Episode 99: Busy in your Cleaning Business? Doesn't Mean You're Making Progress
Episode 99- Video Transcription
Cleaning business owners are BUSY! Every day you are swamped with a never-ending to-do list. And then, unexpected things come up that interfere with your ability to get things done. But many of you are not making progress in your cleaning business.
Sometimes it reminds me of the rocking horse I had as a kid growing up. I was creating all kinds of motion back and forth, but I wasn't getting anywhere or making any progress forward. And sometimes it feels like that in business. But here's the thing. A lot of the time you might actually feel like you were very productive because you were busy going from one project to the next all day long.
You paid some bills, responded to emails, did some research on a piece of equipment you wanted to buy, talked to a couple clients, cleaned out your email again, made a trip to the bank, and stopped by a couple accounts to check in with employees. You were busy! But -- did you actually do anything to move your business forward?
What about talking to that employee with the chronically bad attitude -- the one that the other employees are complaining about? What about that monthly Chamber of Commerce networking event that you missed AGAIN because you were too busy fixing a vacuum cleaner that stopped working yesterday? Oh yes, and you didn't have time to start the search for that much needed supervisor because the thought of having to spend a bunch time interviewing and training a new supervisor is just too overwhelming.
Well guess what! You were busy on the wrong things! I've worked with a lot of cleaning business owners and there's one thing that I've discovered. The owners of underperforming companies almost always work as hard and sometimes times even harder than the owners of larger, more successful cleaning companies. They seem to think that as long as they work hard and put in long hours, their business will continue to grow. But that's not usually the case. At some point, growth is going to slow down or stop altogether.
You'll wonder why it seemed so easy to get this far, and now it seems impossible to break through this invisible barrier that seems to be in the way. It's kind of like rowing a boat as hard as you can, but rowing AGAINST the current instead of WITH the current. You're not going to reach your destination no matter how hard you row!
So stop filling your day with "busy work" and tasks that should be handled by your staff, and start filling your day with projects that matter. Projects that will increase sales and profits and that will bring you closer to your goals.
If it seems like you're crazy busy every moment of the day but your business isn't moving forward by leaps and bounds, then stop and take a critical look at where you're spending your time. Look at each task you're working on and ask yourself if you're working on the most important things that will move your business forward. You only have so many hours in the day so you want to make make sure you spend those hours wisely, or you just may end up on that rocking horse, getting nowhere!
If you're struggling with running your cleaning business, we can help with products and tools to make your business run more efficiently. This will free up your time to work on the things that will propel your business forward! Visit TheJanitorialStore.com for details.
And if you own a residential cleaning business, visit our sister site, MyHouseCleaningBiz.com
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