Hey, good afternoon everybody, Tom Stewart here, smart business moves, and our guest today is Amber Starling. Hey Amber, how are you? Hey Tom, I'm doing great. It is finally starting to look like fall around here. I'm in Manhattan, Kansas. The leaves are changing and we have started to get a little rain. Wow. But it's rain, it's not snow. Not yet. It's only matter of time. You know, before you know it, I imagine. Yeah, I'm just grateful I'm not one of the Issa residential members in Canada right now. I'm sure they have gotten a lot colder than we have. Good grief. It's not time for that yet. I mean, it's October. We've snowed in October before. It gets real hard to put on your cute little Halloween costumes. You gotta put a big jacket over it. You need to have two costumes, I guess, a warm weather and a cold weather costume. Yeah. Hey, I'm not raising kids in Kansas, but that sounds brilliant. So you're in Manhattan. There's a university there, isn't it? Yeah, that's going to be the University of Kansas. It's the Wildcats. Okay. And fun fact, we won our last game this past weekend. Okay. Yeah. So what's their record? I have no idea. I'm not a huge football fan. I just like the yelling at the television. So much fun. Hey, Denet, how are you today? And Amber, it's so cool that you're here. I appreciate that because you're always so much fun. And I remember the first time we met was a few years ago, kind of like when COVID was more of a thing and you and a few other people and you want to, I think it was presented as a scholarship or some type of grant maybe from another software company from Java. Yeah, actually, we were one of their grant recipients when they did their Boost program. We competed against, I mean, they were such amazing, such amazing other cleaning companies, painting companies, things like that. We were just absolutely floored when we got it. Over time, we've since moved over to Meade Central. And we've been very, very much enjoying that transition. That's been a major part in what I've been building towards, which is breaking the cycle of burnout for myself and then teaching other people how to do it. And I really got to a point where, unfortunately, the kind of stubborn that has to get to life or death before I'm willing to stop just driving towards that goal. So this was a lesson that I learned very much the hard way. And I'm going to tell you guys about that experience today. And I hope that this willingness to share will encourage other people to not wait until they hit the wall. And I guess one of the things that I learned about you a long time ago when we first met was that you're ambitious, you're driven, you, okay, is not good enough. You're in a leadership role in ISSA residential, aren't you? Yeah. So I am one of the ambassadors for ISSA residential. There are quite a number of us. And then I've also worked my way into the IICRC. We were the first Certified House Cleaning Technicians in the state of Kansas. And I am now since become a Certified Master Textile Cleaner over time. And those are things that I was working on throughout the time period that we're going to talk about today. And I really was, yeah, I mean, like there's, there's perfect and there's amber perfect. And one of the things that I tell people is that I am a recovering perfectionist. So it's, it's, it's an affliction that a few of us have to have to learn how to manage.  Yes, I am. Yeah. Are you working towards that? We are working towards that right now. Yeah. Oh, that is slow. We are also in the middle of switching over from job or domain central, doing a little reorg that went along with that. So we've moved from team cleaning to a solo cleaning model. And we've moved from hourly to percentage based pay. So I'm in the middle of quite a number of transitions right now. Even recently, we decided that we didn't want to mortgage anymore. We were like, man, why are we paying money for a house that we only get to sleep in? So we flipped the house solo it and moved into a motor coach. Oh, you were telling me about that. It's like a class. I remember that from convention. Yeah, absolutely. We were going to bring her down to your convention this year, but she's 20 years old. And I eventually decided that my poor little heart couldn't take it. So you mentioned convention. So I feel obligated to bring that up just to remind everybody that I guess starting November 13th, there is going to be ISSA residential, the industry, the only non-profit industry trade association for the residential cleaning industry formally known as ARCSI. And if you haven't signed up for that or haven't considered going, I would absolutely encourage you to consider going. And if you want more information or to sign up, I'll drop the link in chat. Yeah, that is a party and a half. It's usually a party and a half, but this year is extra special because we are celebrating the anniversary. We're celebrating 100 years of ISSA. We have a whole bunch of speakers lined up. We're going to do an extra special party. And I don't recall what night that is, but everything's in the ISSA show planner. Everything's very well laid out in there. You can look at all the different speakers. You can look at everything's organized into different tracks for education. And so that's going to make it a lot easier for if you're looking at residential and you don't do any commercial, you might decide that you want to just focus on the residential track. But there are other tracks like leadership as well. And it's going to be a really full show with a great program. And you know that there's like two anniversaries going on. It's the 20th year anniversary for ARCSI. You know, I was one of the handful of people, 20-some-odd years ago, that helped start RxE. Now ISSA is going to be potential. And I do. And I'm studying this textbook over here and there's your name on it. Oh, goodness. So yeah, yeah, you guys, ARCSI turned into ISSA residential. But my goodness, the programs that we have in place because of the work that you and other predecessors have done has been amazing. It's why we have even what we have today. Well, there's been a lot of people that have invested a lot of calories and with the idea of professionalizing our industry. And, you know, I can't tell you how excited I am to see you stepping in and playing a leadership role. Because, you know, at some point, I'm, you know, well, that's not true. I'm going to be doing this forever. But we need some, you know, more people to jump in and help. And I appreciate what you're doing. Yeah, it's funny you said it like that. There are so many people that I've learned from over the years that refer to retirement as the R word as if it was a dirty word. So yeah, I can definitely see why you're so passionate about this and why you would never want to retire. That's fine. That's fine. And it's gratifying. What we're doing is important. The work that, you know, the cleaning our cleaning professionals do is important. The people who take the risk and put in the hard work to build companies to create those jobs and provide those services are doing important work. And it's important that we work together to create a higher level of professionalism within the industry, because that's for the benefit of all stakeholders. Absolutely. One of the things that I love about ISSA residential is that we're very collaborative. We don't, there's no infighting. We're not like, oh, you don't get to see my checklist or don't even look at the chemicals I'm using. There's none of that that you see in other industries where they're just like very cutthroat competitive. We are super collaborative. We will share things all the time. And I just, I really love our industry for that. Thank you, Denet. You're too kind. And I'm not going anywhere. So with that being said, I think that we've kind of framed up our topic for today in a good manner. You know, how do you, how do you have so many balls in the air and do all the things that you're doing, doing it at a high level without getting tired and getting burnt out? So that's kind of the overarching thing while you're doing all these things. You need to make sure that you're capable of getting up the next day and doing it again. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I did a whole lot of learning this, the hardest, dumbest way. So I'm very much looking forward to handing you guys a couple of keys. So you have a presentation, which I like it, already. Make some popcorn and see what we got here. Gorgeous. You touched on that earlier, this problem that we have in the cleaning industry. And it's, it's, this is something that we all struggle with. As cleaning company owners, we're people pleasers by nature. When we were solo cleaners, we're balancing the needs of our clients and our families and ourselves. And then once we hire our employees, we're not, we just aren't like major corporations. Our team members aren't a number to us. We work with them every day. We naturally began adding their needs to our equations. And when we aren't actively and intentionally making space for ourselves in our own companies, we inevitably face burnout. It's really easy to recognize these things, especially in other people, but like, it's really hard to do something about it or to recognize it in yourself. Once you do recognize it, you don't know where to start. Articles online give really great tips, but they don't really give you like an overarching roadmap. And there are a lot of misconceptions about the tools that you can use to establish and maintain healthy boundaries in your business. So today we're going to talk about what burnout is, what it looks like, and give our viewers a brief overview on how to build themselves into their own business. So cool. Awesome. So in 2021, when my therapist started trying to help me recognize these signs of burnout, it was the symptoms that really struck me at first. After all, I mean, is there a single time Tom in your entrepreneurship journey where you didn't experience one of these symptoms? Certainly, I think just being part of the human condition will, you know, from time to time. So is it, do you have to have a number of these symptoms and do they need to become chronic? I mean, if I wake up tomorrow feeling fatigued, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm burnt out, does it?  And the answer is if you're doing things in a healthy way and you start to feel off, that's when you should start to try to do something about it. That fatigue in snowball, it's fine if it's a day or a week or so. But if you're starting to see that feeling of fatigue just like linger with you, you're adding some more of these physical or emotional symptoms, then I think it would definitely be a time to look at your schedule and look at your commitments and see if you aren't overstretched a little bit.  Yeah, that's what I told myself. That was how I ruled myself for a very long time. And frankly, Tom, it almost killed me. That's an indulgence that we'll deal with on another day is kind of the But that's not good, is it? No, it's really not. So when my therapist was talking to me about these signs and symptoms, she just asked me, well, you know, how are you going to keep doing all of this then? I remember just looking at her completely dumbfounded. I told her I'm just going to dig deeper, obviously. And you're right, like that's what we often say to ourselves. I was in my late 20s. I saw my willpower as an unstoppable force. And I saw my body as a vehicle that I could conquer and then use as a vessel for that will up until that time. That was how I governed myself. And it worked back home in Florida. It seems kind of like a previous life. But back home in Florida, I was a volunteer firefighter. I use that to overcome my fear of heights, my fear of fire, my fear of tiny spaces. I trained in 80 pounds of gear, 95 degrees and 100% humidity. And in less than four years, I made the rank of lieutenant. When later in 2015, a lady pulled out in front of me in the rain. I was driving my motorcycle home. It's like 25 miles an hour. She stopped in the middle of the road, though, the back brake locked and there was nowhere to go. She shouted my pelvis. She broke my C1 vertebra. She broke my nose in two places. It was, yeah. Oh my gosh, it was crazy, Tom. It took four days for the swelling in my abdomen to go down enough for them to even be able to operate. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So after it was done, my orthopedic surgeon came in and he broke the news to me that I would never fight fire again. And I did the same thing that I always did. I doubled down. I told him believe so vehemently that the nurses had to sedate me because I was super upset. You weren't going to accept that at that point? No, I wasn't. I was not willing. And what it comes down to is I wasn't willing to accept my own mortality. I still thought I was 12 feet high and bulletproof and I could just walk over mountains in a single leap. So what did you do at that point? After your blood pressure went down a little bit, what happened after that? I was extra dumb. I tripled down and I was back firefighting within six months of the accident. I don't recommend that. I recommend that you listen to your physical therapist. I will pay for that for the rest of my life. Just listen to your physical therapist, man. So you went back and you proved the physician wrong, but maybe you really proved them right. Yeah. And I ended up proving myself wrong because I really did just follow that double down, double down, double down pattern until I couldn't double down anymore. So I got done with firefighting. My husband moved us to Kansas and nobody would hire a military wife. And so I hired myself and built this company. So there was no reason for me to believe that I wasn't an infinite well of willpower and energy. And so I treated my body and my mind like that until I was 29 years old. And that was last year. I started my company in 2017. I had a hundred dollars worth of cleaning supplies from Dollar General. I had the vacuum for my house and we doubled revenue year over year for the first three years. These photos, the first one is from November 2019. The second one is February 2020. The third is March 2020. And then that one is November 2020. In early 2020, I felt like I was really hitting my stride. I brought on a business partner previously that I thought that I really needed only to later figure out that not only did I not need him, but that he had done more harm than good. So in January of 2020, I planned and implemented a hostile takeover of my own company. And then I just hit the ground running. I completed two of those five classes that I needed then to become an IICRC certified master textile cleaner. I was still volunteering a lot around town. I was the director of an entrepreneurship program. If your breeders may be familiar with it, it's one million cups. It's an initiative by the Kauffman Foundation out of Kansas City to engage, educate, and connect entrepreneurs for free. And we primarily worked with startups. We brought them in. We let them present. They told us what was going well in their business so that we could learn from them. And they told us what was going not so great in their business so that we could help give them feedback and advice. And I really, really enjoyed all the things that I was doing at the time. And I had developed strategies to continue our expansion into the residential market before the pandemic hit. How did the pandemic affect you guys?  I mean, we had six branches at one point. And when COVID hit, we, you know, we didn't know what we didn't know. But we were kind of playing best case, worst case. What's a smart thing to do? And some of the branches were marginally performing. So we liquidated some assets and basically got down to three branches. Well done. Y'all leaned up. Yeah. And some of the branches, you know, closed down for COVID for a few weeks. And then, you know, we'll open back up. We were kind of doing what everybody else was doing and moved to solo teams and, you know, kind of, you know, the social distancing part of it. And that was good. We stayed with it. And we started working, you know, spending a lot more time working on Made Central because we had the time to do it because we weren't cleaning as much as we... Yeah. Well done. That sounds like a fantastic use of your time. And you guys were an established company so that you had that opportunity to get leaner. We were not a very established company at the time. And in April of 2020, we lost 60% of our residential clients overnight. 30 days later, we launched three pivots at the same time. We didn't have the money for marketing professionals to tell us which one was going to be a good idea. And we didn't have the time to do anything else because we weren't operating. I mean, we were cash basis. I didn't have debt. I didn't have any of my own money to put in to help float us. We were just doing what we had to do to survive. We chose government contracting, commercial janitorial, and post-COVID cleaning. The post-COVID cleaning helped us float through the rest of that year and our commercial division has grown considerably. Our first commercial contract we landed in May of 2020, so very, very swiftly after we launched those pivots, we actually got our first contract while the government contracts ended up, they just take so long to bid from start to finish and they really are kind of like a lowest bidder game. We ended up putting that one on a shelf and then we pushed forward with commercial. Over time, eventually the demand for that post-COVID disinfection services has gone down pretty considerably. And through those things, we were able to still double our revenue in 2020. And I remember one of my entrepreneur friends just looking at me and saying, wow, Amber, you're rolling. There isn't even a pandemic going on. And I was. In 2021, though, in addition to running both the commercial and residential divisions of my company, I have a cute little plaque back there from when I completed the SBA Emerging Leaders Mini MBA. So that was, it's a free program. It's basically a master's in business except it's boiled down into weeks and months, not years. It was a very hard program. Do I sleep? No. Well, and that was half the problem. Yeah. I was also at the time planning an expansion to a nearby city in Wichita.  At that time, the dissolution of my marriage to my husband naturally followed. And through all that transition, I still ruled my body like an unsympathetic dictator. I kept digging deeper and deeper into my own flesh to find more strength. And that worked until the well ran dry. When did you figure out you were burning out? Yeah, so that would have been September of last year. I dug deeper and for the first time in my whole entire life, I came up empty handed. My weight started to drop. I spent hours a day with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, panic attacks. I lost 27 pounds in less than six weeks and it took me six months to gain any of that weight back. Wow. I have a bit of a dry morbid sense. Some of us can lose that weight and kind of, you know, I did not have it to spare. Yeah, you didn't. You don't. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So like I have a very dry morbid sense of humor. It's off-putting to some people. Some people find it hilarious. But I was talking to one of my friends and I was like, you know, how many panic attacks a day do you have? And they took me very seriously and they said you mean per month, right? And I didn't. I was experiencing two to three panic attacks a day. It was just like all of a sudden? I mean, was it, were you like having discussions with yourself for a while or was it like one day? It's like, wow, this is just falling apart really quick. Yeah, it was a lot slower than that. It was just like, you know, going through a whole day and barely having time to eat, but drinking coffee. It was well, you know, for a few weeks at a time, I'm going to have to work 80 hour weeks and sort of 60 hour weeks. And it was just a lot of, it was just a lot of me really coming down to not holding my own boundaries and not treating myself as a person. Like I was so willing to seed space to everyone else in my life that eventually there was no space for me to be anymore. And then the reason that it got that bad that quickly is because your GI system is very, very sensitive, especially when it comes to things that are anxiety related. It affects your GI system first. And so what happened was I ended up with IBS. I ended up with GERD. I ended up with acid reflux and a imbalance of bacteria in my small intestine. And so it made it to where I mean, without medical intervention, I would have, I was not able to process nutrition anymore. And all of this was going on and you had, in essence, two businesses you were running in these other commitments. And working on my career, what was I thinking? I was thinking that if I just dug a little deeper and tried a little harder, it would all be fine. Right? Yeah. So eventually it culminated with a 12 hour straight overnight panic attack. I was on the phone with the suicide prevention hotline for three hours and found out that our local crisis stabilization unit has 10 slots for the 11 counties that they serve. So our mental health system in the US is pretty lacking. It is especially lacking in the Midwest. There are not a lot of resources and geographically, everybody's spread out quite a bit. So it's hard to get those resources implemented in a way that makes financial sense both for businesses, but also for government services. And that still didn't even stop me. I didn't stop Tom. I know. That's why I was like, I will be super honest with you. I'm dumb. Let's get ready to turn around. So, okay, well now, you know, I guess you started like getting all of this fixed, but not quite yet. No, I was still pouring from an empty cup. I didn't enforce personal boundaries. I didn't enforce professional boundaries. Like I left my staff call out of work for the last minute, no problem. But I never allowed myself to call out at all. I didn't have a terms of service document yet. And I just repeatedly gave abusive clients the benefit of the doubt. Like, oh, well, maybe they just didn't understand. And at the end of the day, I mean, you've been in business long enough to know that there are some people who are just trying to scam cleaning companies. And there are some people who want to be dissatisfied with their service. That is true. There are some people that you know, have hated every cleaning service they've ever had. I know. I know. And that's what I mean when I say they just seem to want to be upset with. They really do. They'll go through, you know, five to 10 maids in a single city and still be say, oh, well, you know, none of them met my standards. So yeah, I mean, your terms of service are designed to protect you from that. And I didn't have that shield. My office assistant at the time told me that, you know, her role was 10 hours a week. She told me that she was completely overwhelmed with it.  And I wasn't even the I wasn't even the highest paid person in my org chart. In fact, I was the lowest paid person in my org chart, because I just really, really believed in this and I wanted to make it work. So what changed? What was the the the the moment that you were able to see this from a different perspective? Honestly, Tom, I don't think that there was a single moment. There is if you are if you're in this process, there is no single moment of clarity when things change. If you're looking for that, then don't. If you're if you're waiting for that to happen and it never happens, then you're just never going to get better. It was kind of like a one step at a time thing. I got within about five pounds of weight loss from ending up in the ICU.  