Business & Career Maintenance [EP:145]

Avoiding Complacency: Essential Maintenance for Business Success

In this episode of the Hello Hair Pro Podcast, Jen and Todd discuss the critical importance of continual progress and maintenance in various business aspects to avoid complacency and stagnation. 

They provide practical advice on assessing your business's needs, such as maintaining equipment, regularly updating pricing, utilizing technology and software, managing employee relationships, client experience, inventory, financials, marketing, legal compliance, facility management, customer relationships, and staying current with industry trends. 

They also emphasize the necessity of evaluating and updating these elements systematically to maintain a thriving and progressive business environment.

00:00 Introduction and Greetings
00:13 Technical Issues and Politeness
00:23 The Concept of Progress and Complacency
01:27 Maintenance in Everyday Life
02:20 Business Maintenance Essentials
03:30 Equipment Maintenance
04:45 Pricing Strategies
07:16 Software and Technology
09:55 Employee Relationships
17:26 The Importance of Schedule Flexibility
18:25 Enhancing Client Experience
21:49 Effective Inventory Management
24:38 Financial Management Tips
25:40 Marketing and Promotions Strategies
26:20 Legal and Compliance Essentials
27:40 Maintaining Client Relationships
28:38 Staying Updated with Industry Trends
30:17 Final Thoughts and Challenges

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Transcript

145
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[00:00:00] 

Todd: All right. What's up everyone. Welcome back to the hello hair pro podcast. Happy Monday. Happy it's for us Wednesday. We don't record on Mondays typically.

Jen: Or whatever day you're listening. Not much.

Todd: All right. So we had some technical issues that we hope are

Jen: I don't think we did. I did.

Todd: It's trying to be polite.

Jen: That was nice of you.

Todd: Nope,

Jen: Nope. Didn't.

Todd: everywhere.

Anyways, we often talk about this concept of and I'm not sure if the importance of that really resonates. And I don't know if we've done a good job of explaining it. And oftentimes we'll say, you know, if you're not progressing, then by default, you're regressing complacency sets in. So we're telling people this, is it really sticking?

So I was thinking about that. And again, I'm not challenging people's intelligence or anything. I just hope that we're not being confusing. So I [00:01:00] wanted to

Jen: Love that.

Todd: different angle. What's that?

Jen: I said, I love that.

Todd: Well, it's kind of your job, right?

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: podcast, you're putting information out. It should be helpful.

It should be

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: So when it's not. You've got to ask yourself why, don't know that it's not either. Nobody's complained about it. I just was thinking about it.

Jen: Sometimes when you come from a different angle though, it's, Lights go off in other people that maybe are like complacency. What? I don't even know what you're talking about. Mm hmm.

Todd: you think about making progress or you think about staying on top of things for me, the word maintenance comes to mind. And when you think about maintenance and how it's applied in your everyday life, it starts to become easy. So look at, for example, your home or your apartment, wherever you live,

Jen: Mm

Todd: maintenance.

You

Jen: hmm.

Todd: Yeah. what about relationships? Requires constant attention,

Jen: Right.

Todd: romantic, spouse. It doesn't matter. It

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: attention. [00:02:00] Your vehicle, infrastructure. The roads, bridges, driveways, whatever. Your pets, plants. If you grow, we're trying to grow some gardens. It, it requires maintenance. Your haircut. your hair

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: need to maintain those things order for them to stay how you want them. So why would it be any different when we talk about business?

Jen: Well, it's not.

Todd: It's not at all. So again, the moment that you let complacency slip in is the moment that things start going

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: You can become stagnant.

It can happen over the course of, like, it can happen very quickly,

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: for example, or it can happen slowly, which is even worse. I've

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: with a few people we've had on the show and off air about complacency is almost like one of the silent killers of a business because a business will be chugging along for 10, 20, 30 years thinking it's doing great. And then all of a sudden [00:03:00] people want something different. So they all either up and leave or they're angry or upset and you have no clue about what's going on because you haven't been. On top of these things,

Jen: right.

Todd: makes sense.

Jen: Yep.

Todd: So let's dive into what needs maintenance or attention in your business to help you. Just think about the things that you should be doing, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, whatever.

Jen: Okay.

Todd: So the first obvious one to me was equipment.

