You may not be aware that the state government has a policy in place that allows for the replacement of essential water taken by firefighting agencies like CFA and Forest Fire Management Victoria. The water may be taken from dams or local storages during a fire emergency or in an ongoing event. The policy defines essential water as water that is required to sustain the health of affected residents or pets, along with the health and productivity of their stock and agriculture and horticultural crops, including permanent plantings and intensive industries. If essential water is taken from a property for firefighting purposes, the landowner can now easily take steps to claim that water back or have it replaced. Each CFA or Forest Fire Management tanker will have an envelope in their vehicle that contains courtesy cards, record sheets and simple instructions. Crew leaders will record the amount of water taken on the record sheet provided in the envelope and forward that information to the relevant fire agency, who will then liaise with the municipality or council. If an incident control centre is operating, the contact would be the operations officer at the ICC. If the agency or the landowner believes that water taken was essential, then they need to simply fill in the information required. Once the details are received and authorised by the ICC ops officer or the CFA RDO, the replacement of the water will be organised. Without these forms, including the details and verification of the amount taken, water cannot be replaced. Your local council area or municipality will then be responsible to arrange for the water to be replaced. Tanker crews need to advise the agency officer about the location and the amount of essential water that has been taken. A landowner can also download the essential water replacement form or contact their local municipality for the form. These forms can be emailed to bushfirerecovery at dealt.vic.gov.au. You can find out more information by contacting your local CFA or forest fire management district office. So remember, it's government policy that essential water taken for firefighting purposes can be replaced if required by a landowner. CFA or forest fire management crew leaders should keep a record of any water taken from a storage during a fire event. Details of what has been taken and how to claim that water back will be left with the landowner. For more information contact your CFA or forest fire management district office.


Alright folks, we have some great news here for you about Super Mario 3D World plus Bowser's Fury. It arrives in 12 days. Now previews have been out for it for, I don't know, 3-4 days now. And I finally had a chance to go through some of them, but thankfully, while I was going through them, I found this on Nintendo Everything. And this is a summary of some key details that you guys might be interested in, because this does let you know how different the game is from a performance perspective from the original. Now, I need to point out here that this is also our last day to enter our giveaway. We are giving away a PlayStation 5, an Xbox Series X, and or a Nintendo Switch. Details on how to enter are in the description or down in the pinned comment. We will be having a live stream either late tonight or tomorrow announcing the winner. Also starting tomorrow, we will have our new giveaway kicked off, so stay tuned for that. I think a lot of you fans are going to be really excited, especially if you love Switch and especially if you happen to. It's a me, Mario. Alright, let's get into the details here. So it's just a few tidbits. I'm going to be consuming the performance of Super Mario 3D World plus Bowser's Fury. So by all accounts, the game right over for Wii U runs at 60 frames per second. This seems to be the general consensus from all of the previews. But in Bowser's Fury, it's different. So what we learn here is that in Bowser's Fury, when you are playing in handheld mode, it runs at 30 FPS. When you're playing docked, it runs at 60. Also resolution wise, the main game runs at 1080p on docked mode, but 720p in handheld mode. Whereas the measured resolutions on every preview I have seen, including Nintendo everything here, who went through some previews as well, seems to indicate that Bowser's Fury, regardless of docked or handheld, runs at 720p. Now obviously in handheld, it can't run higher than 720p, but it seems to be running at 720p across the board in that mode. Now there's actually some more interesting things I discovered from some of these previews. And one of those is something that isn't talked about enough. So the original Super Mario 3D World ran on a eight access movement set. So this basically means there are eight directions when you move your control stick around that actually register the character movement in the game. Now for many players, this can still feel like it completely open and free roaming control scheme, because eight directions is quite a bit more than four back in the day when you used to be able to just go up, down, left, right. This lets you go diagonally. It does seem to some uninitiated gamers that you have full free motion, but you actually don't. And this is really noticeable when you're specifically trying to maybe line your character up just right at a specific point and you can't quite seem to do it perfectly. This is because you do not have a free range of motion. So that still exists in Super Mario 3D World. They did not, you know, take the original eight directions and make it completely free and open despite the fact that it speed up your movement speed in the game and made the game just a bit snappier and just a bit quicker to function better. Now, what they did do in Bowser's Fury mode, and I find this to be wholly interesting, is it's completely free and open. It's free movement. So you have the ability to freely move in any direction you want. It's not locked to eight directions. It's a completely free, normal, open world movement. I find this to be interesting because it suggests to me that Bowser's Fury is actually made from the ground up. While they might be using maybe some art assets, all the code and everything in it is completely new. Now maybe that's not surprising because it's a completely new mode and it's unlike anything we have previously really gotten in a Mario game. We also discovered that the length of Bowser's Fury is right around what I initially thought it would be. So a lot of the previews are saying, hey, if you just want to beat the mode, not 100%, it'll take you from two to three hours, which is what I originally said that Bowser's Fury was actually probably pretty short. And it is. But they said if you want to 100% it, there's a lot more collectibles, all that jazz. It can end up taking you closer to five hours, which again, is about twice as long. That's pretty typical, right? When you can rush and beat certain games in a certain time, but you want to 100%, it usually is at least twice as long. Some games are three, four, five times as long to 100%, depending on which game we're talking about. When you look at some of those massive RPGs out there like The Witcher, Skyrim, any of those games, yeah, you can beat the main story pretty, I guess, relatively quickly. It still takes a bit, but to 100% it could take thousands of hours. Breath of the Wild is an example.  I don't even know. It's less than an hour. It's crazy. So let's look at just some beautiful footage as you're sitting here, enjoying some of this. What I took away from the previews as well, that Nintendo everything didn't point out here is that Bowser's Fury mode, if it was its own game, if you separated it out from Super Mario 3D World, and it was its own game, and let's say it was a $5 offering, a $10 offering, right? Just a standalone game. It seems like almost every single person who previewed it would give it a 10 out of 10. That's the interesting part here, because there's going to be always a debate when you bring over a game that was a Wii U port. We've had these debates in the past over is it worth $60? Is Xenoblade Chronicles definitive edition worth $60? People will say, yes, revamped graphics. And look, they added a whole new story mode that kind of leads it in to Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Okay, sure. All right. What about other games that were more straightforward ports? Like Tokyo Mirage Sessions, right? That game was ported over, and is pretty close to just a straight port. What about Pikmin 3 Deluxe? They added some Oliver levels, but otherwise, it's pretty much the exact same game. Is it really worth $60 when you port it over? And this really came ahead when you were talking about Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Are these games that Nintendo packaged together and are just using emulators and hdm through that? So it's really simple to do is that worth $60. I mean, we proved it with sales figures that to enough people it was worth $60. But this is always the debate with these Wii U games. So when you look at Super Mario 3D World, which pretty much plays and looks a lot like the original except it's snappier and quicker. Is it enough? Is Bowser's Fury mode enough? Well, when all of the previews out there, despite how short it is, are telling you, hey, this is like amazing. This is perfect. This is exhilarating. This is exciting. This is Mario as we've never seen it. We want to see something like this added in future Mario games. Like this, you know, there was a couple of previews I remember that said this experience, because, you know, for how short it is, you can basically call it an experience with Bowser's Fury is the best Mario has been ever. I've seen that stated by three to four different people who have played it. It makes me consider the fact that Nintendo did something brilliant here. And while I don't know that, you know, two to five hours of gameplay is worth $60. I think when you package in, you know, a game that I don't think very many people got to play. Again, very, very few people owned a Wii U. I did. Actually, it was quite funny. So I was playing Ring Fit Adventure yesterday. Yes, folks, I have Ring Fit Adventure. I'm sure you guys know why now if you follow any of my social channels. And I was doing my day one of it yesterday. By the way, highly surprised that how effective Ring Fit Adventure is as a workout. I was pretty skeptical right up until we started going. And then, oh boy, it's quite a thing. I have it set to extreme. So I'm extremely overweight. So I need the extreme workout. So as I was doing that, my fiance was like, Hey, you know, we should get Wii Fit or we fit you. Now, she literally said we fit you. Keep in mind that my fiance is not what I would consider to be a gamer, maybe super casual.  She'll also, she enjoys Mario a bit, but not really like a super active gamer or anything. She played a lot of Animal Crossing last year. But that's kind of an outlier. She typically doesn't play stuff that often. But here's the thing. She was talking about the Wii Fit you. And I explained to her that it's hard to get balance boards that aren't broken because they don't make them brand new anymore. But yeah, I mean, I can totally go get it.  Well, here's the thing. As much as it'd be great to get it. In fact, I think it might actually make for a really cool video. But maybe I'll do it just for that sake. She said something I'd never thought I would hear come out of her mouth. And this is maybe the only person who isn't a traditional gamer that would say this. She stated, and I quote, man, I really loved Wii U. So a little background there. Wii U is a system that we owned back in our little tiny two bedroom apartment when we only had one kid. And we played it a lot. We played New Super Mario Bros. You. We played that. We beat it together. We played Super Mario 3D World. We played it and we 100% not just beat it 100% that game together. She played Pikmin 3 and fell in love with Pikmin on that system.  So she has a lot of fond memories of that Wii U system. So it's interesting seeing her bring it up. And she doesn't even know this game is coming. She doesn't even know the Super Mario 3D World's coming back. So I mean I'm just saying maybe there's a stream coming down the line where me and the old fiance go and kick some Mario butt. We'll see. That being said, hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. Learned something new or at least helped solidify some opinions or purchasing decisions for you here. We'll put an Amazon affiliate link down in the description if you haven't pre-ordered yet and you would like to pre-order. I don't think this is going to be one of those games that's hard to get. It's not like the actual consoles which, well it's relatively easy to get a Switch online right now. It's not necessarily easy to get them in stores. I've been to several stores lately and it's really hard to get any system. PlayStation 4, Xbox One included. This pandemic is hitting everything pretty hard. Let me tell you. So thank you guys for tuning in. I am Nathan and RoboJance. Hit that subscribe button if you enjoyed, if you didn't.  I'll catch you guys in the next one.


