Don't Be a Hoarder

06/08/20 • 26 min

So many companies are ultra competitive, trying to dominate their local area. They hang onto proprietary information and get patents to own their knowledge. This is great and definitely needed so others don't steal your inventions and creative processes. But is it always good to keep your specialized knowledge close to the vest? I believe we are blessed with the ability to learn and comprehend and obligated to give back to help others. I'll even go so far to say that hoarding your knowledge in hopes of retaining your competitive advantage is selfish and unhealthy. My hope is that this episode opens your eyes that sharing your knowledge actually endears you to your target client and will not only increase your business, but serve your community.

During the peak of COVID-19, I was home a lot more than usual and had extra time on my hands. I knew that I needed to dig into the CDC's cleaning & disinfecting recommendations. This lead me into a journey in learning, where I became an expert in disinfecting properly. My next goal was to share this knowledge with my community to empower others to be safe during a difficult time.

Carfagno Cleaning Facebook Page - I wrote a large summary of two weeks of research on disinfecting, wrote out a 5-episode FB Live series with challenges to share on my business page and mom's groups. I created an intro video on my Carfagno Cleaning FB page and shared it to my personal page and Teresa shared it to the locals mom's group. By the time of my first FB Live episode, the intro had 700 views and 8 shares. The content focused on "90% of people are disinfecting incorrectly" and I would teach how to fix the 9 mistakes. The first Live had 5 viewers and a few comments. This Facebook Live series turned into the "9 Mistakes in Disinfecting".
MCBA - Our weekly business-owner's networking group had to go virtual and many were still trying to figure out how to keep their employees safe. I presented a brief summary of my 9 mistakes to equip others. Tom McKee from Edward Jones texted me afterward. This is the same Tom that I met through LinkedIn ("Because You're a Business Person That Cleans"), who introduced me to Marcy (his OM) at Edward Jones for an office cleaning estimate. Again, seeds! Tom loved the tips and was interested in having me teach the Greater Montco Chamber this content. That is in the works. I was not afraid to open my mouth and help with my knowledge.
Chamber of Commerce - I joined the Indian Valley Chamber in October as the only cleaner inside of 300 members. I met with Ken Byler ("Get a Name for Doing") a few weeks later. He helped me a ton and then came onto a SMART Cleaning Tribe call as an expert. He was impressed at my facilitating skills and proposed to our chamber president that I co-lead a Zoom call for the chamber. I was honored. The call went great. We had 25 members on the call, running companies from 5 to 100+ employees. I was able to promote my business! Afterward, I connected with 5 members that engaged on the call and sent them VidYard messages as thank you's. The chamber would like me to facilitate a webinar on my "9 Mistakes in Disinfecting" next!

Read the rest of this article at the Solo Cleaning School website

Carfagno Cleaning Facebook Page - I wrote a large summary of two weeks of research on disinfecting, wrote out a 5-episode FB Live series with challenges to share on my business page and mom's groups. I created an intro video on my Carfagno Cleaning FB page and shared it to my personal page and Teresa shared it to the locals mom's group. By the time of my first FB Live episode, the intro had 700 views and 8 shares. The content focused on "90% of people are disinfecting incorrectly" and I would teach how to fix the 9 mistakes. The first Live had 5 viewers and a few comments. This Facebook Live series turned into the "9 Mistakes in Disinfecting".
MCBA - Our weekly business-owner's networking group had to go virtual and many were still trying to figure out how to keep their employees safe. I presented a brief summary of my 9 mistakes to equip others. Tom McKee from Edward Jones texted me afterward. This is the same Tom that I met through LinkedIn ("Because You're a Business Person That Cleans"), who introduced me to Marcy (his OM) at Edward Jones for an office cleaning estimate. Again, seeds! Tom loved the tips and was interested in having me teach the Greater Montco Chamber this content. That is in the works. I was not afraid to open my mouth and help with my knowledge.
Chamber of Commerce - I joined the Indian Valley Chamber in October as the only cleaner inside of 300 members. I met with Ken Byler ("Get a Name for Doing") a few weeks later. He helped me a ton and then came onto a SMART Cleaning Tribe call as an expert. He was impressed at my facilitating skills and proposed to our chamber president that I co-lead a Zoom call for the chamber. I was honored. The call went great. We had 25 members on the call, running companies from 5 to 100+ employees. I was able to promote my business! Afterward, I connected with 5 members that engaged on the call and sent them VidYard messages as thank you's. The chamber would like me to facilitate a webinar on my "9 Mistakes in Disinfecting" next!