Jen: Yes.

Todd: have to maintain your stuff. You have to sharpen your scissors. You have to make sure your blow dryers work. So as a business owner, you're looking at things that you're providing for your staff to use. whatever that might be. Chairs, lights lights are annoying because I think there's a couple of bulbs that went out at hello, but I have to have to change, but I need to figure out the temperatures either way.

Jen: Yes. Cause when you have the different temperatures on the [00:04:00] light bulbs, it's so annoying.

Todd: I've never done that. So if they're

Jen: Oh,

Todd: someone

Jen: no, my last salon, they were always different. I just, it was like, there was just a moment there.

Todd: A little flashback.

Jen: for sure.

Todd: So stuff like that. It's really easy to, to come up with a list and you should, and maybe you have a maintenance schedule or maybe you have, like, I know there are places that close for a week every year and that's their maintenance week. They go through and they do everything in a week. That wouldn't. Seem like a lot of fun to me. I like to do little

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: go. So maybe you create a maintenance list and it's just, you know, in January, we check the chairs in February, we. Check all of the electrical, I don't know, whatever, however your situation is. The next thing, and this is a, this is a big one for people pricing.

Jen: Hmm.

Todd: What does your pricing look like? Have you raised your prices to reflect inflation? Have you rate and, and none of this stuff needs to go on [00:05:00] Instagram.

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: percent of this, your clients do not need economy lessons from you.

Jen: definitely not.

Todd: But maybe are looking at markets and looking at cost analysis, like breaking down your pricing strategies. So your cost to deliver a service in 2018 most likely, unless you're talking about something like a haircut, was most likely less than your cost to deliver that same service in 2024. have you adjusted? Have you even looked at that? Have you even thought in your head before, like. that. if not, I hope that light bulb just went off for you. Do you have anything for any of these?

Jen: You're doing great. I think with the pricing, it just comes down to if you're like, I don't even know what my cost was in 2018. If some of that is like,

Todd: That's

Jen: I'd never even looked at that. That might be something that you start looking at now. And I think. If you don't have an accountant to [00:06:00] help you with that stuff, you need to get one.

On top of that, if your pricing came from wherever you last worked and it has no rhyme or reason into the business you're working in today, then you're going to need to start even from further back than probably 2018. Like what do your prices need to be for you to get to your, what you need to make and be profitable, and then you can also set out a path on that for maybe A way to raise them and get where you need to be so that the business keeps profiting.

And if you're not sure, you just need to reach out and get help from somebody or us. Right.

Todd: is something that you need to be on top of, and it's gotta be, to be like a yearly thing. You don't have to go through every week and look at your pricing and adjust it. But if you're somebody that hasn't adjusted your pricing or, or you're scared to raise prices on certain things, so you've put it off for like five years or even two years, or even a year, in some [00:07:00] cases, you're losing money.

Jen: Cause everything's going up just the way it goes.

Todd: you're making the same,

Jen: Right.

Todd: that means you're making less over time, which is what you want.

Jen: No, never.

Todd: How about software and technology? So, I've recently seen people arguing about tips, and how to handle tips, and all this stuff, and it just seems silly to me, it's 2024, we have solutions, so for example, we use Tippy, and

Jen: Yes.

Todd: if you accept tips or not, that's irrelevant, if you don't accept tips, then this

Jen: Cool.

Todd: to you, move on.

Jen: Fast forward.

Todd: like people always want to argue

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: like, I don't give a shit what you do. Just do, do what works for you,

Jen: Right.

Todd: That's, that's always been our mission. Do what works for you. But if you're somebody that's struggling with tips, I saw this the people arguing about tipping and how the business has to keep certain amount to cover the costs of the credit cards and. that's called cost of doing business. And you would have factored that into your prices, [00:08:00] like you, you factor that stuff in

you pass that cost along to the customer. Every single place does that. I can't even go register my dog with

Jen: yeah, the town.

Todd: card at town hall, our tiny little town hall

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: paying a fee.

I

Jen: right.

Todd: a check or cash. And if I don't, that fee gets passed on to the customer

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: doesn't want to pay it. So, look into something like Tippy, which is an awesome solution. It's, it's what we use and you don't have to worry about it.

