How To Scale A Cleaning Business - Case Study

And everything depend of the goal. If the person don't value their time and they don't and they just want to continue wasting it, that's fine. Don't create systems. Your business probably will fail because a lot of people think that they can sell their business without having systems in place. And nobody want to buy something that only work with the business owner.

Hello, it's Dave from Systemology. I'm here with Marco Rando. He is the founder of Captain Duster and we're going to shine a little bit of a light on his story and how he's been building up his business with a systems driven approach. So maybe just to start, Marco, if you want to. Yeah. Introduce yourself, tell us a little bit more about the business and what you guys do.

Hello. Thank you. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. Well, I'm Marco Randazzo and I'm one of the founders of Cap and Ulster. We clean houses and businesses in Florida. And when I came across with this system approach, I was actually listening the audiobook and everything changed for me because the first thing that changed was adopting a system mindset. And since then I received systems and everywhere.

Yes. And how long have you guys been in business for?

We've been. We started in June 2021 and yeah, about two years and six months.

Perfect. And your team, how many team members have you got?

We have about eight to nine employees right now. If it just changed variety because there is like a high turnover on cleaning because most people, most employees don't want to clean forever, so they just get the job. We hire a lot of students and they just stay with us a few months and they just continue with their life and find better opportunities too.

Yes. Yeah. Did you think like, it sounds like you had a bit of a breakthrough moment with the systems recently? Would you say, like, do you see yourself as a systems person or was it something where you kind of felt like you had to change? I'm just curious on that.

Yeah, I'm always being like a system person, but unconsciously the nothing better than what you bring into the conscious because obviously like if systems, the whole point of system is great and so everything wrong with Salmi. So I'm always trying to. I'm a big believer of systems saving time and improving the systems. Let me correct myself, I'm always believers in saving time, but I couldn't achieve it until I actually improved the systems. And now the big breakthrough is adopting the system mindset. And actually I made it like a value in our company. So now we work with Three peoples in the office, only the rest are cleaners. But I work with Victor, he's like our manager, he worked remotely and we actually have like, like a rule every, every day we record two tutorial videos. Now we all these like videos about even the, the minor details. Now our training for our cleaners are on video. First we record the videos like the theory and the rules and the guidelines and the how to to and the office side, how to do absolutely. Every step on every task is also almost like 70% already on video too. So that's going to eliminate so much hassle because now like if I bring more people, I don't have to repeat myself. And now the person that is working with me, that is Victor, he already know how to do everything, so I don't have to do it myself neither. So now I actually save 50 hours a week. Like literally. I actually that's why I'm starting a new YouTube channel and everything because now I have time to do it. Yes.

When you first started the business, were you very much on the tools and going out doing the cleaning for the clients?

Yeah, yeah. And not only that, doing the, answering the emails, getting the calls, talking to the employees, answering every question is what's like the most time consuming is actually answering to people and sales. And for us it's like that's, that's, that's a big, a big change in our business just because.

And how did you come across systemology? Was it someone referred it or did you just find it online?

I also know what I like, what I like it and I actually had it on the wishlist.

Yeah.

And I've been coming across like I need to grow my business and the big problem is like, okay, well nobody's going to do it like I do it. So until I, you know, putting into paper and videos, I couldn't achieve that because even I even I didn't even have a subscript. I had it on my mind. I'll tell you. Putting into paper and explain the person step by step and videos, all that. What to say is difficult because in our, and at least in our industry you have to know how many hours or how much pricing a cleaning. And there's so many factors and if you don't have that on system, it's hard to do it. And what I like the best is the, the best is like making on a inedible.

Yeah.

What I mean by that is like in the beginning we have like on our cleaners a checklist and that checklist they had the option to do it or not after they complete the job. And if they don't complete it obviously always was we having problems. So I, I remember that you say something about you have to the system, just don't give you another choice. You have to just follow the system. And we changed the software and now the cleaners cannot clock out without actually completed the checklist. And it's like a funnel, you know what I mean? You bring the person step by step and if they just can't, if they don't, they cannot move forward without actually completing the next step. And that's what it also allow me to produce a lot of refunds.

Yes. Yeah. It seems like you've been able to grow quite quickly at the start, like with a lot of your time as you're making this transition because you're on the tools while you're also trying to put some of the systems and processes in place. I'm just wondering, that period of time was that like, were you able to jump into systems creation mode straight away or were you kind of juggling the two or was it that gentleman in the office who, who drove it?

The first thing that I did was hire Victor. That's like my first step. So I started explaining everything to him and I asked to him, as you actually say in the book, you don't need to do it yourself. You can ask another person to do it for you. So one is the person of the knowledge and another person is going to systemi for you. So that's exactly what I did. I start putting everything, creating everything we see and so he start creating the, the systems for me and that's it. It was, it wasn't. It wasn't harder. It was very easy, actually. The. What is really hard is doing everything yourself. That's hard.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Now that you're a little bit further down, down the process because it sounds like the delivery of the product, which is obviously the cleaning services, you've really focused in on that and obviously the sales piece as well. Are there other parts of the business that you're starting to systemize as well?