I have entirely too many things to live for. And if the way that I'm governing myself and my relationships is killing me, then I have to change. I thought you was going to say I have too much stuff to do today. Well, I mean, having too much stuff to do is definitely part of it. Part of the reason, you know, absolutely. I did start putting things down, but like it took me a while to get there. I had to recognize that my relationships and my personal and professional lives were were kind of one way streets. And I exported a lot of resources, emotional labor, actual labor. And I usually only imported a litany of half apologies. And I kind of fell into this pattern where other people didn't even have to make excuses to me about their behavior. I found excuses for them. Oh, yeah. And so we really just reached a point where I was like, you know, I have got to rework the way that I approach my life to not keep digging into myself like this. And I do want to give you a trigger warning. The next photos show my body condition while I was very sick. There's still a little hard for me to look at. I got scary, scary, tiny. So the next slide will include pictures of when I was teeny, teeny, scary, tiny. This was between September of 2022 and March of 2023. My body just wasted away into mountains and valleys of bones. I would have nightmares every day I'd wake up before I am, spend four hours in the bathroom, put on my uniform and go to work until nine or 10 at night. I remember just dozing off on the bathroom floor on the bath mat between those waves of nausea. I reached a point where I could count my ribs. I could count the vertebra in my spine. I could see very clearly my hips. And it was so, it was so bad that I didn't recognize myself in the mirror anymore. I went from a dress size eight down to a dress size zero. And I didn't even take photos of myself. These are photos of my girlfriend took because she absolutely adores me and never stops taking pictures. But I did. I just, I just wasn't myself. It feels now even still strange to see my own wardrobe look like hand me downs on me. I tried to put a smile on through this entire thing, but like it never really hid even in the top right picture how thin my face got. Or in the bottom left or center, just how small I ended up being. This was, this is really life threatening at this point. It was, it was. Yeah. And I hope that other people don't get that far. Please don't get that far. Yeah. I mean, I'm anticipating that you're going to share your journey back and help all of us like get ahead of this. And if we're going in that direction turning around before things get too bad, but I will be your cautionary tale. Don't become one at the time this was happening. Like did you, were you aware that it was that bad? Or were you still kind of telling yourself that, you know, if I just work hard, it'll be okay. Uh, no, I was pretty aware it was that bad. A lot of my recovery involved my cuddle up for my therapist has also had to put weight back on before. She is absolutely amazing. She has already beaten cancer once in her life and she's younger than me. She, so she recommended to take and put my horrible disgusting protein powder into a jello mix of jello pudding because it would make it significantly less terrible. Less terrible and good are two different things. It was not good. You're bringing the better bad alternative. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, um, yeah, I will credit my life to protein pudding, but I have also told my girlfriend if we ever have to do that again, I would rather do, I would, I'll eat anything else. I don't care. Give me mountains of brush or sprouts.  But like, you're right. In retrospect, I did realize that the personal professional boundaries I had in place were vastly insufficient. Um, but at the time I thought I was good at boundaries and I would be willing to bet that they're part of our listeners who think that they are good at boundaries, but are struggling with these things too.  The name of that book is, um, it's the set boundaries workbook. I'm going to talk about it later, but I actually pulled one of the, uh, actually pulled one of the activities out. Um, if you are going through this and you're like, wow, don't call me out like that, then this is probably about you too. Um, it really helped me kind of like look in the proverbial mirror and it opened my eyes to how well I was really doing with my boundaries. So we can go ahead and look at this activity together. So we have in the last six months, I have waited for others to figure out what I needed instead of just telling them. I have let people borrow items without, you know, enforcing that they be returned, loaned money I couldn't afford to spend money without considering my budget, said yes to something that I didn't actually have time for, uh, experienced GI upset or loss of appetite due to stress. And a lot of people will say, oh, well, you know, I'm just working throughout the day. I'm not really hungry, but you've got to check in with yourself and really pause for a minute and think about that. Um, you know, sometimes it is just like, oh, well, I'm busy. It's warm outside. I'm cleaning a couple of houses today. I just don't want to eat when I'm cleaning. That's one thing. Um, but if it's like really, really piling up, then, then yeah, these, these are signs that you aren't holding boundaries that are protecting you know, and that's what boundaries are.  It's about having a framework of expectations of how people are going to treat you, how you're going to interact with your environment and how you're going to protect yourself. Um, so when you're, yeah, go ahead. So you had a couple of things, I mean, more than a couple of things going on. I'm, I'm sure, but at least, you know, discussion just started, started, you know, I could very much relate to, you know, I've got multiple businesses and I'm ambitious and I've got these projects I'm working on and, you know, sleep is for sissies. Yeah, I know. It's possible culture.  I mean, and even if it's only, like it doesn't have to be all of those, even if you're only starting to deal with a few, checking in with this activity is a really, really great place to just take stock and see if you are starting to kind of walk back some of your boundaries and see if it's time to start to reinforce them. Okay. Yeah. So I did. Your therapist helped you see this? She's the one who gave me the book. Yeah. And yeah, she did help me. When you, when you looked at this list and kind of went down to the checklist, did that change your thinking about some things? Yeah. Well, first I wanted to throw the book in the garbage can kind of like the doctor and the I know. Yeah. Yeah. You see her seeing the pattern, Tom. Thank you. Man, I should have had you in my life at that time. But yeah, no, at first I was very offended and eventually I reached a point where I was like, you know what, you're right. And I started to slow down. I wish I had done it a lot sooner, but I'm going to tell you how to do it. So you can do it a lot sooner. First off, we have, we have to set boundaries with different people. So even as a solo cleaner, you have to set boundaries with the public, you have to set boundaries with your clients. And then eventually when you have employees, you have to set boundaries with your employees too. So since everybody has to deal with the public, we're going to start there. One of the things that we didn't used to have was this cool little section at the bottom of our GoodWitch Cleaning Services card. We used to just have it where it was just like always open because our Facebook page was always responded to. And that was not great. I mean, it was great for my customers because they got used to just being able to reach me anytime of day or night.  It was an employee or a client or a problem or just something that I had to deal with. Making that decision is one of those decisions where you know, you're thinking if I make that change, if I go ahead and I put these hours in here, if I don't respond to that message at 10 o'clock at night, am I going to lose a customer? Is this going to hurt my business? Are my sales going to go down? Am I not going to be able to make payroll next Friday? Am I going to go broke and lose everything? Yeah. Yeah. And for a lot of people who are starting out like I did where you started out as a solo cleaner and you just built out of what you had and built it out of your own labor, yeah. I mean, that concept is terrifying. So when you made this change, how did it affect your business? At first, there was a couple of clients who did not appreciate it. They are no longer clients. And honestly, the only people who have been offended about it ended up not becoming clients. I've just kind of reached a point in my life where if you expect a business to a small business, not a large corporation that can afford their cool little call centers and stuff, but for a small local company, I just don't want to work with people who expect them to be on all the time. I understand that my job as a cleaner is not just to make the house look better and smell better. I understand that not only do I have a responsibility to make it cleaner and safer for those residents, but I also understand that this just isn't coming just out of their household budget. This is coming out of their mental health budget. It's coming out of their fun things to do on the weekends budget. Like they're getting more out of a house cleaning than just having a clean house. They're getting some of their time back, they're getting some of their sanity back. And so understanding that we provide emotional labor also means that I can expect that they are going to hold themselves to the same standards in the way that they communicate with me. So I don't contact my employees outside of business hours unless it's an emergency. I don't contact my clients or the public outside of business hours unless it's an emergency. And I kind of just expect the same. So another thing we did was small like solo cleaners. Well often and for a while I did have the cell phone that I carried was the business cell phone. And so it was not only on all the time, it was specifically me. And that that mix between my professional communication and my personal communication was one of those things where it started to encroach on my time. It started to encroach on my ability to take care of myself. And that really was something that I needed to do to make it possible for me to continue doing this in a sustainable way. So for the benefit of anyone who's running a business that might be in that same situation, you've set that expectation with your customers and if you change it and say, okay, well, this is when I'm available and this is when I'm not available, there will be a subset. Usually in my experience, I mean, I've been at this for a while and almost without exception, the head trash that we deal with in terms of, you know, how much business am I going to lose when I make this change is usually way over inflated. Oh yeah, it was, it was. And for the few you lose, fine, okay, you've taken care of the people who, you know, not only was it misalignment of expectation, but misalignment of values, the customers you have left and the customers you'll get in the future are going to appreciate and respect the, you know, that your values and where you're coming from in terms of how you're running your business and they're going to appreciate you more and be more loyal for that. So, financial, revenue standpoint and everything else, I'm assuming, I'm guessing that you're in a better position now than where you were when you were 10 o'clock at night. Much, yeah, yeah. Honestly, it didn't really affect any of the like most long-term real oil clients that we have. Most of them were like, oh, good for you, Amber. I'm proud of you. And that wasn't the, that wasn't what I was expecting at all. You're right. So, you know, if you're, if you're worried about making some of these adjustments, you're probably worrying about something that you shouldn't, you should be worrying about what's going to happen if I don't make these adjustments. Yes, yes, I am what could happen if you don't make those adjustments. Another thing that we noticed was a lot of the last minute annoying calls that we had were like, oh, can you come do my move out, clean tomorrow? Do you have somebody who's available today? Like, no, I don't. I don't want to be rude or anything, but I keep my employees employed full time. And we can't do that by just accepting same day bookings. So we had to be really clear on the, you know, how much notice do you need? Hey, we booked two to four weeks in advance. You know, what kinds of jobs will you take? Part of this process was us dissolving our short term rental division. And that was, you know, while we were doing Airbnb's, we had 14 under management. We worked with those managers for two years.  Somebody would call out because they didn't want to do their Airbnb or he, you know, Airbnb owners, if you're familiar with the short term rental game, have a tendency to create what we call scope creep, which is where they're just like asking you to do extra things for zero extra dollars.  