Okay. Let's start. Thank you, everyone, for coming. My name is Fatai Wehib. I'm a researcher at Ericsson Research in Stockholm, Sweden. My research is, in general, about the scalability of cloud platforms. And in that context, I've done a lot of scalability measurements with respect to OpenStack. And this talk is kind of a byproduct of all those measurements that I've done before. So the measurements that I'm presenting here, some of them were done by a number of students that also work with us at Ericsson Research. So this is how I've structured the presentation. So I'm going to start talking about, you know, what kind of deployments can you have in OpenStack. And that's kind of instrumental in trying to understand how you dimension OpenStack cloud. And then I'll continue in how one can go about dimensioning compute nodes, which is kind of straightforward. And then I'll proceed into dimensioning controller nodes, which is like the kind of the main contribution of this world. And finally, I'll give a quick summary of what I went through. So as you most probably know, OpenStack is based on distributed design. What this means is that you can run the different OpenStack services in a highly distributed setting with very little restriction. And because of this, your deployment decision can range from anywhere from an all-in-one deployment to a multi-node deployment. Now when you talk about an OpenStack deployment, you generally talk about two kinds of nodes. There are the compute nodes, which are the nodes that host and run the VMs. Then you have the services that run on these compute nodes, which are, you know, like the Nova compute service or the plug-in or the C geometry agents. And then you have controller nodes that actually don't run the VMs but that run all other services that are required to support your OpenStack cloud. Now there are different kinds of deployments. One example, which is like the maybe what anyone who tried to deploy OpenStack starts with is this all-in-one deployment, where you have both controller and compute services running in the same server. So this is something that, for example, you'd get if you're running a DevStack deployment. There are actually also production deployments where you have many of such services. So instead of only having one node, you could have multiple servers. But on each server, you have different controller and compute services. But these are not very common in production environment. What's common in small-scale deployments is this 3 plus N deployment, which is also what OpenStack recommends. So in such deployments, you have one node dedicated for network, another node for storage, and a third node for the remaining OpenStack's controlling services. Then you also would need to have N compute nodes depending on how big you want your OpenStack. And then there is this general N plus M deployment where you could have N controller nodes and M compute nodes. Then of course, you'd need to have as many compute nodes and controller nodes. You have many control nodes here because then you might want to have clustering, high availability, replication, etc. And this flexibility is what actually makes the dimension of OpenStack difficult because depending on how you decide to deploy your architecture, your OpenStack, you have to actually have a specific way of dimensioning. So let's start with how you can dimension OpenStack compute nodes. So to do this, what you need is a good knowledge of the load that you expect on your cloud. And what this basically means is that you need to have what are the flavors that you expect to run in your cloud and then how many of those flavors do you expect. So in this table, for example, we show the different OpenStack flavors and the expected number of VMs that you expect to have in the cloud that you want to run. So the column on the right gives you the expected number of VMs. Now the first thing to do when dimensioning compute nodes is to try and estimate what's the total amount of resource that you need or the total amount of resource that's going to be consumed by your VMs. And to do that, you just need to multiply the number of VMs by the amount of resource for each flavor and then sum it up for all the flavors. And in this example, we can take, for example, the amount of RAM needed and then you see that we need about 281 gigabytes of RAM in your compute nodes. Now before continuing with the calculation, one is also taking into account the overcommit ratio or that one wants to use in a deployed OpenStack cloud. So this overcommit ratio tells how much resource a compute node reports the scheduler. So if you have a hardware server, for example, with 20 cores and if you allow an overcommit ratio of two, then it means that the compute node would actually report as if it has 40 CPU cores. So, of course, you'd want to do this because it allows for having a high utilization of your cloud, which makes your efficiency larger. But then, of course, this has also a drawback if your VMs actually need those resources, then they cannot get it. But then once you have the overcommit ratio in the total, then you basically choose one server type. For example, here we choose a server which has 32 gigabytes of RAM, 412 gigabytes of disk and 20 CPU cores. And then you simply divide the total by the overcommit ratio and the hardware resource available. And then you get the numbers that you see in the column before last. And then out of this, you simply choose the largest one, which is 5.73, and then round it up to the next integer. Then what this basically gives you is that to support such a workload, you need at least six compute nodes of the specified hardware profile. One thing