What Software To Use to Run Your Businesses – Coffee with Danielle talking what software we use for our businesses| Ep. 171 | Business Podcast
Summary
This week is Part 1 where we talk about what software we use to run our businesses and some of the challenges and solutions we’ve found.
Every Friday Danielle Jenkins, founder of Domestic Divas, and I do a live show called Coffee with Danielle at 8am PST, 11am EST on YouTube and talk all things about running a business.
Danielle and I each run businesses doing millions in revenue each year. We grab a coffee and pull back the curtain on our businesses. We talk about what’s working, what’s not, what software and systems we use, sales and marketing strategies, our own wellness and other challenges and solutions we’ve discovered.
Drop in live on Fridays on the EDGE’s YouTube channel, ask questions and join the conversation via chat or grab our recorded conversations on Fridays right here.
Hello friends!
Danielle:
Welcome to the Edge. Today is a recording of our live friday sessions where Danielle Jenkins who is the founder of domestic divas, a residential and commercial cleaning company and I have coffee on friday mornings at eight a.m. Pacific time, 11 a.m. Eastern Standard time and we go live, you can tune in if you want on Fridays on the edges youtube channel and for those of you who can’t do that or miss it.
Danielle:
This is our recording.
Danielle:
And today we’re talking about operations software that we use to run our business and all the trials, tribulations and what should I say? Things we’ve learned from trying to use different types of pieces of software to run the operations and grow our business.
Danielle:
You’ll love this episode if you want to hear Daniel’s full story on how she started domestic Divas when she was in debt broke and within a year climbed out and basically did about $240,000 worth of sales and erased her debt. Tune into episode 1 69 and mark your calendars for friday’s live sessions.
Danielle:
We’d love for you to join and you can chat with us in the chat.
Danielle:
You can ask questions and interact with us otherwise, here’s the recording from today’s conversation Here we go.
Danielle:
Welcome to the Edge podcast, your weekly playbook about the inner game of building a successful business, making you a happier, healthier and richer business owner and here’s your host Brandon White. Hey, what’s going on?
Danielle:
Hey, hey, I am just trying to figure out, oh there we go.
Brandon:
Hey, where are you today?
Brandon:
I am in Windsor wizard.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Danielle:
So I’m actually closer to you.
Brandon:
I’m right on the, like this right here is Detroit.
Danielle:
Oh my God.
Brandon:
What are you doing there?
Danielle:
Uh, so I’m building a house just 20 minutes from here. Um, so I have to meet with the suppliers, uh, like occasionally right to meet to pick the stuff.
Brandon:
So I’m doing that and then golfing tomorrow, seeing some friends. So yeah, that’ll be nice.
Brandon:
Are you going to live there?
Danielle:
No, no, no.
Brandon:
It’s like an investment property.
Brandon:
It’s really cheap here.
Brandon:
Is that what’s cheap?
Danielle:
Uh, well, I don’t know what the market is there, but um, 4000 square foot ranch style bungalow. Custom built for 5 20 with a yard.
Brandon:
Yes.
Danielle:
Corner lot.
Brandon:
Well in a development.
Danielle:
Yeah.
Brandon:
So it’s like a cute little subdivision. It’s beautiful. So yeah, it’s exciting.
Brandon:
That’s exciting. Is that really? That’s really you’re seeing out the back there? Yeah.
Danielle:
Yeah. Oh, shoot now. It’s not going to adjust the exposure.
Brandon:
Well, hey, can you hear the, can you hear the coffee shop music today?
Danielle:
Mm No, no.
Danielle:
Hold on.
Danielle:
I want to see if I get it for, yeah.
Danielle:
You hear it now?
Danielle:
No, no, I have to figure out how to get that to work.
Danielle:
I can hear it.
Danielle:
Um, well we are live on facebook today because I couldn’t get youtube to work.
Danielle:
Oh, okay.
Danielle:
Cool.
Danielle:
I don’t know how cool it is, but I don’t know what happened.
Danielle:
I’m so, I’m so disappointed about it.
Brandon:
But um, you know, we’re supposed to talk about operations today.
Danielle:
Are you ready for that?
Danielle:
I sure am.
Danielle:
This is exciting. I love operational stuff. I’m not good at tech or software, but when it works and it works smoothly, I love it.
Brandon:
Do you have a tech person over there?
Brandon:
Um, I don’t have a tech person, the company who we use or like our software that we use, um, has a tech support team so I can call them any time they help with all that stuff.
Danielle:
So you, when we talked originally, you said and this is your, basically your back end software.
Brandon:
So for any listeners out there, um, who are just joining us, this is Daniel and I have coffee together on friday mornings at eight o’clock, pacific standard time.
Brandon:
Today was 8 12 because I couldn’t get the streaming working and Daniel joined us on the Edge podcast well, probably a week ago and shared the story, which was cool.
Danielle:
And then we just got talking and kept talking and I was like, hey, let’s just do coffee on Fridays and we’ll talk everything about business and whatever else comes up right?
Danielle:
Yeah, I love it.
Danielle:
It’s been fun so far doing kind of, you know, we have a good topic that sets and then we just kind of go on and off.
Danielle:
So I love that last time we didn’t even get to the topic.
Danielle:
Yeah, you’re right actually.
Danielle:
You are right about that.
Danielle:
But you did you did talk about how you survived during Covid business which hasn’t aired yet but it is going to air um When this week, but the the episodes numbers were already set.
Danielle:
So I got to figure out how to squeak that in.
Danielle:
But if you’re listening, you won’t want to miss that episode where we talked about surviving in COVID and we’ve talked about business.
Danielle:
Um I don’t know how we made it so far.
Brandon:
Right click on one.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Danielle:
Especially during a worldwide pandemic.
Brandon:
I mean, you know there’s a lot of people who have come through and and come through even stronger than they were before.
Danielle:
Right?
Danielle:
Yeah.
Danielle:
We talked all about that and I think you know, I’ve said it before, I’ve always had the most luck coming out of downturns.
Brandon:
So knock on wood, we’re going to try to keep that alive and going.
Danielle:
You know, I’m thinking is that’s right behind you. That’s Detroit behind you.
Danielle:
Yes. Isn’t it weird because you’re not allowed to come into the U. S. Yet, are you? Canadians?
Danielle:
To be honest. I’m not sure if I think vaccinated. Um people are I believe so. I think vaccinated. I actually, yes, I think that’s true because a few weeks ago I think when they announced it, we saw videos of all of the borders jam packed as soon as midnight hit.
Brandon:
So I think vaccinated people are allowed to cross if you are unvaccinated. I think you can go, but I think you have to quarantine when you get back for two weeks.
Brandon:
Is there a fairy or something you can take across there?
Brandon:
Um There’s like a little tour but or a tour boat, I was gonna say a tour bus, but no, it’s a boat.
Danielle:
Um but there is the Ambassador bridge over here, which is super cool.
Brandon:
Um So I don’t think you can actually take a boat over there because they have to do like border patrol I guess.
Brandon:
Um but there are certainly not surveillance boats, but almost like security boats policing it all the time I guess in case they get random swimmers go across or something like that.
Brandon:
But like as you can see, I don’t know if you can see it right now, there’s no, the, it’s kind of blurry because it’s a light adjustment but there’s a boat going across right now.
Brandon:
Like a shipping, oh there we go.
Danielle:
Like a shipping boat.
Brandon:
So that’s super neat. Um It’s a beautiful view. I love it here. Whenever I come to Windsor, this is where I stay just for this view.
Brandon:
I thought you were in England.
Danielle:
Really? Well, I don’t know, Windsor, I’ve never even heard of Windsor to be honest with you, it’s like super like it’s the most southern point of Ontario I believe.