Hey, how's it going guys? Hope you're doing great. So today I want to talk about supply and demand in a business So if you guys to courses on economics or business classes in your college level or in high school level You'll pretty much know a concept called supply and demand. What is the supply and demand? So if there's a demand in the market for a product and the supply is very low Then the price or the value of the product will go high But if there's no demand of a product But there's immersive supply of the same product and the value of the product or the price of the product will go Super low a really good example if you take a Bitcoin in 2010 the price of a Bitcoin was very low because there wasn't any demand in the market, but in 2017 There was a high demand of Bitcoin people were buying Bitcoin crazy The supply was very limited. So the price of the Bitcoin went super high. Now, how can we implement this into our app businesses? if we look at supply and demand graph We can see that there's there's there's a point right here where it all matters and To give you a really good example how we can implement this let's go to the Google Play Store and we can see that If you see angry birds type of games or any kind of games that's you know being played The demand for this kind of games are very low right now People have either played this game or they don't want to play this kind of games anymore now There are a couple of companies like Voodoo What they're doing their games is that they're creating a demand for their game. They're creating I'm saying this again. They're creating There is no demand for this kind of games in the market, but they're creating the demand for the market now how they're creating their Spending millions of dollars on Facebook ads to create the demand, but can they sustain their business? But is this business a long-term? No, that's because if you look at catch-up scheme right now Their download rate is going super down like Like literally down because there is and not any more demand people are not typing catch-up games here and Downloading their games So their demand is varying so you might ask how can we as an independent developer? We can make money, but that's a good question. So to find the demand for what kind of games people want We need to go to the Google Google.com Sorry guys, it takes a little bit time to load okay, so as as I discussed in my book before that what kind of Games you need to create we need to find what kind of keywords or what kind of games or apps people are actually searching for So to do that get search volume and results podcast. So let's say we want to create a game That parents search for the kids who are nine to twelve year old or who are six to eight year old So we have like tons of those now. What kind of games can we find? Let's say we want to we want to find those customers Let's say we want to create something like make up girls Make-up games Now we can click on the historical metrics So as you can see average monthly searches for make-up games for girls is hundred thousand to one million people that means 100,000 to a million people are searching for this kind of games Not Horizon not Mr. Gunn not stacked. They're not searching for any kind of things games They're searching for this kind of games now What happens if we type Make-up games for girls We can see this game, which is on the first rank and let's see it's wow It has thirty eight thousand five hundred eighty eight reviews More than five million people downloaded this game See this is this is the very good example of the game interest or the game I go to the app business And this is also ages six to twelve This is what I'm trying to tell you guys You need to know whether you're creating for your customers You can just create some bullshit game and expect it like to grow you need to know. What's your market?  Now the question is can you make this game with a bill box? Yes, you can you don't have to create something like Something like this where you can you know create just like Makeup the girl no you can literally create anything you can like create a tap-tap game with bill box Which has makeup features? I mean it just a matter of what you're creating and you have to know what you are actually creating and there's actually a Lot of games about girls makeup So this is what what I'm telling you first know what you want to create See if there's a demand for that kind of creation in the market and check who's the best players in the market Can you bid this thing? Yes, you can at least you can get a thousand to two thousand downloads a day You don't have to get like this kind of thing If you do it will be really better, but if you don't you're still gonna make quite good amount of money So I hope you learned something from this video I'll post more videos about extra optimization subscribe to my channel and if you want to buy my ebook which I wrote for my three years of experience I have Over a million downloads from only one app and how I got into this app business. I wrote everything in details in this book You can find it here. It's called the Orlando solution website if you go here And click on Here all the way down You will see there's a product which is Google Play Like at marketing so I discussed about it's like $20 which is almost as price as a as a pizza from Domino's which is really cheap and You can see pretty much the proof that I get how you can manage this and I urge you to read what I wrote It's not like something you're gonna download and put this up and you're gonna get boom like a million dollars No, it doesn't work that way. You have to be consistent. What do you do? And I posted like some free You know after optimization tricks and trips hope I can see you guys around. Thank you so much


Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Critical Materials Corner with two experts with us from Nickel28. I have Anthony Molesky and Martin. How are you today? Great. Hey, Tracy, I always really appreciate you having us on, looking forward to chatting today. Yeah. Thank you both. I just want to read one quote here from Dean Bristow's piece on Nickel28, which I think is one of the fastest movers on the market right now. He writes here that, you read this right, EV demand alone could consume about 50% of current global Nickel production within the foreseeable future. Is that correct? Those kind of stats are staggering and overwhelming in terms of consuming not only current supply but future supply that we need to come onto. That's true. Although I don't know if in the current marketplace we had Nickel hit 1060 here at close in London and pressure to move it higher, I don't know if that's what's moving the market right now as much as inflation and just some other general dynamics, but certainly in the midterm, there's no question that the big driver and consumer of incremental demand is coming from not just electric vehicles, but also all aspects of the energy transition. Another example, of course, is battery storage for your house and these types of things. Definitely true. Maybe not what's moving the market at this exact moment. Okay. Well, we're going to turn the floor here for a second to Jack Lifton. Jack, you have been writing for quite some time about how the EV revolution is a myth. We do not have enough materials to achieve the goals that the automotive companies are putting out there. Would you like to comment on Nickel in general for us, please? One of the big things that the analysts make is that they're under counting or ignoring the other uses of Nickel besides batteries for electric vehicles. It's as if those uses don't exist. Now, I don't know if there'll be enough Nickel for the projected demands, projected demands are not real demands. So for example, China has said there'll be at least 25% EV by 2025 production. That I believe China has said they'll be at 50% of EVs by the year 2030. I believe that also. I believe China has enough access to all the materials it needs, including Nickel to carry out those plans. It's the rest of the world I'm concerned about. I think that China's industrial policy, which mandates that has the materials it needs before it starts to produce things, is light years ahead of Western attitudes, which is, well, we'll just aim or we'll get all we need. This completely ignores reality of mineral economics and geology. That's my opinion. I defer to Mr. Maluski, who knows a lot more about Nickel than I do. But I think that we have a problem with almost all of these energy metals. Maybe not with Nickel. You tell me. One thing, Trace, that people don't talk about, I think it's important because I think always in commodity markets, Trace, you've been doing this for 20 years here. Sometimes you can over a hyper situation and the sky is falling and this and that. One thing I will say that's important to talk about is LFP batteries are going to be a major component of the mix. I think some analysts probably incorrectly don't take into account a variety of battery types. What I think you're seeing in China and most likely in the States, but in particular with Tesla, is a realization that everyone doesn't need a battery that goes hundreds of miles.  That person can have an LFP battery and that's relevant because if you're using a demand model based on this standard Nickel battery, then you're going to show a massive shortfall, you're going to show that immediately. But I think if you have a more graduated model where you have a mix of battery types, then once again, I think that makes the transition more smooth.  That happened last cycle. I don't think that that's beneficial to producers. You then start to have conversations around switching to different metals, different technologies. I think a much more graduated supply, excuse me, a much more graduated price increase, gentler going up makes a lot more sense for producers. Oftentimes hysteria around the supply and demand model is put into the market by promoters trying to raise money for projects that need development dollars. I think we all know that story. We've all seen that story, been a part of that story a lot of times. There's no question that the dynamics around Nickel are exceptional. Maybe the best they've been since the real super cycle. Notwithstanding that, I do think there's more nuance in the way that this will roll out. I do think that it'll be more graduated and you're not going to see this massive Nickel supply shock that's going to somehow disrupt the EV revolution. Instead, you're going to see a diversified type of battery uses based on what the average show needs to use the car for. This is my two cents. I just want to briefly say that for the first time, I completely agree with you.  