Austin Gray: Patrick Murphy with Cascade Home Cleaning on the podcast this morning. Welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you on, and we don't need to do any crazy intros or anything like that. I wanna dive straight into how you got started, but one thing that's really interesting to me right now, and I've been thinking through this, I, we just had our second kid, so you've got five and two. You're four years into business. Now have this summer. were taken off. I think it's so important to figure 

Patrick Murphy: Yeah

Austin Gray: How to at the end of the day, it's like business is gonna be there, but these memories that we get with our kids, they go 

Patrick Murphy: Dude, it goes so fast. So fast. There's this there's this awesome. Website called, wait, but Why? But this guy writes an essay and it's all about how life is actually really short, relatively like he, he breaks it down. He says if it seems like every book is available in the world  to read, and you could think to yourself, I'll read every book,  but in reality you read maybe if you're aggressive, I'd say 12 books a year, one book a month, and you break that up and you go 12 books a year.

You probably live, you have 60 years where you're reading like you're really only reading like 500 books in your life. So it's okay, so that makes life  feel short. Then you go Christmas magic with a kid. Paul  Graham had this essay about how short life is. He goes, Christmas magic with a kid is from age two to 10, like you have eight chances to do that. If you saw eight books on a bookshelf, you'd be like, that's not very many books. So it's eight is really short. So dude, a hundred percent. I just was like,  I left my corporate job in  March specifically just to grind on the business and spend time with my kids because how many chances are you gonna get in life where your kids actually wanna spend time with you? I have two girls and it's I know those teenage years will be tough, but right now they love hanging out with me. Yeah, 

Austin Gray: I'm right there with you. I'm absolutely right there with you. What are some it's with your  kids to have fun? 

Patrick Murphy:  My kids are like crazy, love being athletic, and they don't love to sit down and write and read and do art. So what we typically end up doing is a lot of, they love, they have scooters and they like do little tricks. They got like bunny hops. They're starting out with, they got bikes that they love riding. We're living out on a farm. My, at my father-in-law's, it's five acres. So we're getting out on the tractor, we're  going and feeding the fish. Every morning we planted a garden. So they're  like, they love getting outdoors more than anything. I'm a little worried, actually, like as a dad, I'm like, should I be teaching my daughter a little bit more writing and reading?

'cause she's gonna go to kindergarten and that's the part that I'm a little bit like, okay, I need to just buckle her down for that. But they don't love doing it. I'll What about your kids? How old are they? You got the little one. How old's your oldest? 

Austin Gray: I've got a six week old and a two and a half year old right now, and.  

Patrick Murphy: Two and a half is such a fun age, right? 

Austin Gray: It's a fun age. It's like she's kicking my butt right now. Like bedtime, after we had the second kid, bedtime has just completely flipped. She was always great at going down and turned into this two and a half hour ordeal yeah. What's in the  middle of the night just like screaming. So at first we thought, okay, night terrors. But yeah, my dad was always like a black and white, like there is. This is the right way to do things. This is the wrong way to do things, sort of thing. And so at first I had this approach of nighttime was like, okay, we're gonna get her to bed and we're gonna close the door and say, this is, your time  to go Good luck in there.have,  yeah, I have such a hard time whenever she's I'm scared, or I  had a I dunno. This is why they do not write a playbook for parenting because I feel like every if  only. Yeah.  I don't know, man. I just feel this need, like I'm her dad and like she asking for me right now. And  a hundred percent it a  point if she's screaming in the middle of the night, like just gonna be there for her  and I

Patrick Murphy: Yeah,

Austin Gray: the right  thing or not, but it feels that's  what I would do. Heck  yeah. could do, okay. 

Patrick Murphy: You're the one, like you're her only thing in the world. Like nothing is more important in the world. To these kids and like their parents. So if you said no, I'm like, that's tough. What are they gonna, how is that gonna impact them in the long term? So I'm with you, man. Like, when my girls want to cuddle up in bed and hang out with dad. Yeah. Come on in. That's not gonna last forever.

Austin Gray: It's not, you. Yeah, like five, like what do you have eight more years maybe of until  old. 

Patrick Murphy:  Oh yeah. Dad is I'm, I wanna be with friends. I don't want to hang out with dad at all. 

Austin Gray: Dad's got a skidsteer business or dad, dad's got a cleaning. It's like at that.

Patrick Murphy: Then they're interning, then they're actually, they're working the business a little. Get in here. Get in here. You're working. 

Austin Gray: Yeah yeah. My dad digs dirt for a profession. Dad cleans hopes, it's like dude. But how cool will it be? cool. 