Danielle:
Like some of the american states are actually higher than where we are right now.
Brandon:
Oh wow.
Brandon:
Yeah, I guess I’m showing my, my geography of the Great Lakes region.
Danielle:
It’s not, it’s not as strong as it used to be.
Danielle:
I’m getting memories of having to take that test and name all the Great Lakes.
Brandon:
Oh yeah.
Danielle:
I mean I’m going to be honest right now. I probably couldn’t tell you what the lakes are either to be honest.
Brandon:
I know this is the Detroit river, I was gonna say, is it like lake Erie, but it’s not.
Brandon:
Um, so let’s talk about software.
Danielle:
The what software are you using when we originally talked, you said that you built and for listeners out there, Danielle runs domestic divas, which is a residential and commercial cleaning service and has a whole bunch of people that she regularly has to schedule and also does training uh, programs outside of training her own people.
Danielle:
Right.
Danielle:
You have a training program for other people.
Danielle:
So what software are you using? And how did you customize that?
Danielle:
How did you, I mean you said you’re not really tech savvy? Not, not that you’re not tech savvy but you’re not an engineer per se. So how did you figure all this out?
Danielle:
Okay. Um, so when I first, so we’re going to go a little bit further back when I first started the company and there was only about five of us to begin with.
Brandon:
This is my lack of tech skills coming out.
Brandon:
We actually, first of all use written calendars. So we would pretty much talk on the phone every friday night ready for the week ahead and we would pencil in the schedule um based on what clients booked and things like that.
Brandon:
So that big calendar on your desk that you have.
Brandon:
Yeah, yeah, so I had everybody’s and then everybody that was on the team wrote down their own schedule in their own little diary planner, whatever you wanna call it.
Brandon:
Um so that was what we did and then I thought, you know, I can’t, this is too much like there’s no way, you know, we’re erasing things and it was just ridiculous.
Danielle:
Then we started doing gmail calendar, so that was super cool because that was when like the g cow thing was like a big hit.
Brandon:
Everybody started using the gmail calendar.
Brandon:
So everybody had their own gmail cow, we kind of synchronize them together so I could control their calendars and they could see it on their phone, their ipad or whatever they used, that’s what we used first for a long time because we tried um so many like smaller calendar, we tried like everything under the sun, you know, you could google software for service companies, software for this software for that and just nothing really worked well for what we were looking for because we needed to be able to schedule recurring visits for our residential um side of the company, we had to be able to invoice, like there were just so many components that we needed.
Brandon:
So eventually and even down to um what’s it called sir, There’s a Big one service titan or something like that service service now it’s a big enterprise company.
Brandon:
Okay.
Brandon:
Either way we tried a gazillion of them and just nothing really, I was giving us exactly what we needed.
Brandon:
I’m kind of a control freak when it comes to stuff like I needed to run the way I need it to be ran so well, let’s talk about what, what was the requirement, it sounds like so far you’re doing a lot of, mainly use for this is scheduling.
Brandon:
Yes, so obviously being the person I am, I like to plan for the bigger picture.
Brandon:
I was looking at some of the things that we were using and I was thinking, Okay, like how are we going to trap, you know, potentially 50 employees one day.
Brandon:
Right.
Brandon:
How are we going to do payroll for 50 employees one day or is everybody going to submit time sheets?
Brandon:
Is everybody going to use a timer?
Brandon:
Is everybody going to use GPS?
Brandon:
Like I just really had no idea.
Brandon:
So these are the things that I constantly had to think about um scheduling client information.
Danielle:
That was a big one too.
Brandon:
So we also had to try crm.
Brandon:
Right, so we have to try and find a crm system to keep track of all the information.
Brandon:
And then it was also difficult because at one point I believe I wanted my staff to download like five different apps.
Danielle:
One further schedule, one for, you know, requesting time off, one for client information.
Brandon:
And then there comes the issue of confidentiality.
Brandon:
So even to this day, um obviously like our managers have access to more information than our cleaners, right?
Brandon:
We’re not going to give them banking information or anything like that.
Brandon:
You know, like there’s specific things that your dog with you.
Brandon:
I do.
Brandon:
He comes, he traveled with me.
Brandon:
I didn’t know you took him to the hotels, but I guess that makes sense.
Danielle:
Yeah, there’s a few hotels that are dog friendly.
Brandon:
So I bring him, he, he was just napping and somebody I guess shut a door or something.
Danielle:
He’s kind of high on high alert today.
Brandon:
He’s uh, he’s your guard dog in your, in your hotel here, vanilla.
Brandon:
Come here for all our listeners.
Danielle:
The I ever, oh my God, he looks smaller in the photos.
Brandon:
He is small, but I’m really small.
Danielle:
He’s as big as you.
Danielle:
I know, but I’m small.
Brandon:
I’m only five ft tall.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Danielle:
But yeah, I didn’t think God, he looks, he’s big.
Brandon:
He’s £30. He’s a muscular little boy.
Danielle:
He’s a cute little dog.
Brandon:
Yeah, he’s the best with you when you travel.
Danielle:
Yeah.
Brandon:
And when you go check out your house and stuff.
Danielle:
Yeah, of course.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Danielle:
He comes with me.
Brandon:
I mean a lot of the time he’ll stay with my mom like grandma right? So she spoils him. But yeah I love taking him with me. He’s like he’s such a good boy like for being such a baby, like a puppy, he travels so well, so that’s super awesome.
Brandon:
Um Okay so we’re talking about software and um uh confidentiality that you got to keep and managers can’t see.
Brandon:
So you need to basically have a permission based software system.
Danielle:
Yes exactly. So that’s what we needed and it was getting to a point where I couldn’t have um you know like I’m always trying to make it easy for my staff as well.
Brandon:
I don’t want them to have a hard time trying to you know, across different apps and having to access this system to use this system. So I needed something that kind of integrated all of those things um along with keeping track of you know payroll and time sheets and scheduling and expenses.
Brandon:
That was another one, you know because some jobs have expenses that we need inventory. Like there’s just so many things that we had to keep track of um that I was really struggling to find the right one. So then I thought okay am I just going to have to spend a gazillion dollars and build my own, you know because I couldn’t find anything.
Brandon:
Um And back to the crm, even just down to our customer service like you know we’re really well known for our automated responses and how quick and efficient we are when it comes to like our new client packages and things like that.
Brandon:
So I need again I needed something to keep track of all of those things along with do them um whether it was done manually or automatic automated, it still needed to be done and still kept track up if that makes sense.
Brandon:
So and we can talk about that down the line how we kind of take on a new client and the process with all of those things because it’s an additional you know couture service that people like to call it that a lot of um cleaning companies or even just a lot of service companies just don’t offer because it’s it’s a service company right?
Brandon:
It’s not you know they’re not coming to stay at the Ritz Hotel or anything right?
Brandon:
But it just adds that extra um professionalism and sophistication.
Brandon:
That is a big focus in our company and that’s what people comment on right even prior to the actual cleaning itself, people always say oh you know we love getting a new client package, we loved um you know the quick automation, the reminder emails, things like that.
Brandon:
Uh So so those are things that I really needed to have because again for a while before we have the system that we have now it was all done by myself or an assistant or a manager that just had five minutes of her time to go, oh yeah we have to send this person this and it was just chaos right like total chaos.
Brandon:
So I’m like Googling again looking, trying to find the perfect thing and then I came across this um It’s actually another lady who has a cleaning residential cleaning company, she doesn’t do commercial in B.
Brandon:
C.
Brandon:
or Alberta one or the other, I think it’s b.
Brandon:
c.
Brandon:
And she was you know, just like a Just under $1 million dollar cleaning company.
Brandon:
She was doing absolutely phenomenal.