to keep in mind here is that by default, the OpenStack scheduler, what it does is that it tries to balance the memory load on all your compute nodes. What this means is that if your cloud is, say, utilized up to 80%, then it means that on average all of your servers are also utilized to 80%. And then if you're trying to start a large instance that actually requires more than 20% of the available capacity, then you would not be able to do that because all your servers would be full. So if that's an issue that you need to take care of, then you either need to increase the number of compute nodes that you have, or you have to actually change how OpenStack does scheduling so that instead of trying to balance the load, it tries to actually fill nodes first before moving to the next one. But that's pretty much how you can dimension compute nodes. And one can also actually extend this into how one also can dimension, for example, storage nodes or network nodes. But then when you come to dimensioning controller nodes, then that's a different story. Because the load on an OpenStack controller does not really depend on the load on the VMs, but it depends on many other things. Like what's your deployment architecture? How many control nodes do you plan to have? What are the plugins you're using? And what's the software that you use for the different plugins? How do you configure your services? How many compute nodes do you have? And how many objects, OpenStack objects do you have? How many VMs? How many volumes? Networks, routers, users, etc. Do you have? And of course it also very much depends on how your users interact with your cloud. So how frequently are users starting VMs? How frequently are they creating and turning down networks? So that kind of comes into play when you're trying to dimension OpenStack cloud, especially the OpenStack controller. So because of this, it's kind of difficult to come up with a generic dimensioning guideline on how to dimension OpenStack cloud. So what people in general do is that they just over-provision the resources that they have in your controller. And if you have resources to do, if you have sufficient resources, then this is one way, just over-commit. And then if you actually want to have a tighter control on the amount of resources that you actually allocate for your OpenStack controllers, then you have to take some more steps. Then you have, at least from my experience, you have two approaches and two options to do this. So the first one is that you can actually deploy your cloud environment and then measure the resource consumption. But you deploy it in a test environment so that you can actually test different parameters before you actually deploy it in the production environment. Or the other thing is that you try to develop a model that can be used to actually estimate how much resource would be consumed, and then you can use this model as an input for your hardware dimensioning tool. So let's start with the first one, deploying the OpenStack and then doing the measurement. Now when you talk about deploying OpenStack directly in a test environment, you can do it on a physical environment. So if you actually have access to the production environment and if you don't have any load or workload running on it, then you can deploy your OpenStack directly as you would want to run it in a really working environment, and then you can load it using homemade scripts or you can use it probably to put load into OpenStack and see how the controller performs and then do measurements. And then based on that, make a design decision on what your architecture is going to look like and then how much resource you want to reserve and allocate to your controller. The problem here is that, of course, typically you don't have access to your production environment, so you'd most probably have a smaller test environment and then you need to make decisions about how much resource you need to allocate on your production environment based on the results that you get out of this test environment. So in this case what you could do is that you can actually work with an emulated environment. So instead of actually deploying the OpenStack entirely on hardware, you could actually deploy OpenStack in a virtualized environment and then do your measurement there. This turns out to be actually moderately accurate. It's not as accurate as you'd get if you're doing it entirely in a physical environment, but it's actually very flexible. So even if you have a small setup, you'd be able to test how your controller is going to act even if you have a large system. And of course, another approach is to use simulated environment. Of course, the problem there is that there are no good simulators for OpenStack today, and what we're trying to do in the second step of this, in the second option, is to actually try to come up with a simulator kind of a formula that basically takes in the state of the cloud and then tries to estimate how much of a source it could be consumed. On the plus side, this is an extremely flexible way, so it doesn't take a lot of time to actually crunch a bunch of numbers and then get an estimate. But the problem there is that it's not as accurate as you are actually doing direct measurement. So if you're using an emulated cloud environment, then what you could do is that you could test your entire cloud in an OpenStack in OpenStack deployment. So for example, you have one test environment that runs OpenStack, and inside this OpenStack, you have a bunch of VMs, and inside these VMs, you could run your controller nodes and you could also run your controller nodes, and then you could actually look at how much resource is