Jen: Right. It really simplifies that so much.

Todd: We, we use some tech stuff at our salon. For example, if you're not using, a color management software,

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: out on color as well. And people, I, I've heard this a lot too. Well, how much does it cost? back and listen to our episode with Tim from Vish. And he tells you, which should just make sense to you that there should be no cost.

It

Jen: Right.

Todd: the color that you're wasting.

Jen: Right.[00:09:00] 

Todd: And when you look at it that way,

Jen: It pays for itself.

Todd: it pays for itself multiple times over. I don't know what else is out there currently because it's not currently my focus, but I'm sure there's other software innovations and things being done constantly. Data security is something that we. Made important to us. So we made sure that our, our software is able to handle people's credit card information.

Jen: Right.

Todd: we're hands off. We don't get that information. We don't have access to people's credit cards, even if we take them and enter them in our system, they are,

Jen: They become private.

Todd: they become

Jen: Mm hmm. Mm

Todd: by a third party.

And we, that's something that we pay for because it's something that's important. That's integrity to

Jen: hmm. And when we were picking our software, that was the, one of the things that was important to us and we found one that it's just as important to their company too.

Todd: It aligns with

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: core values. The next thing I had and jump in on any of these Jen is employee relationships.

Jen: Oh, that's a big one.

Todd: So what does that [00:10:00] look like? That's a relationship, just like a friendship or just like a relationship with your cohost of your podcast or your spouse or your business partner. relationships need nurturing.

They need care. They

Jen: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Todd: people need to feel like they're like, they're not just heard and seen, but they're valued. They want

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: of something. And so I'm not a big fan of these weekly. I see people that recommend weekly meetings,

Jen: Oh,

Todd: meetings. I don't think those are very effective

Jen: I'd quit.

Todd: because a lot of it is something you can say in passing

Jen: Yep.

Todd: going week to week.

So if I'm working on somebody, if I'm working on something with somebody and I want to check in with them, that should be like, Hey, how is this going? Do you need any help? No, I'm good. I think I'm on track. Awesome. I'll see you when we talk next you know what? I do need help. All right, cool. I have a few minutes here.

Do you want to connect?

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: You know maybe you're doing quarterly meetings, maybe it's twice a year, whatever, sitting down with your staff and [00:11:00] getting their feelings and opinions on things is important. I just don't think it's one of those things. Like, if, if we met with our staff every week, it would stress them out because it's not how we are.

It's not how we run our business. So again, if running a weekly meeting for your entire staff, that could have been paragraph text. Works for you

Jen: Yeah. Use your tech. Back to technology. Use your technology. We have an app that we use to communicate with our staff, so it makes it very easy to do those check ins.

Todd: so yeah, a weekly meeting would be silly because we generally communicate

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: needs to be said, it's just said, like if we are changing something or we're running a or we're whatever, it just, it goes in there. We don't have to have a

Jen: Right.

Todd: You know, we don't want to waste anybody's time. And I hope that our staff understands how much we respect them and respect their

Jen: Yeah, for sure. I think on this point, it's really important, the maintenance of like, just checking in with your staff regularly. And the reason why it's so important is. Most often, I [00:12:00] feel like. People wait till there's a problem and then they check in and they try to come in with this like backhanded, like positive something.

But really you're there to talk about the problem. And so what happens is you're creating a culture where when you ask to meet with them for like a one on one or however you do your things, They're freaking out because every time you come to them, even though you give them the backhanded compliment, you're really coming to them with a problem.

So the anxiety, especially in today's world, is so high, the anxiety of these one on ones or these check ins, they're just literally having a panic attack until they meet with you. Where if you're meeting with them more often about, you know, whatever's happening, then when you ask for a one on one, there's the anxiety is so much more less because they're like, Oh, they're just checking in.

And if there is a problem, we're going to chat it out, but they check in so often that there really shouldn't be anything that is surprising in this one on one. And if you don't do that, you do create a really high anxiety atmosphere and you're creating that.

Todd: I agree. And I, so this just popped in my [00:13:00] head. You prompted this, but these little meetings and check ins, these don't always have to be these performance reviews. I keep seeing this performance review. How do you, how do you review your team? How do you rate your staff? And we honestly, we really don't. do a lot of that.