Brandon:
She had a great crew of people to help her.
Brandon:
She had great morale, great company culture kind of the same thing and she was doing a little article about how she uses the software and what she does because she was having the same struggles.
Brandon:
So she uses this company or this system called Jobber.
Brandon:
And so this is gonna be a little plug for jabber and they love like I love working with them and they love us as well.
Brandon:
So Jabber is a company that does software for service companies.
Brandon:
The coolest thing is about Jabba is there’s different platforms, there’s different levels of the program that you can use whether you have one employee, 10 employees or 100 employees.
Brandon:
So that is what we use and every day they’re updating it every day.
Brandon:
They have cool product features, they really take um recommendations and suggestions from their users, what would make it easier for their company?
Brandon:
But even from the get go when I first got this set up and we did everything, it literally had everything that we needed.
Brandon:
Everything.
Brandon:
I don’t I still to this day, I don’t think there’s one thing that we could ask for that we didn’t want that they don’t have.
Brandon:
So that that was really nice to get, it took a while to set up and get used to and do the branding and everything.
Brandon:
But once we did that happen because I think that’s the other thing, at least for me is getting that these darn things set up can be a huge lips so they help you customize all that are you sitting in all these settings or how’s that work?
Brandon:
So one thing that I really like about user or about job or is it’s really user friendly um it’s really simple.
Brandon:
You know, you’re not going through page after page after page to try and find out how to do something.
Brandon:
It’s really simple.
Danielle:
You know, you you start and it gives you a little clip, it’s on you know, do this to do this and do this, do this once you’re used to it you can go to the menu and everything is just broken down into the most perfect little sections.
Danielle:
It really really, really is user friendly.
Danielle:
So we did it really quick.
Brandon:
I mean we just went through page by page to set up what we needed.
Brandon:
You know, here it was like how how do you want your invoices set up?
Brandon:
How do you want your building set up? Do you want to use this payment system? Do you want to use your own payment system? What do you want your follow up template to say?
Brandon:
And it was literally just that simple and we just went through every single one. Set it up and it’s phenomenal and people don’t even know that it’s job burger say like it comes from us, it doesn’t come from jobber, if that makes sense.
Brandon:
Yeah, it does. I just was looking at it when you were talking.
Danielle:
Um, so you’re able, it’s basically your logo on there. You wait sort of not you customize it. So it all comes from you.
Danielle:
So what did you, have, you said we did you have your assistant or operations person help you do all this or did you do this?
Danielle:
So I did it. Um, but you know, again had to get everybody that does these things on board as well. Right. So we have to go through how to set up this and how to do this because God only knows if I get stuck in Windsor and I’m not coming back, somebody else is gonna have to do it. Right.
Brandon:
So we got everybody trained on it as well and how to use it. So our exact office execs Samantha, she knows that probably better than I do now because she uses it daily you know all day to do absolutely everything that we need to do. And and the coolest thing about it as well.
Brandon:
Not only does it have our staff schedules, there’s also like a franchise section of it.
Brandon:
Um Obviously that comes with a higher price package. Uh but at the top of the system instead of us having you know four different systems for the different divisions of the company we have at the top it literally just has our our two divisions of the company and we can just click on it and it flips it to the other side.
Brandon:
So then we’re not crossing the commercial side on the residential side.
Brandon:
All the commercial managers are over there. The commercial cleaners are over there and staying with the residential side. So that’s a really cool option as well. So if you know you had a franchised lawn care company, one for California, one for michigan like whatever right?
Brandon:
Like you can have all the different ones at the very top flip between them and see how you’re doing.
Brandon:
Get your reports to see what’s going on And it’s it’s just such I honestly Brandon I can’t imagine this company without jobber I really can’t how long do you think it took you to set up because you have to import all this data.
Brandon:
And I mean that’s the worst part I mean the worst part of switching anything right is not only setting it up but then getting the data that you do have in there right?
Danielle:
So that was daunting.
Danielle:
I mean that was probably a good so no to set it up it was easy, you know all the templates, all of those things.
Brandon:
Getting our previous clients that we had in our google drive on a spreadsheet or something like that was daunting.
Brandon:
That took a while because for us to be able to like when I say user friendly it is really user friendly because for example if you were an existing client in our google spreadsheet and we were then putting you in job or took bona every two day schedule for example for cleaning um for us to be able to step that up, we need to have all your information in there.
Brandon:
So we couldn’t even like half asset, you know we couldn’t just put in like Brandon and then like every two days like we had to fill out absolutely everything that we really needed that we had set up to be able to proceed with that.
Brandon:
So it kind of like gave us that kick in the butt like you got to do it because you’re never gonna do it and we all know that if you’re just kind of half after the beginning and then you have you know another 10,000 clients come in, you’re never gonna do those 1st 10 that you only put in half, right?
Brandon:
So we we really had to put them in properly.
Brandon:
Um everything down to access information was in there.
Brandon:
So so again like we really did customize it, but they gave us all those auctions to be able to do that.
Brandon:
So that was absolutely awesome.
Brandon:
So I’d say you know within between a month to a month and a half, we had absolutely everything done in there, everything set up and and like I said, even now they set up and send our new product updates that they’re now offering.
Brandon:
You know like I’m two way text messaging, which is super cool because again we have Between you know 30 40 50 staff and when somebody is running late they can’t call me, hey can you call this client who, I don’t even know where they live or even have their phone number um and say they’re running late so they can actually log into their app where they see all this stuff because all of our staff have an app on their phone that’s run from our dashboard And they can click on it and say you know we’re running 10 minutes late and it’s a preset thing and it goes right to the client from a number that’s associated with jobber, so then our staff don’t even have to use their own personal cell phone number.
Brandon:
So they really thought all of these things through for service based companies, wow.
Brandon:
Yeah, I think the hardest part of doing this whole thing is is that you have to parallel run the systems while you’re getting set up.
Brandon:
Yes, we’re in the middle of that on something else we can talk about later.
Brandon:
But it’s hard.
Brandon:
I mean because you got to keep up your current operations and you gotta switch.
Brandon:
I think that’s why it’s so daunting to people to do this.
Brandon:
And I think it’s hard because when you start a company in your early days you’re just trying to survive.
Danielle:
You’re trying to use whatever you can write.
Danielle:
Which basically turns out to be I don’t use Microsoft Word or I use um Apple pages and I do use Excel but basically everything winds up in Excel or google sheets these days.
Danielle:
Right?
Danielle:
And then you can’t find it.
Danielle:
I mean it’s the age old problem is that you’re like oh we’re gonna start out really good and we’re gonna put everything in this folder.
Danielle:
Well that’s great.
Danielle:
First of all it never winds up on that folder because you’re working on the document and you get interrupted and you don’t put it in the folder and then like you said, it never gets in the folder because it doesn’t happen that way.
Danielle:
Right.
Danielle:
And then and then what happens oh and then what happens is is that you and I share a folder.
Danielle:
Now we share folder and then you name things differently and then I named things differently.
Danielle:
But then we sit down and we have a meeting and we say Danielle or you say Brandon, your filing system makes no sense to me and I can’t keep track of it.
Danielle:
And then we decide sort of on a filing naming system but I get busy and forget and, and then that doesn’t happen right?
Danielle:
I mean this is it, right.
Danielle:
This is the story 100% everybody who uses google drive in a company, same thing happens.
Danielle:
I can attest to it.
Danielle:
My assistant and office exact Samantha is a godsend.
Danielle:
She is the most phenomenal woman.
Danielle:
I don’t know how I would live my life without her or the company would even live without her.
Brandon:
You know, she’s just super woman and her and I, you know, she’s just as organized as I am.
Danielle:
I’m a very organized person.