Patrick Murphy:  No, dude, I think it's gonna be great because you, they have you bring your dad in for school day or whatever I always felt like in the corporate world. And I worked as an accountant for a long time and then I was like at a big, I was at Amazon, so in a fame company and they freaking grind, dude. I would, I remember getting home after midnight sometimes. And that is not a life where you can go to a parent event at a school or do a  chaperone for a day or just have those days where you can plan around  and just say I know I got a team that can take care of the business for me on this day, and I don't really have to check in.

If I wanted to, I could, but how nice will that be when they're old enough where it's like we're going on a field trip and we need parent chap rooms. You can volunteer for it. I think that's ultimately gonna be like one of the really cool things. Whether it's cleaning business or Yeah, land clearing. Like who cares, man? It's, if you can spend some extra time with your kids, that's really what matters.

Austin Gray: What matters?

Patrick Murphy: Yeah.

Austin Gray: I don't know about for you. The biggest motivating factor for me has been I want to go as hard as I can right now to set myself up to where, kids here get Fridays off and basically everybody just skis on Friday. Oh,  sick  I'm like, we have to build the snowplow business to a point to where no matter what, it's a snow day or whatever, like I just want to be able to go ski with my kids every single Friday. And dude. That's awesome thing. That's amazing. Was it for you? like just bringing kids into the world from a business perspective. 

‍Patrick Murphy: Probably not as much as it should have been, if I'm being honest, man. I feel like my twenties, I really grinded hard. I was working easily like 60 to 80 hours a week in the professions I had. And my wife and I were able to build like a good safety nest at that point. Like  we lived comfortably. So bringing the kids in, I never felt like  a need to go grind even harder from what I'd previously been doing. In fact, if anything I was like, okay, the kids are here. I need to reel it in because it would be really. A bad experience for them if I'm never around, if I'm always  working like those late nights like I had been.

And so I actually  chilled out a little bit in my, once I had my kids, if anything, like I feel like it became more work smarter rather than harder. Like when you're in the corporate world, or at least in my experience, I was in the corporate  world. I was getting run through the cogs of just   hey, you're an employee and you just are gonna work and do these things, and these are tasks and there's no like real autonomy or agency to work smarter. You are just like checking off the boxes like we love our good employees to do. I love when my people check the boxes, but when  you're in that position, it's hard to think  bigger and go, I can make my job insanely easier.

Once I had the business and I still was working the corporate job, I thought to myself. Holy. Like how sweet would it be if I could have a VA with me doing this job? Like dude, I would work so much more efficiently, but like  I have an NDA and I can't bring this extra person. I can't go  build this extra process. But in the business you can. And I was able to, like I have probably, I have thousands of Zaps that run every single month that just take days off of my plate,  off of other people's plates. If I could have done that in my corporate  job dude, maybe I would've lasted 30 years. But it's a grind and it's just not, it's not that feasible.

As much as like Amazon would tout ownership as a leadership principle and take ownership, have the agency to make a big change, it's like you are still a cog in the wheel. There  is only so much change you can make. And   really, man, I probably actually dialed it back when I had kids rather than had the motivation to say I need to grind even harder. I was like, I gotta reel it in a little. You seem to go the other way though, right? You like went insane on it. 

Austin Gray: For when saying on what

Patrick Murphy:  Like the actual, like drive. Once you had your kids, did you grind into it and lean in on the business and like work way harder? 

Austin Gray: I did because this was a I placed a bet and it's an asset heavy business and I just knew that if I failed, it could be like. It wouldn't be like, like life changing, catastrophic, but it us back probably like a decade if I would've failed. so I was like I'm bringing  a name on the line for this heavy equipment, 

Patrick Murphy: Yeah, that's fair.

Austin Gray: Built  the house, right? And so I was like, I just, there, there was only one option. 

Patrick Murphy:  Totally. 

Austin Gray: To bring the kid in the world and have her, it's not really like her livelihood but more so just. It's almost like my wife's peace of mind having the kid was riding on that and 

Patrick Murphy: That's a lot of pressure though. That's a lot of pressure.

Austin Gray: It is. And I liked it. I You thrived?

Patrick Murphy: That's good  because  Bezos talks about two kinds of stress. Have you ever heard this? He's got. S like, he talks about stress and he says there's good stress and bad stress. And the way that people normally re think about stress is it's bad stress. Like I have project deadlines that are looming and they feel like weighed down by it. But that's not necessarily like a bad thing. The stress part of that is just there are things coming and it can become a  good thing where. If you just take one  action, you say I got a project coming, and you do one thing, like I'm gonna set the next meeting, or I'm gonna call this one person. All of a sudden that stress just like fades away and all of a sudden you're like, wait, that stress wasn't that bad actually. It just was like a forcing function to bias for action. And it seems like if you're feeling that stress and you're like, I love it, it's probably 'cause you're like, you must be grinding and doing just like task after task to get those things done. 