When something needs to be corrected, we just correct

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: If somebody needs help with a specific service or in a specific area or part of their skill set is off, we just approach them

Jen: Right.

Todd: how can we help this? Here's how we think. You know, do you have any thoughts on this? Were you even aware of this? On and on, whatever. But sitting down and rating people constantly is not what's going to Inspire

Jen: No, I think you're going to do the complete opposite.

Todd: I think it could too. And I think you need to be careful with that. I, I, we used to do performance reviews at my gym with my staff and everyone thought they were fives, you know, we used to

Jen: Right. Yeah. [00:14:00] Correct.

Todd: or listening and communicating or whatever, everyone thought they were fives, you So you have to approach it in a, in a, In a different way, I think also when you go to a one on one with somebody and you just when I do them with people this last round, I think I did a bunch of them when you were in Australia and I just sat down with the staff and I let them talk and then if there are any issues or holes in their game or whatever, usually by just listening, I can tell I can get that information so that allows me to To know if they're aware or not, I don't have to ask them straight, you know, Hey, do you know, you suck at

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: Not that you would say that to somebody,

Jen: no,

Todd: know what I mean?

Jen: it's really amazing when you come in from a listening perspective, because like you said, you get their story. Then we can map out a plan to kind of like, all right, let's, let's reach back. Cause you and I now can communicate like, [00:15:00] all right, they're a little off here. We need to up this, like, and we can figure out how to come into the next meeting of a plan of how are we going to get there and a strategy of how long is this going to take and the why it may take longer, whatever that is.

And it really feels like a. Kind of a collaborative meeting for that individual and they appreciate that and every time we do that like by the next year They're like, wow, thanks so much. Like I can't believe the growth I had and they're coming into it inspired and positive.

Todd: part of it is that they recognize, I think that we're there to strategize on how to help them.

Jen: Mm hmm,

Todd: It's never from, for us, it's never, know, well, from a business standpoint.

Jen: right?

Todd: It's not how we come across because we believe that if we help our staff get to where they want to be, they'll help us get to where we want to be.

That's period. That's, that's just how it goes. And I think anybody that understands business will understand

Jen: Yeah

Todd: And that should make

Jen: Mm hmm,

Todd: I think in this industry, and I'm sure in a lot of others, people have it backwards where they're like, well, what can you do for the business? And when [00:16:00] you stop providing for the business, then I don't need

Jen: right

Todd: why would I have you here or whatever?

Jen: and it doesn't resonate with young professionals usually

Todd: No, and we like to see the upside in people, not where they're

Jen: Right.

Todd: where can they be in

Jen: Mm hmm

Todd: months, two years, five years, you know what I mean?

Jen: Yeah

Todd: more of what we're looking

Jen: I agree. And I think real quick, we also, we look at our staff, as I just said, as young professionals, I see a lot out there like this generation, they don't get it. Blah, blah, blah. Of course they don't. They're this generation. They're not ours. So we really strive hard with whatever young professional we are hiring and look at them as that.

And if they don't come in, maybe at the professional level we want now, we're. Gonna help nudge them to that level, right? But we look at them as young professionals, not this generation, and they suck. Because at that point, you're not leading them. You're just a jerk.

Todd: Well, here's the deal. Okay, let's just. Cut these people right down, because I don't like those people. You're exactly who I'm fucking talking to. [00:17:00] Because you've become complacent, Sally, from 30 years ago. You expect everyone to do things how it was done 30 years ago.

Jen: Yeah, which,

Todd: when you say that, when people say that, they don't get it.

What is,

Jen: right.

Todd: What are you talking about? No, they do get it. They get how the, how the world is and how businesses right

Jen: Yeah, for today.

Todd: very

Jen: this present. Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm

Todd: everybody wants to have freedom in their schedule. That's what everyone wants. And think about it. When you force people to work five days a week behind the chair, and they're working these long hours, and then you're having a lot of staff leave. Because they're going to a salon with some freedoms or they're going to rent a chair because they don't believe that's possible to have in a commission

Jen: hmm.

Todd: salon. You are the problem.

Jen: Right.

Todd: other way

Jen: Right.

Todd: You need to put some maintenance into reading a book

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: with the current times. Because you're part of the problem. You're who's holding the industry back by saying people don't get [00:18:00] it.

