Should cleaning employees know what you charge the customer?
Great question and we're going to talk about that today.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now today's show is brought to us by SavvyPerks.com and if you are a business owner and you have
house cleaners, Savvy Perks is for you.
It's a small benefits package that has all kinds of perks and fun stuff in there that
is affordable to every size business.
Whether you're a single operator and you want to provide the perks for yourself, or you
have one or two employees and you want to provide perks for them, these are the same
benefits that major corporations offer to their employees as a benefits perks package,
but most of the small house cleaners that I know do not qualify for a package like this,
so we have partnered with America's largest employee discount network to bring to you
these same perks.
Through Savvy Perks, you become part of our network and you get to offer this to your
employees, so SavvyPerks.com
All right, on to today's question, which is
from a house cleaner who has this question.
Hi, Angela. It's Janice Weaver in Ottawa, Canada.
I was just watching your YouTube video on show notes, which is great, because now I
understand them, and there's a lot of great information there to be accessed.
One of the things I was wondering about, on your worksheets, you say that you use them
as an invoice or a receipt.
If you have cleaning associates working on your behalf, do you obviously have a policy
where they know exactly what's being charged for the service, and does that cause any problems
based on the rate that you're paying them?
Just wondering whether that's an issue for people or not.
As a cleaner, you don't understand maybe what's involved with running a business, and the
costs for marketing, and advertising, and insurance, and bookkeepers, and marketing,
and all of that stuff, so just curious about how that works for you.
Thanks very much, and love what you're doing.
Angela Brown: All right, hi, Janice.
How you doing?
This is an excellent question, and there is a lot of debate around this one.
Should your employees know what you charge?
All right, you can set this up just like you do on a walk through with a customer when
you're setting all the ground rules, and all the boundaries, and all that stuff.
You can set this up with your employee on the day that you hire them.
On the day that you hire them, they know nothing, or they know very little, or maybe they once
worked for a house cleaning company,
but they don't know a lot about running the business itself.
During the job interview, you can say,
"Hey listen, I'm the boss, and here's a list of my duties."
And then you have a list of all the stuff that you do as a boss.
Then you can have a breakdown of all the stuff that you pay for.
Now you don't have to break it down like month by month,
like I pay $432 for insurance or whatever.
You don't have to break it down like that, but you can have a list of all of the expenses,
vehicle expenses, gas for the vehicle, insurance for the vehicle.
You have registration and licensing for the vehicle.
You have service and repairs for the vehicle, and so just for the vehicle that gets you
to the job, here's all the stuff we have to pay for in order to make this business happen.
Then when you get to the customer's house, you're the employee, and so here's what we
have to pay for just for an employee, and then you have a breakdown of uniforms, and
you have a breakdown of workman's comp, and insurance, and all these different things
that you have to provide, whether it's gloves, or shoe covers, or whatever the personal protective
equipment that you provide.
If you yourself provide the clear bags that they carry to and from work to prevent theft,
this all goes in the breakdown of things that you pay for.
Then, once you get to the customer's house, you have a new series of expenses.
The series of expenses include things like your cleaning chemicals, and your mops, and
the mop heads, the mop replaceable heads, and the fiber, microfiber clothes that you
use, and the vacuums that you use, and your stepladders, and all the different things
that you have that you provide, cleaning caddies, and aprons, and there's a bunch of stuff that
costs money.
Now, whether or not you wear uniforms, that's something that would be thrown in there.
You have all these different things that you provide.
This costs so much money.
Then you go on to explain that there are other costs.
In order for me to pay you every week I have to hire a bookkeeping company, and that requires
software.
It includes internet access.
It includes booking software for our customers.
It requires follow up with appointment reminders, and all these other things.
We have to have software that provides some of the basics for our company.
Then we hire a payroll service, and you have this big list of all the things that it costs
to run a company.
You say, "Now, you came to me for a job.
Did you come to me because you want to pay for all of these things, and you're actually
here just to train so you can go start your own business and pay for all of these things
on your own?"
They might say, "No, really.
I'm just here to clean houses."
"Oh, I just want to make sure right up front that we're on the same page," so you're coming
as an employee, not coming as an entrepreneur that's just learning the ropes so you can
go start your own business.