Thank you. I agree with Anthony too. If you look at car manufacturers, they don't all sell a car with a six cylinder or an eight cylinder engine. Yeah, four, six, eight and diesel. The same thing is happening with EV batteries. You have different chemistries for different needs and requirements. I think car companies are hedging their bets on, as Anthony says, a lot of short range cars or entry level EVs are using a chemistry that is deficient in Nickel where high performance cars may be Nickel rich and I think you will find a balance. Also, as recycling of Nickel rich batteries starts to take hold in the next decade or two, you're going to see a lot of that material come back into the market. That will help alleviate this infinite demand that people believe will never be fed. One thing that people don't focus on, in fact, it's a much bigger story in terms of dollars, size, any metric is stationary demand, demand for solar at your house or for the new development. Tesla has done a fantastic job being out front with the power wall. However, it's kind of absurd to be using a lithium ion battery for that. Instead, things like lead acid batteries, to say it, vanadium redox batteries and a bunch of other technologies which are all being refined, invested in and ultimately rolled out in the coming years and decade will also further diversify the availability of different types of batteries in different options. I think it's a much more complex story, but the market needs sound bites, the market needs, there's only one way to heaven kind of sound bites, but in actual fact, we have a much more nuanced story that's going to benefit a bunch of different technologies, battery types. And ultimately, if we're talking about a commodity's audience or different commodities, over say the course of a decade. Let me ask you a question about the geopolitics of this. The Chinese are very aggressive and acquiring overseas for them sources of these critical materials. Where do you think the West stands in having enough nickel owned or controlled by Western companies to compete in the next decade? Over the next decade. Well, they're two different, as we all know, they're two different governments and China is investing on behalf of its people, effectively tax dollars, let's call them tax dollars. And they're executing a political strategy and they're decarbonizing. I think when China looks or has looked historically domestically at things that upset people, because ultimately they have a constituency, one of those was corruption, and another one was pollution. And in addition to electrification and transitioning towards electric vehicles and batteries and solar, they're also doing things like moving industry out of the major cities, out of the path of when they're doing a bunch of that. And that's their prerogative. And I think sometimes there's these sort of articles written as if they're doing something nefarious. I would actually argue that they're leading the world in some respects in environmental policy. And the West, not just America, but Canada and Europe to a large extent are embroiled in fights over, should you get vaccinated? Shouldn't you get vaccinated? Like, did they just stick an electrode? I mean, just nonsense, right? And I don't foresee in the States or in Canada that somebody's going to lay out a couple billion dollars to build a nickel mine, if there's even one to build in the States, if it's not sitting in a foreign national forest. And so I think it's a much more kind of complex conversation because on the one hand, I don't think China is doing anything wrong. And I'm not aware of any accusations other than the fact that the government is using effectively their taxpayer dollars to execute a government sanctioned strategy. That's great. That's a great idea. The West doesn't have that same idea. And so no, I don't think there are very many assets controlled. And nor will there be any time soon, you know, look at the projects in Australia. You know, these are big CapEx projects, multi-billion dollar CapEx projects that have challenges around grade. They have challenges around H-Powell. They have challenges around power. Like is anyone after the experience of Goro or after the experience in MBATIVI, are they going to like line up to put six, seven, eight, ten billion dollars in? I don't think any time soon. So that makes Australia challenging.  You know, no one's lining up as far as I could see. Everyone knows where those assets are. So it's a more complex situation. And we have a free market in the West. And if you're an allocator of capital until maybe the last 10 days, just go buy tech stocks. Go buy the NASDAQ 100. The S&P last year was up 29%, 100% liquidity.  So I think people don't put it all in context. And the reality is, if we believe in a free market system, there's been much better places to put your capital for years and years now. And you know, if the moment arises when investing in these is a good idea, then you'll see money flow in and they'll get built. But I can tell you Dumont, as far as I know, is fully permitted, shovel ready, two billion dollar CapEx. Goldman has been running a process for eight or 10 months like, okay, Ford go build it. Okay, Tesla go build it. Okay, a government of Canada go build it. Well, no one's building it. So, you know, that's a decision that's being made. And I think sometimes China is wrongly accused of doing something that various, they're not just implementing their, their public policy goals. I'm speechless. Because I completely agree with you. Okay, on that note, critical materials corner this week with nickel. Thank you everybody for joining us. We have the team from nickel 28, Martin and Anthony. Thank you. And of course, Jack Lipton. Thanks guys. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Tracy.


and welcome to another episode of the Private Property Home Shopper Show Cape Town Edition. You've seen us in Cape Town CBD all the way up to Constantia to Val dV and we are now right here in Blobo's Rund and ladies and gentlemen for those of you who don't know this is the new up-and-coming it suburb. If you want to live in Cape Town but you don't want all the noise all the traffic all the people this has got the best of everything while being still super super close to Cape Town. This has come from a quaint fishing village in 1806 and it's been built up to include some of the most beautiful houses you'll be seeing and these crown jewel in that is the home you see behind me right now three bedrooms four bathrooms one of those being a guest bathroom plus so many other features so I want you to follow me and let me show you exactly what living in this area offers you. Let's go. And walking in to this beautiful home the first thing you'll notice is the sense of scale of epicness of grandeur when you stand in front of this spiral staircase ringed off with stainless steel balustrades right in front of me is a massive window giving you nothing but a clear view of the sky and plenty and plenty of light and then to top it off the cherry on the cake if one may is this incredible chandelier above me when you've made it you're living in homes like this but we've got a lot to talk about the home spans all the way to my left as well as to my right and I don't want to spoil the surprise so I had to close this up so let's start over here where all the living areas are let's talk about the kitchen let's talk about what makes this home so fantastic let's tour it let's go upstairs to the bedroom and you guys can let me know in the comments when you want to move in let's go and walk into your left you'll find yourself within your living areas this right here being the lounge and what a place to be this is I love how big it is I love how much space is I love the wood flooring that I see is quite interestingly common within expensive Cape Town homes a lot of people with taste evidently like these really nice matte wood floors I absolutely love it I can see why they do sitting back here you can see just how much you can fit in without it feeling cramped now wrapping around though is one of my favorite features and let me also mention aircon right there but what a fireplace wrought iron fire crackling away but also fully enclosed so there's no smell or fire within the home whatever this house smells incredible smells like roses smells like the flower arrangements actually of which there is one right here moving off to this side you'll find your dining room area and really every home has to have at least one fault and I guess this dining room area might not be the biggest but one must make make do with what they have no guys this is the dining room area absolutely stunning framed with glass everywhere and giving you the use of the ocean as well as of table mountain across the corner here you can see table mountain peeking out of the clouds but on a clear day it offers unobstructed views it also has a sliding door giving you an approximation of indoor art or living even though you are quite high off the ground our love how it's done and there is a safety balustrade there as well so you don't need to worry really nicely done but it continues because right over here in this kitchen and a stunning kitchen this is there is this gigantic kitchen island which can also serve as a breakfast nook now the top of this kitchen island is a thick piece of quartz plenty of undercounter storage as usual beautiful down lighting illuminating what you need but let's talk about the kitchen because on this side is really where the magic happens we've got a built-in liquor or wine rack coming over this side we've got our chef's sink which is a must in any exclusive home beautiful beautiful taps as well I believe hunscrow then over here we've got a Bosch electric stove top as well as Bosch extractor and then over there I was wondering where that is is your Bosch oven and microwave over here on my right hand side a display cabinet which is internally lit that I really enjoy frosted glass at the bottom clear glass at the top undercounter storage all the way across and then there is a scullery slash pan free right in front of me let's take a look at that now this is the area where you'll house your fridge as well as your other kitchen appliances such as your dishwasher and washing machine what's really done nicely is because it is an open scullery you have shells and cupboards that will hide those appliances away so you do keep that nice clean look which is so important in kitchens as fantastic as this within the scullery you'll also find your double sink again with another hunscrow tap and now that we've covered this half of this home let's move through over here because the first thing you will notice is this is a fully enclosed entertainment area the doors behind me shut for you to have a good time with all friends and family that you visit on my right hand side beautiful countertops cord countertop with your very own sink here for you to do washing up while you are mixing drinks and your drinks are displayed in all their glory down lighting in all the cabinets really does add that final touch we've got speakers in the ceiling catering to all of your entertainment needs right over here a good reading desk or even if you just want some time away in some quiet where nobody's using this perfect place for some lighting some fresh air if you crack open these windows and here we are within the lounge area or another lounge area where you can kick back watch some sports on television and enjoy the sea views and talking about sea views walking out of this stackable sliding door aluminum frame which really does help with the wear and test specifically when you've got the ocean right there this is where it's at if you want those sea views 180 degrees of the ocean on this beautiful wooden deck plenty of space here as you can see for outside entertainment massive lounge suite really doesn't make you feel cramped or just funneled into a box and right here I'm about that close to falling into this stunning heater pool but wrapping around we've got a sliding door here again aluminum trimmed and we find ourselves within the downstairs guest bedroom now if your friend gets by a safe and you don't want to put him anywhere else you can tuck him away yeah I'm sure he's gonna find himself very comfortable you can see a couch fits here with no problem whatsoever and then a massive almost wall-to-wall window looking out onto that stunning ocean now this bedroom as well comes with its own on-suite bathroom let's talk about that let's wrap around back into the living areas let's talk about the guest bathroom and then it is all the way up that stunning spiral staircase and we can take