Jen: Right.

Todd: it's, it's you

Jen: But you hear it all the time.

Todd: I would love someone to disagree.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: have you on the show. So if you disagree and you're setting your ways from 20 years ago, 30

Jen: Let's chat.

Todd: Yeah, let's do this. Let's have a little debate and I'll be friendly. I'll, I'll be very respectful, but like you are the problem.

Jen: Correct.

Todd: Let's move on. Client experience.

Jen: Good one. Right.

Todd: hi Oliver. If you're watching, you can see my youngest son's or our youngest son's head peeking. So what have you done to step up the experience for your clients over time? Most people think their clients care if they took some classes. Well, I took some classes. So I'm better at this. That's not, we've already established that the hair is prerequisite. That's not anything above and beyond. That's the, that's the, so you took some classes. [00:19:00] Cool. Everyone took some classes

Jen: Everyone should.

Todd: that doesn't improve your client experience at all. and I'm not talking about offering coffees and amenities. Like, how are you treating people? How are you

Jen: Right.

Todd: people? Are you still offering somebody a beverage that says no, every single time. I have clients. That never ever want a beverage. They never ever want me to take their coat. They'll throw it on the chair. They never ever want me to take their hat or glasses and place them on the station. They've told me that the day that I forget to offer is the day that they'll want that.

Jen: Right.

Todd: So

Jen: So we still do it. Yeah.

Todd: so what, what are you doing? And that's a silly example, like offering to take someone's coat, but. Are you just saying, come on over when someone walks through the door? Hey, you're with me. Come on over. That's not client experience. So start to think about some of these things, because this becomes important to people, especially when you're looking at everyone it's, it's slowed recently, [00:20:00] but everyone's like recession, recession, everything's going to collapse. Okay. So if you are aware of that, then you should be aware that people are going to be more picky about where they spend their money. are

Jen: Right.

Todd: spend money, it might not be with you. If you don't up your game.

Jen: Right.

Todd: We talk about restaurants pretty often. go out to a restaurant, there's a few things that we want, and not a lot of them are the actual food.

Like, the food is the prerequisite. Your food

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: for us even to show up.

Jen: But it's the way we're treated. It's the way the family's greeted. Right. The excitement that, you know, we feel from the staff.

Todd: Yes, like we have restaurants that we go to, we're greeted by name, our children are greeted by name. We have, sometimes we'll grab a drink, we'll sit at the bar and it's just the way that the bartender interacts and jokes with us and whatever, that is experience and that's what we're looking for. don't want to go sit at a bar [00:21:00] and somebody just be like, what are you having?

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: a drink down in front of me and walk away. That's not why I'm at a

Jen: Right. And when we do have that experience, we're like, we're not coming back here.

Todd: Correct. Yeah.

Jen: Cause that's a big deal to us because that's what we hello experience is, is so important to us. So we, we are always striving to make that better and better all the time. So when I'm out, I, I want at least that level or, or I want more or better so that we come back and we're like, Oh, we went to this place and it was amazing.

And we can implement what we learned when we were out and have a, even a better experience at our salon.

Todd: I think too, like if you want to, like if we were having a meeting or we were talking about something important, we would get a table not set at a bar, you know, so

Jen: Yep.

Todd: you to choose that stuff too. So,

Jen: Agreed.

Todd: Inventory management I had on my little list here. every once in a while, you're going to want to go through your stock and you're going to want to look at all the stuff you have.

Jen: Right.

Todd: And you might find, we used to do [00:22:00] this in restaurants a lot. So obviously with food, but I ran the front of the house and I ran the liquor and wine and all that stuff. And so we would go through and look at after a season, like, what do we have? Like

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: way too many of this specific, know, bottles of vodka. Why

Jen: Yep.

Todd: much stop ordering

Jen: Right.

Todd: you know what I mean?

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: you're going to want to go through and monitor your turnover. You're going to want to make sure that you don't have products that have been sitting on the shelf for three years.

Jen: right. I think,

Todd: good 

Jen: I would even go like to your color bar, like what colors are, are popular. What's not, or you're looking at, maybe you have a few different color lines. Are you even using one of them? Why do you still have it? Like it's same thing with products. Like they're on your shelf. Are they moving or not moving?