And all those while you're there is out up. Yeah, absolutely.  Can you fix that and make sure can you please pray for ants while you're there? Like, no, I'm not an exterminator. Look at me. So that was one of the things, you know, what kind of jobs will you take? We had to say, hey, we're no longer doing this. How much notice do you need? I need two to four weeks. How do you prefer to be communicated with? If it's not a call, you know, perhaps you prefer email or you prefer text messaging, I have found that a lot of my clients prefer me to text them because they also lead very busy lives. And sometimes they have a screaming child in the background that doesn't want to let them have a phone call. So those are boundaries that you can set with the public and ways that you can broadcast that message to the public. When we're talking about specific clients, there are a number of things that we can do your terms of service. We have broken ours down into some pretty simple sections. We have our basics and one of them is as basic as our office hours are nine to five Monday through Friday. We prefer to be contacted during them. If you're repeatedly contacting us outside of office hours, we may elect to not retain you as a client. So your terms of service, they don't have to be written lawyer. You're allowed to write them yourself. That was one of the common misconceptions that even I ran into was that, oh, well, I can't write my terms of service. I need to be able to afford a lawyer to do that. And the answer is no, you don't.  Oftentimes in residential cleaning, it's not a contract. It's what you call a service agreement. And that service agreement is just going to govern like, hey, this is the scope of work I'm doing. So you know exactly what you're paying for. And then this is the price, you know, exactly what you're paying. And so those financial policies are state. Hey, this is not a contract. I am not some, you know, multi state broadcasting agency or, you know, cell phone provider.  You know, I earn your business every time. However, that also means that, you know, we can both cancel at any time, either way. People policy. Oh, did you have something? Yeah, in part, in part, your setting expectations and so much of it is a lot of times we don't do an awesome job of setting expectations. And if we don't do that, then your customers just assume whatever fits, you know, their needs at the moment. Yeah. And you know, there's a whole definition of quality about expectations and perception. And if we can get a limo on expectations, and then, you know, meet those expectations, life is beautiful. But it's so beautiful.  Did you get some help with this?  How did you make this happen? Yeah. So Jessica, my general manager, was the one who put her foot down and she was like, no, we're writing in terms of service. What we ended up doing was we have Trello in our office. And so we made a little Trello tab of things that we could come up with that needed to be in our terms of service. And then we had a little parking lot where we were putting in things that happened with a customer. So when we had, you know, whenever we had an incident, we were like, dang, we should have had a terms of service for this, we just put it in the list so that we could write the term of service for it. And that's kind of how we developed our process. So having the terms of service as part of it, and the other part of it is making sure that your customers have those top of mind, they understand what they are. You can have rules, but if nobody knows what they are, then you might as well not have them. Is that what the email templates are about? Yeah. So those are actually for when you need to communicate with a client about whether or not they have worked within the bounds of the term of service or they haven't. One of the things that I see cleaning professionals ask a lot is oh, I'm already in this situation, I have this client, they're upset with me. How do I handle it from here? And really, or what do I say? How do I respond? And really, the time that you should be doing that is not when it's actually happening. When you recognize that there are terms of service in your list that would trigger an event where you say, okay, well, I know that this client is a poor fit or we got to the house and it was locked or they canceled at the last minute or they needed to claim their satisfaction guarantee to initiate a claim, then what you can do is you can put those email templates, write them ahead of time. Even if you're just using Gmail, you can save those templates. It really takes the emotionality of it when you're dealing with a situation like that. You're not having to write it while you're feeling it. You already have it in your back pocket. Basically, you're anticipating conversations that you're going to need to have to make sure that everybody abides by the boundaries, abides by the terms of service. You're making it really easy for you and your team to communicate that and stick to it when the situation calls for it. Yeah. We have some pretty strict policies. In our people policies, we clearly state, professionalism is important to us. My employees in my residential and commercial divisions average 13 years of customer service experience. My average employee has 13 years of customer service experience. We are very people-oriented. I have to tell people, hey, we are open to feedback. We're not open to abuse.  If somebody yells at my office manager, Lisa, she's allowed to hang up the phone. Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. We're kind of shifting right now. This industry is shifting from a very much a buyer's market to the pandemic created a bit more of a seller's market where cleaning companies were able to command a higher price as long as they were also willing to do extra disinfection, take extra classes, and be willing to step up to the plate. Even before COVID, as an employer, you have an obligation to make sure that you have a safe work environment. Absolutely. No, certainly your customer's homes. We've got just a few more minutes left, Amber. Are there any points we want to touch upon in closing? We can get through this pretty quick. For employees, you have a training manual. We have our training manual on training wall. So you see in the side, we actually screenshotted a couple of those pages so you can see them. We have our cleaning checklist. We have a team member manual, TMIP. You'll notice that I say team member instead of employee. So that is a team member improvement plan. So if somebody has broken our training or one of our policies, then it's not something that you would need to fire immediately. We have, you get a verbal warning, you get a written warning, and then that's three strikes you're out. But so having that template already ready so that you know everything that you need to say and where you need to put it is important. Keeping an inventory sheet of your chemicals and equipment, especially if you have employees who are struggling, they're leaving stuff behind at clients' houses or they're not always coming in with the equipment that they need. We have equipment checkout forms now that are signed. There are some really, really amazing tools that you can use. When I'm looking at meal preps, I have a few little things that I always do. It's like instant pot meal prep, budget meal prep, five-ingredient meal prep, slow cooker meal prep. Those keywords in Google will get you a really, really far away.  It doesn't have to be a huge slot. It doesn't have to be your own house, but like get yourself some support. Keeping nutritious, hydrating snacks around my office manager and my field operations manager swear by apples and grapes. They're a really good way to just get some good nutrition and you get some hydration in you and start to feel a little bit better. We have the binaural beats and the 12-hour sound machine podcasts are great tools to help bring your nervous system down. There are different types of self-care. I had to tell one of my friends a while ago and it's kind of become a running joke. Taco Bell is not self-care. Getting yourself nice. No, it's bad for your body. I know, but there are, I mean, and that can be one thing, just getting yourself a little pick-me-up, but there are many different types of self-care. These are some of the books I recommended that set boundaries workbook is right there for you. They're industry resources, so Goja and RJ host a monthly coffee and conversation through ISSA residential. They bring on a presenter each week, but we also at the end of the day, we go into breakout rooms, we hang out, we talk. It's a really good time. The ISSA residential has the house and home cleaning discussion group. The Angela Brown's professional house cleaners group is a great one. They have a ton of members. They're very active. And her Ask a House Cleaner podcast was my bread and butter. When I was doing solo, I was always listening to that, just trying to find connections because as a solo cleaner, it's just hard to feel like you're part of an industry because you're all by yourself. There are a lot of the ISSA ambassadors. If you are looking for one of us, shoot me an email at GoodWitchCleaningatgmail.com and I will get you in touch with your ambassador that is closest. I have to tell you that since we implemented our terms of service, we have gone 211 days since our last unreasonable client. It is thanks to our terms of service that we've been able to do that. Do you have a board in your office that you update the number every day? No, but I have been very much considering it. I just haven't done it because I don't want to jinx it. My goal is that everybody after this session, so this is going to be at the ISSA show. It's going to be on the showroom floor in the Solver X Theater. We are doing boundaries for business owners and I've actually made a workbook for the attendees. So it's like step by step, fill in the blank. You will have your terms of service ready to go by the time you are back home from convention. So please come visit me. This was our preview for the show. Mark Baker is a big fan. He's asking you for a part two. So why don't you have a lot of snow and you can come back and we can continue this discussion. Awesome. Talisa, Marie has a question. If we could squeeze in really quick, maybe just a moment to help her with wanting to know how to make the jump from small residential to commercial. Where does she start? She mentioned she does air bean bees but has an off season where I guess work is slow. Yeah. So getting into commercial from residential is going to be a little bit difficult. Oftentimes, those commercial clients really want you to be outside of regular business hours. So if you are looking for commercial and you're trying to supplement with a residential company, you may try looking at some smaller offices that will allow you to come in during the day. But honestly, if you're just trying to fill in off season work for air bean bees, there are plenty of opportunities to get more recurring residential clients, especially this time of year when everybody's getting ready. The off season for air bean bees is the on season for holidays. So you can get those people who are getting ready for holidays, getting people in and visiting and kind of build on that back end there. I'm not sure without being able to speak more to her about her particular client balance and the resources that she has available, I wouldn't be able to responsibly make a recommendation. Okay. Fair enough. But that's a good advice. And we're at the top of the hour and Amber, in my opinion, this takes a lot of courage to come here and to share personal information like this. But I know where you're coming from. I know it's in your heart and this is helpful to probably more people. It's probably helpful to more of us and what even we are aware of at this point. We all have various degrees of needing to take better care of ourselves. Absolutely. It's hard nowadays, it really is. I look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas here in a few weeks. Absolutely. I am so excited. So we're going to go ahead and call it a wrap for today, but we're going to be back next Wednesday, five o'clock Eastern for smart business moves till then everybody take care. All right.


