Lighting for Profits - Episode 181

This week on the show we welcome Nicole Rivera, the Director of Marketing and Sales at Jill’s Office, with a rich background in People and Culture. Known for her expertise in leadership, vision, and team building, Nicole combines entrepreneurial insight with a passion for fostering positive company culture. Her journey in HR, business development, and marketing showcases her dedication to turning big-picture ideas into actionable realities while inspiring others to embrace growth and adaptability.

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Episode Transcript

We discuss everything you need to know to start and grow a successful landscape lighting business

Welcome to Lighting for Profits. All light.

All light.

All Light powered by Emory Allen. Get rid of your excuses. Your number one source for all things landscape lighting. That's where the magic can happen. You can really scale a business.

We really had to show up for.

Each other from lighting design, install sales and marketing.

You're a scaredy cat salesman, Kurt.

We discuss everything you need to know to start and grow a successful landscape lighting business. What do you think a hippo has.

To do with your business, Ryan?

Usually it's some weird childhood thing, some bully.

I think the key factor here is trust.

Here is your host, Ryan Lee.

Ryan Lee: If you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business

All, light. All light. All light. Let's go. I'm so excited for this show, you guys. It's going to be a great one. I'm Ryan Lee, your host of Lighting for Profits powered by Emory Allen. And this, this is such an amazing opportunity to get, the opportunity to nerd out on all things lighting, all things business. And listen, if you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business, you're definitely in the right place. We've got the one, the only, Ms. Nicole Rivera coming on with Jill's office today. I don't know if you guys know this, but we are actually trending. We're the number one landscape lighting show in Ogden, Utah. So, yeah, it's official, it's happening and it's, just an honor. You know, who would have thought that we'd be the number one landscape lighting show in Ogden, Utah? So excited to have Nicole Rivera on. We're going to be talking about some really, really cool things about, hiring, scaling your business. And there's a couple key roles in there that you really need to have done. And Nicole has a, great background and we're going to talk about, some things with, the show coming up. We've got Light It Up Expo, Home Service Workshop, Million Dollar Admin Academy. So many good things, so make sure you guys stick around.

There's still a time to get your Light It Up Expo tickets

by the way, guys, speaking of Light It Up Expo, there's still a time to get your tickets, but get them now. Anyone who enters or gets their ticket. Now we, all of our vendors are doing this huge giveaway, like I'm talking thousands of dollars of, of things that we're going to raffle off, and we'll like post a list or whatever. But if you're going to come get your ticket now because then you'll be automatically entered to win it. And Light It Up Expo is all about bringing the lighting industry together. So I'm talking landscape lighting, holiday lighting, permanent lighting. If you're in one of those industries or you want to bolt one of those onto your existing business, this is the place to be. We're going to have some amazing speakers which we're announcing over social media over the next few weeks. we've got some breakouts. So if you want to attend the landscape lighting breakout, it's a whole afternoon session or holiday lighting or permanent lighting, you can attend one of those. The vendor hall is going to be amazing. It's shared with all the vendors of home service workshop. So this is like one ticket, one flight, one hotel. But you're going to get access to all these shows. and we're going to talk about million, dollar Admin Academy as part of that. So get your ticket guys. Go to light it up expo. com if you have questions, reach out. But I'm telling you, you're not going to want to miss out on this. We're going to do, we're doing a promo code that you guys can use to save 100 bucks on your Light It up ticket. It's lit 100. If you use that code, it's going to save you $100 per ticket. So go to light it up expo. com get your ticket now.

I want to talk about how to most efficiently scale your business

Now again guys, we've got Nicole Rivera coming on in just a couple of minutes. Before I have her on every, every show, I've got like something on my mind. the other day someone posted inside one of my Facebook groups and they were asking about pricing and I want to talk about how to most efficiently scale your business. so if you want to know how to scale your business without flipping out all the time because it's easy to flip out. There's always like fires to put out and things going on, stuff like that. So what I try to do is minimize the problems. Right. And oftentimes the right answer is not the best answer on paper or it's not the best answer to ask in a Facebook group. Because like when you get an answer from someone in a Facebook group there's really no, there's not much context. Like have they scaled a multi million dollar lighting business? If you want to be a million dollar lighting business and you're getting responses from people that are only like 3, 400 grand a year, I'm not saying that their answers are bad all the time, but it might not be the right answer for you at that time.

If you can learn flat rate pricing, you can maximize your profitability

So I want to talk specifically about flat Rate pricing. And this is so important to understand and learn this because this will make everything so easy from a sales, a design, an installation standpoint. If you can learn flat rate pricing. And this is the key, a lot of people screw this up. The they, you have to learn it in a way that you still maximize your profitability so that you can afford to be in business tomorrow. Okay? So, make sure you understand, where I'm coming from, okay? There's a, there's a formula on paper where you should know every single penny of your business. You get like a super smart economist on my show, and he's probably gonna tell you something different than what I'm gonna tell you, but he's probably never scaled a multimillion dollar lighting business, okay? It's like sometimes these engineers design some really cool things, but they've never done the thing. That's what I'm talking about here. So, take this for what it's worth. But this is what I know to be true. This is what I know that works. This isn't theory because theory works on paper. It doesn't always work in the real world. So here's how flat rate pricing works, guys. You need to simplify your pricing so that when, when you get to a job, you can, within literally five to 10 minutes, put together pricing for a job. I'm talking even a $20,000 landscape lighting job. Like, I can do the pricing for that in under 10 minutes. And you can't do that if you don't have a flat rate pricing model. And when I say flat rate, I mean like you have these set prices for certain things that are just a flat rate. And the, the, the reason people are afraid to do this is because of the what ifs. Well, what if it costs more immaterial. What if it costs more in labor? Like, well, that's a valid concern. So let's talk about that.