Like, do they align with what you still like your values and your mission are in your, in your brand? If not, why,

Todd: sold?

Jen: right. Why are they still there? Like, what are you doing? It actually feels so good when you're like, why [00:23:00] are these just sitting here? Yeah. They're, they're. It's time to move on, get them out, figure it out.

Todd: I agree a hundred percent and we've had it happen where we've had product lines that we were just like we're done with this

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: got rid of the whole product line. And then as a solution to that, we don't carry. We don't. We carry, we don't stock a lot of retail physically on location. We have the things that we've identified that move that sell well.

And we have the things that we've identified that we want to offer as part of certain services. So like extension services, I know you put together packages for people that, the care of their hair, like that you can look at and stock and not have to worry about carrying. You know, whatever, 50 lip glosses on your front desk or

Jen: Right.

Todd: like all this stuff that people want to put in everywhere and it's a lot of your money just sitting on a shelf.

Jen: Even the product lines we do carry, we we piece it together.

Todd: yeah,

Jen: [00:24:00] There's not one product line that we have the whole entire thing sitting there. There are different products that come in different seasons. There's different things, depending on hairstyles that we're like, Oh, wow. Somebody would really like to walk out with this.

And we're going to keep a couple on our shelf. It's, it's really the products that solve the problems of the clients when they come in and what, how they're speaking to us and what their needs are. And that really curates what we have on our shelf. And it, it's a nice way. And it always kind of. It's changing all the time too.

Some stuff stays, but there's always different things depending on like what solves those clients problems for that season.

Todd: The next one I had was financial management. So we are in a situation where we have somebody that does most of the stuff for us that we just talked to, but your bookkeeping, have you checked up on that lately? Is it accurate? Does it

Jen: Right.

Todd: everything? Are you missing things? Maybe you need budgeting.

Maybe you need to come up with budgets for things that you don't have budgets for. Maybe there's tax [00:25:00] preparation stuff that you qualify for that you aren't aware of. Like, so you've got to stay on top of those things. it's, it could be a lot of money. We've had sometimes there's times where you get A credit for something that is like a thousand dollars.

And they're

Jen: Right.

Todd: is yours, not ours. this accidentally got paid twice somehow or whatever. Like it's things get lost and mistakes get made. And that part is okay. What's not okay is not staying on top of it.

Jen: Right.

Todd: So you're just losing money and tossing money away.

Jen: Yeah. An accountant is your best friend.

Todd: Yeah, for sure. Until you need a lawyer.

Marketing and promotions. What have you done worked? What have you done for the past year that hasn't worked?

Jen: Right.

Todd: Are you just posting the same thing over and over again and wondering why no one is calling? Maybe it's time to take a look at things. I don't know.

Jen: Yeah. Cause that would mean it's not working.

Todd: Have you updated your website at all? [00:26:00] Have you updated your Google My Business? Have you updated anything? You know, and it doesn't take a lot. It takes very minimal work, to be honest with you. If you want to do it really well, it takes more work. you want to do it the best, you'll probably hire somebody. Next thing legal and compliance. So this is a licensed business folks.

Jen: Yes.

Todd: your responsibility to stay on top of that. So here in New Hampshire, our state board was sending out like a weekly email. updates and about reminders and things like that. I haven't seen one in months, so they've already fallen

Jen: Oh yeah, that's true.

Todd: Yes, it is true because I stay on top of stuff and they don't. So I knew that other legal stuff might be your insurance. Are you keeping up with your insurance? Do you even have a proper plan in place?

Jen: Right.

Todd: what that means? I'm not talking about health insurance. I'm talking about business insurance.

Jen: Do you have enough coverage even?

Todd: We talked about equipment in the beginning, but [00:27:00] I also had facility as a separate highlight here. So like, what is your daily cleaning look like? What do just managing your day to day sort of. Business day to day, what does that look

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: working? Is it not? So this might be your cleaning lists for your staff or closing lists, opening lists, whatever it is.

Stuff annoying you. Are you coming in and you're like, why is this not set up correctly? That's on you. You're the owner together a better list. Right. Make it easier for people.

Jen: Right.