Danielle:
But you know, chaos happens like you said you got busy meeting happens, you forget to save it.
Danielle:
So this literally happened a few weeks ago, we were updating some foundational stuff on the residential side.
Danielle:
We were updating our employee manuals, our client handbooks, all of those things.
Danielle:
Uh you know, to incorporate the covid stuff that we talked about last week or the week before and I saved it, but again it didn’t make it into the residential division, um manual holder and Samantha saw it on the homepage and thought it was a draft so that went into trash and then she started doing one because I was in a meeting and I couldn’t answer her phone call asking about it or something to that effect.
Danielle:
And next thing you know, we have three manuals that are now half edited and we have no idea what’s going on.
Danielle:
So yes, I can attest to that.
Danielle:
Yeah, it’s a, it’s an age old problem.
Danielle:
And then the other one that happens is everyone says email sucks.
Danielle:
You can’t, you know, or and they, and they have this, this idea that you’re going to have zero inbox.
Danielle:
I don’t know who the hell came up with that, but I think it’s stupid to be honest with you.
Danielle:
Uh I do, I’ll tell you right now, I’ll tell you right now how many emails are in my inbox right now?
Danielle:
This is true story I’m not gonna share, sharing my screen because I don’t know who’s on here.
Danielle:
But um uh oh, zoom link, please.
Danielle:
I do see.
Danielle:
Yes, that was me.
Brandon:
Heard me to zoom.
Danielle:
Like I told you I was trying to get us live.
Danielle:
And I, the truth is, here’s the truth truth.
Brandon:
We’ve we’ve agreed that we’re going to be very truthful during this whole relationship we we did.
Brandon:
So at six.
Brandon:
Um well, it all started last night.
Brandon:
So I normally get up at like five, sometimes 4 45 55, 10, whatever.
Brandon:
But generally around that time last night we had indian food and for whatever reason, it just didn’t sit well with me.
Brandon:
So this is we try to eat before seven, always really six and I ate this indian food.
Brandon:
It didn’t sit well and I was just exhausted and this is not like me.
Brandon:
Like normally I Would go work out, sit in the sauna for 20 minutes.
Brandon:
You know, I needed to finish the newsletter for that edition that needs to be filled out and I need to answer like five other emails on our company.
Brandon:
And um I sat down on this giant bean bag that we have like Mhm.
Brandon:
I love this.
Danielle:
I love my story.
Danielle:
True.
Danielle:
I’m just I was and I fell asleep at 7:15.
Danielle:
So 7 15 true story woke up at midnight and I really get pissed about that because I have a sleep tracker in bed and then I don’t get credit on the sleep tracker because a sleep tracker doesn’t know you fell asleep in the beanbag chair.
Danielle:
So you so you basically you get totally jammed right?
Danielle:
Um needless to say That this morning and there was, I wouldn’t say a crisis, but there’s there’s always something happens in business.
Danielle:
There are some things that need to be attended to it.
Danielle:
So it’s six 40.
Danielle:
I was on the phone um dealing with this specific time, it doesn’t matter still 6 40 in the morning and I really didn’t get done until seven 40.
Brandon:
Well it really it really started at 6:20.
Danielle:
Um But I got on the phone at 640 which I really don’t like doing early.
Danielle:
But I did it.
Danielle:
I really don’t like people talking to me in the morning.
Brandon:
You did say that.
Danielle:
I remember you saying that.
Danielle:
Um so it took me like 20 minutes to get my head together to like smile.
Danielle:
Not that I’m not that I’m angry.
Danielle:
I just ordered in my own thoughts in the morning right?
Danielle:
Like I go outside, I tried to get seven minutes of sun in my eyes.
Danielle:
I try to do my sit ups, my push ups.
Danielle:
I eat breakfast.
Danielle:
It’s you know, very simple.
Danielle:
Four egg whites with spinach every morning.
Danielle:
Like it’s a program routine.
Danielle:
Yeah.
Danielle:
Yeah right.
Danielle:
Um And then I am dealing with this.
Danielle:
I got it whatever.
Danielle:
I was like, you know what, I’m just not going to shower, I’m just gonna go on and have coffee with Danielle and No one will know the difference.
Danielle:
Sounds like and start your day smiling right?
Danielle:
I was like, I can’t do that, I gotta shower, it’s sad but and I was like, oh I and I normally like I get a lot of good ideas.
Brandon:
I have a pad in the shower actually because I didn’t love that.
Danielle:
I love that.
Danielle:
And I’m also, I’m going to test that because I have a waterproof case on my phone.
Danielle:
So then if I’m thinking because my phone is always with me, it’s just part of business that’s a little over the top.
Danielle:
No, and I will put my phone on the thing in my shower and it has like a little outside my shower has a little shelf and I’ll put it there and if I think of something, I’ll grab my phone and I will make a voice note.
Danielle:
I think that’s a cool idea and that and this is all going to operations like try to get it aggregated.
Danielle:
Not me though, I have a waterproof pad and I write on the waterproof pad, but like in the shower, I don’t know, I think it’s, I read about a guy who takes three showers a day because I mean that sort of sounds weird, but um, and you wonder what he’s doing.
Danielle:
But he actually said that this shower sparks ideas which it does the best time to think it is.
Danielle:
I mean, besides my bike, I would tell you besides biking that.
Danielle:
I will tell you that that is where I get my good idea.
Danielle:
So anyway, I was like, I can just cannot start friday off that shower and I can’t go on this.
Danielle:
I can’t go on our call this morning looking ragged.
Danielle:
Um, so I took a shower and then I wanted to get us on youtube, but I mean, hey, this is, this is how business happens, like it, you can’t plan for it.
Danielle:
It just happened.
Danielle:
So at 7 44 you sent me an email asking where it was, which I figured I would text it to you but nonetheless going back.
Danielle:
I don’t know how how it all got there but I have 87,134 emails in my inbox.
Danielle:
That’s impressive.
Danielle:
And my theory is that you’re not going to get to zero inbox, like that’s so stressful like shit comes up for lack of a better way to say it.
Brandon:
And then and then you’re going to be up until midnight trying to get to zero inbox only to wake up no sleep at all.
Danielle:
Yeah right.
Danielle:
Like when does that end?
Danielle:
When does the email and it doesn’t end?
Danielle:
It doesn’t, it never ends.
Danielle:
So obviously I’m sure you do too.
Danielle:
Like you have your company admin info office whatever you get for your companies.
Danielle:
Right?
Danielle:
So we have 12.
Danielle:
So ours is office at domestic divas dot org.
Danielle:
That is where everything comes in.
Brandon:
So on there we have our office exact Samantha.
Brandon:
So she kind of disperses everything that comes in.
Danielle:
So if you own a warehouse and you need us to clean it, you will email us.
Danielle:
Samantha will then put that off to our commercial side.
Danielle:
She kind of does all of that Samantha is a flipping angel.
Danielle:
She keeps that inbox at zero all the time.
Brandon:
She is on it.
Danielle:
Unless there is something that I have to deal with because I obviously see things that come into that and I have access with it as well.
Brandon:
If I can see it that means that I have to deal with that.
Danielle:
That is how we work the two of us.
Danielle:
If she has left something in there after hours.
Danielle:
So say she’s done at four p.m. She starts at eight a.m. Till four If she has done it for and I go in at 5:30.
Danielle:
And I see that there’s an email in there that’s like Daniel, you’ve got to deal with this.
Danielle:
That’s kind of our way of dealing with that.
Danielle:
My personal email, I think I have about 140 emails in there right now.
Brandon:
Probably just from yesterday at noon because you know there’s things that people will email and that you got to do this.
Danielle:
So my way of dealing with things that need to get done and I guess this is part of operations as well.