being consumed on the controller node, and then based on that, you can tune your configuration, how much resource is allocated to the controller node, and et cetera. You can take this a step further, and you could actually run the controller directly on a physical server, on the one, on the type where you expect to run your controller in the physical and production environment, but then run the compute and maybe even the service nodes inside the virtual machine. And this gives you better measurement and better accuracy in terms of how much resource would be consumed if things were running in a physical environment. Now, of course, when you run OpenStack inside OpenStack, then you can't really have real world workloads in there because you don't have sufficient resources, you don't have memory, you don't have physical resources or CPU resources as you would expect when you're running the cloud in a production environment. So because of that, you want to use a small and simple image to test the OpenStack. So one image that you could use is the Syros image, which gives you a fully functional Linux deployment which can run inside 48 megabytes of RAM. It can even run in a smaller amount of RAM. So that's a very small Linux distribution, or a Linux image. If Syros is too much, you can actually even boot an IPX image. It's an image that simply tries to boot from the network. And if you haven't configured any network booting, then it would simply check whether the network works or not, but then it doesn't do anything. You can even try to boot an empty image. Then, of course, when you try to boot an empty image, nothing would happen inside the VM. But from the point of view of the controller and the compute node, there is a VM running, and it is allocated the resources that it is supposed to consume. And as I said, of course, so you have the image, and then you actually would need to stress the system using, for example, Rally, or you could also write your own custom scripts as we did in our experiments. So we did, for example, one such deployment, and we did some measurements for a deployment where we have both controller and compute nodes inside OpenStack. So that's a snapshot from the Corezen dashboard. And you see that there are two nodes in the middle there, which are the controller nodes. One is a node that only runs network and storage, and you have a bunch of compute nodes. Maybe the interesting thing there is that we have a 2N plus 1 deployment, as I said. One storage and network node plus one controller node. And also we use a very small compute node. So our compute node is a 1 core, 1 gigabyte of RAM node, VM with 6 gigabyte of disk. And with this, we are able to actually deploy up to 100, 200 compute nodes and then test how the controller would perform in such a large scale. On a moderately small cloud setup, which had about 10 compute nodes. And then with such a setup, you can get these kinds of measurements. For example, the measurement that I'm showing here is that for our OpenStack deployment, where you have about 125 compute nodes and 800 VMs, where there is no interaction from the user side, how much resource is consumed. And basically what we see here is that, for example, the controller consumes the resources that you see there. So the average CPU utilization, for example, is at 171%, which basically means when the system is idle, meaning that there are no API calls to the controller, it consumes around one end or less than two CPU cores. And then you see that the amount of RAM consumed is around 5.6 gigabytes. And then you have information about also all other resources. And this approach actually allows you also to dig in deeper, so you could look at, okay, where does the CPU utilization come from? And then you see in the graph on the right that, for example, the process that consumes the maximum amount of resource from your controller is the noble conductor. It takes about half a CPU core, followed by a rabbit MQ.  And of course, you can now change your deployments, I think, and then maybe you could actually look into deploying it with, for example, an additional controller node or changing the available resources that you have in there, and change the start and stop rates so that to see how the system would perform when you have users interacting with it. Then you can change things and then use this information to actually tune the amount of resources that you would need if you had a production environment of this sort. So this is the first approach. Now, if there are a number of unknowns, which means that, for example, if you're not sure how many VMs you expect or if you're not sure how frequently users are going to interact with the cloud, then it's kind of difficult to try and evaluate all the possible combinations of the different settings. So in that case, what you could do is that you try to develop a model for the resource consumption and then use this model as a simulator. So you can use it to predict what the resource consumption would be at different parameters. So in general, what this model should do is that it should basically be a function that can map the state of the cloud into the amount of resources that's consumed. So what you mean by the state of the cloud could be how much physical resource you have. It could be the number of computer nodes, storage nodes, hardware routers. If their type plays a role, then that should also be a function in here. Also, what objects do you have in the system? Like, for example, how many VMs do you have in there? How many volumes, routers, networks, tenants, et cetera? And also, how does the end-user interaction pattern look like? So how frequently do users start and stop VMs? Or how frequently do they attach or create a volume? So these things should be there as part of the state of the cloud. And then the output should be, you know, how much CPU is consumed? RAM, disk, iOS, storage, et cetera. And of course, this model, in general, when you're trying to model a real system using a formula, it's always difficult. And then you have to always simplify as much as possible. And I'll show you how we did that. So this is the model that we chose to use. So what this model says is that the resource consumption for resource R could be CPU or it could be RAM or whatever. It's given by the resource consumption, while the system is idle, idle meaning that, you know, there's no API call going through the system. Plus, the resource consumed as a result of the API is being called. So this is how the model looks like. And then, of course, you have to now refine this model a bit. You have to first choose, you know, what is R? What are the resources that you want to take into account? And then we said, okay, let's look at CPU, because the CPU is the resource that actually is exhausted faster. Then you have to choose, you know, what are the state variables that you want to take into account. Then we said, okay, so the number of VMs and the number of compute nodes seem to be interesting. So we take those into account. Then we also want to also take into account, you know, open-stack APIs that end users would make a call to in this model. And then the data at which, of course, they are being called. And then, of course, in order to make this model complete, you have to have an estimation of, you know, how much this idle resource utilization is and how much resource utilization is per API. Now, the first thing that we did was, okay, how can we, which API course do we need to take into account? Because open-stack has, you know, maybe hundreds or thousands of APIs that you can make a call to, right? And then you can't really put everything in there, because then your model would be very complicated. And actually even profiling each individual model, each individual API call, it takes time. So the first thing that we did was, okay, we tried to identify what are the API course that we want to take into account in our model. And then for that, what we did was, okay, we tried to profile, you know, a set of APIs and then tried to see, you know, for a case where you have, okay, 125 computers and 800 VMs, how much CPU time does it take to actually do these individual things? For example, how much CPU time does it take to create a VM or to create a volume or to delete a VM, et cetera? Then we found this. So what this basically tells us is that, you know, if there is a lot of call to an API and if it takes a considerable amount of resource, then you should take that API call into account. So taking this into account, we said, okay, we say, we see creating a VM takes a lot of resource and then deleting a VM takes a lot of resource. So we'll take this to as the only two API calls that we want to take into account. Of course, it's kind of important to choose which API calls one needs to take into account because this makes sense for our model, but maybe if you actually use another kind of load generator, for example, then you need to take into account other models, as I would mention later on. But then for all of us, we said, okay, we would choose these two API calls. Then the next step is rather simple. So you just need to run as much experiments as possible for different values of number of VMs and the number of compute nodes. Then you want to measure, you know, how much the resource utilization is changed with different values of efficiency. Then also do how much each API call of interest consumes when you make a call of that sort. And then finally, when you have assumption numbers, data points, then you can do a curve fitting using a number crunching library of your interest. And then basically get a function that can be used to estimate the resource consumption. So we actually did a measurement in our deployment for a specific kind of cloud configuration. We said two plus end configuration. And then these are the results that we found. For example, on the left, we see how much resource is being consumed when the system is idle, so when no one is making any API call. Then what you see is that, for example, as expected, this number increases when the number of VMs increases and also when the number of compute nodes increases. And on the right, we see how much CPU resource is, how much CPU time is consumed when you actually start a VM. And you see, and then there is some interesting data there. For example, what you see here is that to stop a VM, the amount of resource that you consume when you try to stop a VM doesn't really change much with the number of VMs and the number of compute nodes that you have. But the amount of CPU time that you consume when you actually start a VM, it increases both with the number of compute nodes and the number of VMs. And then, of course, you can do curve fitting, so you have a bunch of points which you can do curve fitting, and then you get the formula that you see there. And now you can plug in these things into the expression that I showed you before, and then you see this scary-looking formula. But it's not actually a very complex formula, so it's a function of C, V, and the lambda. And you only have one lambda here because in a stable system, the rate at which you start a VM has to be the same as the rate at which you stop a VM. Otherwise, you have constantly increasing VMs or the number of VMs is going to die out. So it has to be one. And then you get this function. This function now can be