Smart Cleaning School Ken Carfagno

 Throughout my life and career, I have often wondered what causes some to emerge victorious no matter the scenario. It's easy to win when the conditions for winning are easy. In contrast, it's easy to quit when the conditions to quit are easy. What is the ingredient in the human character that causes someone to win when the conditions to quit are easy? What causes someone to persevere when it makes no sense? What causes a man or woman to strive a little longer when every adversity is against them? The answer is a key to success that few possess. It's called grit.

 Webster defines grit as follows: "firmness of mind or spirit : unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger "
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Growing a cleaning company to any level of success is hard. You will face obstacles, hardship, and who knows... danger. Will you develop the grit you will need to survive and thrive? That's up to you. You may ask....what could come against me growing a cleaning company? The answers are endless. The biggest obstacle is other people. People will try to steal your dream. They will tell you that it won't work. Why would you waste your college education? They will criticize you. The hardest part is that they will likely be the people closest to you. Will you survive this onslaught? You will get rejected by potential customers... a lot. Can you handle that? You will work so hard to serve clients for months and even years and they will cancel service with no warning. How will you handle that? What if you lose your biggest client as we just did this week? Will you fold it up and quit? If you ever hire employees, oh my! There are so many obstacles there.

My Pop-Pop used to say when I was a kid. "Kenny, are you a winner?" I'd respond. "Yes, Pop-Pop." He'd simple say. "Good. Winners never quit and quitters never win." I heard this enough and actually believed him. I was programmed with grit as boy. Others were programmed the opposite way. "You'll never win. You can't do it, why even try. No one in our family ever makes it." My Pop-Pop helped me develop a winner's mindset early on.

There is a profound difference in a winner's mindset and a loser's mindset. Before I explain the difference, let me ask you a question. Where does failure belong? Is it part of winning or losing? This is definitely a trick question. It's both. Failure is neutral. You will fail at many things you try. The best hitters in baseball fail 70% of the time. You will encounter failure. The person with a winner's mindset will embrace the failure, learn from it, grow forward, and keep going until they reach success. The person with a loser's mindset will quit when failure strikes... and it will.   What is the opposite of winning? It's not failing or losing. It's quitting. Once you quit, you lose the opportunity to win. Someone losing and not quitting has the potential to turn it around to win. Failure is not fatal unless it's final. That's the impact of quitting. It's what my Pop-Pop taught me years ago and I'm so grateful.

I make it sound easy. It's not easy to be losing and failing again and again. It's not easy to lose loved ones, lose property, overcome addiction or abuse. I firmly believe that anyone can overcome anything if they had enough grit. Think of something gritty like sandpaper. What does it do? It smoothes the object rubbed against it. When we become gritty, we too can smooth circumstances around us.

How do you develop grit? Can you read about it and just do it?  To be honest, I don't know for sure. But I do know this. You have to start somewhere. Overcome a hardship once and you will add grit to your character. Each hardship you embrace and overcome will add another layer.


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 There are thousands of solo cleaners in the free cleaning groups. They all want to grow. Yet, many are not succeeding. Why is that? I believe it comes down to one word: Mindset. Too many are looking for the easy way or the short-term fix. But that's not how the successful, succeed. What does it take? I'm glad I asked!

 Last month, I taught a short lesson to the Solo Elite Membership to highlight these success principles. I called the lesson, "Membership Mindset".  Regardless of where you are in your business, I want to encourage you to listen to this with an open mind.

Listen to the "4 Characteristics of Coachability", which are humility, curiosity, proper growth mindset, and taking action. How do you stack up? Then, listen to the "4 Fundamentals of the ISO Model" which are knowing your numbers, mindset, strategy, and people skills. Again, how do you stack up? Enjoy this lesson!

I want to formally invite you to join the Solo Elite Membership. What is it? It's the only system for solo cleaners to optimize your solo cleaning business to earn six figures  without the drama of employees! Or if you want to earn full time income through part time cleaning without employees. Get access to this game-changing training for only $97 per month or $997 per year in the Solo Elite Membership at smartcleaningschool.com. Members get access to the full ISO Model Course to optimize your solo business, live Q&A community calls, access to the Solo Elite Community, bonus podcast content, access to private coaching and more! 

In this part 5 episode, I sum up the cost and value concepts with an excerpt from the Solo Elite Membership. It's a clip from a membership call that allows you understand the mindset needed to price effectively.

I want to invite you to join the Solo Elite Membership. What is it? It's the only system for solo cleaners to optimize your solo cleaning business to earn six figures  without the drama of employees! Or if you want to earn full time income through part time cleaning without employees. Get access to this game-changing training for only $97 per month or $997 per year in the Solo Elite Membership at smartcleaningschool.com. Members get access to the full ISO Model Course to optimize your solo business, live Q&A community calls, access to the Solo Elite Community, bonus podcast content, access to private coaching and more!

 The first lesson of Blueberry Pie covers the 3 types of Buyers:
Those that want your product or service and value it enough to pay what it's worth.Those that want your product or service and do not value it enough to pay what it's worth.Those that don't want nor value your product or service.The sooner you can learn to accept this and focus on finding Buyer #1's, the sooner you will hit your goals. Do you remember how my interview with Marcia Davidson went? I didn't answer her question about the ones that wouldn't pay her prices. They were Buyer #2's.

​The second lesson of Blueberry Pie is the ability to separate the emotional from the logical.