Austin Gray: I'm naturally a procrastinator and 

Patrick Murphy: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And so if I have the stress or the pressure. It actually kicks, it just kicks me into gear. And yeah.  I don't know, like I've just figured out a way to stack the cards game that I need to play personally. It's never been about like competing with other people. It's like, all right, Austin, here's how your brain works. Let's figure this out. How do you play this game and create these little milestones or these incentives? That like really push against you to push you into action. 

Patrick Murphy:  What stresses you out the most, you think? Is it sales hiring, something like that? 

Austin Gray: It's interesting. The first thing that comes to mind is plans. I don't like plans.

Patrick Murphy:  Yeah. Is this your nightmare having a scheduled podcast? 

Austin Gray: Nope. I do it. I do it. I love the podcast because I love. I get energy from  conversations from people like yourself.   

Patrick Murphy:  So it builds up your day, it gets you started in the right mood, that right energy. 

Austin Gray: it does, and I only do it on Fridays and Saturdays. 1, 1, 1 slot in the mornings. It's like  this is that that I do. So it does give me energy. How about you? I'm curious to hear what's your, what's your biggest version of stress? 

Patrick Murphy: Dude, fulfilling jobs. Selling is easy, staffing is hard. Fulfilling the job is so hard. I don't know if you feel this way, but in home cleaning the staff can be very transient in a way. And what I mean by that is there are people that are like very good employees and this is like nothing about demographics with age or type of person or where they're from. There are just some  people that are like very good employees because they are  naturally, like on time people, they're responsible. They know how to talk with respect to other folks, and there's other people that are late. They don't show up like they don't think it's important to communicate.

They just will eat whatever pain they're feeling. And in house cleaning, when I have a day, I have something I call the 7:00 AM scaries. I wake up at seven and I think who's calling out  today? Every single day. Who's calling out today? And the  hard part about that is I've already made the sale, now it's on me to make sure I can staff it that day. And that is a, that dude that gives me a little bit of that bad stress to combat that. What I have is like different processes to help. One thing is I have my VA start the day at 7:00 AM with me. We're gonna triage this together. If  we have any issues at 7:00 AM he's on the phone with me and we're  looking at the calendar.

That's the immediate triage. The process that I set up to help in the longer term is typically staffing with up to three people. Almost never. One, usually two sometimes three. And basically that gives me that buffer that slack in the rope. So if something has to give,  I am going to have at least one person out  there to get the job done right. It might mean we have to push jobs later in the day. Like I think when people get their house cleaned, they're okay to say you're not coming at 9:00 AM it's at 11. That's fine. I'll still be at work. That's okay. Sometimes it doesn't work and people can be picky, but give myself a little bit of slack in the line. Last week I had a terrible experience where I had almost. Almost 25   25% of my jobs were either  canceled or pushed because I had so many staff out I had one that had his mom in the hospital. I had one that she herself went to the like I dunno if it was the ER or it was like a urgent care, but she went to the doctor.

I had another gal who was just straight up out sick. I had another gal who had car issues and normally car issues in house. Cleaning means bs. I don't believe it. You probably just are not reliable. But in this case, like this gal's been on staff for a  long time and actually had car issues. So I had like  maybe a third of my team out. I have a district manager who I bring in to help cover like when those things happen, I hate using her in that way. That is not the best use of her time, but if I have to fulfill the job, she is gonna be there to help with that. It was so bad I still had to cancel 25%. So I'm actually making a change where this upcoming week, I'm gonna put someone in.

I'm gonna guarantee their hours at 40 hours  a week, and I'm gonna put them in a position where they're gonna  be like a sub and that's gonna gimme one extra piece of like slack in the rope so that my district manager doesn't always have to step in. She gets 40 hours guaranteed. I can't tell her where she's going that day. Maybe 7:00 AM I can when I see who's called off. But it's gonna gimme a little extra slack. So to me that's like the most stressful thing is fulfilling the job. So it's like working around how do we staff at least. 

Austin Gray: Quick rundown of your business model for listeners home cleaning, 10 99 subcontractors?

Patrick Murphy: Yeah. Okay. So I'll give you the, I'll give you the intro. Yeah, my name's Patrick Murphy. I'm the owner of Cascade Home Cleaning out of Bellingham, Washington. We are, we clean homes and commercial spaces. I used to think of us as a marketing agency. That happened to clean houses, and that's when I had  1099 contractors. Now I think of us as a  staffing agency. We can get the marketing done. We are top, we are the big dog in the small market we're in. So now it's a matter of staffing. It. Can we staff the job correctly? The jobs will come in, but can we staff them when it, what was your last question? Was it something about the breakdown of the business of like how it works. 

Austin Gray: I just want to go straight into staffing because I think this is such a I think like I see a lot of businesses right now, it's okay, first is owner operated. This business doing everything myself. Second is I see myself as a sales and marketing company. 