Danielle:
And I can tell you like my secret.
Danielle:
So my cell phone in my text messages because some of our clients from way back when we first started still deal with me on my personal cell phone.
Danielle:
They sell my personal number from way back.
Danielle:
So I deal with those right Like it is what it is.
Danielle:
It’s part of just growing a company from nothing to where we are now.
Danielle:
So when a client will text me even my girlfriends will text me and say like hey what’s going on or a client will say hey can we have a meeting at bah bah blah blah I will book it we will deal with the conversation as soon as everything is booked done complete.
Brandon:
I delete that conversation.
Danielle:
So for example you sent me to zoom length this morning via text.
Danielle:
That was all I had to do with that.
Danielle:
I input it into my zoom.
Danielle:
I deleted the text.
Danielle:
So anything that’s left on my texts, same with my inbox on my email I still have to deal with that.
Brandon:
You just you just deleted our whole conversation.
Danielle:
What if you need a piece of information that you and I text like three weeks ago.
Danielle:
So anything important.
Brandon:
I do keep like I take a screenshot of it.
Brandon:
I put it into a folder so it’s Daniel’s way of dealing with it.
Brandon:
So if there’s any important information.
Brandon:
But that’s also a way for me.
Brandon:
Not that I’m a procrastinator, I don’t want to say I’m a procrastinator.
Brandon:
But that is my way of kind of putting my butting here to keep to get it done.
Brandon:
So that seems so stressful.
Brandon:
It’s not.
Brandon:
I mean okay I cannot imagine suit I mean my text messages so you deleted are you delete the whole conversation?
Brandon:
Mhm.
Brandon:
Yeah but but what happens if you need the attachment that I sent you three weeks ago you can’t click on what what if you’re walking Benny well then I won’t delete it right then.
Brandon:
But for my own brain.
Brandon:
So for example like if I’m going to bed, I hate texting in bed, I need my brain to shut off.
Brandon:
Right?
Brandon:
So say I’m having just a glass of wine and you know, I’m doing something in the house, I’m like okay, I’m gonna like start winding down now, right?
Brandon:
So if I go on my text messages, I’ll quickly scroll through and if there’s anything I needed to deal with that day, I will deal with it and get rid of it.
Brandon:
Um If there’s something important, I will leave it there until I for example, go to the office, have a sit down like this in front of my computer and I can reiterate the information, save it where it needs to go.
Brandon:
Um If people send me a bill, for example, that automatically goes into google drive.
Brandon:
So I have like my own systems like, you know, any kind of pdf, they all have a file in my personal or the company google drive, you know, there’s like, there’s it’s a system, it’s, it works for me, it keeps me so calm and again, back to the whole procrastination, Thank, it really does kick me but to say like clear it, get rid of it because my inbox is never going to be zero, but at least I can try and get my cell phone to be at that point.
Brandon:
So for example, if you send me 12 dates of when we have to do a meeting and I know that they don’t start until december.
Brandon:
It’s october so I have a couple of months that I can put those in my calendar or I can do it next weekend or something, but I don’t want to do that.
Danielle:
So all those days I will then put in my calendar and then clear the message.
Brandon:
So they’re in there, they’re done, done, good to go complete next.
Brandon:
Well, that’s impressive.
Brandon:
So here we go.
Brandon:
That’s awesome.
Brandon:
It is impressive, Daniel.
Danielle:
It’s very impressive.
Brandon:
Thank you.
Brandon:
But then I get involved in your shared box and but we have shared notes that we have.
Danielle:
I know I’m just saying I’m just using me as an example.
Danielle:
It could be anybody in your company.
Danielle:
Like the fact of the matter is is that when multiple humans get involved in sharing organizational folders and things, it never goes well and it’s nobody’s fault.
Danielle:
It’s that my filing system could be different from yours and even if we agree on it, we forget about it.
Danielle:
Obviously not you.
Danielle:
But, but, but but some people, right, well forget and then basically you can’t search, you can’t find anything is ultimately what happens.
Danielle:
And then what people, I think where we were going with this originally is, here’s what will happen.
Danielle:
You know, Danielle email doesn’t work.
Danielle:
Uh get too many emails, I can’t find anything.
Danielle:
Um We’re going to use slack and you know, we use slack, we can talk about that, but we use slack to communicate.
Danielle:
Um And slacks awesome for depending on how many people, so on one team we have 12 or 15 people on a software development effort.
Brandon:
It’s awesome for about the first month easy find everything four months later.
Brandon:
Back to the same problem that the inbox has.
Brandon:
Right?
Brandon:
Oh not only not only is it the same problem, it just got worse because Danielle, I didn’t get that file.
Brandon:
Now I’m making you the search engine for me because I can’t remember if you send it via slack or via email.
Brandon:
Oh and by the way we also text because when you don’t answer my slack message right away I’m going to go Brandon, answer you’re repping emails or your text messages and then I text you the file.
Brandon:
Yeah and then I probably delete it so you see this.
Brandon:
I mean nobody and we’ll go back to job or it sounds awesome.
Brandon:
Love to check it out.
Brandon:
uh it looks like for up to 30 users It’s about $299 a month which is pretty reasonable.
Brandon:
Um Oh it’s so reasonable.
Brandon:
And then just to throw in on that before we just move on to the next thing there when I was saying about the Franchising things so that per platform is that cost?
Brandon:
So um like for us we have three.
Brandon:
So you know that would be that up to 30 users per three.
Brandon:
Um I think so and it’s us dollars as well.
Brandon:
Well what’s your third you have commercial residential and what we’ll estate company.
Brandon:
No I can’t use job or for that.
Brandon:
No we put the post construction jobs in there.
Danielle:
So we I think I told you we do like post development cleaning as well.
Danielle:
Yes so that’s because we are on about 13 post construction projects right now.
Brandon:
Um so we need we need a total separate you know it’s different types of cleaning, different types of equipment.
Brandon:
It’s you know a whole type of different things.
Danielle:
We have to keep that separate as well.
Danielle:
That’s like finished building things when you do that like the clean up to do the turn over to the owner.
Danielle:
Yes So we do two.
Danielle:
So the builders will pretty much finish everything.
Danielle:
Then they do their P.
Danielle:
D.
Danielle:
We go in and do a cleanup of the big dust, all the grout everything before the inspection and then after the inspection they will do their deficiency work.
Danielle:
So any paint chips, anything like that, we’ll go in and do the final cleaning.
Danielle:
The owner gets it the next day, regard it.
Danielle:
So you use job or for most everything.
Danielle:
But what do you use for accounting?
Danielle:
Uh huh.
Danielle:
That is um Again many systems used tried.
Danielle:
I haven’t gotten all of your little movements but when you move your shoulders like that does that does that mean it’s a problem.
Danielle:
It’s like uh it’s not a problem.
Danielle:
Again I’m a very organized person.
Danielle:
So we know I know you’re organized, but just so you know, just because it’s not perfect, doesn’t mean you’re not organized.
Danielle:
I know, but this is I I almost have to justify it because it’s like the age old problem, like what is the most perfect thing?
Danielle:
Again, if you have too many hands in the pot, it’s effing chaos.
Danielle:
If one Accountant does it different than your bookkeeper, a definite chaos, like there’s just so much to take any consideration, right?
Danielle:
So for, okay, for example, jobber.
Danielle:
Jobber keeps track of job expenses.
Danielle:
So if we need equipment, product inventory, things like that, it all goes in there, which is super cool because that gives us expenses right into the system.
Danielle:
So if we’re looking at a job and it was quoted at $28,000.
Danielle:
Easy numbers, let’s do 50,000.
Danielle:
Just for an easy number.