Okay, so do you know that as an employee, part of this expense is employee expense,
so out of all the money the business makes, this is how much goes to employees, and then
what's left pays for all these other things.
Then they go, "Oh, well that's a lot of things," but until you let an employee know, they don't
know how much it costs to run a business.
They don't know about advertising costs.
They don't know about internet costs.
They don't know about running Facebook ads.
They don't know about running ads in Valpak, or on HomeAdvisor, or any of these other sites.
They don't know that those costs are involved.
There are a lot of house cleaners that think, well, I'm just going to go clean, and because
I'm doing all the work, I should make all the money.
Okay, that's like really simple thinking, and I love the fact that they're thinking
that way, because that's some entrepreneurial spirit, but they're not looking at the big
picture because they haven't been explained.
If on day one when you're setting the ground rules, you say, "Please help me understand
where you see yourself fitting in the business," there are people that will say, "Wow, that
overwhelming to me.
That is so much stuff.
All I will do is just come clean houses.
I just want to show up, collect a paycheck, and go home."
Okay, so for your part of the job, you don't get to keep all the money.
You only get to keep part of the money.
It makes it really simple from day one, because they know.
They know up front.
There's a lot more money this company's making, but there are a lot more expenses that I myself
am not willing to pay.
Not everybody that can clean house should, and not everybody that can clean house can
run a house cleaning business.
If you explain right up front ... I've been in interviews where people are like,
"No, I'm here to learn from you, then I'm going to go out and start my own house cleaning
business."
Then I can say right up front, "Hey, if this is your goal, I can help you.
Would you like to train as a manager and would you like extra responsibilities up front so
that you can learn all these different facets of the business?"
If that is truly their goal, you can position them so that they can learn all these other
things and so that they can provide service to you maybe in a different area that will
eliminate some of the responsibilities that you, as an entrepreneur, are wearing all these
different hats.
Have the conversation up front.
There's no shame in having a conversation and explaining that it costs a lot of money
to run a business, and that it costs a lot of energy and a lot of time.
Now, as a house cleaning business owner, I can tell you this, when the cleaning is done
for the day, your job is not done.
When you go home, you still have to do inventory.
You still have to replace cleaning supplies.
You still have to clean out vacuums, and all the different things that you have to do,
whether it's refilling bottles, or it's replacing rags that have gone missing or misplaced.
You have to follow up with customers.
You have to do customer surveys.
You have to do ratings and reviews.
You have your online marketing.
I mean, there are nights as a house cleaner you don't go to bed till 11:00 at night, and
you've been working solid since 6:00 a.m.
I don't want to scare anybody away from the house cleaning business, because I love it,
and I'm passionate about it, but what I do want to do is this, paint a realistic picture
of what it is to run a business, because there are a lot of house cleaners that think oh,
well, I'm going to work for myself, and I'm going to go work six hours a day, and I'm
just going to go clean a couple of houses and then I'm done.
That will work for a couple minutes, and when they run out of clients, they're going to
be twiddling their thumbs saying, "Oh dear, I've missed a few steps.
How do I market my business so I can get more clients, and how am I supposed to pay for
all this stuff, and how do I make money if I'm paying for employees," and lots of questions.
Not everybody is cut out to be a house cleaner.
Not everybody is cut out to be a house cleaning business owner, and so right up front find
out where people are, and by all means, explain what the costs are and what is involved in
running a business, because there are a lot of people that after you explain it they're
like, "Oh my goodness, that's a lot of work.
I don't think I'm cut out for either one."
Then they leave, and you don't put them on the schedule, and then they stand you up on
day two or day three when they've figured out that it was more than they thought they
were getting into, because a lot of house cleaners hear the big money.
Oh, I can make $45 an hour and do nothing.
That is so far from the truth.
Yeah, have these conversations right up front.
There's no shame.
There's no harm in doing it, and if people want to come along for the ride, great.
If they don't, we've blown them out right now right up front, so there are no surprises
and they don't waste any more of your time and energy, and insurance, and training, and
recruiting, and all those other costs.
All righty, that's my two cents for today, and until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
For more infomation >> 十二星座8月28日運勢：避免爭吵，保持專注 - Duration: 10:05. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét