Relationships Trump Transactions

Coach Josh and I use Marco Polo to communicate during the week. He allows me to send questions as I have them. He listens and responds when he gets the chance. I'm very grateful to have Josh Melton in my corner as we grow C3 to the next level in 2023, which is to add the second building block and earn over $100,000 income from the cleaning business. Josh and I had an exchange on November 8th and 9th of 2022 that was so interesting to me. I've never heard it talked about before in the cleaning groups or other podcasts. I had to cover it here.

Cleaning is a business, but a business is not merely a ledger with a list of transactions. It's easy to pull up a profit and loss report and see all of the income and expense transactions. It's easy to see the text and numbers printed on the screen or page and assume you're looking at the cleaning business. I don't believe a business merely consists of transactions. A business is relationships. A cleaning business is a group of humans cleaning for other humans, all of which have personalities, beliefs, families, interests. It's easy to measure a business in transactions. That's what our accountants do. It's not easy to measure the relational strength of our business.

Josh poses an interesting point in his Marco Polo to me. "I believe that you can trust someone that you don't respect. But I don't believe you can respect someone you don't trust." I agree with him. I can think of people right now that I could allow into my house around my family, but I don't respect them. Therefore, respect is greater than trust. How do you earn trust? I've talked about this a ton. On the "Optimizer's Workshop with Dave Reeks", I defined the 3 C's to build trust as a cleaner. You've got to have excellent character and be the type of person that others can trust. You've got to provide an amazing cleaning service. In other words, you've got to handle the transactions of cleaning with excellence. This includes the cleaning itself and surely the transaction of invoices and payments. You've got to be consistent in your cleaning service and everything you do in dealing with your customers. If you show up with great cleaning and character over a long time, you will develop trust. Another way to build trust is to give it. Others won't trust you if you don't trust them. Trust is mutual. I'm going to add a fourth C. You've got to have compassion for other people and not be selfish. This is so foundational. Show love for your fellow human.

When you put this all together. Start with compassion and character. Become a great cleaner and cleaning service. Handle your transactions with excellence and trust. Give trust. Do this over time. This will earn your trust from your customers. Keep doing it consistently over time and that trust will turn into something greater. It's respect. When your customers respect you, they will want to do business with you for a long time. Most clients will grow with you as you grow mutual respect. However, some clients will only ever think of you as "just the cleaner". Become a person of trust and respect and you'll attract the right ones

I absolutely love this mindset and it thrills me to build this type of cleaning business in my community. Everything hinges on relationships, not transactions. I hope you enjoy this interaction between Josh an I on Marco Polo.