Sometimes love is a one-way street. No matter how badly we want to be with someone, they may see us as just a friend. And hey, that's their right, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it still might come as a major blow. Maybe you're wondering right now how your crush feels about you. Do they share the same level of attraction as you do? Or is it strictly platonic? Well, we've identified seven signs that your crush only wants to keep it friendly and nothing more. One, you're always initiating. Think deeply about all the times you've hung out with your crush. Are you always the one that suggests hanging out? Are you the only one making subtle hints, like buying them coffee or giving them little compliments? Maybe you've even made the move once or twice. Have they ever done any of these things in return? If not, that could be a sign they're just not feeling it. Two, you two only hang out in groups. Are you ever alone with your crush? Or does it seem like there's always one or two other people hanging around as well? Maybe this is just a coincidence, but if you never seem to have a chance to spend even a few hours alone together, then your crush probably sees you as just a friend. It's not that they don't value your company. Some people feel more comfortable hanging out in a group setting with their friends. Three, they talk about their crushes with you. Sometimes people actually talk about their crushes with the people they like. They might want to see if you get jealous, but for the most part, it's a sign that they see you as just a friend. It's definitely not a bad thing. After all, people only share these kinds of intimate secrets with people they really trust. Basically, they see you as a good listener, someone they can confide in.  Four, you've already been friends for a while. How long have you known your crush? Did you just meet them? Or have you been crushing on them for a few years? We'll be honest, it's not looking good if you've known them for quite a while and you've already settled into a friendly relationship. If it hasn't bloomed into something more yet, it probably never will. Most common reason is that people don't want to ruin a good friendship or risk losing a close friend. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes people who've been friends for years suddenly realize that they're madly in love with each other. But if you're not living a romantic comedy, it's not likely. Five, their body language says it all. If you really understand how to read body language, it's easy to tell whether someone is attracted to you or not. We've actually talked about this quite a bit in our other videos. And it's a fascinating subject. What you're looking for from your crush is open body language. Examples would be open, outstretched palms or even uncrossed legs. Closed body language includes things like clutching a bag tightly, crossed arms, and lack of eye contact. Your crush might also make excuses to make physical contact with you if they like you. If your crush isn't exhibiting at least some level of body language, they probably don't think of you in that way. Six, it's awkward when you compliment them or do them favors. No matter how hard we try, hiding our true feelings is almost impossible when we're around our crushes. The temptation to compliment them or do them favors is just way too strong.  No matter how smooth and suave we are with our loving gestures, we're crossing the lines between friendship and romance. It's important to be aware of when we make our crushes uncomfortable and if your crush doesn't see you in that light, they'll be visibly uncomfortable. Seven, there's nothing wrong with being friends. And that's okay. Let's end things with a little encouragement in case you're realizing your crush might not feel the same way as you. Although this realization is disappointing, it's important to look on the bright side. You need strong friendships in your life.  Ignore all that nonsense about the friend zone and how terrible it is. A friendship is just a different kind of relationship. In many ways, it's just as strong as a romantic partnership. Maybe even stronger in some cases. So don't just reject your crush because they only see you as a friend. Instead, embrace that friendship and see where it goes. What do you think? Is the friend zone really that bad of a place to be? Can you relate to any of these points? Let us know in the comment section and why not subscribe while you're at it. Remember, you are crushing it. Don't forget to hit the like.


So we're due to kick off it in about one minute, so just a quick kind of explanation of what we're going to discuss tonight and how to respond to any things that you're not sure of or any help that you need. I'm going to do a short presentation. This is just to explain a little bit about the coaching manuals philosophy towards player development. Probably not too many surprises for people who've been involved in coaching for a while. People who are new to it will hopefully learn something that they've not heard before. And after the presentation I'll kind of walk through a workflow that I use for helping players and it's something I've been using with the boys that I coach who are now under 13. I've been using it with them since they were six years old. So it's a well tried and tested process that's been developed over quite a long time and has had extremely good results extremely positive results. It's also a process that we've shared with with thousands and thousands of coaches all over the world and we've had lots of very positive feedback. So if you've got any questions ask them in the chat box. I'll record this presentation. I'll record the webinar and we'll make that available to everybody who attends tonight. I'm also more than happy to share the presentation that I'll walk through so no need to take pictures or record the screen will share everything that we go through tonight. So just for those who are joining us now, but it's time to kick off just a quick introduction again my name is Terry Barton. I'm head of product development and head of research and development at the coaching manual and top techers and also football coach. And this evening we'll walk through what play development is in very brief terms how things are changing in the modern world. And how technology can facilitate education specifically skill acquisition. And, and some of the lessons I suppose that we've learned as we kind of hopefully come out of the COVID pandemic now. So, play development for the coaching manual really boils down to three key things that we that we kind of stick to.  And this is how we approach education for every session that we deliver so every, everything that we create has this in mind underneath all of our activities underneath the, the, the things that we provide for coaches to help them kind of progress with their coach education. This philosophy really underpins everything that we do so. The smiling is obvious we want players to enjoy the sessions that they do. Learning, we really do stand by the, the idea that every single session that a player attends should present them with the opportunity to learn at least one thing. And sweating is another part of our philosophy football is a physical game is physically demanding. It's the kind of the major team sports it's the most physically demanding in terms of things like distance covered a number of sprints and the amount of high quality running that's required to do the game. So, when we put sessions together, or when we're out on the field coaching players, and these are the things that we'd like to, to focus on. The three things here are quite, they don't always go together. We want children to enjoy themselves, but working hard physically isn't always enjoyable for people so we've got to find ways to make sure that we still fulfill that objective of having hard work and at the same time for children to enjoy that. Learning isn't always straightforward for children, it can be frustrating, it can be frustrating for players, it can be frustrating for coaches, and we've got to make that enjoyable. The learning can sometimes be stop start so it doesn't always necessarily feel like it goes hand in hand with with working hard. So getting the balance of these three things whilst they look fairly straightforward on the surface does take a decent amount of skill and a decent amount of concentration and focus from a coach when trying to deliver coaching sessions or deliver soccer education to children. The one that most people probably focus on is the smiling part, the enjoyment part, and that runs the risk I think sometimes of people ignoring the fact that you are there to try and help people learn, and you're also there to help children work hard, get fit, and be part of that process. Just to reiterate, I've got a raised hand I think, but if you've got questions, if you could ask them in the chat or in the Q&A then we'll do what we can to respond to those as quickly as we can. So the smiling part, the fun part is the thing that we probably focus on and actually lots of people say the game has to be fun. My argument for that is the game is fun. You don't need to make it fun. Football is an extremely enjoyable game and that's one of the key reasons why it's the most popular team sport in the world. It's because it is fun by its very nature. So if we focus less on the idea that we have to make it fun and we have to do things that we think are going to be fun for players and focus more on the outputs of learning and the physical development, then fun will always fit in as long as long as we get the other things right. So what do we kind of need from players? What do we need for players to demonstrate when they're a footballer? They need technical ability, that's a given. Most of these will relate to the four corner model. Players have to be able to do what they want to do with the ball. So whatever they're intending to do, we would want them to have the technical ability to do that. Now it's not a straight line for learning for things like this because there are lots of complicated elements of the game, which is why when we start with young children, we're working on very basic fundamental movements. And as we get older and older, we open the areas out, we make more demands of those techniques. Physical ability, as I mentioned, it's a physical sport. You have to be fit to play it well, but even if you're not playing at a high level, there still is going to be quite a lot of running involved in playing the game. So it's a demanding sport in that regard and making sure that people are physically capable of performing what's required in the sport will ultimately make the game more enjoyable, as will the development of technical ability. They need to understand how the game works. We need players to recognize what's happening in the game and react to those different moments so that they can make the right decisions at the right time. And again, you can play the game for a lifetime and you still get things wrong. So we're not expecting anybody to get all of these things to be perfect. But these are the things that you need to understand from a play development perspective, when we're trying to create to create footballers. Communication really relates to the social side of the game in some regards, but having players who are confident enough to talk each other through the game to communicate with their teammates allows them to work as a team. If they don't communicate, if they don't help each other through the game, then it does very quickly become a game of a bunch of individuals playing their own thing. So technical, physical, tactical and communication, fairly common themes within coach education. So what's number one? What do we think is number one? I don't think it's just us. I think that throughout the whole of the football spectrum, most people will identify that this one at the top is the most important part of the game. I like to think of technique as