a look at what the top floor has to offer the downstairs guest bathroom includes a walk-in shower and a massive one at that glass framed looks exceptionally lovely then you've got your two basins so two separate sinks as well as a massive mirror under counter storage and then your toilet tucked off nice and privately in the corner now your guest bathroom is located just through the front doors to the right and it includes a floating toilet as well as your very own private vanity and it's perfectly tucked away from prying eyes the first bedroom we're gonna show you upstairs makes a perfect child's room as it is calibrated right now an office or even a small spare bedroom no bathroom on suite the bottom is just across the hallway which can service anybody upstairs now you may be asking me Chad what is somebody just doing wandering around upstairs and what they might be doing is what I'm about to do right now and that is come over here and open this door which leads out onto a beautiful long balcony giving you uninterrupted sea views 180 degrees the Cape Town ocean as usual is fantastic although the weather today might not be but out out there Simba in the dark bit that there is Cape Town CBD but we've wrapped this up let's walk our chair let's stretch all the way to the left-hand side of the house to show you what's over there and then we come back to the creme de la creme the master suite now when talking about the only bathroom that isn't located on suite I promise you no expense has been spared beautiful taps double vanities massive mirror giving you all the light and all the reflection you could ever need frosted glass doors cover all of the under counter storage and then to your right you've got a tucked away toilet as well as a walk-in shower framed wonderfully with a frameless glass panel coming across this corridor you've got this beautiful floor to ceiling glass window and then on the right-hand side of damn second room yeah we are let me close this door as this leads in to your on-suite bathroom now this bedroom along is with all the bedrooms in this house give you those 180 degrees of the sea and they've done it so wonderfully because they've almost jutted out the bedrooms so that you can get that 180 degrees and it is a beautiful view even on a cloudy day like this but right behind me covered space plenty of it double bed fits in here easily so you know there'll never be any problems with space as well as table and a couch really is nicely done in terms of area usage but behind this door we've got your on-suite bathroom so let's open this up and take a look at it now your on-suite bathroom has much of the features you come to expect and love of a house of this caliber that is your double vanity beautiful taps stunning mirror under counter storage again with that frosted glass walk-in shower framed by frameless glass and then on the left-hand side you've got your toilet floating toilet hidden system as well as some beautifully placed mirrors and windows looking outwards while still being frosted letting in that light that on-suite bathrooms soft and crave and right here before we move on to the master suite we come into a bar area slash office area this is located on the front left hand corner of the house and it gives you the most spectacular views of the ocean as well as all table mountain signal yield lines head and devil's peak that I think you could ever ever ask one but here we are bar right here windows all around the two of the walls plenty of space for you to get your party on this mixed with the bar downstairs shows you that this house really does cater so much to entertain us as I'd mentioned this can also function as an office because of all the space here you can go absolutely wild let your imagination run wild and do what you like air conditioning in all of the rooms and then these doors frameless slide open and stack together so you can utilize this balcony and let me see the view from this corner of here and here we go the creme de la creme absolutely incredible the master suite take a look at the views behind me but let's talk about what comes first as soon as you walk into the room on the right-hand side you've got your very own walk-in closet with plenty of cupboard space that continues around the wall over here as you can see more closures right there massive wall there for all of you TV lovers and a really cool feature here for people who love their pets is we've got a door that opens out onto your own balcony but there is an inbuilt pet door at the bottom so if you've got cats if you've got dogs and you want to keep them in the room overnight you know that out there is exactly where they get to do whatever they need to do but this room is massive air conditioning as I've mentioned high ceilings really this king bed fits in without a hitch and just in front of me you'll find your unsweet master bathroom now just before I walk into the master suite what I'd like to mention is this house has home automation you'll find one downstairs as well as one right next to the bed so you want to control anything if you want to let your guests in if you want to handle your music that's done through there but walking into the bathroom you will see the wood flooring that warm wood flooring gives way into these massive tiles and that helps space out this bathroom then like all the other bathrooms in the house we have got the double vanities the frosted gloss under counter storage and then on my right hand side an even bigger walk in shower floating toilet with a hidden cistern but on my left hand side I think that is the crown jewel of this bathroom and that is because of these two windows here letting you take a bath and enjoy living in Cape Town you've come down to Cape Town to live the lifestyle to have the beachfront to have the views and this home has just that stunning views all the way across of the ocean it must be divine and there you have it folks this home has been wrapped up we've showcased everything that makes this home as incredible as it is and for 11,490,000 reigned I doubt you'll be able to find anything that matches this quality ever again so what do you need to do next you need to contact Warren Leslie at Remax blowbook to schedule a viewing at your time and place but ladies and gentlemen that is it so for myself Chad Vaveiros the team at the home shopper show as well as everybody at private property the Cape Town tour continues tomorrow we're in Stellenbosch as well as Cape Town City Center so tune in Mondays and Fridays we love you all and goodbye


Hey, good afternoon everyone time Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter Matt Ricketts and our special guest today is Sherry Weaver Is bringing it to us from somewhere north of the border. Hey, Sherry. How are you? I'm good. Thank you We were just talking about COVID and COVID vaccinations and Most of the people in Canada are getting vaccines and is that is that correct sharing or being vaccinated a good percentage? The ones who are wanting and pretty much are vaccinated the ones who don't want it We're still trying to figure out how to get them to join our team Just ship them to United States. So yeah, right in that said we just opened Restaurants for the first time in over a year last Friday Hey, Denet, so well there is conversation here that Starting in September They want to make it mandatory that if you are working at a job even if it's remotely in your own home, you have to be vaccinated Wow Say that again Liz Exactly what you think you heard that to be employed in the state of Washington You will have to have to be vaccinated even if you never leave your own home Even if you are Yeah, so I don't know how they would track that like if you were an entrepreneur or soloprenar, but I don't know I mean does have they have they found out that COVID spreads through zoo? I Think it's just one way to be able to control it, right? So They they were talking about attaching it to registration our registration, but then they thought well only one person in a household So Wow That's our new conversation right now That would never fly here So what's happened must been happening in the world the last couple of days anybody watched the news Have I missed anything? I've been kind of busy lately. I have not looked Tom. I always count on you You know We're here Monday in the stock market in the US just completely fell apart on Monday because of COVID concerns But it's come roaring back and they're hitting highs again. So, you know Go and figure Drop 900 points came back 200 and I guess we're up Almost all of the losses are back. They're up to 34 798 so above actually what they even closed after our week So, yeah, just still a lot of still a lot of volatility. I think I think that there's definitely concerns that were not through the worst of this year in the states that There's potential for You know more lockdowns restrictions and how that's gonna affect the economy. I I don't know I don't know crystal ball, but I'm not hopeful we go down that road again I'm not sure people have the patience anymore. They're they're expecting this wild summer and travel and Freedom and I'm not sure they're ready to go back. Well, you guys like in Missouri like Less than half of the eligible population has been vaccinated. They're right. I mean, isn't that like one of the hot spots? Yeah, Missouri is Missouri leads the way and Being Missouri We get to blame Matt Vaccinated early and often Like it's like voting in Chicago voter vote early vote often I'll get all three different kinds that are approved here That's a microphone How do I sound Yeah Yeah, things are good. I had I had Gosha from Gosh, I can't remember a company name Gosha Baron in Chicago. Yeah, Chicago. So Gosha was visiting me today and Firm age is that somebody is that sound right? I can't remember PCT clean is RJ from He's from Atlanta Atlanta, he was there both visiting today and It was a fun. It was a fun day. We visited my office my recognition broke the day they visited in my office So by we had to get out of there about 10 and it was getting about like 85 degrees in the office That's just the way it is though, right? You have you have guests and and the air conditioners we just replaced in two years ago So I'm like, I'm Certain that I'm certain it's something we did at this point like Being in a commercial Department Matt, are you gonna start commercial? I actually I actually got rid of about quarter million dollars of commercial work during the pandemic because I refocused on on Residential jobs that were more profitable because I was so short on staff. They went the opposite direction. They went Gosh, if they're not doing, you know, RJ is probably 50 50 commercial at this point It's just the way, you know the way that he swung during the pandemic They're doing they're still doing a lot of spraying and disinfecting a lot of businesses still want those services I'm not surprised. I think that there's still a lot of You know COVID concerns and you know, the new strains people are getting concerned and so I'm not saying that they're capitalizing on that but they're making money off of that for sure They're they're they're finding a way to grow their businesses It's an interesting niche and are they like looking for for local partners? I mean, they're expanding in various parts of the country Working with other house cleaning businesses, right? Dude, I didn't dig too much on that. They were really here. They were really looking at made central quite a bit We're kind of looking at my operation You know, I had plenty of questions for them, you know sharing ideas and You know, but they were here to learn and grow and we dug into my operation a lot and but I did look