Patrick Murphy: Yeah.

Austin Gray: Sweet. That's great. That's actually not that hard to do when you you're gonna get leads, right? 

‍Patrick Murphy: Yes, a hundred percent.

‍Austin Gray: of people on X are talking about. But third, and this is where I'm so excited to have you on, and I would love to focus the next 30 minutes of the interview specifically on this. What you said is we are a staffing company, so  man this  is the bottleneck. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to in these owner operated or small businesses recently where it's like, how do I find people? Can you teach us? 

Patrick Murphy: I'll tell you my process and it, I would say like with how, with house cleaning, if it works for house cleaning, I gotta imagine it's gotta work for other stuff. And a lot of what I pulled was from my days at either. A big four accounting agency, which is these are national accounting firms that have tens of thousands of employees, international. And so they do a lot of staffing. It starts with co, with college recruiting, and then they work people up to become a partner of the firm. And then the  other thing I pulled from was my days at a FA company with Amazon,  because they also employ. In Seattle alone it's gotta be 40 to 60,000 across the globe.

It's like in the millions because they have delivery drivers, so they do tons of staffing. And I pulled from what I saw in those two businesses and I just applied it to house cleaning. And I feel like that level of sophistication, you don't even to have to get a hundred percent of the way there. If you get 80% of the way there, you're gonna be staffing better than most mom and pop in your local market. 

Austin Gray: Awesome. 

Patrick Murphy: So here's my process. I primarily use Indeed's, my go-to. They have a way where you can sponsor your job postings. A lot of pe like I used to just throw money at marketing and sales and I wouldn't put anything on sponsoring a job post.  That thing would get buried so fast.  You need to be in front of eyeballs of potential candidates. And the benefit of being at like a big company is like people may reach out to you. No candidate is reaching out to Cascade home cleaning, looking for a job unless there's a job hosting out there. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's it's one  of these things where you gotta actually get in front of eyeballs.   I personally treat recruiting. As seriously as I treat like sales and marketing, like I am looking at the same type of funnel. I'm saying I have a pool of candidates, like you might say, you have a pool of potential customers in the market.

I now have to qualify those candidates just like you would qualify a customer. You have to do a  lot of follow up with those candidates just like you do, follow up with  these customers. And so basically building out a funnel for recruiting to me is as important or more important than what happens with marketing Once marketing is set up, if you don't have your fulfillment, like you're dead in the water, like great, you sold the job. But people are gonna be pissed when you don't show up. You know what I'm talking about? 

Austin Gray: Absolutely.

Patrick Murphy: Yeah. Okay. So you're on Indeed and you have a job posting and. If you go on indeed, you should go look and see if other people are posting similar things. Because what you'll, one thing that you may have done at the beginning of the business, like  I did, this is I called competitors. What's your pricing?  And at the beginning I priced like towards the bottom. I just did this recently. I called again and I said, what are you charging for this size home to clean? And I got all the pricing and I decided I actually should raise my prices to be slightly above. Like we're top of the market, we're the big dog, so now I'm priced higher than anyone else. And  so the same way you're checking prices on competitors  with how they sell, you gotta check with what they're paying like to me. You gotta pay. If you're gonna go charge top of the market, you gotta go pay the top of the market to bring in the best. And so to me, go look at Indeed and I'm looking at what are other people, what are my competitors paying?

And I'm gonna mark that  up. I'm gonna pay even better than that. And it should work in your  numbers. I'll break down my numbers for you as well of what an average job is. It should work in your numbers. If you can't make it work, you're gonna struggle to find labor. If you're trying to pay less to get better results, it's not gonna work. Like people don't wanna be paid less. So you gotta go look. And then  the other thing with that job posting  is when it comes to the actual copy of it, like it better be really damn good. You gotta have really good copy on your Indeed job posting, because you get people who are gonna, you got a lot of tire kickers when it comes to Indeed. 

And you gotta be able to catch their attention. They're gonna I  don't know if indeed swipes or they just scroll, but people are like. Just going right through job applications. Like when I post a job on Indeed, like I'm getting hundreds of applicants, hundreds and hundreds of applicants.  I imagine if I took my copy and I put it really bad,  I'd probably get like dozens. You know what I mean? It would just not be the same because you gotta catch their attention of why should it be that they're gonna work with, for me? Especially in house cleaning. It's like the type of job where anyone thinks they can do it. And so I gotta compete not just with other house cleaning companies, but I gotta compete with, if you're a manager  at Taco Bell, or I gotta compete with people who might go work  in, a hardware store.

Maybe they've done some house cleaning on the side, but they also could do other jobs. And I gotta compete on price and what the job actually is to make them excited about coming to join me. Sorry. I'll pause there, man. Do you do, how's that sound so far? Do you do something similar? 