Danielle:
$50,000.
Brandon:
We know payroll is going to cost 30,000.
Danielle:
And then in that job, it lists all the material needed, almost like it would almost be perfect for a contractor company.
Brandon:
If any of you are listening who have like construction companies, I think that would be cool because you can put all your material in there before the, job’s even finished or started, It’ll go in there and then at the end it’ll say, you know, you’re going to make $10,000 on this, that’s what 20,000 Or 20% profit, right?
Danielle:
So that’s super cool that it tracks that.
Danielle:
Um And then at the end of each month, each week you can do your reports.
Danielle:
So you can customize any report.
Brandon:
You can just basically do clients billing if they paid or not an amount.
Brandon:
So at the end of the week how much profit, how much revenue, you can customize it where it’s profit revenue expenses Date paid like there’s like something like 13 columns that you can choose from for all of your reports, you can do it as easy or as complex as as you want.
Brandon:
So when it comes to accounting I have a great accountant, I have a great bookkeeper.
Danielle:
All my job is is to download an email and then they deal with it.
Brandon:
So you don’t use it so you don’t use quickbooks or do you use quickbooks?
Brandon:
No I I used to use Quickbooks for invoicing.
Brandon:
So in the midst of our gmail, trying g cal um scheduling software, Danielle’s half past attempts of trying to organize things.
Danielle:
We did use quickbooks for our invoicing and then we would be able to print those reports and get to the bookkeeper but it was very chaotic.
Brandon:
You know we were then having to print schedules from google cow to match with the invoices and then receipts for inventory and product and material and it was just too much like I have files like this thick every a couple weeks going to my accountant or my bookkeeper just to try and do you think your bookkeeper uses quickbooks because you need a corporate, you need a corporate P.
Brandon:
And L.
Brandon:
You’re managing on a job cost basis effectively.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Danielle:
So she I’m going to be very honest as good as I am that at the company and business and everything else.
Danielle:
I’m really bad at that stuff.
Brandon:
So I think that’s fine.
Brandon:
I think you’ve got to hire people, you gotta know your weakness and hire people who are competent to to fill the weakness instead of trying to do it all because it’s crazy to try to do it all.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Danielle:
And I mean when you first start again back to everything you you kind of take that on right like you try to figure it out.
Brandon:
Um I will tell you a story right now because we’re being brutally honest all the time four years ago.
Brandon:
So a year in our first year we did extremely well.
Danielle:
I mean okay for our first year we did extremely well Off all your debt like 60 grand of debt and everything.
Brandon:
Right?
Brandon:
Yeah.
Brandon:
So that year that’s what I paid off my personal debt.
Brandon:
We did About 220,000 in revenue in the first in the first year.
Brandon:
Which it’s pretty effing good for a first year of a cleaning company, right, cleaning business at the time.
Brandon:
Like it wasn’t even like it was a corporate company or you don’t, I think it’s incredible.
Brandon:
You, you didn’t even know that you were going to do a cleaning business and you didn’t know, I’m not saying you didn’t have potential.
Brandon:
I’m just saying you had no idea that you’re going to run a business at that time, right?
Brandon:
It was just kind of like a moneymaker.
Brandon:
Let’s just kind of get it done.
Brandon:
Right, Okay.
Brandon:
So first you to 20 you pay off your, all your personal debt and if your listeners out there, you can hear Daniel’s whole story.
Brandon:
I forget.
Brandon:
What episode do you remember?
Brandon:
What episode?
Brandon:
Just a few episodes ago anyway, you’ll see it.
Brandon:
Daniel, Jenkins, domestic divas, uh, take control of your own life, right?
Brandon:
Yeah.
Brandon:
Don’t let your circumstance to stop you from living your life.
Brandon:
Yes, that’s it.
Danielle:
That’s it.
Brandon:
So, this is how this goes to show how Not that I didn’t care how much one I didn’t know at 20 years old starting a company because when you start a company, it’s not like the government goes here, here’s a nice little package.
Brandon:
This is how you start your company.
Brandon:
This is how you remit your taxes.
Brandon:
This is how you pay your taxes.
Brandon:
This is how you do everything because they don’t do that ever.
Brandon:
So we do 220,000 in the first year.
Brandon:
And um, shortly after that, then I realized that any tire bookkeeper and an accountant again, being young, busy as hell with all these new clients.
Danielle:
All these new contracts were going next level like right away.
Brandon:
Um I hired somebody who I thought would be a great bookkeeper accountant, tax preparer, don’t even know what the title was to be honest.
Brandon:
I was said that they can help me.
Brandon:
Cool.
Brandon:
So every month they were remitting our putting into the government submitting our reports for income.
Danielle:
They were doing our Remittance taxes for payroll, all of those things.
Danielle:
So then 678 months go by in the, in the following year.
Brandon:
I think everything is going great.
Brandon:
And then I get um a letter from the government saying we were being audited.
Brandon:
Cool standard.
Brandon:
That’s pretty standard with new businesses and whatever.
Brandon:
So I called them, set everything up.
Brandon:
So then about a week later I was in walmart, I don’t even know maybe Home Depot or something.
Brandon:
I don’t know.
Danielle:
I was picking up some kind of um supply for for one of our jobs.
Brandon:
It was like 200 bucks.
Brandon:
So at the time I probably had, I don’t know 35 Grand sitting in the business account at the time.
Brandon:
You know, just to get everything going and I go to you, it’s my car and as it declines and I’m like there’s no Fucking way that I don’t have any money.
Brandon:
I like it was yesterday I had like $35 or $36,000 sitting in there.
Brandon:
So I go on and it’s like my bank accounts at negative $26,000 and I was like, what The fuck, literally.
Danielle:
And I’m sorry for any listeners that are sensitive, but I was literally standing there like shaking, sweating negative 26,000.
Brandon:
And then the first thing that goes through my head is it’s Wednesday I payroll on Friday And where the funds are going to come up with 20 or I guess it would have been like $10,000 for payroll that week, right?
Danielle:
Like all of these things are going through my head, I’m freaking out.
Danielle:
So I go to the bank right away thinking that maybe it was an error.
Brandon:
So that was at the time, it was like, I think they ended up taking 52,000 out of the account.
Danielle:
That’s what was taken, Who took 52,000?
Brandon:
Well they got, I mean they overthrew you.
Brandon:
So what happens when I go to the bank freaking out crying devastated, like, oh my God, but that’s a lot of money for somebody who has really had no money, right?
Brandon:
That’s a lot of money for, it’s a lot of money for anybody, right?
Brandon:
Like freaking out.
Brandon:
And I got in payroll, like that was my biggest thing, I didn’t even care about my own money and it was like, how am I going to pay payroll?
Brandon:
So I go to the bank, they tell me that the government has frozen my account and taken 52,000 or whatever it was and I was like holy sh it’s like what am I going to do?
Brandon:
So I called the government, I’m crying.
Brandon:
The government does not care if you’re crying, I’m going to be very honest about that.
Brandon:
And they told me, so what happened with my assistant at the time that we’re not assistant, she was helping me with the books and all of those things.
Brandon:
She was submitting our revenue, like our income and not submitting any expenses.
Brandon:
So our income was like 240,000 with no write offs.
Brandon:
So then the government was taxing us on that and because we hadn’t paid it thinking that that’s what she was doing and again it’s you know, it’s a learning experience, it’s me trusting somebody because I don’t have any effing idea what I’m doing in that department.
Brandon:
So I’m thinking okay, she can do it, she knows what she’s doing.
Brandon:
These are the numbers, this is everything.
Brandon:
I just assumed that she was paying and reporting and remitting and everything is good to go, turns out that’s why they were going to audit us.