at the way they're doing things and You know, they're their teams and they're moving towards some some mix of solos They're trying to figure out how we pivoted to that and you know language around that They were very interested by the fact that we charged $25 extra for somebody to be first thing in the morning if somebody wants to be first thing and That was you know an interesting thing to them, but a lot of a lot of different a lot of different good ideas were shared Gosha does some really interesting things with the way she does commission for her salespeople and I think that I would love to track it a little bit more granularly by who makes my sales and how that contributes to overall revenue growth of the company And she bonuses based on a percentage of that On revenue growth. I thought that was a good takeaway. So there's a lot of there's a lot of learning Jerry. Oh, sorry Tom go ahead No, I'm just thinking $25 for first thing in the morning I guess there's a lot of customers who want first thing in the morning. It's just easier to schedule Is that the thinking? Yeah, and what we do is we tell them Hey, you got a 50-50 shot of being first thing most of our cleaning techs are just doing one or two jobs a day But if you absolutely must have it and you want us to lock it in and make sure that that always is the case But if you're flexible, you might get it anyway, but it's just a good amount of people are willing just to say I need to be first and they're willing to pay for it. So We would have the same Yeah, that's too Same thing. Well, hey where we get much deeper. Can we introduce sherry? You know explain who she is where she's from and all that good stuff. Let's do that awesome Sherry do you want to introduce yourself tell us about your business where you're located? What what got you into the house cleaning business what your favorite flavor ice cream is So I'm Sherry weavers I own and run three little birds here in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada So for many who don't really know anything about Canada, we are about 45 minutes north of Buffalo I've been a business since 2012 and Yeah, I think we have a really great culture here in our company and we really focus on relationships with our staff with our clients Are you sitting in your office now? I am that is beautiful. Yeah, what do you have pain it? Is that a It's a decal. It says whatever you're not changing your choosing That's one of my favorite quotes Yeah, I like it. Hey chair. You don't by any chance have your logo somewhere handy. I just love your logo It's changing a little bit. I want your car. No the car. There's the logo You'll notice the heart. The heart is there. That's something that got added It's important to us those who want to notice and see the heart will notice it and others that don't care Look right past it. Is it a wing or is it a heart? Yeah, it is a wing, but it's shaped as a heart It's a little subtle little subtlety there. It's a FedEx arrow. That's what it is What's that? It's like a FedEx arrow. It's there. There you go. Yeah, exactly Have you watched Portlandia before? Have you ever watched the TV show Portlandia? It's kind of a kind of a take on like the culture of Portland just a bunch of shorts and So, you know, I use a bird with a logo in some of my marketing too and there's a joke from the show It's like put a bird on it. It's art and all the hipsters in Portlandia have little birds with hearts on there on their little patches and stuff like that. So When that show was popular everyone was like, did you steal that idea from Portlandia? I was like, I don't even know what Portlandia is. It's like you guys are looking at me now But I did watch it and it's entertaining It's hipster television from about ten years ago And if I would have watched that I would have never opened an office in Portland having watched that television show I would have been like It's a shame it's a shame that one of us never watched it would have been good it would have probably saved us some trouble But yeah, put a bird on it. It's it's a funny line from the show just YouTube that part and you'll get the gist of it, but Yeah, I'm looking at Hamilton on a map I didn't realize it was so close to it was so close to Toronto and that Not far from Detroit. I used to go up to London As a kid and play in hockey tournaments not too far from not too far from there Yeah, my son drove to London today just to do some shopping. Yeah But yeah, I'd say we're about halfway between Niagara Falls and Toronto Cool So are you so we're we're going to be talking about Productivity to matching scheduling all that good stuff today. What is your model? Are you solos teams? Only teams only teams. Yeah I'm sorry, what size to two teams of three Teams of two is our minimum teams are two are the most profitable for us When we have to make the schedule work into three can work and so we will do that at times We don't want to see any of our cleaners clean more than six hours In a shift. So we've had massive jobs. We've sent six people on a job But but generally it's we aim for two So and the reason we wouldn't ever change is the stuff that we hire there are all Very social we get everybody from restaurants retail They they they wouldn't be happy if they worked by themselves Huh So yeah, I never thought of it that way. So I mean the idea of recruiting from hospitality and food service and so forth is Common, but they're used to working around other people. So having those Candidates work by themselves might not work well No, thanks. Everybody wants to work. Yeah, they want to work with their friends Yeah, we saw some turnover of people when we went to so those people that didn't Particularly love that model say I agree. That's probably true Especially if you're hiring for relationship And we find the dynamics our clients will comment all the time about the energy of two people coming in and they're laughing They're smiling They're hanging out with their friends while they're working Have you heard of that Liz like if you're if you have a solo model, maybe you shouldn't be You know recruiting from hospitality and retail food service. Yeah We're actually just talking about that today and then my groups that you know for solos everybody's got to be Recruiting from other places the CNA angle is still really good though so And and hotels are still really good You just don't want to be because those people are used to working by themselves. Yeah, a lot more landscaping people are You know, hey, no land. Oh lost Tom It's not common to lose Tom We're still why we didn't in the show Yeah, I mean Hey, one of the things One of the things you'll see in our job ad and it says happiness is happiness is finding a friend at work Nice so You know, it really works. Nobody wants to call and said because you're gonna hear about it from your partner Even if you were to leave Eventually So What we wanted to talk about this is scheduling production planning month for the most part We can go with us a lot of different ways that Anyway, we really want to go with it, but Matt, I know you and Sherry talked a little bit about doing a deep dive into some Some routing and scheduling techniques. Yeah I've seen it a couple from a couple other people now, and I'm not sure where it originated But I think Sherry does it well. It's basically a rainbow, right? Like where you use a visual tool Yeah, it might be do that's that's yeah, do you have a PDF version or something that we can Yeah But the general idea is Maybe put it up on the screen a little bit while I talk about it is is that that basically The zones that Sherry designed are all color-coded and they can quickly look at each zone and make scheduling decisions Just like that like that makes sense to them Like you would never schedule a purple job next to a green job because you've got across Looks like a lake or like a half way across like it's like a sea shape And you don't want to drive that part of time So you kind of visually by this by the rainbow is you have a center of the rainbow where that might be your office And then both sides of the gradients of the rainbow. Am I describing that right? Look, how will you tell the rest of the story? Absolutely because what happens is you'd have orange would be in between say yellow and red You would have your green in between yellow and blue. We just set it up. So it's just very logical So when you're looking at it very very quickly on the map You kind of know what goes with each other We also have it set up at stages as you go further away. So we have Like we have we call those slices and sections. So we have 1a 1b 1c as it goes out. So Anything that's an a is so close to the shop, they're interchangeable Because if you think about how it goes out, you can have a to see switch out with a 3c Because they're only one number off so a team could once they're out They can work their way as they're coming back and just kind of slide into the other slice And that's basically how we've set it all up and it made a huge difference for us Yeah, I love that. It's so nice and organized. I really like so the the rainbow hack isn't as intriguing to me as the A B C that is very that's that's a brand new idea that I've Yeah, so you're basically taking your zip codes, for example, you got six of them now We've got 18 because we're splitting them up so that you decide I like that that that's yeah That's really interesting Yeah, and then the other option that we tried to do is we tried to have everyone start as far out as possible So you're starting out from E and working your way back towards a So if the team were to run into trouble Other teams on their way back could potentially stop drop off somebody to help and things like that Yeah, because we're all kind of working toward the center just like you would clean a house Yes for this doubt and then coming closer to the door. Yeah, that makes a huge difference for us Do they drive so in the past? I know they did drive your cars.  