Austin Gray: Incredible. I want you to teach us the sauce. If you have it, are you willing?

Patrick Murphy: I got, yeah, I can share more. For me, in the first two lines of the ad copy, I'm gonna talk about like the things that will make me different, whether it's the price I pay. How the frequency at which I pay, so I pay above market. I pay weekly. I pay direct deposit. I basically call them out and I say, Hey, if you want this stuff, read below. Hey, you want, you wanna get paid at 26 an hour. You wanna get paid every single week. This job might be for you,  and I know I'm gonna pull like a bunch of unqualified  people, but I gotta try and catch the diamonds in the rough. You know what I mean? There's like that one needle in the haystack in the.

Do the, just to come back on things that are stressful when you can't fulfill is when you don't have the staff, not even that they're calling out, but you're selling more than you have the people for. So the worst positions I've ever found myself in is when I'm trying to force a hire. I want them to   be good. I want them to come work for me because  I know I can go sell their work because I can bill them out. But if I'm hiring out of pressure, like I'm, I might be like looking over red flags or finding things like. That I like reasons to hire them rather than reasons not to hire them. So all of a sudden I'm like hiring people that probably I shouldn't have hired.

So it's a really bad position to be in. I always  have recruiting on, I al like you don't  turn off your sales and marketing, you do not turn off your recruiting funnel. It would be insane to do that because you need to have people on your bench. I'm not saying they're employed with you, but I'm saying they're on the bench and you've already networked with them in the same way that like. You can't just go out and hire the CFO of Amazon, you're gonna go network with people and have them around. And when that position comes up, you can go tap on them and go, we talked about this a month ago  or two months ago. I now got something  for you. I need you on the team. I've wanted you on the team.

I, I told you we didn't have the jobs quite yet. We are gonna grow the business just to get you on the team and that's gonna make them feel wanted and excited. And so you gotta have that bench. And so you gotta keep the funnel. So in that funnel, you gotta have it always on for those folks. So you gotta get the diamond in the rough, which means you're gonna get a lot of unqualified people, but you have to at least capture the attention in the very beginning  to bring 'em down the page. From that point, you gotta  like basically try and disqualify them. As soon as they're hooked, you start the disqualification process. It's, I guess that's different than sales. I guess maybe it's the same. Either way you could disqualify or qualify them, but when you disqualify them, it's I'm gonna tell you all the reasons you actually shouldn't work here, because I want you to know that once you get in the door, like you should stay, you're self-selecting into work here.

And so I'm not  gonna hide all the things that are a problem. I need to actually tell  you all the bad things. And if you're still good with it, like hell yeah, I think you're gonna be great for the team. Hey, our schedule's not perfect. Sometimes people cancel. Are you cool with that? Hey, I don't like jobs come in and sometimes you have one day's notice. Are you good with that? There will be people that are not okay with that. And unless you bring it up during the qualification process for applicants, like you will hire people, figure out that something you do makes them unhappy  and then like they're out the door and all of a sudden you've budgeted or  planned for these sales. Then now you can't fulfill. It's so I do as much disqualification as possible, even in the job description. I'm gonna put my core values, I'm gonna put very specific, here's what you're responsible for. I'm gonna talk about what's going on in our business on a day-to-day basis. And so if they're still clicking through and dude, a lot of people tire kicking, we'll click through. But if they're still clicking through, like there's some intent there that maybe this is the right place for them. 

Austin Gray: Super cool. 

Patrick Murphy:  Okay. Should I keep going? Okay. So you've got the job posting, you've got the job posting on Indeed. You've sponsored it. You can do it per day. You can do it where you can actually like, go look for applicants and invite them to apply. I don't do that. I've tried that before. I don't think it actually is worth the money. They're  gonna try and. Get you on a budget of 60, $80  per day. That's a fairly expensive to hire, at least when it comes to a blue collar kind of entry level work. So I do a daily sponsoring at a $5 or $10 rate. I think five's the minimum. I know indeed. What they do is they actually will sponsor your post and they'll run through the budget and then as soon as you've hit your budget, they kinda bring  it down.

So if you want to get. Top of  the page, you'll have to spend more as soon as you run through the budget of like people clicking through. Similar to, I guess to LSA, right? You have LSA, you have a budget. Once you click through and there's enough people and you're. Budget is done for the day. Your LSA goes away and your competitor comes up. So it's the same thing there. So you can tweak how much you need based on your job you're hiring for in your market,  but you got your job posting out, you've got it sponsored.  Five, 10 bucks a day. The copy is good. Ask Chat, EPT. Whatever you wanna do. Go look at sign competitors. Go look at the com. Dude. Honestly, what I did is I looked at house cleaning companies of people that I like, respected and admired. That are not in my market and I can only piece together some of the stuff they're doing. I'm going, this guy in Michigan's doing something cool.  That guy down in Tennessee's doing kind of something cool oh,  this guy in Ohio, he's got this.