Many people underestimate the importance of flat rate pricing when selling lighting projects

So when I go into a project and let's say I talk about, selling a project at 500 per light. Okay? Now first of all, I would never tell a client, a homeowner like $500 per light. And a lot of people do that because they think they're pre qualifying when really they're just scaring people off that could have been qualified to buy their lighting experience. So don't talk about price per light because no one wants to buy a $500 light fixture. However, a lot of people will pay and be grateful to pay $15,000 to have a lighting experience, to have an awesome backyard Transformation to have their, front yard, when they drive up to their house every night, feel like they're driving up to a resort that's worth 15 grand every single night for the next 10 to 15 years. Of course it's worth that. But no one wants to buy a light at $500, okay? And they don't understand that you have overhead and you got transformer and wire and connectors and you got trucks and you got tools and equipment replacement costs and taxes. Like, they're not thinking that when they hear $500 a light. But here's how to protect yourself, okay? And so let's say I say $500 per light. Well, the obvious thing, people go, well, that doesn't work. I mean that might work for a spotlight, but that path light. And I got six of them on this project, they cost $50 more per fixture. And the way I see it, okay? And this is not this way that a, pricing economist is going to see it is. I don't care. I have a flat rate price. And I, and I'll, I'll tell you how to protect yourself in a minute on how to like, go back and make sure that this number works for you. But I have a flat rate price. And what if it, what if it's 20, ah, feet of wire per light instead of 10ft? And what if, what if, what if, what if, what if? That's where people get hung up and then they start taking all these notes and they go put the numbers in their computer and then they lose the opportunity because when they left, they took the emotion with them and people buy an emotion, okay? And so now you're sending an email to someone and it says $15,000. Like that seems like a lot for lights, okay? You need to sell these jobs in person and build emotion. And so, when you do flat rate pricing, it allows you to scale, it allows you to be efficient with your process. So what I will do is I'll put some protection in place. So if you want, you could say, well, it's $500 a light, but every time I use this path light, I am going to charge $50 more per light. Or every time I go in that tree, I'm going to charge an extra hundred dollars per light. Or every time I do a core drill, I'm going to do +150. Or every time I, have a bigger property and it's like, man, these are longer wire runs. I'm going to do plus 500. But the, the point is it's Flat rate. I'm not measuring and I'm not going, oh, that's, is that 200ft of wire or is it 240? And what if I have to go into the sidewalk? And what if I have to do this? Like maybe you have a, plus 150 to go under a sidewalk. Okay. You want to come up with very simple operations, here, so that not only you can remember it, but you can replace yourself. Because you might have all that, you might have the ability to do all this stuff. But what happens when you go to hire a lighting designer and a salesperson to replace yourself? You need to make it so simple. So when I had my business, it was flat rate. I didn't care if it was a spotlight, path, light, washlight. The only time it changed was when we had like a custom fixture. Every once in a while, you know, it's like, oh, we're doing, linear lighting or mailbox address or something like that. But I'm still, I'm selling the job, closing the deal, getting the check. And I don't care what type of fixture it is, it's a flat rate price that I'll tell you how to go back and make sure that this number is going to work here in a minute. And I don't care how much wire it is, I don't care how many connections, I don't even really care how many transformers. We're not putting in transformers that are $1,500. Okay? These are like 150, 200 transformers. So when you go and do this, it's a flat rate price with some certain minimums. Okay? Minimum jobs gonna be $3,500. So if someone's got four lights and our flat rate price is 500, it's not 2,000, it's 3, 500. Okay. The other thing is I'll have very few. I'm talking so plus 150 for a core drill, plus 50 for a downlight. I, wouldn't even charge to go under sidewalks and driveways because our, our team was so efficient. I had one guy that was, his whole job was to do downlights and trees. So if we got there and we had 10 in the trees, he would knock those out before lunch. Okay. If your company can't do that because it takes you three days to do that, you can't stick with my same numbers. So don't just use 500 a light and plus 50. Like you're going to have to figure out your number for you, but come up with the number that makes sense for your business. Okay, so for me, it worked out because that guy was like, knocking stuff out. I mean, he had the climbing gear, had the ropes, the harness. He had the ladder. He had everything going right. Another guy would do the custom, like, core drilling stuff. And then another guy would be doing mostly trenching. So when you, when you build your business, it's going to change. Right now you might have to do +500 for something that later on might ha. Might. You might only have to charge $50 for in the future because of economies of scale, and you get faster and better at it.