Yes. Yeah All right, so it because it doesn't make a difference about You know where they start based on where they're coming from they're coming from this or their home Yeah, and we pay travel time Yeah, so for us, it's especially important. Yeah, I Think well here in the States Everybody pays travel time. It's Not to how you pay it is up for grabs, but you have to pay if you have okay Please if you have independent contractors, you know Yeah, if people don't work for you, you don't have to pay them Good general statement, isn't it? You can just Right We do straight hourly as well no commission or anything like that Mostly because we are getting our staff from places like retail and and restaurants where it's hourly from the time you start to finish So, um, how do you manage? So you're paying hourly they come from this other Area where they get we're paying hourly, but they were getting a lot more in tips. So how do you manage that piece? Oh? We get our fair share of tips Okay Don't do all you Canada I don't know how many we're tipping before now that we're with made central the tips are coming through the roof Um, yeah, and so we're seeing them now, but everyone has given us feedback. It's they're definitely increased Do you know the num? Do you know the number because I was just looking at it today with with RJ and Gosha? And I was like please do you have you looked at yours lately and kind of know the number off the top your head? No, I don't I just look at each employee and I look and I'm thinking wow like Just the amount that they're getting in because made central shows it in there how much they're actually averaging per hour It's almost a temperate. It's almost a 10% raise or more. So we Just looking at last week. We generated over $1,300 in tips You know, it's not quite 10% last week, but It was basically almost a dollar 80 and higher last week for employee averaged out But it's significant so I've had some people push back on me on this a little bit And they're like well, then you're paying the credit card processing on that thousand dollars and I say don't like you wouldn't trade $30 to give your employees a thousand dollar raise you wouldn't make that trade and When they think of it that way It's it's so powerful because it would cost so much in sales to give them a thousand dollar raise to do that How much would that cost you in sales probably five thousand you have to make five thousand dollars in additional sales to do that same thing I'll take a $30 credit card processing fee to do that And the other pushback point is at least in the states is you have to play the poor your taxes on those tips as well But whoop-de-do it's still free money for your employees. It's true that cost me another seven percent. You are right It does cost me that too. Yeah, yeah So do you guys have to do that? Um, sherry also Yeah, we pay quite a bit. Yeah, it's still it's totally worth it. Like Matt says It's so worth it. I love it The response that Matt does so I'm gonna have to look at that made myself a little no I'll bet you sherry's is better than both of I'll bet you sherry's is better than mine because sherry's response rate on her surveys Last time I talked to her, maybe you can fill me out on this but it's it's through the roof We we used to sit about 87% nice And what are you now? Hi 70s I'm just working on our our template right now. I want to revamp it now that I've been with mid-central for a while and Get that up there Yeah, I think that I think anything above, you know In the survey industry if they would tell you anything above a 20% response rate would be phenomenal but You know 87% that's that's culturally your training employees. Yeah Maybe your customers to the way you're selling And I think it is probably the way we selling we almost sell it like they're buying into Almost like a club and it's part of being of our club Nice nice. So tell us a little bit more. What does that sound like sherry? How are you like telling them that it's a club? First of all, we tell them it's required If we go up because they didn't respond and we just tell them sorry it's all automated and Because we don't we don't What's the word omit anybody from it? Everybody gets it. It goes every single time. I mean come on. It takes what three seconds to do it And if you're not willing to do it, you're probably not a good fit for us because together You know, and it's also how we pay our staff. There's a lot based on on their discourse That's good. That's a good little selling point, too And we really help Yeah, go ahead. We help the clients understand that you benefit by the collective of everybody doing this Because that's how we keep our great staff and they get paid. Well Yeah, awesome. I have found that people are very receptive to this idea that it's mandatory As I oh We say we don't tell them it's mandatory, but the calls are gonna happen. So it's probably easier just a Three-second click Then it is stuff to deal with our phone calls.  Yeah I'm not really on saying that to you guys here, but we just you know It's basically it's going out automated and the people who are calling it's just because they're calling off a list of those Who didn't respond to our one second, you know Feedback email. It is really straightforward. I just I had my house clean the other day And I just I always do my surveys after my staff leave and it takes it just a moment and then You know the the next step where you can put some comments and that takes an extra couple seconds if you want to do if you Want to you know, give some more specific feedback, but just the clicking action is just opening your email Just, you know, if you can train you that you really create a lot of data a lot of data points just on on You know frequency of surveys Which which of your technicians are our game surveys and some that are falling below standard And obviously we want their surveys scored There's something to be said for that For that response rate to that they're actually following your processes Oh, wait, it's all about how it benefits them and we just communicate that to them I mean, I'm saying about how we're handling it, but no, it's it's all it's all about the clients and how it benefits them So the zones Scheduling Structure that you have where you've got the circles and the colors and I mean, I think that's really awesome so you use that to reduce down or drive time to Increase what we would call Efficiency out of the work day you want people to spend their time actually generating revenue as opposed to looking out of a windshield Have you measured your efficiency? Do you know how much of your team's day is spent cleaning a home versus driving around town I I'm gonna quickly look while we're here. So It's like, yes, I do have that track Yeah, I So Tom, I know that, you know, she does have this number cuz she's a softball That's the whole point I mean it's aesthetically pleasing it looks really awesome and I love the level of detail But the real benefit is you make more profit when you use tools like that to schedule your jobs So I'm just looking here. And yeah, we won't go under 80% Efficiency and those are for teams which is really hard to get a high efficiency With teams so how many homes does a team typically do a day? three We almost never do for Mentally just doing that fourth job. They're done But yeah Generally, that's very different in their work. They start at your office. Is that is that correct? Nine o'clock, so I'm trying to get my kids to school generally first. Yeah Does it end at your office as well? By five. Yes. Okay.  That's a lot of drive time and being able to do all that Still have 80% or more of that day actually generating revenue Both people on the clock from the office to the first job Yes, everybody. Yeah, that is that's amazing. That is I honestly didn't know that so I'm pretty happy to hear this I didn't know how I compared Yeah Yeah, so I use 75% even though we do end up pushing closer to 80 with all the solos that I have For the revenue production planning that I used to do my sales We base that on 75% so the fact that you're getting 80% with teams I mean, even though you're using them a little bit differently than you're Still getting a lot you're slipping a lot out of people even in shorter periods of time. So that's That's really it's really good. So so one thing I have to question though is so do you have to pay benefits? So like is there would there be some benefit if they could work a little longer because don't you have to pay benefits in Canada regardless? Or is that kind of covered in the It's covered it's covered in the government. We do offer benefits after one year of employment with us. Okay. Um, but we also have our Our community Coordinator or sorry supervisor. She just got changed to supervisor So she oversees all of our training all of our new hires the orientation as well as quality She's basically the one she just drives around all day and goes from place to place And if anyone needs anything they're calling her if someone's locked out They're calling her so kind of like a field supervisor But she oversees mostly the quality and the um in the training Nice Sherry Robin has a question. He wants to know how many cleaning hours do you schedule for a Team with three houses So each of our cleaners can't clean more than six hours. That's our policy here So for a team of two you'd have 12 man hours So a loud hours would be 12 hours. Yes Yeah for a team of two. Yes Okay, so it could be a two hour home a two hour home a two hour home as a team of two or it could be A six hour and a six hour or no, sorry, uh, three hour and a three hour I'm going team back for I don't think that's super unusual I was thinking maybe you meant that they could just work six hours in a day max inside, but you're you met a lot of hours Yes. Yes. Sorry. So they're yeah No more than six hours physically cleaning and then you'll have your travel time works out to usually be about not eight hour day Yeah, I think that's great. Yeah so It seems to be perfect for the staff so I Think if you balance that out, I mean if they end up going over a day that You know if you balance it out in general, but yeah if you if you do push people Long cleaning days day after day just because it seems like they can do it sometimes they They do fizzle on you. So it seems like a good approach for long-term success. I do a lot of long-term employees You know sherry one of the uh themes you've heard a lot Here in the states is it's just really hard to hire team members hire cleaning professionals Um, what's it what's it like in canada? It's been we've been all pretty much about two weeks behind you guys so we It's been a real struggle here. It was near impossible a quality of our applicants just changed so much until last friday suddenly restaurants and The malls are open So everyone who was getting subsidized by the government suddenly can't get it anymore And uh, all of a sudden the quality of our applicants has just changed big time Oh, so yeah government is the one that's been the issue It's part of it for sure here too. Yeah It's there's so many there's so many moving pieces right now, but I will say I was skeptical that it would make a huge difference But Missouri was the first to open up and I mean we've hired 13 people in the last, you know 45 days. I mean It's been the flood the floodgates kind of opened up So nice All right, so that's what you have to look forward to and We're getting it now. It's it's good. It's good. It's just it's amazing to see how much it changed Well, you're ahead of actually a lot of america on that because um You know, it's kind of a divided america between the states that are required or still paying The extra unemployment and that'll go until september 1st if I remember, right? I think I think so on a national level So we still have about half the states here, you know friends of ours that are on the east coast most of those states You know are all probably paying extra unemployment and I know That probably I'll bet it is a tale of two countries right now as far as hiring and rehiring Well, think about it though for us our staff are coming from restaurants and from say the mall say a restaurant worker They've been laid off because they they're not open So why would they move to when they can collect up to 200 dollars or was it no is 500 dollars a week Why would they work for the same amount somewhere else? But now once the store like the restaurants the stores all open on friday their jobs are there again. They're not getting the subsidy And they're like wait, I've been where I've been home having dinner with my kids every day I've been have weekends off all the stuff, you know, I don't want to go back to that world So suddenly we're a little more appealing Through labor day is what robin is saying is that that's not maybe that might be when it is at the federal level That's what he's saying federal Yeah, the the channel tax credit is just starting to roll out now and that's uh additional funds as well not tied to unemployment, but it's still People more runway in terms of You know more choices in terms of do I really need a job or not? Yeah You know, I but this is a chance to look at all the way we do everything and pivot and There's going to be a lot of good ideas that come out of things just from us going through this The obstacle is the way I tell people that right now just as just look at your numbers and I and