Read the rest of this article at the Solo Cleaning School website

Previous Episode

Get a Big Dream

Have you ever had a dream that kept you up at night? I have. In March 2010, I was making up creative adventure stories with my 5-year-old son Kenny at bedtime where he was the main character in the stories. We were connecting so much as father & son, that my wife encouraged me to record them. I listened. By the end of the summer of 2010, I had a complete 10-book adventure, fantasy series filling up 22 hours of mp3. As I searched for the next step, a deep desire welled inside of me to not only convert the stories into a book for my son but to get them published. 'What if these stories could help other families?' This thought and desire was confirmed when I was given a bible verse as a mission statement - Luke 1:17 - He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
I quickly realized that I needed more resources to complete this dream. We were in a lot of debt at the time and I was cleaning houses 5-6 days per week, thus I lacked time and money. I also lacked the resource of knowledge on how to write a book and get it published. It's amazing how a powerful dream can get you to make changes in your life that you didn't think possible. There were 3 major changes we made:

MONEY - Teresa and I dug into Dave Ramsey's strategy to eliminate debt to free up money. We used this system to pay off $170,000 in debt in just over a decade. During the writing of the book, we cleared at least a third.
KNOWLEDGE - I dug into the craft of writing to produce the best resource I could for other families. I learned the art & craft of professional writing through critique groups, mentors that were published authors, joining SCBWI, attending conferences & workshops, and studying the successful books in my genre (children's adventure/fantasy). During 2011-2012, I read and studied over 120 of these similar books. I was able to get audio versions of many and listen while I was cleaning. For example, I listened to the entire Harry Potter series in 1 month. My writing improved dramatically during this time as I developed my voice. The connections I made in the author's world lead me to my book editors, mentors, and ultimately my publisher. After 5 1/2 years of hard work that I loved, Arctic Land published on 12/15/15. I would like to give a huge thank you to four men who helped me through this process:
- Christopher Maselli (Author of over 40 children's books and writing coach at Writing Momentum) - Thank you Chris for replying to my email that lead to a friendship over the 5 years I wrote my book. You became my #1 writing mentor and encourager!
- Darren Shearer (Founder of High Bridge Books and host of the Theology of Business Podcast) - Thank you for taking a chance on an unpublished author with no representation by an agent. You also became a friend and mentor to me on this journey, helping to bring my creation to life!
- Billy Altman (Missionary at the Altman Crew with FamilyLife/CRU) - Thank you for being my friend and spiritual mentor/accountability partner for many years. Thank you for introducing me to Darren and for doing the graphic design work on the Arctic Land GAD Logbook & SMARTMaps!

Read the rest of this article at the Solo Cleaning School website

Next Episode

Boost My Post

In my last cleaning business update, I did not hoard my knowledge and it lead to opportunities to help my community. Since we're in the middle of a global pandemic, I'm doing whatever I can to serve my community in my expertise of cleaning. In part, it's actual cleaning and in part, knowledge. In this week's update, let's continue the theme of serving.

I served my clients in a way I've personally never done, but it made a HUGE difference! A veterinary hospital I've cleaned for nearly 2 years is close to wrapping up a 4,000 square foot expansion. We've known that the cleaning scope would expand, but the goal was never to maximize what we could make. It's always to maximize the experience and goals of my client. I already shared that I met with the owner a month ago to talk about the cleaning. They desired to create a cleaning plan to incorporate daily cleaning by staff, weekly cleaning by a staff member for extra money, and weekly deep & presentation cleaning services from my company. I asked if there was a map of the new building. She said that one of the staff was making one. Instead, I volunteered. "What if I create a full map of this hospital, make my recommendation on the various cleaning items, and color code it!? We can use this as a working collaboration tool until we have the options that you'd like me to price." She was so pleased with this. I left and set this map as my next task. I took a video walking through the new hospital and used it create my map. It was beautiful and took me a full day at home to do. To the outside world, it seems like I wasted a full day. But I know this. By taking this consulting role with the vet to help them achieve their cleanliness goals, we will be rewarded an increase in services of at least $5,000/year! That's called an investment, not a waste!

Another way I served my clients was leaving Google reviews. I've personally worked with or have enough 1-to-1 experience with members in my BIB networking group that I went on their Google profiles and left 5-star reviews to help boost their views. This is a totally selfless and honest act. I asked for nothing in return.

I also continued to help my community. My chamber invited me to host a second virtual Zoom workshop with everyone working from home. My friend Tom asked me about masks and directional filtering. It was a great one, so I did follow up research and got back to him later in the day. He responded with this. "I consider you my cleaning & disinfectant expert." I checked in my friend Dr. Mak from the Skippack pharmacy to see if he had any questions. He said a few of his customers had follow questions to the videos I made for them. So I checked out the pharmacy page, found my videos, comments, and answered the questions. Before leaving the page, I noticed something startling. One of the my videos had 4,500 views! I dug in more and realized how. Dr. Mak BOOSTED MY POST on Facebook. I was so honored that he would ask me to help his clients and then he invested into his business and mine through a boost. This lead to Facebook page likes, which I personally friended and thanked (which lead to new client Monique), and it lead to 5 newsletter signups!

That's what can happen if you're a Go-Giver. You can eat your seed or plant it. If you plant it, you have a great chance to see that seed turn into a tree producing fruit with thousands of new seeds. I chose to sow my seed. I hope you do too!