Buyer #1 and #2 will NEVER buy your pie. When they say no, they are not saying no to YOU. They are saying no to your product or service. They are not offending you, judging you, or belittling you. They just don't want what you are offering. Once you accept that, you can gain the confidence to start saying "next". Beth Lane referenced that most solo cleaners (from her point of view) are introverts and empaths. This makes it extra hard for them to accept this second lesson. 

 I was talking with Robert Pierce from my Solo Cleaning School Elite Membership. He's doing amazing. Robert works as a manager at Target and it's been in retail for 25 years. He found me on the Side Hustle Nation Podcast and decided to start a solo cleaning business. Robert understood the value of investing into his new business as he wanted to shortcut years of trying to figure it out himself. He joined the Elite Membership and has subsequently built his solo cleaning business in 6 months to a lean, professional, and profitable company. I was so impressed talking to him as he shared how close he is to achieving his goal and dream of getting out of retail! I was so excited to hear this. We talked about his plan and how many clients and profit he needs to hit this goal.

​The main reason for the call was for strategic coaching. He was taking on 1-time and recurring house cleaning clients, but like me, he wanted to get into commercial more. He had a recent opportunity with a tool & die shop. It was set up like any industrial building. Picture a large steel box with offices in the front and huge warehouse and/or manufacturing space in the back. There's a filthy bathroom in the warehouse area and the office space isn't the most pristine either. These are blue-collar workers, running a useful service to the community. Robert did an estimate for cleaning the offices and warehouse restroom 3 weeks ago with no feedback. He wondered if his prices were too high. Our conversation was excellent and I knew it would help others as well.

Robert gave a very realistic price of $200 per visit. He estimated the job would take 4 hours per visit and he wanted to charge an hourly rate of $50. Thus, he gave a flat rate price of $200 per visit. I agreed with Robert on his method and the price was reasonable for the work he was proposing to do. However, I knew it was overpriced! Listen to what Robert shared next. "Ken, I found out that this facility had a janitor that cleaned prior. I figure he was there for 8 hours to clean the place and made $12 per hour. I'm guessing the tool & die shop paid $100 per day to have their facility cleaned. I'm asking $200. I figured it would be fine since I'm an outside contractor and would be fully insured." Robert already knew why they weren't calling him back. This was all the opening I needed. He is absolutely right at his $200 price is completely reasonable. I taught him that in the Elite Membership. But... there are two angles to come in on a price. One is COST PRICING and the other is VALUE PRICING.


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 There are thousands of questions asked every day across the cleaning communities worldwide. I can say experientially that the two most frequently asked questions deal with how to clean and pricing. This is no surprise as both of these questions are asked by newer people and the answers come with actual experience in cleaning and making pricing mistakes over time. I didn't have social media communities to ask. I had to learn the hard way through trial and error. It's my firm belief that social media handicaps newer cleaning owners into relying on other people too much. I would prefer if the groups functioned this way.

 A new cleaning owner asks a question. They receive an answer that makes sense. They ask a second question. "How did you get that answer?" Now they learn the mindset behind the question and this new person can actually grow to the next level. This new cleaning owner now understands the what, the how, and the why behind their initial question. That is my precise goal with this pricing series. I have learned so many lessons over my two decades as a business owner. I have shared these lessons in over 400 episodes of this podcast for free. In fact, I have found over 10 episodes with messages themed completely around pricing mindset.
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In this first 5-part Pricing Mindset Series, I am helping you build a foundational mindset on price and value. This is essential.

1.      Pricing Series I – It's Not Your Prices It's Your Process: In last week's episode, I taught the VERY first mindset about price. Price and value are not the same. People pay a price based on that price being less than the value they perceive the item or service is worth. People perceive a value based on the trust they have in the provider of that item or service. Every time someone tells you your prices are too high. They are really saying that I don't value your service and I don't trust you. You must understand this in order to move forward.

2.      Pricing Series II – Do You Charge by the Hour: In this episode, I take you back to an article that I wrote for our local cleaning company. It was written FOR our prospective customers in their language so they understood the win-win in accepting a quote by the job instead of an hourly quote. It's vital for YOU to understand WHY to charge by the job and just as vital for your customers. I didn't unpack the YOU part as much in this repeat episode from 2021. So here is a short addition. Charging by the job is the only way to optimize your solo cleaning business. The entire ISO Model hinges upon charging more per client over time, getting faster at every cleaning, and knowing your numbers so you can constantly increase your take-home profits. Charging by the hour removes your ability to do 2 of those 3 aspects to optimizing. You may ask. "What is optimizing? Why do I need that?" Optimizing is the only way to earn a full time income of $60,000+ per year profit without killing your body, having no time to yourself, and having to deal with the drama of employees. If you don't optimize, you BETTER hire and scale. Otherwise, you will be crushed by the weight of your solo cleaning nightmare. Optimizing is the art of becoming more productive, efficient, and profitable. I learned this an engineer and applied it to my cleaning business. Now it's the ISO Model and the foundation for the Solo Elite Membership.

3.      Pricing Series III – Blueberry Pie: This episode is one of the most popular I've made. It's a simple story of a blueberry pie door-to-door salesman. I teach what the word value means compared to price. I also show you that a no isn't a rejection of YOU. They simply don't want your pie or your cleaning service. Develop a Go For No Mindset to win.

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