I just say look at look at a couple things is How much revenue are you doing now and how many less people are you doing it with? That's a good indication that you're actually you've improved some efficiencies in your business through covid A lot of a lot of companies are doing more with less. We're at 95 of pre-covid revenue with 75 of the employees Um, so we're getting more from our from our current employees. We've raised prices. We've done some other things, but um it's There is there's a lot of light at the end of the tunnel that we've actually Probably built more resilient businesses through this process. It sounds like you have Yeah, absolutely Yeah, I think the scheduling stuff that that you've done has been really interesting I think I see that a lot with with people that that like during covid they really took the time to do some of these projects to really Fix some of these internal things. Was that something that was like that wasn't as detailed or Was that a problem before covid or when did you fix this? We did it just before covid okay Or actually maybe I'm trying to think it's been so long ago Um, yeah, it was just around there and it was but it's been that much better since we moved over to made central because now We have the schedule efficiency and all that type of stuff that we're looking at I actually have Other the same colors as your zones and made central too. So you kind of can identify easily like visually We did we did yeah, and what I did my son is actually going to school for uh, like uh website design and things like that so Just for some extra Just some extra experience when we moved over to made central. We had him come and work a couple hours one day Like once a week he came in for about four hours and he just worked on his job was our schedule efficiency So all he had to do was look and say well if we could change this to this and we could do that to that and We were paying for him based just in the improvements we were doing And uh, and he was getting a feel for the software Yeah, that's great. Yeah, very nice. And then does he work for your company? Is this another one that works at your company too? It's a family business, right? Yeah, they don't want to be here though. He quit on me But he was only about four hours a week and uh, my other son is here right now as a cleaner. Um, But he won't be staying long. He's going back to school. I put my kids to work I haven't go to the office on on the weekend and and do some towels and do some other things just to um Make them understand what we do and that it's not all that they just get to Get nice things because we get paid. So it's nice to put My kids when they were little they got fired so many times That's awesome. I think about firing my son every day.  He's the same as everybody else. I didn't even hire a mother's dad He had to do his police check apply the whole the whole thing But when they were little and they were doing the class and certain laundry and all that stuff. Yeah, they were fired every week Were they upset did they cry did they care? That's why they got fired Okay Mom was mean Some chairs about money and so it like I tell them it's not going in your college fund this week. You didn't do enough hours I'm not putting it on your payroll next week.  So just just the same I think as everybody we does for their clients Do you want to remove all the obstacles you want to make it as simple as possible? You know, we kind of do the same we always take the same approach to our client our staff I mean, I look at them as they are there are clients too in a way just the same thing we want to market to them and You know to help them see the value and even once we've hired them not forget about them But same thing. It's time you start to time you finish. This is how much you get paid simple Yay, excellent and that I was wondering about that because of your Efficiency and holding them to the six hours eight hour day never going over So I was wondering how that drive time might play into that One more thing if they are If you have a situation So they never work past five you said and they never work more than six hours What do you do if there's like it's going to be six hours and 15 minutes does somebody come and help? or Six hours and 15 minutes would be okay Providing it's not taking them past five o'clock five o'clock is a big deal for us because we we market ourselves as that Family-friendly company you need to be home and have dinner with your kids And so that's something that we're committed to And so what happens if you get to I mean, I'm sure that your company's like the rest of ours where you get to that single clean That vacant clean that everybody thought was going to take 10 hours and now it's taking 16 Do you do schedule it for the next day? Do you generally we can do it with all hands on deck So everybody would be coming it's going to be a less profitable day for us because other teams now we're going to be going They'll lose an efficiency because they're not following where they're supposed to be and yeah, we'll do all hands on deck Oh, you don't leave any man behind kind of thing But uh, yeah, we generally can get it done in In the time. All right. I I do know another company that's in texas that Nope when the time hits And they they're done They're off the clock and if they have to go back the next day for 15 minutes Then they go back the next day for 15 minutes. That's it. Oh, they're wow. Yeah, you know, we're we're pretty good with that and I think also, um Our times seem to be pretty good Our staff we encourage them. You never rush. You don't have the deadline. You ever need extra time. You just call and let us know but we keep an eye And again, I keep saying this but we've made central, you know, we can see, you know The rate increases and things like that the rate adjustments. They're fantastic Because we can see what homes were consistently adding extra time to and they get the rate increase Into how often do you guys look at at that report? Whether or not you need to adjust your schedule Do you do that daily weekly monthly? We try to do weekly We try to do weekly. Yeah Yeah A lot about people doing Daily and weekly where I think back in the day before made central came along. I think people did that annually Right. Oh, if ever if ever Good point. Good point. Sure. Right. Yeah Have you used the rate increase tool the report? Have you looked at that recently? Yeah, have you used that tool? Oh, I absolutely I have the shortcut on my on my browser Yeah, so the summary I love the summary of it that tells you how much that Price increase is going to make you in a year Five years, but I also like how it tells you how much it's already generated you So I did that price increase in april And you know, it's it's it's generating about 46,000 dollars annually about I don't I think it was like 250,000 over Over five years something like that and But I've already captured $10,000 from it.  I'm looking at it right now and we have done in april It we were looking at about $30,000 And how much have you captured already? How much has already been On the summary. How much have you already collected of that 30,000? Is that the actual additional revenue? Um, I think it's I think so I don't have mine open. I can look at yeah, so that's looking at 57 5700 So you already captured $5700 extra since since april since april. Yeah That that's what I really love about that report because it's not just like the prediction Then it goes back and tells you how well you executed on that and how well you You know that was based on keeping those customers, too. So it's You know, it's uh, it's a very valuable like look back tool as well. So not just look forward But look back how you're doing on it. Yeah, well, I think too what happens is just by looking at that It's not even just the money it makes everything run smoother because we're able to identify homes that weren't priced properly We're able to properly communicate to the clients The staff aren't feeling the pressure that they were feeling so then the staff are enjoying their job better I mean the whole thing Everything just runs smooth I was never that good at this at this particular aspect So what I always was been really good about was like I'm just a really good sales guy I could just top line revenue We could just grow grow grow and I always thought I could outrow outgrow my problems But yeah, it is so critical to like be looking at every day, especially in this last year We're like, oh, I can't just sell 10 more houses this week. We need to actually Make more money off what we're doing. So Yeah, like I've heard Tom say it to you know, this way before is that you'd be better off not cleaning certain homes, right? There's houses that you go to and you're just like you'd be you'd be better off not Cleaning that house collecting that money because at the end of the day You've lost money and I actually identified Seven or eight houses that were just like we are paying these people That was that was one of the first lessons I ever learned and Liz I think you can probably appreciate this GCA global cleaning association. You don't want all the jobs. You want the good ones That's very very true So and you know sherry you said something earlier that we kind of glossed over but I think is super impactful for people to hear That it doesn't matter if you're using made central It I know we talk a lot about made central because we all use made central But for those of you that are not using made central what you said Is what makes a difference sherry the reason why you're doing it now and doing it that way and doing it weekly Not annually or whatever is because everything runs more smoothly your your company looks more professional and Actually runs more professionally when you're managing this stuff on a regular basis not Waiting until there's a problem jumping in fixing it and then let it go fixing some other problem You know, that's that's what we see too much in our industry people just like talking from problem to problem to problem Yeah, it feels like it feels like like that money that we were making that extra money from those rate increases That's just the byproduct Yeah, I mean it sounds really silly, but There we need it just yeah It doesn't sound silly. It sounds like the just rewards not to the price increase But to the professionalism that you're creating in your company and the balance that you're creating And you make your company more attractive and it makes it easier for people to stay at your company Yeah, I think that's a good point the best companies that I've ever seen run have been doing this for years Like whether there was software behind the scenes or they were You know running this with a ledger and looking at every single job like you know looking at a loud hours I have to agree the very most professional companies that I've ever Visited talk to always track their loud hours To their to their actual hours and they know the story of every job Um, I talked about Kathy gauge last week on Wednesday. There's other people that I know that did this Just as religiously with paper and pencil And and ran really tight ships and the value in that is is that when you're ready to sell your business Even if it's not on whatever software You have a much more valuable product because you can you can prove your profit margins on on every job It's it is just an incredibly important thing to do whether You know whatever software you're doing this on whether you're doing it with paper and pencil I mean people that are running very successful businesses through their sheer will power and quick books It's it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible I want