You need to calculate your daily overhead and figure out how much it costs

Okay, so come up with your. Your variables. Like, I'm talking. No more than like five variables. Okay, so mine were like plus 500 for long wire runs. Typically, like larger estates or HOAs. We'd have plus 150 for core drill, plus 50 for downlight. And I think that's it. There might have been one or two others, but that way I could sit in my truck and stare at the front of the house and be like, okay, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I got 20 lights. Okay, 20 lights times 500, that's 10,000. Plus I got two core drills, and they're plus 150 each. So that's 300. I've got two downline, or let's say three down lights out of the tree. That's another plus one 50. So that's four 50 on top of the 10. It's 10,450. I just did that in my head, like in under a minute. Okay. This is how you scale your business. Now, I want to also help, you understand that, like, if. If you just do this without double checking the numbers, you. You could be hurting yourself. So what you got to do is calculate your daily overhead and figure out how much it costs you to run your business. I'm not gonna have time to go into that right now, but. But you have to calculate your daily overhead and figure out exactly how much it costs you to wake up before you even start working. How much is it costing you to run your business? How much is it costing you without materials? You know, cause that you don't have to buy materials if you're not working today. But you do have to pay for your. You do have to pay your laborers if you've got them on, salary. You have to pay your office, you have to pay for your trucks. There's a lot of expenses that happen no matter what happens to your sales. So calculate what that is and then double check it, and then when you're done with the job, go back and job cost it and say, hey, I thought that this job was going to take us eight hours. And I thought my labor cost on that was going to be somewhere around $1700. Okay, and go, man. It took us 10. So what needs to change? Okay, is there, is there something, I mean, be more efficient or do you need to raise your price to cover that more? Or maybe you thought was going to take eight and it only took six. Maybe you thought that it was going to be 500ft of wire and it took you a thousand feet of wire. Okay. This is how you make adjustments. So you have to start somewhere, you have to have a baseline somewhere. But then eventually you can be like, oh, I need to start adding about 5ft per wire more than what I'm thinking. And we use more connections than I thought. I guess our guys are screwing up some connections or we're doing some more hubs. There's lots of different variables here, but you need to go back in job cost and double check yourself. After a while, you'll figure out what your average is and you can go, gosh, 500 isn't even enough. We actually probably need to be at 525 or 550. Or maybe you're like, Dude, 500 is more than enough. So I'm going to keep it there because I'm able to sell a lot of jobs at that, and I'm actually going to go up a little bit higher and I'm going to test the market and see that when I get resistance. But I do know that I have some fluff. I know that my real number, I only need to be at 4:50. So if I had to negotiate, which I don't lead with, but if I had to in a slow period of time, I could give this person a deal and say, hey, we can't give you that deal now, but if you'll wait two months, we'll give you that deal. Give me a deposit today. We'll do it in two months when we slow down. And I'll have my guys come over there and we'll save you 500 bucks. A thousand bucks. So you get to control your pricing. So hopefully that helped. Flat rate pricing come up with. Exactly. And this could be true for maintenance, this could be true for new installs. Come up with what? The flat rate pricing. That works for you, I promise. It makes everything so easy. rather than going back and calculating, okay, we have two and a half connectors, and then we got this we got 22ft of wire and like, it's so complicated. I don't even know how people run a business that's that complicated. I only know simple like, like I don't want to deal with all that stuff. So start using flat rate pricing. Know that you're probably going to be wrong a couple times and that's okay. There's jobs where it's like, we didn't make as much as we thought, but then this job, we made up for it. So this isn't just like a per job basis. This is like per job, per job, per job. And like how do we do for the week, how do we do for the month, how do we do for the quarter, how do we do for the year? And you'll know the numbers don't lie. They'll tell you where you need to be and then it's easy. You'll know like, dude, my number's 400, my number's 500, whatever it is. And, and if you decide you need to do some plus variables, plus 150 for this, plus 250 for this, that's okay. But keep it super simple. Don't have a huge list that has, you know, 300 things on it. You have to search for five things that are the plus variables. And this makes it so easy. So that's all I got for you. in a minute we're going to have Nicole. Ah, on.

Emory Allen offers world class customer service and discounted contractor pricing

But I got to give a shout out real quick. What sets Emory Allen apart? Well, bulbs aside, they believe customer satisfaction should be the top priority. Always. Emory Allen goes out of their way to ensure lighting professionals have access to the best light sources built with the highest quality components suited specifically for the landscape lighting industry. At the end of the day, it's what's on the inside that counts. So take advantage of Emory Allen's world class customer service and get 10% off. Guys, all you need to do is email tomgmeryallen. com and mention that you heard about him here on Lighting for Profits. He'll hook you up. Don't go to their website unless you hate money and you want to pay more. I'm telling you, the homie hookup. Just email tom gary allen. com and he will hook you up with that discounted contractor pricing.

Nicole Rivera joins us to talk about growing your business

All right, well now the reason you've all gathered is to hear from our awesome guests. So should we do that? Should we get the background music going on so we can, have her, have her join us? I think we should. It's time. Let's get the music going all, right. Welcome to the show, Ms. Nicole Rivera. What's up, Nicole?

Hey, Ryan. I feel like I just walked out on a red carpet.

Yes.

That was awesome.

That's what we want. Listen, I'm not just. I don't. I hate just boring stuff, so we want to, like, you know, if you're going to learn, you might as well do it in style, so I'm glad you felt that way. That's what. That's what we're going for.

Yeah. I'm excited.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you. This is a, we did a video. We did a live the other day on, on your podcast. so now it's time to return the favor.

Yeah.

Do me a favor real quick. Just introduce yourself to those that don't know who Nicole Rivera is.

Yeah, so I, my name is Nicole. I actually live in Utah, same state as Ryan. So we're neighbors by about an hour.

Let's go.

But, I work full time at Jill's office. I've been here for almost a decade now. did a lot of years in HR and now in sales and marketing. and so we're just really passionate about helping business owners, you know, to grow. Helping to delegate their phones away from the owners, answering all their calls and booking their own jobs and actually growing their businesses. So we handle phone calls and phone management for all of our clients. And then my husband and I started our residential cleaning company a couple years ago. And, that was kind of, an exciting new venture to start off with. All the knowledge I've learned from a lot of the shows that I've been to, being at Jill's office, a lot of the clients that I've got to know over the years, literally thousands of business owners I've talked to about their businesses, ins and outs. I learned so much. And so, yeah, I'm excited to share everything that I know, about Jill's office, about our cleaning company, and about some other extra stuff, too, so.

Oh, sweet. Extra stuff. I love that.

You're delegating a whole part of your business to another service

Well, I definitely want to talk about all the extra stuff. I want to talk about Jill's, office, because we've had. Man, I've had several clients use your services. And I think back to when I was starting my business. I had no idea. I mean, I don't even know when Jill's office started, to be honest, but there was had to have been an answering service or something available at the time. I just had no clue. So I thought I Was supposed to just do that. And I kind of took a lot of pride as an entrepreneur. Being like, busy. I'm like, yeah, I answer the phone, I do the marketing, I do the bills, I do the installs. Like, at first I thought just that's what an entrepreneur is supposed to do. But man, it's like a wake up call when you go to events and conferences and you're like, wait, Jill's office is a thing? Wait, you guys, you guys do this? It's so cool.

