing only on finding better people, because their current staff have more to offer than they realize.
- Using DISC behavioral styles. Liz will include a simple hack she created for quickly estimating employees’ DISC styles. She said it isn’t certified DISC but gets close enough to help managers.
Heather joked that the two-presentation speakers were overachievers. Elena recalled that Liz’s talk at a previous ARCSI convention drew such a crowd that she couldn’t get close enough to hear.
Other speakers mentioned. Elena also named several presenters not on the call.
- Kadma Ough, a coach of coaches for the Conquer group, newly a featured writer for Entrepreneur magazine, and an advocate for people with disabilities. The transcript’s spelling of her name may be garbled, so please confirm it.
- John Brown, on carpet cleaning as an added source of income.
- Meaghan Likes, a QuickBooks expert. Elena said Megan normally charges a lot for her knowledge but is donating it here.
- Alonzo Adams, who chairs the ISSA/ARCSI residential cleaning advisory council.
Elena added that some presentation titles have changed from those on the posted schedule.
Why participate
The return on giving. Debbie argued that if the summit helps an owner earn just $5,000 more a month, that’s $60,000 a year for years to come. She said any single talk would be worth more than the $3,000 suggested donation. Tom said, “The cost of not knowing this information far exceeds the cost of the Juno Summit.” He also called it an easy decision, since the summit “is either going to be great or it’s going to be awesome.” Trisha said she would have jumped at something like this when she started her business 10 years earlier.
Don’t wait. Debbie said top achievers don’t procrastinate when they see a chance to invest in themselves. She realized during the show that she hadn’t registered yet and did so on the spot. Liz said anyone who has ever regretted not acting on something should register now. Elena suggested blocking off the week of September 15 to watch the sessions.
Why the community is giving back. Trisha said Laura has always been generous with advice, even to people she barely knew. Liz said Laura called her asking her to stop the effort, because she found it hard to accept help. Debbie said true givers often struggle to receive. Liz also said Debbie had earlier held a separate event and donated all of its proceeds to Laura. Elena said she wanted to help create a community where no one faces a crisis alone.
Juno update. Liz said Juno’s hair is starting to grow back. She explained that losing it had devastated Juno, who hadn’t let anyone outside her family see her without a hat.
More to come. Liz said additional opportunities for summit participants would be announced later.
Closing. Tom asked Debbie to close, since she founded Cleaning for a Reason. Debbie said giving to people who can’t give anything back changes you as a leader, changes your employees, and changes how the public sees your company. She said many owners have told her Cleaning for a Reason transformed their businesses and brands. She urged owners to start making decisions based on results rather than cost, and to register right away before talking themselves out of it.