And so you can go look at anyone's job postings, just pull the stuff that looks good and you think would grab attention. And then I also do it hyper specific. You can do it for a county. I do it really specific. My reasoning for that is because I'm thinking if you're looking for a job, you're not looking for job in county. You're  like, I'm looking for a job in this town, so  I will run the same ad copy in multiple towns in my location. Like we, I'm in this really small market. I told you the name of the town was Bellingham, but in reality it's like less than a hundred thousand people. So I will put a posting for there, but I'll, I may also do postings for the small surrounding towns and it might cost, then I'm gonna allocate  my budget across all of them.

But I know people in that town is,  are searching for jobs in their town. Once you get them in the hook, you can say, Hey, actually you travel. You may be in your town, but you may have to drive 15 minutes to this other town. They're okay with that, but I don't think they're searching for jobs in this county. Right? House cleaning this county, they're searching for jobs in this town, so multiple jobs  postings that are sponsored that have good ad copy,  and once you get through that, you're gonna have an automated message. This is what I do, at least you get an automated message kicked back to them. Because dude, this is like recruiting takes a lot of time 'cause you get 500 applicants and you are weeding through loads of garbage. How many applicants do you get on a job, do you think? 

Austin Gray: I'm, I'll let you keep going because I have a process too for. I'll tell you the whole thing then. And  the very final  hook here's what it takes for me to look at somebody.

Patrick Murphy: Oh dude. Okay. Okay. I'll tell you my whole process. Let me finish, dude. I'm very long-winded, so let me go a little bit quicker then. 

Austin Gray: I'm following it. And this is super valuable for people. Listeners you're listening like. And you're still on the sales and marketing thing and you're still trying to get leads. Like just  hell yeah that  once you crack the sales and marketing stuff, and once you start getting leads, this is going to be your main focus right here. I'm going through it right now 

 Patrick Murphy: Dude, I wish sales was the hard part. I wish that was the hard part. It's it's staffing. It's fulfilling.

Austin Gray: It's all sales, right?

Patrick Murphy: Yeah. Oh two.

Austin Gray: It's a sales and marketing funnel to go on why they should come work for your company. 

‍Patrick Murphy: And dude, let me tell you, like my mental model, the framework I think about this is it's. A hundred x more important than sales, maybe a hundred x. I'll tell you, here's my number of how I get there. My average job is $200 for a recurring customer. Okay? $200. Kind of peanuts, you need to get a lot of recurring clients to really build a base. When it comes to, when I  hire one person, I can take the number of hours they'll  work in a year, times the what I bill them out as. And that number is a lot bigger than $200. And that to me is holy crap. Like when I hire someone, I've unlocked a next level of being able to sell through. So if I think about the people I have, it's 2000 hours a year that they can work.

The reason it's 2000 is 'cause you're gonna take 50 weeks in a year. You take two weeks for a  vacation, people are gonna take the holidays off or whatever. So if you have  effectively 50 weeks in a year, people are working 40 hours a week. Ideally, max, I'll tell you, like that's not, they're not working 40 hours a week with me because they have to drive between homes. But max utilization 40 hours a week. So you take, 2000 hours in a year they can work. I bill out at 65 an hour. That's $130,000 that if I hire someone and they are really good, I've just added $130,000  worth of revenue to my company. 'cause I know I can sell it through.  It just takes time.

But I know I can sell it through. That's a lot more valuable than a $200 job that like if it went sideways and I had to fire the client, okay, no big deal. But if I have to fire a cleaner, I'm like scrambling to go find who can fulfill $130,000 worth of work. Do you have a number that you bill out at specifically where you could come back and say this is what an employee is worth to me.   

Austin Gray: Yes, but I have a couple different businesses. So let's

Patrick Murphy: Gotcha.

Austin Gray: Mine is very similar in a  labor business that I have here in, in snow shoveling. So  yeah similar  model at that point. I'm curious to hear let's go back to the job description though. I want to finish out Oh yeah,  you wanna finish that up?  Yeah. How do you go,

Patrick Murphy:  Okay. 

Austin Gray: Yeah process when you're getting 500 applicants?  How do you screen and filter?

Patrick Murphy: Okay, if you're in the early days, you will be on indeed.com a lot, and that's okay. Like you can go through every single candidate and take a look because it feels good to find the needle in the haystack when you go, this person actually  matches everything I want. There are so many people who I  get where they are. A hostess and they've never cleaned a house, but they've cleaned at home before and that's what they put. And it's that's great, but I need paid experience. So again, like when I try and disqualify them in the experience, in the actual job posting, I say you have to have two years of  paid experience, paid all capitals, paid  experience. Will people still apply? Who say that they just cleaned a home? Yes, they will. And you will be searching for those diamonds in the rough against 500 at the early days. What I do now though, is I have an automated message to every single person and that automated message basically says,  Hey, thank you so much for applying.