being the skeleton key of the game. And what I mean by that is that good technique unlocks all of the other possibilities that the game has. You can be physically super fit. You can be very intelligent. You can be have great game understanding. You can see things that you should be trying to do. You can be a great communicator. But ultimately, if you don't have the ability to perform those techniques at that moment in the game, then the game becomes very frustrating very quickly. You get frustrated. Your teammates get frustrated. Your coaches get frustrated. So technique really does unlock the game. And technique is complicated. It's a game that's played with pretty much every part of the body apart from the arms unless you're a goalkeeper. So you are using parts of the body where the coordination between the brain and the parts of the body you're using isn't every day in commonplace like it is with hand-eye coordination. So we have to develop this technique over a long period of time and we have to build this technique slowly. And it starts really with the fundamentals at a young age. So Arsene Banger gave us a good quote about technique, the idea that between the age of seven and fourteen, so obviously Banger comes from a scientific background. So he understands the idea of myelination or the formation of myelin sheath around nerves and how that speeds up the processes, the messages that get sent between the brain and the different parts of the body. It is a key age for this to happen, but it's not the only age that it happens at. So I understand the sentiment of what Arsene Banger says here. The idea that if at the age of 14 you haven't got the technical skills, you can forget it and you'll never be a football player, I think has actually changed in the past 15 to 20 years. And the evidence that we see from youngsters in modern development would suggest that it is and has changed significantly. And that really comes down to modern life. And this is something that we have to take into consideration when we're thinking about how we're developing children, how quickly they are expected to develop. And what the outcome is going to be from our perspective to help them get to the to fulfill their potential. So there's a number of polls that have covered this topic over the over the past 10, 15 years. You've got poll in the UK found that children spend half as much time outside compared to the parents from 20 years prior. So children in the 1980s were spending around 20 hours a week outdoors playing, having fun, playing games, much of which in this part of the world would have been football. In 2016, we found that the players were spending around 10 hours outside. And actually children playing sports on the decline. The Aspen Institute did a study in 2019 as part of their state of play report and found that between 2012 and 2019 is about 5% decline in participation in sport. So our expectation that children are going to have the same level of technical ability now has got to change because they just simply don't have the access to the opportunities to practice that one's had. So this is where we can start thinking about how can technology feed into this process. How can they, how can they, how can technology support us as coaches. It's, it's, it's something that is quite important, had an interesting question already about motivation and technical ability and tactical ability. And I will come to that actually, but very soon in the presentation here. So we have to change. I've put an image of children playing computer games, my son's in the next room and he's doing exactly that right now. However, he's been, he's played probably two hours of sport after school this evening so I'm not too concerned. But there are so many more influences in their child's life so we've got to find ways to kind of overcome that. We can't expect to put that genie back in the bottle. It's not going to happen. We have to understand that we have to change our approach to skill acquisition, technical development, sports development in order to not combat the modern life but actually just to just to help children get to to their full potential. So technology can be used in lots of different ways. Obviously there's lots of technologies that we can use to track physical performance. We can stick GPS trackers on people now we can put devices into smartwatches. We can put trackers on boots. There's lots of ways for us to improve, improve that element of the game, understanding the physical nature of it. Although, I would argue that most people who you can interpret that data probably do need to have some kind of qualification to do so. And technical development is a little bit harder and tactical and technical understanding of the tactical and strategic understanding of the game is something that we can only really teach by being good coaches. So that really kind of talks about how does this process work from a development perspective. So there's lots of myths that kind of have propagated over the years. I put a suggestion of a small selection of them here. And I'm sure that most people will be aware of these things although they'll have heard them mentioned so one of the oldest kind of lines that people have said is let the game be the teacher. Now when I was a child in the 1980s absolutely I was I was playing football and before school at school and then after school when I was seven years old because I was allowed to go to school on my own as a child. That doesn't happen anymore schools because of safeguarding don't allow kids to play sport around the school bell so in modern society in the modern world children don't have the opportunity to go and play with their friends as much as they did 20 or 30 years ago, so they don't have the opportunity for the game to be the teacher. So when we're trying to teach the understanding of the game and when we're trying to teach technique, it really does become a responsibility of the coach to be the teacher. Organized coaching is is much more common now than it was in the past. And that's probably one natural kind of response to the fact that kids just don't play as much. So we put them into structured sport. Well, if we put them into structured sport, then we have to make sure that we provide them with the structure that's going to help them learn. And that's where understanding good sessions and putting good practices on can really can really help us. Unopposed individual practices outdated so there is a school of thought from from certain people who say that that people should only practice things within the game. Well the game, we all know you touch the ball very little in a game. So there aren't that many opportunities to practice in the game itself. If we're focusing on technique and we're focusing on one touch passing or two touch passing on control or anything like that, then we have to practice those things in isolation so that we can perform them in the game. Now every single development model in the world encourages us to use ball mastery and ball manipulation with youngsters, because we all know that repetition of those techniques helps to improve their ability to perform them correctly. But following that logic, then it makes absolute sense that all of the other techniques that we require players to be able to perform should also be practiced in that way, so that kids can develop the skills can learn how to do those different actions how to move their bodies, how to control the ball, how to understand space, but practicing it on their own. Not preferably not in a coaching session, because if we're spending lots of time teaching children how to do basic moves in the coaching session, then we are losing that opportunity to teach them the, the tactical side of the game. But certainly at younger ages, there's absolutely no harm in just helping kids at the start of every session focus on technique, whether it is passing, whether it's shooting, whatever it is, techniques should be a part of, I would argue, every single training session that people do. I coach on the 13s and I do the first 15, 20 minutes is almost entirely technique. And there's no reason why we can't continue to do that up until 1415. In fact, if we look at the professional game for advice, we'll see that the vast majority of professional footballers also focus on technique at the beginning of practice. The technique in pairs, it's not with opposition, it's just getting used to the ball. And so that's a myth that we kind of need to kind of dispel and understand that children will not learn those techniques in the game because they will simply not get the opportunity to. The big one for coaches is winning. The big one for kids is winning. Kids love to win. You know, I've had to deal with it, the kind of the output of losing games and no child likes to lose, no coach likes to lose. But winning doesn't define success. Many people think that the God given reason that they were put on a pitch to coach children is to help them win. Well, yeah, potentially, when they're 15, 16, 17 and winning does become more important and they're in leagues and they're in divisions and they're in cups. Yeah, winning does become important. As I said, nobody likes to lose, but there's a real risk at younger ages where winning kind of trumps development. So a good example, and it's an example that I've seen commonly over the time that I've been coaching is a fast powerful player who's who plays as a forward, a big strong boy as a goalkeeper or as a or as a defender, who can launch the ball up the pitch. The fast boy can chase the ball, can score a goal, works probably 80% of the time when you're coaching 7B7. Great tactic. If you want to win, just lump the ball up, let the fast kid chase it, let him put the ball in the back of the neck. He's so strong. The other kids who aren't quite as physically developed as him can't do anything about it. The problem with that is that you're not developing the other players in between those two. The midfielders who you want to be able to receive the ball and move the ball quickly and with purpose up the pitch, that just won't happen. So it always comes back to bite you. We play in a local league where teams have been playing with each other for five, six years. So we've played the same opposition time and time again with the same sets of players and you see it when you coach. The teams who do that, the teams who have that kind of approach to winning at seven years old or eight years old, well, at 13 years old, they're not winning because they don't have the tactical ability to actually play the game properly. And that old tactic of launching the ball when people have started to catch up physically just stops working. So technical development and how do we motivate children? It's a challenge because people are at different levels of development. Confidence is a massive thing for children. Practice is a really important part of it. And the thing that kind of brings those two things together is success. So confidence, there's lots of research into this. Confidence is generated by people who practice something and have success at it. So if you're working with children who are very basic in their technical development, there's no point asking them to do something that you know is going to be too complicated for them. You have to start at the beginning in some cases. And if you're coaching six-year-olds or seven-year-olds, you'll probably see this more commonly.  