your so-called simulation environment. Then you can use this function to answer a number of questions. For example, you can ask this question, how many CPU cores are needed for the controller of a cloud that has 70 compute nodes and hosts on average some 300 VMs, and the VMs have an average lifetime of an hour. Then this formula says, okay, you need about 1.44 CPU cores. So if your cloud environment has the properties that you specified, then a cloud controller with only two CPU cores should be able to handle this workload. Or you can also do the reverse and then say, okay, how many compute nodes can a four-core controller handle if we expect to have 10 VMs per compute node and an average VM lifetime of an hour? Then you can plug in the different numbers in the formula above, and then you'd get 116. Now, it's important to note that these numbers are much smaller than what you'd expect from a real production environment, because for our evaluation, we're making this assumption that when you start a VM, you only make one API call. But if you are actually using, for example, Novaboot to start a VM, then it actually makes 11 API calls, to Keystone, to Neutron, to Glance, et cetera. So because of that, actually this number is going to be much larger than what you see here. Or this number is going to be much smaller than what you see there. So what that basically means is that if you want to actually model a system or model a system where actually when VMs are started with Novaboot, then maybe you either need to actually change the number of type and the set of APIs that are being called, or you could actually change the model slightly and then say, you know, basically what you want to do is take the amount, the rate at which a VM is started and the entire amount of resource that is consumed when you use Novaboot to actually start a VM. Yeah, and then this is kind of very flexible because now you can plug in different values of C and V, and then you can get the amount of resource that you need. And then you can even make this a bit more complex and then you can, for example, do the same for a specific resource, a specific service. So you can take, for example, RabbitMQ and then develop such a model with it and then see, you know, at which point do you need to actually cluster to be able to support more load than what RabbitMQ can support. Okay, so to summarize, I was talking about how to dimension an OpenStack cloud. It said, okay, an OpenStack deployment has compute nodes and a set of controller nodes. Dimensioning compute nodes is rather straightforward as long as you have a good feeling of how many VMs of what flavor that you want to run. Dimensioning controller nodes is not straightforward, so you have three options. One is to overprovision, or the second is to do direct measurement, deploy it in some test environment and then do measurements. Or third is to do try and develop a model and then use this model to, you know, simulate the cloud and then get an estimate of their source consumption. So that was my presentation. Thank you for your attention. So if you have any questions. CPU is 16. Why did you pick two? Are you using the perforating or you are not using the perforating? So that's kind of a random number, sometimes I'm not using it specifically. But of course, I work for Ericsson, and Ericsson, it's more important to make sure that you deliver the resource that you claim you're delivering. And the issue there is that when you have a larger amount of CPU overcommitation, what it means is that if more VMs actually need those CPU resources, then they are not going to get it, right? So maybe 16 is not actually what you want to have if you want to guarantee services, right? And yes, you're using a perforating. So when I say CPU course, it's actually taking into account. What storage are you using? Storage we're using, it's safe. For the evaluation, we're using safe, yes. Got the questions? Okay, thank you.


Let me turn to Theo, thank you very much for coming over from Seoul and give us the perspective of trade. You have been very much engaged in global trade negotiations, both on an incentive perspective, also on a protecting perspective. You have been, as I said, the Minister for Trade in Korea, and you have a very interesting perspective on the future trade regimes. So please, over to you. So thank you, Niklaus. Actually I'm the only one who doesn't know much about business, even though I'm advising our clients about the geopolitics and some legislation introduced by the United States and the EU, but I'm not really in the area of business, so bear that in mind. This afternoon I want to share some of my thoughts on the evolving landscape of the world trade environment, and as we all know very well, we all talk about this in the first session and second session, the global trade environment has been undergoing unprecedented transformation, and as a trade economist, I believe the most fundamental change is the increasing prevalence of negative views toward globalization and free trade among the general public. There is a widespread perception in many countries that domestic industries and labors have suffered from domestic companies' overseas investment and excessive imports from abroad, since they think that these have caused huge unemployment rate and also growing income inequality. Unfortunately, politicians have strategically promoted these negative sentiment on globalization and free trade to capitalize on the psychological state of law income voters predominantly composed of workers for their advantages in the election. Indeed, this has led to protectionist policies in many countries that prioritize domestic production over