I need  you to come to my website and apply. It's gonna put you in front of the queue, it's gonna put you at the very top. And if you come to my website and apply, then you know, you basically jump the queue of being looked at. Thank you so much. Here's the link and I send them into my  funnel on my website. So it's effectively, I'm doing a lead capture form,  but instead it's like I just ask them the most basic information. So I keep my indeed very loose on like filtering people out. Indeed you will have options where you say I have these requirements that say you're, you have to be  authorized to work in the us.

Okay, that's a good one. But then there's  other ones where it's I need you to do this and I need you to be able to drive. Are you okay with being within 50 miles of this place? And, people can get crazy with all of these things that they're asking. Like people are just gonna turn away. They're not gonna answer 50 questions on Indeed. They're gonna like  press apply. And maybe two things. You know what  I mean? So if they're intrigued, they press apply, two, qualify, two qualification questions, maybe. Okay, good. Good. And they then they get that message. They see the message. If they're not tire kicking and they're actually interested, they're gonna see that link that says, oh, go to my website.  I can jump the queue, because then they're  gonna click through that link, come to my website and have an apply form right there where it's like, again, very simple. I just wanna ask very basic questions. Check the box. Do you have two years of paid experience? Do you have a car that's reliable, all that type of stuff.

So I basically  bring them into my website. Once I have them there, I  can do a more, that was screening number one by the way. If people don't go through, I will go search out the diamonds in the rough still. But I know that people have actually come through the website are much higher intent to work for me, so I can probably filter down more than half the people. Like it's  gotta be I think I, I've ran the numbers for me and for another cleaning business before and people will drop off at an amazing clip if you are, ask them to take one simple step and if they can't take one simple step, do you want them working for you anyway? If  that's the job for them and they don't want to click through one link, maybe that's  not the per type of person that's gonna be a real good employee anyway. For you specifically. Maybe they have other passions that they're interested in, but they. They're not gonna be into house cleaning.

So I filter 'em out, step one, just by having them go through  my website. Then I actually have another kind of  disqualification it's very easy because it's just check the box, on those things. I'm not gonna ask anything too hard. It's gonna kick them into. Okay, great. Like I, they get an auto text message from me because they've hit my landing form and that auto text message is gonna say, Hey, it,  it has a seven minute delay. So they're like, maybe still  looking, but it's not like super instant ai. I actually am anti, I'm a little bit anti AI when it comes to recruiting because I need it, I need the most personal touch on this. I need people to think that oh, I need them to know we care about them, and. If  they think this is ai, they're out.

No one wants to  get recruited by a robot. Okay? So I leave a seven minute delay. I have a message come straight from me that says Hey, so and I just happened to see your application come across. I would love to get you on the team. Here's a link to schedule a first round phone screen. So I  stole that from Amazon. So Amazon has a process where they do  a first round phone screen. It's just like the most basic thing. What I'm looking for is can they show up to a phone call? I don't allow same day phone calls. It has to be at least one day later. 'cause I need them to be able to at least set a calendar date for themselves one day in the future and  show up to it.

So all I'm screening for is can they show  up? Then I'm gonna ask some of those questions that are gonna be a little bit in like the disqualifications that we just chatted through. Basically, like you, you check the box that you have two years of paid experience. So what's your experience?  Where did you work? Tell me a little bit about it. So  that's like phone screen one, and we're gonna go through that whole process and we'll disqualify like 75% of people through a first phone screen. So out of the 500 applicants, we've probably lost at least 50% through just going to the website to apply. We've  lost another 75% coming through that's actually  doing a first phone screen.

Either they're not showing up or they continued on in the process, even though they don't have the experience. After that if they pass, I guess to be really specific, I have a  Google form that my VA fills out. He does  every interview. They're scheduled 15 minutes. I have a Google form and it's just like very easy for him to follow. I have a whole template of here's the exact questions to ask. Then write in the candidate name, their phone number, their job experience, like why are they leaving? That's a big thing. I wanna  know, like why? What are you looking for in your next job? Some people,  it's more pay. Awesome. Everyone should, they're trying to better themselves.

Some people are just straight up I work for bad management right now. And then it's okay, tell me about that. What's bad about it? I don't like it because. My hours are unpredictable. I don't like it because this person's  just rude and it's okay, let me tell you about what we can offer you. So  it's the sales thing. We're back to sales. What's your pain? Why are you thinking about leaving? I just wanna know, because that's what I'm gonna talk to if I'm trying to tell them about. Whatever, we've paid sick time and they never, they don't care about that. Like, why am I talking about that? 