They're not the ones that we need to worry about too much in development. It's those ones who aren't self-motivated who don't have the confidence to do that work on their own. So by giving them activities that they can see progression in, that they can see success from, that then starts to build that confidence. So there's no point looking at what an academy player from Manchester United can do at nine years old and expect your nine-year-olds to do that because they won't have the same level of technical ability. And if you put that expectation on kids and ask them to do something that they can't do, well, they won't get success and then they won't build confidence. So getting the balance right is really important from a technical development perspective. Start with something that they can work on and improve at. Praise them for doing well at it and watch their confidence grow. Good habits is something that we all want to develop in children, whether it's towards homework, whether it's towards sport, whether it's just towards life in general. And one of the things that football gives us is the ability to create brilliant human beings because we give them good habits, we give them high standards and we give them praise for when they do things right. But it's really hard work to create people who are self-motivated. I won't go into the science behind it and I've put a really rudimentary equation together here. If we combine a structure with some objectives and we give children praise and then we add the secret ingredient of competition, then that will eventually start to drive motivation, or more importantly, start to drive self-motivation. So what we're talking about there is children who take their own responsibility for practice because they see that they're getting better. They meet their objectives, they have a structure, they receive praise for it or they receive some recognition for what they're doing and that drives them to become self-motivated. Very basic, but the three things on the top, the four things rather, structure, objectives, praise and competition, they're really things that come from outside. They're things that we can help with as coaches, that parents can help with, that teammates can help with and more importantly, that technology can help with. The motivation is an internal factor and that's ultimately what we're trying to build with players. So we give them activities that they can do, we put them into league tables where they can compete with their teammates and then we give them a chance to improve and get better. Okay, so that's kind of the first kind of part of the presentation done. I've put some appendix in here as well, which has got a bit of the other information about what I'm going to talk about and we'll get to that in a moment. So I'm just going to stop sharing this and then I'm going to go into sharing kind of my process, how I work through some of these things that I'm talking about and how I support coaches who are doing something similar. So if I just share my screen, I'm going to show you first into my coaching manual platform. I'm going to talk about top techers in a moment, but the coaching manual is a tool to educate myself, but more importantly, it's a tool to educate my players. So I've set up a structure for my players, which I've had for them since they were six years old, and that's driven first and foremost by the activity that we're doing every week at training. So I have a plan, I have a structure, and because I've got all of my team inside the platform with me, and I've given them all access to it so that they've got access to everything that we do, then I've got all of the information is accessible to them as well. So every week they know, and I know what we're doing at training. So simply, they watch the session, they watch the video, they read the plan, they see the objectives. I'm working with under 13s now so it's a bit more complicated. And going back to that question about how do we get technical and tactical development. Well, tactical development for me didn't start with these boys until they were under 11 under 12. Prior to that very little tactical development, most of it was technical, because with a good technical foundation, as Arsene Wenger was saying, you can build the tactical understanding, tactical understanding probably comes after under 11 under 12. Certainly when they get into 11 aside football under 13, that's when you really start to layer in the tactical understanding, focus on technique, get that part right. The tactics actually becomes a lot easier, as I'm finding now so they watch the, they watch the, they watch the session I know they've gotten in the session brilliant. And we don't have much time on the pitch anymore. As I said in the presentation time is precious. So I've got to make the most use of the time that I've got. And this does create one thing which I guess most people get a little bit wary of which is preparation work for the players so how do I, how do I prepare my players. So let's go into the folders on here just just bear with me. So I go into the folders that I've got on the platform, I built this myself. We build this for clubs. And I'll show you kind of through the process that I've developed so I have loads of different folders contained within my account which I've given access to all of the players so in each folder I've shared that with with my Titan so they've got access to the same folder structure that I've got. Now within the player education folder. There are things that we can I can use to help with preparation this week. So we're working on playing through the thirds. So I'm going to go and have a look into the game folder and let's have a look at content I think will be relevant to them. Well playing between the lines is going to be important for that. So that's probably an article that I've saved. So what I've done in this this other document is just kind of just to explain what the process looks like. I've structured all of the content that I want to use from a player and a team education perspective, and I put it into a format that actually any of you can use as well so if anybody wants access to folders so they can set this up themselves probably take you about 30 minutes. And we can do it we do it in the kind of the back end of the system but we've also made this functionality available for people who do it so I've built my folders already. But I'm going to do my match prep my training preparation for the week so I'm going to just copy that cell. I'm going to go back to the beginning of my folders and I'm going to create a new folder, and I'm just going to call it preparation 2511. Then I'm going to share that folder with my team so that they get that folder. Then I go back into my document and I'm going to open up the first article which is playing between the lines. So I want to add that to my folder so that I've got that ready. And then I'm going to go and open up the other piece of content. So this is receiving on the back foot to pass. So this is a one to one activity they can do at home with mom with dad with with a sibling, but this is just a simple activity to focus on the technique that we're going to be working on in the game. So I'm going to add this into my folder as well for them for the prep for the week. And then the last bit that I'm going to add in is transition from defense to attack so when we're playing through the thirds. I'm assuming that we're coming from the back and we're moving forward. So I'm going to share an infographic with the players that they can read about how to transition from defense into attack. So this is their folder now that's been shared with the team. I can see that that contents there so I can say to the boys right. You know what the session is this week. And I've created the preparation folder for the week, go and have a look at that. They also get the match reports that I create within the platform each week so if there's learning elements that have been included from the week, then that will be in there as well. So they've got the folders. They've got their preparation folder. And importantly, they've also got all of the information that they need for different skills, one to one skills, ball mastery skills, different strength and conditioning, new guides on nutrition, game understanding so the tactical part of it.  But as they get a bit older. I'm kind of saying to them look boys you need to put in more effort outside of training to understand the game better to be technically better so that when we come to training. I'm not spending all my time teaching you technique or spending all my time teaching you how the practice works. I want to fill in the gaps in your knowledge about how to make the right decisions at the right times. So that's why I use this fabulous learning opportunity for me as well, because I've got to kind of go through this information, make sure it makes sense, and often remind myself of things that are relevant as well. So, I've got my kind of first part of my workflow setup. Like I said, takes about half an hour for a coach to set a workflow like this up. Once it's done, it's there for you for as long as you want, you can add and you can remove things you can create your own stuff, and you can start to build out your own kind of educational philosophy that grows with you that grows with your players so if you're working on 11 for 11, you can add all of the different formations in there. We've played this season already in three different formations. And again, development. I'm not saying that kids stay in one position. I'm not staying saying that we stay in one formation, because I want my kids and want my players to be able to do lots of different things in football and not become rigid. So I want them to understand how to be creative, how to recognize what's happening in the game and how to be flexible in how they approached it. So that's my part of the coaching manual done for them. They've got the session, they've got the little bits of reading that I want them to do with a bit of one to one practice. What I also do is I'll take them into what they're going to do for the technical development of the week. So I've filled in the kind of some one to one technical stuff that they can do with their mates, but I've got them in top techers. So I've got my team in here. I can keep a record of what they're doing and how they're progressing. So we have some really good performers and some really good practices. Those boys who have developed that self motivation, I can really start to identify the ones who aren't self motivated through this, which is great. But I've got my playing through the third session. So what I've done is I've created the team, how I've created the team in top techers is that I've got them all connected. I've gone and I've invited the parents in and, you know, just add them in via email and add them to my team so that my players are all in there. So I've got my team set up. I can add a team if I wanted to and put a new one in, but I've set my titans up. Now we're working this week on playing through the thirds. So I've added very specific training activities, which are going to be important for that speed of movement, speed of passing. The other thing that I should probably add into this is I'll add some turning. So I just go and add some other activities. I'll add the outside hook turn, because that's really common when you're trying to play through. And let me add a control as well, so that we can work on some control as well. So if the ball's coming to them in the air, they've got the control. So now what I've got is I've got a technical learning plan that I say to the boys, right. You've got the stuff on the coaching manual, go and watch it. That's 20 minutes of your time on a Sunday afternoon, so that you're ready for Wednesday when we train. You've got some activities and some reading, which is maybe another 20 minutes of time. And then I've created some activities in here, which you can go and work on individually so they can go and take these, go and watch the skills videos and take the challenges so that they're doing technical work away from the training ground. Now, it's not going to work just on its own by me saying, hey, I'm your coach, I'm telling you what to do. There has to be this element of competition, especially for my boys who are under 13s, the kind of on the brink of getting a little bit old for top techers. So that's why I'm introducing them more and more into more tactical things inside the coaching manual, but competition still drives them and still they want to be the best. So if I want to look at how they've been performing over the over the past couple of days, I can quickly apply those filters so I can see who's been busy in the last couple of days. So since I created this plan, I can see that the players are already starting to respond, which is brilliant. Some of them haven't yet so I can give them a bit of a kick up the backside. We've got a game on Sunday so we've kind of done our match prep for Sunday so I'm already looking ahead to next week. Now I could react to the Sunday game and say I'm going to do a different session, but typically I don't, especially at this time of year, when there's all sorts of different factors that play into performance, the surface conditions, the weather. I might kind of stick to the plan over the winter because I don't have much time so I'm trying to make sure that I provide them with the structure but I can see that Connors at the top. I can give the boys a quick kind of say, you know, Connors at the top, who's going to win the competition this week, but I've got that competition.  