Oh, man, what you're talking about too, that my first business was a retail brick and mortar business back in 2010. And I did pride myself on doing everything. I'm like, look at all these hats I'm wearing. I do the register. I, you know, I did everything. that business did close down after six years. That's when I found Jill's office. and I just thought that was the way to do it. Like you said, the owner does everything because nobody knows how to do it better than me. And so I pretty much burned myself into the ground. Burned out, found Jill's office. And I remember when I was talking to, who is now director of operations, Jaden, she was there from the very beginning. I came in on year, right before year one, and she explained what Jill's office did and said, we answer phones for our clients. We were really small back then, and all I heard was, you take this huge load off of business owners plates when they're trying to grow and they're overwhelmed. That's all. I heard you're delegating, a whole part of your business to another service so that you can focus on growing. I felt that so much in my whole body that I was sold that very day. And I've been here for almost a decade, like I said. So I believe in it 100%. And now when I run businesses, I hunt. Like, you need a team. You need people to delegate tasks to who are better than you and all these other things. I don't see how else to grow without having strong teams and strong processes in place.

Yeah, there's so many m. man, there's so many things that I want to like, break apart here because.

Yeah, sorry.

No, this is so good. It is the whole who, not how. And like, if people just realize like this one role, like just, just getting someone just to answer your phones. If, if that's. And I know Jill's office does like more than just like answer the phone, but like, even if you. If that was the only value that Came from it. That is so important. And most businesses owners, they're, They ask me for one thing every single week. How do I get more leads? How do I get more leads? And I'm like, are you sure? Because how do you handle the leads that you're getting? Like, do you answer every single phone call within two rings? And I. I know the answer.

Yep, we do, too.

And I remember I've told this story before. Maybe I've told it to you, but I got to say it again. I literally, I was in a tree doing maintenance. We had grown our business where we had two installers, but now we had service calls. And this was before led, so there was quite a bit of service calls. And I was our maintenance guy, which I was really proud to be. You know, I'm, the maintenance guy now, too. I'm in a tree just doing my thing, and I just thought I was doing what was right. Missed a phone call, which was normal. Call the lady back. I'm in Texas. Okay. Super Southern. Sweet lady. So nice. She was so nice. I couldn't hate her. I wanted to hate her, but I couldn't. And she was just like, oh, you know what? Thanks so much for calling back. But we got a hold of another lighting company, and they're coming out tomorrow. And, you know, I'm like, okay, well, no worries. I can, you know, I can come out. Heck, I can come out right now. You know, I come out today. Oh, no, it's okay. I, will probably just go with them. And I was like, what, What do you mean? You just go like, I can come out like, are you not listening? And again, I couldn't even get mad at her because she was so sweet.

If you have a business, you have to answer your phone

So I hang up the phone call. At the time, our average job was $5,000. I just lost $5,000 because I didn't answer a phone call like, are you kidding me? And then I start doing the math. I'm like, you know what? There's other people that weren't even as nice as her that didn't answer my phone that I kept trying to play phone tag with, or they just wouldn't. Wouldn't respond. I'm like, 5, 10, 15, 20. It was like, $60,000 just over the past, like, couple months that I could document in my head real quick of lost opportunity. That. Yeah, that was the day I literally put an ad out to hire an office manager. And that was the scariest thing to do, because I'm like, I can't afford an office manager. But the that math alone just mathed out to like, well, I can't afford not to. Had I known about Jill's office, I would, I would have already had Jill's, office in place, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everything you're saying makes 100% sense. Like, it. We do talk ourselves out of things. I've talked to prospects in the past that are like, I, you know, I can manage my phones. You know, missing one call is not a big deal. I answer all my calls, and then when they look at their call logs, you know, it's not, it's not 100% accurate. even then, though, like, we went 247 a couple years ago because we have a lot of clients in the trades doing plumbing, electrical, H vac and they get emergency calls after hours. That was really important to them. So we really encompass the whole 247 of managing your phones. Even if you have people working in the office because you like someone right there, you know, working face to face with you, they like breaks, they like lunches, they like vacation also. So do you want to take over their job when they leave? No. Jill's office is a great backup even in those situations. And so what I think right now is that not answering your phone is non negotiable. If you have a business, you have to answer because that story you told happens to everybody. so if you can imagine, when I started my cleaning company, I already had a leg up on a lot of other competition because I was like, every call is getting answered every single time. text messages, everything's getting responded to in, like, record speed. So, yeah, it's.

It's so annoying too. Like, as a consumer, I need my carpets cleaned. I need anything done around my house. When I don't have. I'm just like, sitting around all day, like, wonder what I should do. Oh, yeah, I should call and get the service done. Like, I have, like a 10 minute window. Like, I just finished work, but I got to go pick up my kids or I got to do whatever. And, like, I get so pissed off when I call and no one answers right. And it's even worse when I leave a voicemail and no one returns whatever. But I'm telling you, like, I, don't know what percentage. It's a very high percentage that don't answer their phone. And I'm like, dude, you, just lost my business. Like, all you had to do is answer the phone. And I didn't even care what your price was. I just need you to come out and they missed it. It's crazy how much that still happens.

Yeah. I mean, if you've got the time or somebody in office to do some market research on your. Maybe on your competition. I do like to have my VA do calls to other cleaning companies in the area for one, to see if they're able to give quotes online. Because everything you were talking about with flat rate pricing. You're speaking my language. House cleaners don't like to do flat rate pricing and they almost all refuse to just give instant pricing without going out to the home. And I'm like, you've got to get pricing to them quickly and you've got to get them to say yes as quick as possible in the emotion like what you were talking about. but yeah, there's so many aspects to it, but I think we get in our own way and we make up these obstacles of why we can't do things and why we can't grow our businesses. But, yeah, it's all about growth, right?

Oh, yeah.

Nicole owns Lavender Lush Cleaning, a residential cleaning company

Well, let's talk about your residential cleaning company a little bit too, because I think this is so fascinating. I'm like, what? How is Nicole this amazing superstar? You work full time at Jill's office. You are a team member of another company, M. But you also own your own business.