to swing back around for a minute to where we started with the Zoning that sherry does and the efficiency factor, which is like north of of 80 percent and for And the typical company with a business model of everybody meeting at the office in the morning and again In the afternoon and two or three person teams An efficiency factor of 70 percent in my experience is considered to be pretty good Yeah, um the difference between 70 percent and 80 percent. I'm going to do some quick math here. That's 10 percent But that's like 10 percent extra Home cleaning you're getting revenue that you're generating without having to pay any additional salaries for that So looking at it in another way If you've got like a team of like 10 cleaning professionals and you can increase efficiency 10 percent You can get the same amount of work done with like nine people as opposed to 10 Or if you've got a team of like 20 cleaning professionals and you can increase efficiency 10 percent Then you can get it done with 18 as opposed to 20 So if you think about you know, what am I playing a cleaning professional and You know, probably more than 500 dollars a week, but just to keep the math simple You know, it's like a thousand dollars a week of bottom line profit that you'd be making with you know the team of 20 Just by getting that efficiency up 10 percent. So Sometimes I feel that we talk about, you know, some of these metrics, you know productivity efficiency, so on and so forth And yeah, that sounds nice When you translate it into real dollars on the bottom line into profit, though, that's uh, Where it really gets interesting. So you're making more money scheduling that way Then what the typical house cleaning company would be without being that diligent and that efficient And it's really hard. It's really hard to make those twings too like a 10 percent swing in efficiency It sounds like just 10 but that's huge I mean, it's almost a logarithmic scale of difficulty to get from 70 To 75 like it's like 10 times harder than you think to make those improvements Um, so, you know, 10 it might as well be a hundred percent harder to get that kind of improvement There's just so many things you have to be executing on To do that. So it's not probably just this. Is there anything else that might be um I think I get teased a lot. Um, I'm thinking of somebody in philadelphia in particular Um, like that I'm like militant on on certain things, you know, like when my staff go in I can tell you even the left handed they're cleaning one direction. They're right handed they're cleaning another direction like every single thing is There's a flow. There's a routine and It's okay and it seems to work for us because we follow we hire rule followers You know the people who it's like no, no, no, this is the way I'm supposed to do it I want to do it that way and uh, you know, we say trust us trust us. It's stuff like, um We always say it like a like a baker, you know, we're baking at home and we're just I don't know using however much flour we're supposed to use Whereas a bakery they're measuring it and they're doing it different someone who's truly a professional at what they do Is going to do it the proper way and there's a reason because then you can multiply that and we want it So that if one person's not going to be in one day and somebody else is going to be filling in that spot They're cleaning the exact same home the exact same way every single time It's so much more predictable. Yeah I'm playing cars. I did it for the same reason. I wanted all the wiper switches to be in the same place I wanted the drive. I wanted all the shifts I want I do want that consistency as well and how we Like the ergonomics of equipment and things like that Predictability is important. I think even down to what you're describing of of changing the hands If you're a left hand as you go a different direction and And right, I've never thought about that before But and we explain it to like for our staff It's always two what's in it for you Well, when you're cleaning exactly the same way every single time and you want to take that time off Because you wanted to go on this the school trip with your son You can't easy peasy because somebody else is going to fit in and the client's going to be happy Everything's going to be done exactly the same way your partner's already going to know how to work with you. So It's just sort of how you sell it to them and help them see what's in it for them Yeah, I think that's that's awesome Yeah Well, we we know it's working too. I mean how do you know that can tout 80 efficiency with I do have to say I do have to say it does get a little difficult though when you're down on revenue Because now suddenly we're trying to cover a wider area And you do have a little bit more criss-crossing, but yeah Yeah, as you as you grow things do Tighten up your efficiency can tighten up. Absolutely. Yeah, we have more houses in a dense area So of course that sense, especially with teams of two, but you want to grow that efficiency You don't want to grow an inefficiency So you want to get it while it's small So sherry, do you do anything? Like we were talking with I think we were talking with chris will it last week And we're talking with somebody else too that said that uh twice a year They go in and they sort of do like an efficiency check and they make adjustments and changes Based on things that have sort of gotten out of whack periodically like Like you have a customer that's every two weeks They skip a cleaning and they say just have me go from this week forward That's a different a different rotation a different location, right? So do you guys have to do anything like that too? Or do we just do it? We just do it We ask them do you want to change your whole rotation? We can't guarantee the same team the same time slot Or do you want to just pick up where you left off? And so you never have to go in and like optimize your schedule Just get everything back in order and where it's supposed to be again We do we do but that's the business in my opinion. I mean, yeah, it's just I'm wondering how often that was my question. Oh, sorry. How often again, we try to do once a week We'll sit down and go through the master schedule Oh, okay. So yeah, that's why so we're almost the same We're almost the same way Liz we look at that master schedule once a week and then adjust it like Hey, how did this house end up here? Oh, they must have asked for a rotation change, but we didn't really think this through very well We we identified a couple yesterday That were like, you know on opposite sides of town on the same team and it was coming up. So yeah, we look at that regularly too Good info for everybody on this call I know a lot of people Well, we had two guests this month that said that they go in the optimizer schedule either quarterly or twice a year, so maybe Kick that up and not y'all Weekly weekly is a big kick up there. I had to do it more frequently I don't think it takes as much work. It's kind of like doing price increases when you're doing a rolling price increase Like you're not doing all 700. So 700 problems didn't creep up You only have to fix a few problems if you're doing it weekly Only one or two problems have crept up since the last time you looked at it. So Um, if you wait perfect sense to me Yeah, if you wait every month or every quarter You probably have 30 things you've got to fix instead of one or two Another thing we do try to do is when we're bringing clients on we use the tags What is their preference of days? Sometimes they'll be like Tuesdays or Thursdays or Mondays or Wednesdays and we try to get that in there Um, so when we're booking the man and say I'm like, oh, we're all the way out in this area on this day I'd really love to be able to find another home that goes in there. I could do a search filter, you know bi-weekly client in this zone with a tag of Tuesday Tuesday or whatever day and I mean it sounds like it's a lot of work, but that really isn't Yeah, it doesn't sound like a lot of work to me at all So Sherry, will you give me a favorite email me that that visual that you had that could put that in the academy for people? I will yeah, all right So I will have that uploaded for people that want that download They can they can thank Sherry for saving them Tens of thousands of dollars in scheduling efficiency. Yeah, no kidding Because we generally do 30 minutes from any Like from our location or 30 30 kilometers 30 miles So we are approaching the top of the hour um Got a minute or two. Are there any last? Last pointers or a thought Sherry that we'd want to touch on before we run out of time today You don't want all the coins. You just want the good ones. Just the good ones It's the 820 rule, right There's a couple that we all have or you know, if we don't watch we'll wind up with them That we'll have more money in the bank at the end of the month if we didn't have them Exactly, especially right now y'all Right now while clients are plentiful You can be picky, right? Choosing mothers choose jiff choosing Owners choose good clients Oh, yeah We're going to be back Monday at five o'clock eastern and our guest is going to be Katie Lambert And I think that we're basically going to be kind of picking up on this theme again on monday, aren't we? In a little bit different way. Um, but yes Katie's going to share how the master schedule works. Um, but Not from the maid central perspective a shocker Just be giving a Um, sort of a low tech version how anybody can do this is um based on the Kathy gauge model Yeah, this has been around since white words and and uh and post it notes This is it's just put in software. You can do this however you run your business At the end of the day, you just want to be mindful that you want your cleaning professionals to be spending as much of their day as possible generating revenue Yeah, and and that's the objective and You know, we've got some calculators if sometime this month we can kind of dust them out and play a little You know what if analysis and show How much more profitable you can be if you can appreciate Improve your efficiency from some lower number to some higher number and it's free money. I mean, it's truly Like free money. Yeah Yeah, you're probably going to get hit up by a million people now sharing wanting to know what Hey Denny Wang was useful Tom dust off those calculators for next week and let's try and Really, can we do that next week? Can we can we please mom? This is awesome Thanks, so I'll be doing this week again Yeah Sherry this is this was really good. Thank you. You're sharing with us and You know, congratulations on the success you're having especially in the face of All the challenges for these unprecedented events. We've been dealing with you know through covet I can't wait to see your rainbow too So we'll get that rainbow. Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Yeah Can you guys like people go in and out of Canada now or is that still kind of restricted? I think august night this way August 21st for the us has pushed it back a little bit. But yeah, are you gonna are you going to be coming to convention this year? Oh heck. Yeah, I gotta get out of here Awesome. Okay. I look forward to seeing you there Um, I think we're done for the week We're done. Um, thanks for joining us again. Sherry. Thank you for your help Very good stuff. We'll be back Monday. Katie Lambert. We're going to be talking about Um, some some the basics on on how to do your schedule to get the results that Sherry was sharing with us today. So you guys take care. Have a good rest of your week and we'll see you Monday. Bye. Bye. Thank you


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