Todd: complicated. Make it

Jen: Easy and simple. That's how people follow it.

Todd: Mm hmm. We talked about client experience, but a client, a client or customer relationship So whether it's following up, whether you have some sort of reward program, whether you have whatever, whatever, whatever you have. So I'll go through an email time to time. People that leave internal reviews, I always will email [00:28:00] back negative. So if there's any negative, we generally attack it right away.

Mm hmm. But maybe once a month I'll go through and I'll pick out five to 10 clients that were happy. And I just reach out and say, Hey, it made our day knowing that you were happy. And we just wanted to say, thank you.

Jen: Right.

Todd: think that happens enough.

Jen: I would agree.

Todd: when's the last time a business has thanked you? We have a couple of businesses that

Jen: individually thanked you, right?

Todd: Yes,

Jen: Not just some posts. Thank you for being so loyal. Like you're literally making that connection to make that relationship.

Todd: And then the, the last. Thing I had on my list here, and I'm sure there's a million more is just industry trends. So this is not something that I really care much about. It personally, I don't care

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: it's generally people trying to use a different word for something that already exists.

Jen: Yep.

Todd: But what that means is that your clients are going to come in and they're going to

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: stuff now

Jen: Right.

Todd: they saw some dude in California who [00:29:00] whatever and called it this method.

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: you have to understand what that means.

Jen: Right.

Todd: rather than fight it, just kind of acknowledge it and keep up with it.

Jen: I would agree. I think that's something from a educational standpoint from when I'm teaching. I used to ignore, even when I was teaching, like the names of things, whatever. I'm like, let me just show them. But I started to realize, to what you're saying, these trends come out. So the people I'm teaching need to at least know the name of it so they understand what someone's saying.

Speaking about and then learn how to consult of course after, but it, you still have to be on point with that because people are coming in and they're going to say this. And if you're like, Oh, I have no idea what you're talking about. Like your client shouldn't know more than you. Right. You should know kind of what is trending and just have an awareness to it.

Todd: And a little pro tip here. Don't, don't brush aside what the client is telling you. You don't have to one up the client. You don't have to be like, that's not this. This is

Jen: Oh God. No,

Todd: the client feel good. Don't make them[00:30:00] 

Jen: right.

Todd: them. Don't make them feel stupid. Don't try to establish a dominance.

Like I'm the professional. Just if you were professional. You would guide them through and give them the best

Jen: Yeah. Make them feel like a superstar.

Todd: yeah, make them feel great. That's what it's about. So I just listed, I don't know, what was it like 10, 12, 13 things

Jen: Yeah. It's a lot.

Todd: So I would challenge you if you're listening to, we should do this to come up with one topic or one area from each one of those items that we just listed out and just identify an area where you might be able to up your game or pay attention to being a little more maintenance forward with your business.

Jen: And understand Todd and I at hello, we do all of this stuff. It's it's constant. So it might sound like a lot, but it is doable. It's just like Todd said in the beginning of the podcast, like laying it out, maybe in January, you'd focus on this stuff, February is this, however it is for you to attack these things and not feel overwhelmed, but as a business [00:31:00] owner and leading a team, like no matter where you're at, like you, these things have to be done, or you will, Fall so far behind you, it, the mountain, it looks like you have to climb.

Just seems like it's not possible when it, it truly is. If you stick with this and stay on top of things.

Todd: Your first step is just to go through and identify a problem in these areas. It's not to attack them because when you go through and you work systematically, will create a list and you'll identify commonalities in

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: And then what you can do is create solutions that are going to attack multiples of those problems at the same time. And that's

Jen: Right.

Todd: effective

Jen: Yep.

Todd: business and

Jen: Makes sense.

Todd: You're not going to go through and recreate the wheel for every

Jen: No, too exhausting.

Todd: we always harp on from your mission

Jen: Right.

Todd: values, because it just, it makes it super easy

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: decisions.

Jen: Keeps you focused, accountable.

Todd: Right.

What does your mission say?

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: are your core values dictate?

Jen: Right.

Todd: that's sort of how we run our, [00:32:00] our operation. If you need help, reach out.

Jen: We're here.

Todd: That's all I got. Anything else, Jim?

Jen: Nope.

Todd: Bye everyone. Thanks.

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