I do, yeah. You know, I've had. I know that I am. I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I was meant to own businesses and I don't think I can live without having one. So I think just previous trauma of my first business, just a really, you know, hard experience, very emotional, kind of made me afraid to move forward. But I knew that I would one day. eventually. I felt like it was. I felt like it was time. I felt like I had the information. So I told my husband, you know what? I think I'm going to go with residential house cleaning. Because I had a couple different ideas of what I wanted to start. And he's like, well, why that? And I just thought, well, I can relate to it the most. My husband and I are super busy people. We have kids, we love a clean home, we have pets. But every time I would try to hire a cleaning company, it would be annoying because no one would get back to me on time. No one seemed to be able to just give me pricing without coming out to my house. And I kept thinking, like, that's ridiculous. Like, just tell me what I might be paying. and then I might just spend my money on you. Like, I don't have time to go through all of these Things with you. So I just kept feeling like, oh, man, I could just create this really amazing service, make it so easy, go out and make people's lives easier. So, yeah, we started planning for Lavender Lush Cleaning. I always like to come up with a name first that means something to me. And I'm like, now's my chance for something with purple in it because it's my favorite color. And m. What the interest. My husband was like, how are we going to do that when we work full time? I'm like, well, people. Like, you need people. And he's like, how are you going to find people? I'm like, you're talking to the hiring lady. I'm hiring at Jill's office. I've got this whole thing down. Like, don't worry about it. And so we did all the back end stuff of, business name, logo, website, all of that stuff. And I ended up throwing up the company on local service ads right away. Not right away, in conjunction with hiring. So I posted for hiring and posted our local service ads at the same time.

Nice.

Crazy. Yeah. And so we started doing interviews at a coffee shop, found our first employee and told them, look, because I'm all about transparency, this is a new company. We don't have any clients yet, but we're already advertising. so it's going to be kind of slow to start with jobs for you. And then it'll pick up from there. Like, are you okay with that? Are you okay with the way we have the pay structured? And you just gotta find the right person that's able to do those things in that moment. And she was. And then I think it was a couple days later I got my first client. that was exciting. And they're still a client. We're three years old now, and she's still our client. every two weeks. Yeah. And so it just kind of grew from there. I think two weeks after she started, we needed. We hired two more people. Six months later, I hired, an office person. And then about six months after that, I hired a gm. I might do some of these things in different orders if I were to do it again. But it worked for us. It was more about moving fast when we knew we needed something instead of sitting on it too long. And so it definitely is hard to juggle all our time and things like that. But it helps when you have really strong people play.

You started your company three years ago and now have two employees

So wait, so what was the timeline of that? You had your gm? How, how fast?

we're three years old and about a year, about A year and a half. About a year. I can't remember the exact date. I had an office person in first, to be, like, a face in the office. They came in about six months into the business, and then, I want to say about six months later brought in our gm. Yeah.

Okay, so you're a freaking genius, because I'm telling you, I. I work with, You probably know more business owners than me, but I work. I work with hundreds. And I'm just telling you, these people are doing, like, millions of dollars a year. Not all of them, but there. There is a path to success, and you have it figured out. Like, it's all about people. And most people start their business not knowing or thinking that, like, in the lighting world is best. Especially, like, we're, like, designers and artists and, like, we're about, like, creating this experience and stuff like that. And we get so hung up in that that we forget that, like, wait, this is a business. Like, we need people to replace us. Like, we should just be, like, the visionary and maybe going and doing, like, the big sales, but we shouldn't be doing everything. So the fact that you, like, built that team within a couple of years is epic. That's amazing.

Thanks. Yeah, it's. I mean, I've had struggles, too. We've gone through hard moments, learning, experiences. But we. We definitely went into it with the mindset of, well, for one, we can't be the cleaners. We can't even work in the office. We can't answer the phones. So what do we do? There's no way to do it without people and processes in place. And so we kind of. That was our focus from day one. So obviously, a lot of our revenue goes to payroll. We're payroll heavy because of people. but that's kind of what the idea was. I was challenged to see if I could start a cleaning company that wasn't using 1099 contractors to go in and clean. I really wanted a team that wore uniforms, that knew our core values, team to really build brand recognition. I feel like that was what I was wanting. So w. Two employees and, that was kind of the focus from the beginning. And, yeah, it's been great. We're still learning. Like, I'm really happy with the business, but I always feel an itch to start something new. I keep a notebook for new ideas.

Nice.

Anybody that knows me, I have to put it down. Otherwise, it sticks in my head and I can't focus. So, yeah.

What's been, like, the most challenging thing about building that Business up until now.

Well, the silly answer is vacuums. I mean, if you own a cleaning company, vacuums are like the bane of your existence. They, they break, they burn out. You know, your employees, they want something light that can move around a lot. So which means you can't really do heavy duty commercial ones. But that's kind of surface level. I don't deal with the vacuums anymore. My team is so amazing at taking them apart and Frankensteining pieces together to create a whole new vacuum.

What's the go to right now? If you, if you're gonna go buy a new vacuum, which one do you go? You go with.

They love the shark. what is that? That shark vacuum. It, like, it moves. It's really, really light.

It's got like the ball head on it that turns easy.

No, not those Dysons. But the thing is it doesn't have the, it doesn't tangle any hair. And I don't want my staff to have to cut out hair from, you know, it keeps things a lot cleaner. And we do like to ask clients sometimes if they have a vacuum that they prefer that we use. Especially, like, you know, if they have pets and things like that. Sometimes there's so much hair. So there's some of those little things that you, you feel like you have to make decisions about. And then eventually, like, my, my whole thing is, like, if I'm thinking about it and trying to make a decision, can I just give that to somebody else? Like, can my GM just decide what vacuum to buy? Do I have to look at the vacuums? Do I have to approve it? Like, do I trust her? Because if I hired her and I don't trust her, what was the whole point? So you got to trust your people to make decisions. And I know she's not going to buy 20 vacuums when we don't need them. She's going to buy what we need and she's going to look for the best price and the ones that work. Right. I love it. I don't need to oversee that. but really the obstacle we're always trying to overcome is just growth. Trying to figure out how to manage the growth, to have enough staff to make sure that they are providing a really good quality service still. and constantly getting in new clients and getting in front of people.