You know what I mean? So I'm just gonna figure out like, why are you leaving your  company? What's interested, what's most interesting to you? And I'm gonna try and sell that. So I, he's got it all basically templated out on a Google form and at the very end there's a radio button and it says, wait till the end of the interview.  If you're inclined if you wanna move them forward  there's an inclined button and a not inclined button. If you're inclined to move them forward, you press it and if you're not inclined, you press it and that will trigger off a Zap. And if they're Inc. If we are inclined, they get a automated email, automated text that basically says it waits like an hour,  but it's thank you so much for doing the interview, we'd love to  continue you in the process.

Here's another calendarly link. It's a video interview with our district manager who's like on site. She's like in the field. You can just talk with her if we're not inclined. They get the automated text after one day that basically says, Hey,  thank you so much for applying. Unfortunately this time we're not gonna proceed  with your application. So that's all automated. I also shoot that into a Slack I have that is as a recruiting specific channel. It's like hashtag recruiting or whatever. And basically every single thing that happens is like a new application. New application. First,  first round, failed. First round passed, and if they pass,  that Google form is kicking off into a Google sheet or I'm, I guess it, it'd be a Google Doc has all the information and now it links to that.

So when my district manager goes to do her interview, she can go back to Slack,  search a person's name, this is for Susan. She  finds Susan. There's a Google Doc link right there, and she can read every note about the interview ready to go. So she's ready for her interview based on the first round phone screen. She does her phone screen if she's happy. That's another dude. Okay. So we've disqualified  a lot of people at this point, by the way, like we've probably gotten  down to, out of 500, we're at like three people. It's mental. But if she's all good and she does like more of the detailed questions. How would you clean this? What chemicals would you use? What are your core values? This is what's important to us. And we have  three core values. Like I was very diligent about this and I wanna find  people that like, care about those three things. And so like she's asking all those very detailed questions for 30 minutes, and if they pass, we are gonna basically move.

And again, she has like a Google form as well. We're gonna move them on  into a background check and then a test clean.  And if both those things come back. Okay. So first of course we're background checking everyone before they ever go into a client home. But if that comes back good, and then we send them to a test clean and our crew is yes, their quality matches what we expected. Then at that point  we will be offering them a job. And I use  Gusto and I send them a job offer. And I give them a call personally and I say Hey, I'm so excited I get to offer you a position with our company. We just can, some of the things I maybe miss, but we're gonna screen for is do you want full-time or part-time? 'cause that goes on the offer letter. What  role do you want? And here's  what the pay is with it. And I'll actually talk about that for a minute as well, because I think it's an important part for the company or any company. But before I get into that, dude, I know I'm freaking going off on this, so let me know where I should dig in more or not .

Austin Gray: This is incredible, absolutely incredible. This is the verbal masterclass on hiring.I believe any local service business owner can apply this principle and this framework and just go follow this. This was the premise of the podcast. This is why I haven't focused specifically on one industry because I'm a firm believer that by talking with Patrick, even though he owns a home cleaning business, I'm in land clearing two radically different services. We deal with the same things. We need to have a website, a sales and marketing funnel. We need to hire, delegate, fire people when they're not doing what's asked of them. But at the end of the day, it comes back to sales and marketing, which hiring. It's just a sales and marketing funnel. And so like you are teaching the masterclass on this right now, and I'm so thankful that you are here teaching this because I think there's a lot of people who are going to get a lot of value out of this.

Patrick Murphy: So how many employees do you have or do you do 10 90 nines. Okay. 

Austin Gray: No, I have W2 in Bearclaw. We have six right now, plus a va. So seven.  yeah.

Patrick Murphy: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: We're in a really small. You have 20 what, 

Patrick Murphy: 20 employees. And so it's it's but I've turned through a lot to get to 20 good ones or 20. Solid ones. You know what I mean? And I continue to have to churn them because people have things that come up and they move away for family and whatever it is. But yeah, if you need to cut your teeth on any industry that does a lot of staffing, house cleaning is one of them. So I do feel like I've unfortunately learned many things over a short duration, mostly through mistakes. 

Austin Gray: Patrick, anything else you'd like to share with listeners before we close this one out? 

Patrick Murphy:  No. Stay out there. It's hard out there. Keep grinding. 

Austin Gray: Keep grinding.  Yeah, I love it. I love it. Listeners, thanks again for listening to another episode of the owner Ops podcast, Patrick Murphy Cascade Home Cleaning and. Yeah, so that was literally the verbal masterclass on the hiring process. So if you guys do want to jump in we'll get you scheduled for the coming weeks here, and you can just sign up for the school group with the link below. We appreciate you guys listening. Don't forget, work hard, do your best. Never settle for less.​

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