Brandon:
But at that point they were getting piste off with not having their 50 some odd 1000 that apparently we owed them.
Brandon:
And so I begged and pleaded, they ended up giving us that.
Brandon:
I think like 20, I think it was half, it was like 25,000.
Brandon:
So that pretty much gave me like $4,000 positive in the account.
Brandon:
Um to pay the payroll?
Brandon:
So then I had to take money off my credit card that I had like a $12,000 or limit on to pay payroll until the government could give me back all my money.
Brandon:
Because I said to them like look like we have all this stuff, it just was done wrong.
Brandon:
No idea.
Brandon:
So we finally I ended up having to spend like $3,000 on a new corporate accountant to redo everything.
Brandon:
Like it was just a bucking chute show I’m going to be honest.
Brandon:
It was totally crazy that there was a wake up call to go okay you’ve gotta kind of figure something out when it comes to accounting Danielle.
Brandon:
Like you can’t just leave this on every, so you kind of have to know what you’re doing.
Brandon:
So now Great Bookkeeper, great accountants.
Brandon:
They do everything we prepare it, we send it over to them all the reports, the expenses, absolutely everything from all of our systems.
Brandon:
They go over and they do it all.
Brandon:
Well I think that’s smart.
Brandon:
Yeah I think.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Brandon:
So that was that that was crazy.
Brandon:
That took about a year to reconcile and figure out uh in that regard.
Danielle:
Yeah.
Brandon:
I don’t like giving the government access to my bank account like that either because that’s random.
Brandon:
I mean you’re lucky you got through that.
Danielle:
Yeah very um It still took about eight weeks to get through the full amount of money.
Brandon:
So if I understand it right you use jobber, does that keep time a track of people’s time as well?
Brandon:
Yes so they actually have like I was saying they have an app On their phone.
Brandon:
So basically if they had a job from 830 to 5 8:30 they start the timer they we actually pay lunch in our company, we pay everybody for their their lunchtime.
Brandon:
Um They then clock out at five, they hit the stop timer.
Brandon:
So then basically every sunday the system automatically calculates everybody’s time.
Brandon:
That then goes to our ceridian which does all of our payroll.
Brandon:
Um And then they do the direct deposit for payroll.
Brandon:
So the payroll system connects the jobber and your accountant manages that as well I assume.
Brandon:
Yes.
Brandon:
So it’s pretty cool because basically with cerulean Jobber connects with them, sends them all of the payroll reports and and the time sheets and everything, we do have to approve it.
Brandon:
Obviously in case somebody accidentally forgets to shut off the timer and they’re being charged for you know 24 hours or whatever.
Brandon:
Um So then we approve all the hours.
Brandon:
Then the bookkeeper will take care of everything after that.
Brandon:
All the W.
Brandon:
S.
Brandon:
I.
Brandon:
B.
Brandon:
Remittance tax corporate money is like all of that stuff, they do all of that and everybody gets their money and Daniel is not stressed.
Brandon:
Do you still use G.
Brandon:
Suite for your email provider and your storage of files and I assume you still use a calendar.
Brandon:
Yes.
Danielle:
Oh yeah definitely.
Brandon:
Um So the cool thing for jabber is not only is it good for jobs, so obviously you know if you were a client of ours, not only could we do that, we can also put in like task.
Danielle:
So Samantha for example being our office exact, she has her own profile And so any tasks that need to be a re occurring.
Brandon:
So um on the 25th of each month she knows to finish the draft of the newsletter on the residential side And that is repetitive every the 25th of every month.
Danielle:
Um and then she can also complete those tasks as well.
Danielle:
So it’s it’s super cool how it’s not only that not only tasks, also calendar events.
Brandon:
So if we have a company conference call every monday morning we have our residential team call.
Brandon:
So every monday morning it’s in there in a different color than their regular jobs has all the zoom link all the call in information, the agenda of the meeting.
Danielle:
Um They can also put notes in there, that’s like anything that they need to discuss that we need to answer for.
Danielle:
Um and then that’s all there for them.
Brandon:
So calendar events, reminders uh on Samantha side being admin, she can see anything that needs to be dealt with.
Brandon:
If a job hasn’t been closed properly, it will come up in the reminders like it’s just it’s so streamlined like I honestly I can’t even imagine um this the successes of what you do about it but you use G suite as your email back end.
Brandon:
Yes and you don’t use the filing anymore.
Brandon:
You don’t use google drive for dr we do uh yeah so um we use google drive for a lot of our company pdf obviously anything that we need for basically just to store it um you know if our marketing person says hey we need the brand board for your logo, it’s in there.
Brandon:
So any one of our office people managers, anything can access that, pull it out and email it off to where it needs to go.
Danielle:
So there’s not not anything like um confidential, you know there’s no client information in there that’s all in our job or system.
Danielle:
Um Yeah it’s basically just documents that we need on like you know for regular stuff, christmas promo stuff, advertising stuff, um templates, training and stuff are manuals or handbooks, all of those things are in there and then what do you use for your social media stuff?
Brandon:
Do you use it to manage it?
Brandon:
Do you do you manage it or like do you use hubspot or do you not hubspot?
Danielle:
I don’t even tweet I think it’s called Hoot Suite.
Brandon:
Yeah Hoot suite.
Brandon:
There you go or one of those.
Brandon:
Um So we have a great lady named Liz who she actually is, our website designer, She does everything.
Brandon:
So I feel really lucky and really blessed that we’re in a position where if somebody says to me, hey, you need to add this onto your website, we just have to send an email and Liz will do that.
Brandon:
So Liz does our website, Liz is also a social media strategist.
Brandon:
So we meet with her monthly, we go through um like so myself, Samantha lives and then anybody who were doing like our social media is really done internally because it’s kind of um it’s one of those things where it’s it’s very unique, right?
Brandon:
So I can’t just hire somebody and go, oh, you know, commercial or residential cleaning.
Brandon:
Okay, can you do all of this for us?
Brandon:
Right, so listen, we will have a conference call with ways and we’re actually having one this coming monday for october and november and we will go through Holidays.
Brandon:
What do we need to prepare for?
Danielle:
What do we need to post?
Danielle:
What do we need to do here?
Brandon:
And we’ll go through everything and lives again, she’s a social media strategist along with Web, so she knows what to post, whether it’s a blog, a picture, the hashtags to use things like that where she knows that it will say come up on Google 1st.
Brandon:
Um because when we first opened our google google my business, we assumed that the better ratings you got, the higher you would come up if you were searched for, that’s not the case.
Brandon:
It’s worked all on words.
Brandon:
And um again, I’m not very good at the whole time.
Brandon:
We can actually save, we can talk about that on another, on another friday.
Brandon:
But but you, you basically, she strategizes but you, you and the team take pictures and actually do the posting, but she guides you and you’re like, hey, we’re gonna make three posts this week.
Danielle:
Here’s what you should do and you’re on a thing and then you either you go out or Samantha goes out or you have the people on the job, go out, take a picture and sort of do it that way.
Danielle:
Yeah.
Brandon:
So our team does that, our teams take pictures of their job, They make videos of what they’re doing.
Danielle:
Um If we’re doing anything kind of simple like that, they will do that.
Brandon:
They send it into the office lives and again, we discuss all of that.
Brandon:
So that’s on a separate system.
Brandon:
It’s email.
Brandon:
Again, the email, like, like how many systems do we really need?
Brandon:
Right, there’s so many that we could have, but I don’t like having a gazillion systems for the reason you were saying, you know, somebody’s gonna email me on that on this and that and I don’t want that.
Brandon:
I, I’d rather have 80,000 emails in one spot than 50,000 emails and 10,000 signals and 10,000 text messages, you know what I mean?
Brandon:
I totally know what you mean.