The, uh, cleaning industry, residential cleaning is difficult because

The, cleaning industry, residential cleaning is difficult because there are a lot of people that like to do it on the side. So I never try to battle it out on Facebook groups. Like, that's not my space. But people do recommend us There, which is great. If you're looking for a professional company with a team, you know, that is not just someone doing it on the side without insurance, then we're the right company for you, but you're going to pay a lot more.

Yeah.

So knowing where your people are and where you should be marketing, always things that are in my head.

Yeah. Very cool.

If you were to start a new cleaning company who would you hire first

You mentioned, you might do it in a different order next time. The growth. If you were to start a new cleaning company and we go into business and we're gonna start a business in Nebraska, who would you hire first?

So what I didn't mention is I also have a va. I think I would have my VA really early on. And if I can figure out how to do it, I would have, I mean, I would have a gm, even earlier, someone to run things and start the hiring from the, from the get go rather than myself. that's the only thing that I would really change. And I mean before we did all of that too, just building out policies, handbooks, processes, pricing, all of that stuff was for the most part, figured out and then we built on it from there. Because of course you have to evolve as your business grows and you learn new things. so that's kind of the order. Somebody had told me before, if they were to start businesses again, they would hire a GM from the beginning. And so that kind of stuck with me. And I can see how that would help a ton. because their main focus is their job, where you're looking at like growth and how do I expand and how do I get more customers. You can have somebody in office really quickly focus like more hyper focused on internal things.

That's such a good answer. And it's, it's amazing because the, like, I think this is like the, the number one common denominator that entrepreneurs, we all struggle with is like, we're not good managers. We're not naturally good at recruiting and hiring and training and dealing with personalities. Like, we just want to go, like, make tons of money and here's the vision and here, like, I can go sell anything and like, why not just recognize that? Why not just own it and be like, there are people that actually love what we hate. They would love to get in there and start building systems and managing people and putting structure into place. Like, that's, it's just genius.

Thanks. Yeah, I mean our GM is, is amazing. You have somebody who loves to manage the team and loves the people because somebody. Well, we did realize, that's one of the reasons why I would go with the GM really early because your people need loving on in their own ways. You know, they need to know that you care. They have, you know, different personality types. Someone needs to understand that and needs to make sure that their job satisfaction is high. and if you're not able to be in their day to day checking in on people, making sure that they have what they need, that's when people start to feel like another number. You, hear that all the time. I was just another number. No one cared about me. And I don't think that those just being in HR for so long, I don't think that that's true at companies. I think that the focus is, it's just unfocused. I guess I should say, everybody cares about people but if you're not focusing on it, then the people in that group don't feel cared about. So you need someone whose job is to focus on those people. and that's what really. Yeah, that's what's really made a huge difference with the team.

How much time are you spending on your business now

So how much time are you spending on that business now? Like I was going to ask you, you've got all this HR experience with Jill's office. I mean you've done I think recruiting and hiring and training and cool culture and all this stuff. Are you doing any of that with your business or is that your GM doing that?

So it's usually our gm, she does like bi weekly huddles because we try to stay, I guess you would stay remote. You know, we don't want people working in office and staying in office and coming to the office. So they come in as little as possible. But I recognize that they need to touch base face to face, go over training, things like that keep morale high. so I don't do much with it. I do make sure we have things like you know, a Christmas party in place and then I do meet with our GM to make sure we're doing, you know, different things depending on how our employees like. And we're a really small company so having a huge like Jill Con we have every year, you know, that doesn't work for my small cleaning company. so it's mostly my GM that carries things out. But I do like to pop in, because I do see when we get, you know, good Google reviews, I like to put that in a Slack channel that everybody sees where you can give shout outs individually to people. And so I do make sure to go in there from time to time so they can See that I'm active in there, and I do like to stop by in some of the huddles to see how people are doing. Overall, I would say about two hours a week. if that maybe sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on what we have to do for, you know, end of year stuff or if we're working on a big project. But.

But yeah, that's amazing. I'm so jealous. You've done such a good job.

Million Dollar Admin Academy is a great way to increase employee retention

let's talk about, what's coming up. We got Home Service Workshop, Million Dollar Admin Academy. I'm really excited. This. I know I've already had a couple clients sign up for it just because it's. It's, it's truly, like, I. I guess I identify as a business coach, but really what we're building is a community. It's. It's so much more than coaching. This is like, this is way bigger than me. This isn't a community. And the thing is, like, information or tactics only gets you so much. You need to build a team, you need partners, you need resources. And so when, when I heard what you guys were doing, I'm like, dude, everyone needs to go to Million Dollar Admin Academy or they need, like, if I didn't have an office manager right now and I wanted one, I would hire one right now and send them to your boot camp to be like, okay, this is day one training.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think the very first. So when I started working at Jill's office, I got sent to a convention. I think it was a roofing convention, back in 20, I want to say 2016, 2017. And that was my first time being exposed to one of those types of shows. I didn't participate a lot as necessarily a vendor, but I did get a dose of, like, what it all entails. And it was pretty crazy. It was a really big one in Vegas. It was overwhelming. Then my second one was the huge convention and it was in Atlanta, and I actually had to do. I had to. I think I did a presentation there. super nervous, really scared. That was like my true experience in one of these shows. And I remember how excited I was going. And I felt so important to the company. Like, they're putting me in this show, they're paying for me to fly, paying for me, my hotel room, my food, everything. Like, they feel like I'm really, I felt really special, like really valued, really trusted. That's where I feel like that the initial thoughts came from. For mda, giving your admin person, a Chance to go out outside of the office, wherever they work, and show them that you actually trust them and you value them. Let's invest in your education and help you level up. That's kind of the initial, I guess, motivator for mda. For myself, I thought, this is a great way to show your employees that you really, really trust them and care about them. in turn, it creates amazing retention. I mean, if you have an admin on your team that does so many things, like you just rely on them so much, if you just imagine for a second that they leave you because for whatever reason, it doesn't really matter. it's so much easier when you don't feel valued to leave a company.

