016 — Three Improvements We Have Planned For Custom Maids In 2023
If we don’t improve, we regress. There’s only 1 choice. Here are the three main improvements we have planned for this upcoming year.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good. Beautiful morning this December 7th, 2022. We are getting, well, I'm preparing for our, uh, regular check-in this morning, uh, for Custom MAs, our residential cleaning company, and I'm going over some of the Q1 2023 goals I had written down, um, had saved inside click up and just wanted to go over some of these, um, and just jot these down, kind of using like this as almost like a vlog except there's no video attached to it, so you don't have to see my ugly mug. Um, and these are a no, uh, specific order. Ooh, this one's done. We did that one already.
(00:50)
So a couple of things we have on here is outstanding invoices. Um, of course this, this should really, should be obvious. I mean, we really don't have a set process to attack these. Um, we are very fortunate to have outstanding clients that pay their invoices almost all the time, so we never have to hunt payments down as much as you'd think, but it would still be nice to mitigate that as much as possible. Um, and I know there are ways to do it since we have not put any focus towards that yet. Anyway, uh, next thing, uh, I have on here are strategic partnerships. So in the Bay City area, Saginaw area, well really any populated area in this country, in the United States, you're gonna have home service professionals. I don't just mean, uh, United States, I just mean this is gonna happen across, across the world, um, in any populated area.
(01:52)
But when I speak on stuff with regards to a cleaning business or a cleaning company or paid ads, I've only ever operated in the us So I'm not sure what nuances that there might be outside of it. So I don't, I don't speak on anything, uh, in the other countries just because I don't know it yet. Um, so strategic partnerships in Bay City. Let's take a lawn care company, for example. Well, we want to begin teaming up with any and every lawn care company in the area, um, because their clients usually for the summer will sign up for a regular recurring lawn care service package or, or whatever it might be. Well, it's very similar to cleaning, except cleaning weed aren't seasonal. So like you're not, if, if you're in Indiana, if you're in Michigan, if you're anywhere in the north, you're not, you're probably not gonna hire your long care company in the winter, but you'll still hire your cleaning company.
(02:54)
Now, I pick a long care company first because it's a bit different. Like with landscaping design, you're, you have clients that are gonna pay like big one time payments, lawn care, they're gonna pay a lot of smaller ones. Our cleaning business model is focused on many of those smaller transactions. So if we can target or team up with a long care company whose book of business is already filled with people who are used to paying a recurring home service bill, it is a very easy segue into house cleaning. And then vice versa, of course, our clients, we will share, we will help, uh, refer those to our, our partners. That can be lawn care, like I said, it's gonna be all home services, but I wanted to start with lawn care because of how similar, um, they were. HVAC a another one, no one hires their or has their HVAC person to come out unless something has gone wrong, right?
(03:56)
It's not like, Hey, we expect our plumber to come over or our, um, sorry, not plumber, our HVAC guy to come over, uh, Tuesday every week just to check on everything and make sure it's okay. Like that doesn't happen. So those big one time tickets are, ticket prices are very, very nice. Um, we're fattening up our business with, um, or our company with, um, recurring subscriptions. Um, but we will definitely be, uh, partnering with those other home services companies like painting, flooring, landscape design, those bigger one ticket items. Um, so strategic partnerships is the second thing. And then the third thing, I have many things on here, but I can break these up into different clips. Uh, the third thing, gift certificates. We already sell sell, we already offer gift certificates. Um, but I think that there is a way to ramp this up. I I I'm seeing something like a Shopify store or a Shopify order page, Shopify like order page and letting people buy the gift certificates there.
(05:03)
And then what they receive is either an email, a really nice PDF email that looks like a very official voucher, or we can even mail them something like a very like, really nice card stock, like send it out so they have something tangible. Um, but the one thing that had me thinking, so like if we say, Hey, we offer a hundred dollars gift certificates, right? Um, you can buy them in a hundred dollars increments and uh, what we would do to the person buying that gift certificate or the person doing the gifting, they would be able to buy that a hundred dollars at a 10 or 20% discount. So they're able to buy, well, essentially for them they're buying money at a discount, then they're able to give more of that gift to whoever they're gifting it to, that cleaning service or that cleaning
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Visit, I guess. Um, so those are the things I have been noodling on. The out getting the outstanding invoices numbered down. I think there's only something like 15 or $20,000 worth outstanding. Um, honestly, I'm not sure how bad that is. We only do like, between this year I think we're gonna do about $743,000. So I don't know what in comparison <laugh>, what the outstanding balances are like, but I I really, my gut feeling is that we have really good clients, people who pay their bills, pay their invoices, and it's, it's really a blessing. So I, I think it's great to have something in place for outstanding invoices, but it's not a worry at this point. Second thing for 2023, uh, in Q1 is putting a focus on strategic partnerships. Um, and then third thing was the gift certificates. Setting up a way for people to buy them online, cuz it's kind of clunky how they do it right now.
(06:57)
Like we have people calling in and saying they want to buy a gift certificate. We say, great. They come in, they pay and then they buy. But like, people don't wanna come pick up a gift certificate necessarily. Not like that anyway, especially when most of this stuff can be done online. So we're gonna figure out a way, um, to tackle all this online and, um, ramp it up. At the end of the day, uh, there's going to be a significant chunk of these gift certificates that don't get turned in, that we will have collected the money on. That's why I'm okay with offering that 20% discount. 20% might be a bit too much. Um, but if they wanna buy like a hundred dollars worth of cleaning services for $90, I'm willing to take that hit on the front end because I know a certain amount aren't going to get paid back anyway.
(07:42)
On top of the fact that we're willing to take a loss on getting that first service because we're going for recurring services that client will make up. Its, its profitability, its roi, um, in the long run. So those are the three, three of the many things we're going to be looking at for 2023. That's just breaking it down for q1. Um, let me know what you think. Let me know your thoughts and what you might be tackling for 2023 as well. Um, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So goals must be set in place. Take the time now to do it. Just even if they are, forgive me, if they are half asked, it is better than nothing. You need a target. You need to aim for something. Take some time this week or this weekend, or in between Christmas and New Year's, right before the new year. Set up your goals, write 'em down, get 'em onto a Google Doc or even share them with me. Would love to be your accountability partner if needed. Talk to you soon.