Yes, the last one that we're working on it right now is actually the how to clean properly. We actually even like we just apply this needs. We're going to come up with a new tutorial that is about like, we're going to collect all the data of all complaints that we had in the company and we're going to present that on the training tool and say, hey guys, this is all the problems that we had in the past and this is what happened and we're showing you this so we prevent this problem from happening in the future. And that's one of the things that we're doing. The second one is also the training. Normally me and my wife used to go to the place and now we just start recording all the. For example, how to clean a fridge, how to. To clean an oven, how to clean the floors, how to clean up lines, all the steps. So we know that's going to be the last part where we actually fully automate all the videos and how to do. At least until we are. Because there is always more systems to create. And after that we're going to start creating like the marketing system. So.

Yes. Yeah. Have you got visions for where you would like to take the company?

As in, yeah, we want to, we want to. We want to take it to seven figures and after that we might go and sell it. Yes, I wanna, I want to be. I, I'm not like a patient forever. I, I like to just work in a company, learn growing it and I'm gonna sell it after that. That's my like my vision. Great. To send figures and sell it and it's gonna cost more because it's gonna, it's gonna be systemized.

Yes. I think what I love. We were chatting just before we hit record, you had mentioned as well about, and you mentioned it briefly about the idea of starting up the YouTube channel to almost document what you're doing and showcase some of the insights and learnings that you've picked up. Because there's a real passion for that and a lot of what you're learning in the way that you're applying it to the cleaning business really can work for any business. I can already start to see you're starting to think like a business owner thinking about, well, I can sell it and then you can move on to the next thing. Like you're not, you know, falling in love with the, the business, but more the, the work of, of being a business owner.

Exactly. Yeah. It's just, it's also like the, the book about Michael Gerber, the emyth he mentioned about like it's. It's about the art of creating the business. You know, when you're an artist, even the most boring business can become a piece of art if you are. And that's how I see. I now I see the, the business itself like the product and not what I sell cleaning. And that's the whole point because literally like this. Alex and Morsi mentioned about this too. Because when On a perspective of an investor, someone is going to buy a company. The real value is how much money can make without demanding their time.

Yes.

And that's like someone that systemize their business, I think that they at least to edge their, their value, at least as minimum. Because imagine like if you don't have systems in place and the business cannot run without you, when someone's going to come and buy your business, they basically buying a job, they wouldn't buy a business. And that's kind of like the, the big shift. And now for example, when I see. I went a few days ago because I'm from Venezuela, I'm living in Florida and I went to my attorney and they was taking me a picture to renew the permit to work here. And I see the, the person that was serving me that she called the person in the, in the, she called the receptionist, she was teaching how to take the picture and asked to her like, do you guys have to do this all manually every time that you guys train someone? And she said, yes. You know what? I was like, are you sure you guys don't want to systemize this? You should, you can create tutorials. And I was like, I couldn't even imagine. Now I can see it everywhere, you know, and also I recognize when there's good systems in place, when there is people actually remember who you are and what do you like and all these things, like the small details, that is the 5% of things that actually make a business stand out.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean with. It's almost like if you've seen the movie the Matrix, once Neo starts to see it, you can't unsee it. I'm the same. I'll walk into businesses and I'll think about the systems that are basically propping that business up. You mentioned some tips around like it was a breakthrough for you to have Victor come in to do some of the recording or the documenting of those process. Are there any other tips that you can think of that were quite valuable for you in growing the business and getting these systems down? Because as you know, a lot of business owners, they, they struggle with this idea of systemizing the business. Either they don't have time or they think it costs too much money or they just can't seem to get great team members to be able to do it. I'd love to know if, yeah, there's anything that you've done where you're like, oh, that was a really important step for us.

Yeah, well, everything is about perspectives. And the first thing that A business owner have to break through is their own belief. Because if the business owner most of the time the business doesn't grow because they are the bottleneck and they're on the way on, on the on their own way. So the first step is knowing that we live on an international economy and you can hire anyone from anywhere as long as they speak English or your native language. And you can save a lot of money by hiring someone overseas. That's the first step. And after that it's very easy to record everything. If you can just record your screen or record yourself. If you don't want to do it yourself, you can ask the person that you hire to do it for you. And the only thing that you have to know how to actually teach. That's like the biggest thing. So if you don't have cleared your ideas in your own mind, it's going to be very hard for you to make other person do exactly what you actually want. Another thing is like you have to become in a habit. It has to be something that you do every day. Because there is a lot of things that you need to systemize. And after you systemize, you need to work in the system to improve the system. So that's something that what I do is as soon as I see the problem, I create a video to prevent it. That's like the thing that I do when someone comments, say, for example, let's say we have an issue with one of our customers because she requests to clean the interior cabinets of the kitchen and interior cabinets of the bathroom. But she also has shelves in her living room. But she didn't mention that. But she request old shelf and was a problem in our end because we didn't request, didn't ask, hey, there is only any other cabinets in the living room, common areas that you want us to clean in the interior. And now we just added into our booking form that have all the extras that you can click and choose. And now it's part of our sales process going to that all these questions and ask hey, do you have any other problem? And that just by doing that we're going to save money like yes, dollar probably in a year just by doing that change. And that is applying anything. So as soon as I see the mistake, I immediately jump and ask to be to record this system, I'll do it myself. And that's like that's the best thing that you can come across when you're trying to actually save save time because you if someone say I don't have time to create Systems, you're the person that actually needed the most. Because if you're, if you're too busy to actually systemize your business, you need to systemize your business so you're not too busy. So that is like just excuses. Work after work, you know what I mean? If you work until 5pm well don't watch TV and go to your house and start recording tool videos and hire someone overseas and buy your. Buy. Pay back your time too.