Right.

So much harder to just get up and leave. Everybody will have bad days. Our motto for myself, and I mean my team is, you can never quit on a bad day. You have to quit on a good day. Then you know that you're actually making the right decision. People leave all the time. They might have a bad day and say, you know what? I quit. Like this, this sucks. I just want to leave. If that freaks you out at all, you should be focusing on how to make sure they feel valued as much as possible. Create really good retention in your company. And then after that, just the content itself. We want to make sure that people in these positions feel super supported, that they can keep up with, all the changes in technology. make sure that they're really, organized, really efficient. I'm going to be, providing them with a lot of HR basics that they can help with in the office. If you need help with job postings and, you know, pre screening, scheduling interviews. There's a lot.

Yeah, it's so good. I, I think about when I had my business. First of all, I didn't even go to stuff like, right. And if I did, I went to maybe one or two things. I never even thought of taking my team because I'm like, well, they gotta work and they can answer the phone. I didn't have the backup, the Jill's office backup. Right. and then I was like, what did I take back to them? Like, a list of demands, like, this is what we're doing. This is what you're gonna do. Like, no, that's not how it is. Like, when you, when you bring your team, like you said, it's such an investment in them. And just imagine from their position, like, how that would feel. You went through that personally, it's like, man, this is so cool. I, like, I'm Part of this company. Like I'm an integral part and this is a career, not a job. Now like in nine months when I have that bad day, I'm not going to quit. I might threaten to quit. I might quit for the day and then come back the next day and be like I was having a bad day. So.

Going to shows as an owner can be overwhelming for your team

Well, that what you pointed out too about going as an owner, going as an owner and bringing all of that information back is overwhelming for your team. It can be really frustrating. You created absolutely zero buy in but how much of it do you actually remember to bring back to your team? It's really hard to retain all that information when you bring a team member that, that you're paying, to come to these things. Their sole focus is their job and they want to absorb all of this information. I have been in that situation where I'm going to shows and I'm documenting everything that I can and creating a plan. So when I get back, I know exactly what I'm going to do. it's hard to do that as an owner. You're networking, you're talking to other people, you're hopping between different things. You might be working on some business stuff while you're there also. And so having someone from your team there, it's, it's a huge game changer. It helps you out so much.

Yeah, I just, I think it's such that's why I like that we're doing this together because if you're an owner and you're like going to go to one of the shows, let's just say hypothetically, light it up. But it honestly doesn't matter. If you're going to sales boost, you're going to responseicon, going to whatever, like bring your admin, bring your office manager, send them to this. I was just looking at the pricing. Is it, is that a typo is only 300 bucks to 99?

No, that's right. It's only 299. It's not hard at all. It's going to be amazing. So much value and we're just there to build. We want to make sure admins feel community. Also we want to see a room full of people in a position that handles all of these administrative tasks and we want them to feel very supported and we want them to go back to your business later and just on fire to roll out all these things and just so excited to help grow your business.

Yeah, I love it. And again, it's their job as an owner. Let's Face it, sometimes we go to these things as kind of a vacation. We're there to learn, you know, and stuff like that. But we have different intentions than someone who's like getting paid to be there. For sure.

Oh, yeah. yeah. And I mean Light It Up Expo. I can't be in your show and I really want to be, which is why I'm bringing somebody to be in your show and to get everything that they can out of it because I'm sure yours is going to be fantastic.

I can't wait. I mean, this is the first time and normally I would be nervous, but I've done a lot of things for my first time, so I don't even care. I'm excited because it's not my first time doing a show. It's not my first time doing trainings. This is going to be epic because we've learned a lot over the past four or five years. I've been doing this and this is just. Oh my gosh, it's going to be so huge because we're bringing together all these outdoor lighting industries and bringing them as one and then just the opportunity to network with these other shows. I mean, there's going to be people that are going to Million dollar admin that weren't going to go to Light it up or sells boost or responsicon, whatever it is. There's just. There's going to be a lot of opportunities at this show for all of us.

Yeah, I think so too. Then the networking opportunities themselves are 100% worth it. Even without the shows, just being in a building with all of the people that will be there. honestly, that's like what I say I've learned. Where I've learned so much information about starting a business was from talking to so many people at these show, including people there like yourself. Like I met Kurt at a show from Responsibid. I've met so many people in like really valuable relationships. And now you have someone that you can lean on if you, if you are looking for, you know, accurate information. Because again, like you said earlier about pricing, I do see people all the time in pay, in, you know, Facebook pages asking, how do you price things? If you aren't talking to somebody who's already, already surpassed, where your business is, you're asking the wrong person. You need someone who's already made it that can give you sound information.

So I know what we were talking. I think you were on there. We were talking about how we have these like five shows in one and we all met at each other's shows. You know, like, I went to Responsicon, ah, at ah, one time. That's where I met Kurt. That's probably where I met Jill's office too, I think.

Probably.

Yeah. I think it was at his show. I went to Sales Boost last year. I spoke there. it's just, it's pretty cool. Like, and you know, now I can tell my wife I don't meet everybody online. She gets, she thinks it's weird. I meet guys online, but now I meet some of them in person in Orlando.

Yeah. Yeah. And it is, honestly, it is fun. It's. I love to travel. I know some people don't. They like to stay home and stay close to home. I mean if I could travel every single week, I would, My husband would hate it because he's not like an on the go type of person. And I'm constantly like, where are we going?

That's awesome.

I love it.

That's good.

Million Dollar Admin is the first of its kind

all right, what else do we got to talk about? Anything else with Jill's office or Million Dollar Admin?