Brandon:
10 years ago I built an application that put it all in one that just said, just said Danielle, it didn’t matter how you contacted me whether you text me, whether you emailed me, whether you twittered me, whether you facebook me back then we actually hacked facebook.
Brandon:
I wouldn’t acknowledge that.
Brandon:
But yes, we did.
Brandon:
Uh well they had a security issue but we weren’t trying to hack it.
Danielle:
We weren’t hacking people’s accounts.
Danielle:
We were hacking our own account to get the messages from facebook into this master app.
Danielle:
And the whole idea was, was that the problem is is what you just described and and, and it sounds like you’ve done a better job than me, but you still have jobber, which probably has an internal messaging system.
Danielle:
It probably emails you that there was an update in jabber and then you have text message.
Brandon:
Yes.
Danielle:
And I don’t know what else you do.
Brandon:
You have slack or anything like that?
Danielle:
No.
Brandon:
Um and I will say at one point we did try to have a group WhatsApp because I needed something that was a little bit better for like our team to communicate other than just email.
Brandon:
So a quick text, right?
Brandon:
Uh well when half the people don’t care to download the flipping app, how are we supposed to do it?
Brandon:
Right.
Danielle:
Like we talked about it many times in our company calls, you know, if you guys want this because a lot of the girls would say we need something where we can ask somebody whether instead of bothering management because we have a gazillion other things to do.
Danielle:
Um, so where they can communicate with each other and say, hey, this client saying this, how do we deal with this or vice versa?
Danielle:
Right.
Danielle:
Um, so instead of calling me or Samantha or one of our managers, we don’t want to deal with that.
Danielle:
And so we said, well, let’s download an app that we can all be in a group.
Danielle:
Maybe not myself for management, but at least all the rest of the staff Canon, they didn’t want to or they didn’t know that they didn’t want to, but they didn’t.
Danielle:
So, I mean, I can only suggest so many things and now they just use, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, we’re gonna wrap it up because we, you and I always talked a long time, uh, and we always talk afterwards.
Danielle:
But um, I’m going to wrap it up this suggestion that you can add to if you think it needs addition.
Danielle:
Okay, when you agree in a group to do something like that, I have found that and this, this I mean, I really borrowed this from Amazon Jeff Bezos when he ran meetings, uh, for listeners out there who don’t know The 1st 10 minutes and don’t quote me.
Danielle:
But if it’s an hour meeting The 1st 10 minutes, you actually read the brief of the person who wrote the brief for the meeting because no one reads the stuff before you come to the meeting in general.
Brandon:
I mean it’s it’s fact right?
Brandon:
You’re like oh I’ll just figure that out in the meeting.
Brandon:
You don’t spend 30 minutes before the meeting because the meetings from 2 to 3 When really the meeting should be from 1:30 to 3 but it’s not.
Danielle:
So and you know amazon gets credit for this and I’m sure other people do it and have done it and that’s fine.
Brandon:
But um in the amazon meeting the person who has a meeting actually has to write A two or 3 page executive brief if you will or executive summary on why you’re having the meeting what the background is and what the desired outcome is and we do that with meetings.
Brandon:
Which is what, you know you can’t just have a meeting to have a meeting.
Brandon:
Either they’re making a decision, you need feedback um or something else which I don’t know what it is but I’m open to it.
Brandon:
But going back to the suggestion is when you do that, I now make everyone do it in the meeting because I can’t leave the meeting until if we made the decision to do X.
Brandon:
Which um we use we do use an app.
Brandon:
So I’ll you know we can I’m happy to share another day um because it’ll take as long as you going through your stuff is is we do have another app which is secure and what’s happened, I know you were using it for multiple things, it’s not a secure app, but we can talk about that another day to um but we use a secure app and we decided to use the secure app for sensitive stuff that um we didn’t want that, we just wanted to be safe.
Brandon:
Right?
Danielle:
Of course, because someone hacks it or somebody clicks a link by mistake and basically, you know, if one of the people in your company clicks a link by mistake or click the link, text or email, you’re completely compromised.
Danielle:
I mean, so to avoid things like that with the most sensitive information that we have, we have a secure app, so we agree on the secure app and um everybody agrees.
Danielle:
And what happens is what happened with you, they don’t download it.
Danielle:
So now we’ll wait everybody, we’ll walk, right, we’re gonna walk right through it.
Danielle:
I mean that’s what really meetings are for is to actually come out with that.
Danielle:
So my suggestion um to anyone listening out there and and look, it’s painful, like you get a lot of eyes rolling, like Yeah, just yeah, it’s very good.
Danielle:
You must do that.
Danielle:
I know I do that in my office when nobody’s around, I’m like, I roll, right, I mean right, I’ll do it later.
Danielle:
Brandon, we’ll do it later.
Danielle:
You well if you do it later, I’m allocating time for us together to do it right now and by the way, you can ask questions when you have a problem because there will be a problem.
Danielle:
I can’t find it in the app store.
Danielle:
Oh, I did download it, you know?
Danielle:
Oh, I thought this was WhatsApp.
Danielle:
You know, here’s the icon here.
Danielle:
It is.
Danielle:
Make everyone send a message and I’m only using that as an example.
Danielle:
Uh and that can be for anything.
Danielle:
Hey, we’re all going to sign up for X.
Danielle:
O.
Danielle:
We need to get this form filled out.
Danielle:
Well we’ll all sit here together and we’ll fill it out together and when we’re all done, just like we did in school, it seemed to work.
Danielle:
I’m not saying school is perfect, but there’s some things that network, right?
Danielle:
It’s true.
Danielle:
It’s true.
Danielle:
I like that.
Danielle:
I like that a lot.
Danielle:
I mean granted, it’s not like it was a do or die, right?
Danielle:
Like I wasn’t thinking on your situation.
Danielle:
I was just using it as an example to say, you know, when you do, I mean we were talking about operations and calm communications and things, but I just used it as an example to say.
Danielle:
Um, and maybe we can talk about meetings another day because meetings are a whole nother ball wax that are basically just a big waste of time the most for the most part.
Danielle:
That’s why we don’t have a lot of them uh you know, just, I know we’re gonna wrap it up, but we try to keep it, you know, to that monday morning because I do, you know, we do motivation and I submerged myself in that meeting.
Danielle:
It is coming from me, you’re right.
Danielle:
You know, like it’s not like it’s one of those companies where the boss is at home and you know, it sounds one of our managers to run the meeting.
Danielle:
Like I am there monday morning to do the meeting at 8 30.
Danielle:
And I’m like, hey guys, you guys are part of this company, you know, welcome to all our new members and people talk about this like a meeting structure and things that work because we’ve tried to do a meeting every monday since the beginning of the company and I have tried a gazillion different things and I’ve tried being a hard as I’ve tried yelling, I’ve tried being happy.
Danielle:
I like I’ve tried everything and it, you know, these, what I found now is the best Possible way.
Danielle:
You know, I told you about the same repetitive paragraph for the first meeting or the 1st 10 minutes of the meeting.
Danielle:
Um, and that always works right.
Danielle:
So I think we should definitely talk about that sometimes, but I do try to keep minimal meetings.
Danielle:
A lot of things.
Danielle:
I try to do email.
Danielle:
I think it’s a good idea.
Danielle:
Well, hey, um, build your house today, enjoy Windsor.
Danielle:
Thank you And uh, we’ll talk next week.
Danielle:
Sounds good.
Danielle:
Looking forward to it.
Brandon:
Thanks everybody, we’ll see you soon.
Danielle:
Thanks for being generous with your time and joining us for this episode of the Edge before you go, A quick question, Are you the type of person who wants to get 100% out of your time, talent and ideas.
Danielle:
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