Yes. Yeah. One thing I'd love to find out more about because I'm seeing it more and more with a lot of the companies we work with is this idea of offshoring and finding team members in other locations with what you guys have done. Like have you recruited outside of the US like have you got any back office team members that help out?

Yes, I actually hire my best friend. He lives, he's from Venezuela also but he live in Peru and I hired him, he already had skills on computers and editing website. He had like a marketing job before. So I just hired immediately with, with him. But yes, absolutely, you can, you can hire a company, you can hire, you can put a post a job post on. Indeed you can go Facebook groups. There is multiple ways to, to get that help. I would say that the important thing about hiring someone overseas is first to try them. Don't believe what they say, just try them. Try them how they speak. Make sure that they speak very, very good English. Because a lot of people, what they do is they hire people that yes, they know how to speak English but it doesn't sounds that well and it's. That person is going to speak directly to customers and there is no, at least a decent quality of English and it's gonna, it's gonna damage the customer experience because they're gonna have problem understanding and is going to mess up the experience for the customers.

Yeah. We also find that the systems and processes, they're really essential especially for when you're working offshore or with people that you're not necessarily sitting right next to. Because the biggest thing is making sure that they understand what it is that you want them to do and having very clear expectations and systems and processes really help to outline that. And I love your mindset of thinking about where things go wrong or have gone wrong and then making the adjustment in the system to then make sure that that problem doesn't happen again as well. Like I think you've kind of given some really great tips there. I suppose in the, the tail end if someone was thinking about putting systems and processes in place I don't know if there's any final suggestions or words of advice on when they should start. That's the other thing. Sometimes people think, oh, I'm too small and maybe I need to wait till my company is larger. I don't know if you have any suggestions on that.

It start today and start right now. And again, the same reason you don't have is that they say that business owner don't have systems in place. Maybe they just don't have it because they didn't actually thought about it. So the person already know it and they're watching this video, they read your book or they watch a podcast of yours and they continue doing. Working in the same way is just because that's the same reason why the business will not grow because the problem wouldn't be outside. It's not an external factor. It's not about time because the person is not dead. It's not about anything. It's about only the mindset, the perspective. We create the time. So we create the time for things that we actually think that are important. So there is always this. I don't know. Remember if you watch the fight club, the guy put a gun and say, hey, just you have, if I see you again, you don't follow your dreams, I'm gonna kill you. It's the same way if you put a gun in your head and say, hey, if you don't create systems in your business, you're gonna shut that that gun in your head in 24 hours. People will do it. That's it. It's just like. And everything depends on the goal. If the person don't value their time and they don't and they just want to continue wasting it, that's fine. Don't create systems. Your business probably will fail because a lot of people think that they can sell their business without having systems in place. And nobody want to buy something that only work with the business owner. So someday that person will have to retire.

Yes.

So better do it now.

Was it, what was it for you? Like when you had read the book and you said you were thinking about scaling, like what was it that made you think now is the time? Was there any. Yeah. Anything going on in your life or any reason that made you act or was it just obvious to you when.

You saw it was first was obvious? Yeah, I mean that's why I buy the book. I when I just write it, it read the title. I already, I. I already said o this is what I need to do. And I just use the book to reprogram my mind. Yeah, right. I want to put the idea, I want to collect those ideas and I want to think in system. But the biggest breakthrough I think is about what you. One of the things you said is about if you create systems too specific that make people just follow system and don't allow them to chime and be themselves, nobody smart is going to work want to work with you. And that means that you can, you can still having flexibility in the system that you create. And also you improve the system over time so they that I wouldn't have to have it ready perfect in my mind. I just have to start recording, watch what I did and if a better idea comes out, I record it again and I improve it and I continue recording more videos and making it more, more, let's say more complete or more complex and more dynamic to be able to predict problems in the future and prevent those problems.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love hearing all of these different insights and what connects with business owners and what speaks to them and then the impact and change that it has because you start to make some of these little changes now and then you magnify that out across a good number of years and the impact is tremendous. Like you said, once you see business in this way, you can really not unsee it. Like this now is just part of the way that you look at business. So if people are based in Florida and then they want to get some cleaning done, they can Definitely check out Captain Duster.com I'll make sure I have a link to that. And yeah, just want to say a huge thank you, Marco, for just sharing your story. I know it'll inspire some others. And once you've got your new YouTube YouTube channel up and running, we'll make sure to put a link to that as well. So thank you again for your time.

Well, thank you so much, David. Thank you so much.