So definitely worth getting parents to buy into this because I can see what the players are doing. I can have a look more individually at players. I can go in and kind of see with a bit more granular detail around what they've been doing. So I can have a look, for example, at this player and I can see, okay, his progression has been pretty solid. He's got good stats, good performance, achieving goals. He's our top performer, so well done to him. He's flying through it and he's winning lots of different trophies to do that. But it's kind of me, I have to engage as a coach and I think we all have to engage as a coach if we want our players to maximize their potential. I would love to have a team of players who I don't need to do anything for because all they do morning, noon and night is eat, you know, sleep and play football. But that just isn't the society that we're in. They spend an awful lot of time playing FIFA. So this is just something to kind of give them motivation to do something around that. That's kind of my workflow in a nutshell. Session first, homework to go with the session, if you like, technical and tactical development alongside some physical development. And then in relation to the actual session that we're doing some very focused technical development skills to help them do stuff that's going to help them improve in the game. So it's a workflow that's worked incredibly well. I'd say I'm fortunate, but the players that I work with from the age of seven when some of them could barely put one foot in front of the other, now are technically a very, very capable team, capable of playing two and three and four, capable of understanding space, capable of controlling the ball under all conditions. And that is all down to the fact that they built a really solid foundation of technique. Now, what's my overall objective for this group of players. And that's the ultimate kind of goal of player development, if you like, where do we want these kids to go. I live in south of Manchester. I've got Manchester United on my doorstep. I've got Liverpool just down the road. I've got Manchester City. Well, you know what, I'd love my players to all become professional footballers, but that is just such an unrealistic expectation that I don't even entertain it. If I'm honest, my only hope and my only objective for these boys is that when I bump into them in 15 years time and they've been to university and they're working, that they tell me that they're still playing football on a Saturday. Because it is a game that gave me so much throughout my early adulthood and well into my 30s when I continued playing until my knees finally did give up on me and I had to stop playing 11 aside on a Saturday, but I still play. I play five aside and things like that. But my objective is is yes, we've got objectives to get help kids get into college. We've got objectives to try and get kids into professional or semi professional football. That is really, really high expectations. And when you're working in grassroots, the reality of that is very, is very unlikely. And actually, I think the satisfaction of it's also unlikely because they'll get taken off you at 1230 and you'll never see them again. So my objective is just, can I please have these boys still playing football when they're in the 20s. And that's the kind of focal point of their week they spend a week at work they go off to live in London or New York or wherever. But they're going to join a local football team and play as far as I'm concerned job done. And it's a development process for me that is, you know, 15 16 years in the in the making, probably will will, you know, not really see the, the full effects of that until later in my life. But that's my objective anyway. But development for football is is, and that's what it's about it's about developing a passion for the game, developing the passion for practice, because players do drop out and there's an awfully high percentage of players that drop out. Now, almost all of the players who drop out of the game drop out because they stop enjoying it. Now, if you've got a good physical platform and you've got a good game understanding platform. Great, but if you don't have that technique, then the likelihood is that when the game becomes more complicated and you can't execute things that you want to do course you're going to stop enjoying it we all get frustrated. And that's why techniques so important because that's fundamentally for me.  And the more that they do that if they get that right 60% of the time. And guess what we're going to stay playing the game for as long as they can because it's enjoyable. And I'll go through any other questions now because that's kind of the end of what I was talking through. I hope it's been insightful. I'll more than happy to share my my contact information if people want to ask me direct questions. I'm going to share the presentation that I did as well. It's got some of the information in there to support the to support the kind of the things that we're talking about so some links and things like that are in there. So physical ability. I'm going to answer one more question because I kind of touched on it and lacking in physical ability. Technical and tactical ability can't be utilized so disability football. I'm not saying that this is a case of that but there are lots of reasons why people don't aren't there physically. It's really tough at young ages, because I know because my son was born right at the end of the year in terms of development so he was at seven years old he was almost a year younger than some of his teammates. So he had a year's left less growth and development and maturity, and it's been a real battle not just from a physical perspective from an emotional support perspective. And I focused just on technical stuff with him just on ball mastery control, even in isolation and that's me as his dad, just trying to help develop that technique because you know what, for the vast majority of people eventually they catch up. Eventually their physicality changes and they will catch up. And if you if they don't have that technical base when that happens, then they'll exit the game. So if you can teach them, even if it's basic rudimentary ball mastery and we have some kids still in the under 13s in the lower group in the age group that I coach that are pretty new to the game we've got got kids who joined us in the summer who'd never really played football before. So we've gone right back to almost as if they were under eight and we're doing basic ball mastery. The good thing is that they learn quickly so they're at a good age to pick that stuff up quickly, and the progression that they've made has been incredibly rapid. So, focus on the real basics with kids who don't have that physical ability give them some success in the technical side of the game so that they get that confidence is what I would say, give them that and then keep working on that keep giving them that confidence keep giving them that confidence and just at some point the physical side of it will catch up. And do you know what, put sessions on where you have to run, and don't do too much talking, even if that is a 15 minute arrival game and you put them in, they just have to run, make the pitch a bit bigger. Lots of things you can do, but don't force it. There's a great piece of advice from a coach recently talking about match day. There's an article on on the platform about the match day. And the advice I got from him was, don't criticize somebody for their character. So, if somebody's not working hard, don't stand on the sidelines on a coaching session or on a match day saying, you're not working hard enough, because it's it's criticizing their attitude to it is criticizing the their love of the game and the reason that they're there. And I was guilty of it all the time of telling kids they're not working hard enough that they're not getting stuck into challenges that are not being brave enough. And about two months ago changed my approach on match day changed my approach in coaching, and it's been a revolution so you constantly learn, try new things out and see what works with those kids who are struggling, just keep encouraging them. Find something that they have success at and keep them getting better at it and then that will gradually build that motivation for them to just keep improving and improving. It's not going to work for everybody, but for the vast majority it will. So thank you everybody for joining us tonight. We'll share the recording. We'll share the presentation. Oh, one more. So and with regards to the cost for top techers. We've changed things slightly so on the document that I've created, we've put yeah the websites kind of changed and we've gone mobile only. But I've we've got in the in the presentation I've done there's a link about a team plan that we've done for top techers, which brings the cost right down. You can choose how many players you want and let us know. The cost is something that parents may may resist. But it's a great coaching tool. It's going to help their kids get better. It's a good use of technology. If you can't do it that way and then try that I don't know what age they are but try the coaching manual. Like I said with the with the the the content in in the coaching manual. There is an awful lot of information inside the platform that's that's also useful for that exact reason for that. You know for that that to teach them skills and to give them the give them the confidence to go and practice there's all of this ball mastery stuff. There's loads and loads of stuff that they can just watch and learn from and one to one skills training where they can get mom and dad involved and stuff like that so just persevere. And just persevere and when we send the presentation have a look at it. Thank you everybody. Thanks and under nine perfect for them know under get them. Try and get them to watch a couple of the sessions if you can and just give me a shout and I'll let you know some of the stuff that's free so that they can just access it. And just see how it affects your training session but yeah top tech is is great and made a lot of improvements to it so yeah keep keep going with it. Thank you everybody.  It's frustrating. I've been frustrated, especially at the younger ages because I didn't think I was making any progress. What I can say is that it just gets better and better and better coaching kids and now that my boys are under 13s and that they're in secondary school. The development of their personalities the development of their football the development of their team ethic is just absolutely amazing and I'm so glad I stuck at it. Because it's so much more rewarding the longer you do it so well done everybody stick at it and thank you very much for joining us this evening. Take care.


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