I think you kind of covered it. I mean, I'm just excited to see people at, I mean even for like yourself. Million, Dollar Admin is the first of its kind. It's our first time doing this. But I'm just so excited because the people that I'm bringing have been with Jill's office for a long time, have been doing the things that we're teaching about, you know, HR sales, we're going over organize, we're going over tech stacks, we're going over marketing 101, you know, basic level things that an admin can help with. we've been doing it for years and we've also done administrative work. We've had Jills, you know, we've trained Jills, hundreds of Jills over the last 10 years that we have so much collective knowledge that we're going to bring to Million Dollar Admin. And so it is, I mean it's going to be just. You can't miss it. Your admin can't miss it. You need to invest in them if you want them to stay long term, you want them to grow and just be better in your business. you have to come. Basically, you cannot come.

I love it. There's so many good things that come from it. And I think the fact that you're teaching just like, no, this is what we do. This is what we did. This is what we do. It's not theory. I Think what's going to happen too. And I don't know if this is. Maybe you guys have something planned or not, but you get those people in the room now, they have, their own group, they have their own community. And so, like, they get back and they're like, hey, did you try to implement what Nicole was talking about? Am I doing this wrong? Like, I'm struggling here. And you know, they call the other person, like, yeah, it worked for me. Did that. What, What'd you do? And they're going to find out, like, where, where the crack is. And like, it's going to be an opportunity for them to have their own networking opportunity. Instead of them being like my old office manager, she had. I, I don't know how she stayed so long. Like, we didn't, we didn't show her like this career ladder or anything. Like. And it was just like in the back of the warehouse in this small office, there was no community. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, that poor lady, like, we could have, we could have been so much better to her, you know?

Yeah. I mean, you know, you learn from those situations too. But our goal was to have a, community. So we're going to build a group so that they can lean back on each other and ask questions and see maybe how, somebody else in the group implemented something that they learned. Because there are going to be, you know, everybody's going to have different, maybe job duties at each business. So we want to try to tailor it as much as we can. Some people might be dealing with payroll, while other admins don't do anything with payroll. Things like that.

Good thing I muted that sneeze. no, that's gonna be awesome. I think it's, it's just, it's really good. So, guys, if you have not yet, go to homeserviceworkshop. com there you can see it's like, choose your show. If you want to just go to Million Dollar Admin Academy, you can do that. And that's the thing. Even if you're going to make an excuse and be like, I don't like to travel, I don't want to go. You could just send your office manager. You could just send your admin. Like, there's so many options. That's why I like, this opportunity is like, you could bring your whole team. We have, we have people doing that. They're bringing their whole team. And like, someone's going to million dollar admin, someone's going to sales booth, someone's going to light it up. Even within light it up, someone's going to go to the landscape lighting breakout. Someone's going to go to the permanent. So this show can be whatever you want it to be. And that's kind of the magic behind it.

The Park Hopper is a great way to go to multiple shows

So go get your tickets, guys. Don't wait. Don't wait.

Yeah, and if you're like me and you can't make up your mind, the show Hopper is amazing. I think it's like, what is it, 1500?

Yeah.

You can literally shop, just hop around. I love, I'm a Hopper. I would love to hop around to different shows and I know my brain will say squirrel and then I'll go to another show. And so if you're like me, that's a really great option too, so that you can kind of, you know, visit with each one. and isn't it right outside of Universal Studios? It's like literally right outside. It's at the entrance with the family or just yourself.

I know.

Really good opportunity to have some fun.

Well, I'm glad you actually brought the Park Hopper. Park Hopper Show Hopper. I, I forget about it but like we used to sell. Last year I sold landscape lighting, live tickets for eighteen hundred dollars. That, that was my just one show. And I forget because, you know, you hear like, Your show's only 299. Mine's 400. So 1500, like almost sounds expensive when you compare it to the 299, the 400. But I'm telling you guys, $1500 is an epic value. You can just go to all the shows and you get, I don't know, do you get the recordings for that? I can't remember, but yes.

Yeah, that's, that's an amazing value. It sounds like a lot when you compare it to like the 299 that you guys are charging. But I'm telling you that's not a lot. To go to four or five different shows and hang out all week, get lunch every day, it's, that's a amazing deal.

Nicole, congratulations on your success as a business owner yourself

All right, well, Nicole, thank you so much for coming on here. Thanks for taking time out of your day. congratulations on your success as a business owner yourself. That's freaking amazing. And congrats, on your success at Jill's office too. It's cool to get, to know you better and look forward to hanging out with you in Orlando.

Same. I'm really excited.

You can send us an email or call us. What's the best way to do that

Okay, guys, go get your tickets now. Don't wait. If you have questions, reach out. Oh, and if you want to get in touch with Nicole or Jill's office. What's the best way to do that?

The best way would be to send us an email. You can email us at let's do salesillsoffice. com.

Okay.

That would be the best one to get routed to me. and you can also give us a call. Let me see if I remember our phone number off the top of my head. 385-393-1122. When you work somewhere for 10 years, almost ingrained, like my grandma's phone number now. So, yep, you can do that. You can send me an email. we can do a discovery call. If you have any questions, I'm happy to help.

Yeah, Nicole's a wealth of knowledge, not. Not just for answering the phone. I mean, this is way bigger than that. This is literally building culture and hiring and training and all this stuff. But I should say this. Jill's office is an excellent resource, even if you have an office manager, like you said, like, well, what happens at 5 o'clock when everyone leaves? And, a lot of people that are wealthy, they work till 5:00, you know, so they'll get home at 6:00 and want to call and get appointments and stuff like that. And you probably have a form on your website or whatever, but people are still calling, leaving messages. So even if it's an overflow, even if it's a backup to a backup, Jill's office has so many different options. They'll. They'll build a custom plan for you. So reach out salesoffice. com yes. Or the phone number that you said.

385-385-393-1122.

Okay. All right, let's measure the call volume and the emails. Let's see what happens. Guys, reach out to Nicole. I'll see everyone in Orlando. Looking forward to hanging out.

Thanks, guys.

Hey, guys. See you next month. Let's go.