How do you work “on” the business and not “in” the business? I have a question about transitioning my company from strictly working with sub-contractors and working in the business myself, and just easing into working on the business versus in the business.
There will be a difference where I'm not bringing money into my pocket because I'm going to be paying for more cleaning hours. If you start a house cleaning business at some point you're probably going to want to expand.
There are lots of house cleaners that only ever work in their business. They're the ones that do all the bidding. They go out and get all the jobs. They do all the marketing. They're the ones that run the flyers. They sit down and they do their bookkeeping at night. They do their marketing, their social media and they're the ones that go out and do all the cleaning.
So, if you decide that you want to expand your business and you want to hire other people and start outsourcing some of those things, there are a couple of systems
that you can create.
Keep Flow of Cleaning Business
There are things that you do in your business to keep the business afloat, but they don't directly bring you money. They're “busy jobs”. These are things like your marketing, hanging out in a Facebook group, creating a sale for a Super Saturday Sale, or something like that.
It doesn't directly generate revenue. So let's say for example, that you answer all of your emails but you decide that's not the best use of your time because your time is better suited to being directly in front of a customer closing the sales.
So, you're going to find a system for every single thing that you do in your cleaning business that is not the best use of your time. And the reason I say that is because at some point – it doesn't have to be today, it doesn't have to be this year – but at some point, you're going to want to outsource the things to someone else.
Right, now, there are some things that I want you to pay attention to.
It's easy to say, “Well, I don't want any part of the business. I just want to run the business.” There will always be a drive and a focus and a concentration and a motivation that has to come from you, for all of the people that work underneath you that you manage. And so even if you hire someone and you give them the book of working in the business, even if they manage all of those tasks, you still have to manage them.
Learning By Mistakes
We fumble around and we learn by trial and error until we find our way. Once you find your way, template it. Template it and put it in the book of working in your business.
Once you know how to do it, you know what's involved, you know about how long it takes, how much you're willing to pay, and you know about how much time it's
going to free up for you to go do other things that actually generate the money.
If you don't have a map, you don't know where you're going. And so you must know number one in your business, how much money you're bringing in, and number two, you know how you're bringing it in, and then number three, you know what tasks have nothing to do with.
Generate Cleaning Resources
Focus on the things that generate the cleaning resources. And figure out a way to a template and then outsource, the other things that you're not so good at or it's not the best use of your time, or it doesn't instantly generate money. Get rid of those things.
What you can do next is to keep your machine a well-oiled machine, and keep your business afloat, even after you take a couple of steps back, and you yourself are not wearing all the hats, and doing all the work. That's just in a nutshell for the whole scenario.