corporate overseas investment and imports from foreign countries. Another critical aspect impacting the world trade environment, we all talk about this, is the strategic competition between the US and China. Following the imposition of extra tariffs on imports from China by former President Trump, US-China disputes have broadened the scope of national security to include economic and technology areas. The US considers steel and aluminum, even, crucial element in its national security and is actively engaging in securing its dominant position in strategically advanced technology sectors such as semiconductor, electric vehicles, EV batteries, and AI and so on. In addition, the global companies, we all talk about this now, have experienced real challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine and they recognize the imperative need to restructure their supply chain. At the same time, major countries are actively promoting initiatives related to various social and environmental objectives including enhancing labor and human rights and reducing carbon emission and protecting the environment. Let me now provide some examples of major countries' policy measures. The US has introduced a chips and science act allocating $52 billion in subsidies to the semiconductor sector. The EU has also introduced the EU chips act which provides substantial amount of subsidies to increase the global market share of its semiconductor. It is crucial to notice that countries previously critical of China for providing heavy government subsidies to specific sectors now give themselves industrial subsidies to promote their domestic industries. Of course, China continues to provide government subsidies to key advanced technology sectors. This means that industrial policies may be revived, triggering unfair trade activities among major countries. The US restrict exports of semiconductor and semiconductor equipment to China which is hugely affecting the Korean companies which are operating in China. Samsung and SK Hynix are producing semiconductor in China. The US also introduced, in Korea we call IRA, but now ERA, which is Inflation Reduction Act, which includes provisions discriminating against electric vehicles assembled outside North America and EVs equipped with batteries manufactured with parts or minerals from the so-called foreign countries of concern which may include China. At the same time, leading nations worldwide have advocated for policies to establish stable supply chain particularly for critical raw materials. For example, the United States is endeavoring to establish a critical minerals club with the EU through the Trade and Technology Council, another club with the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework Member States. Also, the EU has introduced critical raw material act to limit its dependence on a single country for critical raw material to a maximum of 65%. As we can see, major countries are utilizing subsidies, trade and investment measures to achieve their national objectives in various areas including national security, the economy, technology, society and more. However, some of these measures may violate the multilateral trade norms of the WTO, such as the subsidies agreement and the principles of most favored nation and national treatment. Certain measures included in the US IRA are good examples of these violations. Nonetheless, the World Trade Governance, particularly the multilateral trading system of the WTO, is not effectively addressing these issues. As we all know, the WTO dispute settlement system remains incomplete because there are no judges at the appeal party since the end of 2019 and appointing the appeal party judges has been unsuccessful. So even if a WTO member wins a dispute through the panel investigation, the final legal result will be pending until the appeal party, which currently has no judges, can make a ruling. Therefore, it would be meaningless to accuse any members for their violation of the WTO norms and principles for the time being. So we now find ourselves in a world where major nations are adopting various unilateral actions, focusing on their domestic political agenda to achieve economic as well as non-economic objectives. The negative consequences of these unilateral actions on the world trade will progressively escalate. If this trend continues, world trade order will remain fragmented, increasing uncertainty in the global trade environment. Under these circumstances, it will be practically impossible for the whole WTO members to discuss sensitive issues. However, doing nothing would not be a desirable option either. So we should note that the WTO allows member states to take unilateral actions. If fair and non-discriminatory implementation of these actions is guaranteed, considering all these, it would be crucial for countries with similar interests and positions to engage in transparent and unbiased discussions on various issues, including new commercial rules, and come up with agreements. Of course, these agreements should be open to non-participating countries that may wish to exceed later. Many trade experts consider these so-called open prelateral agreements as the second best option for addressing important issues at the WTO. So in conclusion, I would like to note that serious efforts from major trading nations are urgently needed to respond to this crisis situation in the world trade environment and mitigate uncertainties in the global trade environment. Thank you very much. This is all. Thank you, Thao. And I think it's real that we, as you said, you speak about the crisis environment. I think the fact that WTO is not active anymore creates a vacuum, which we also see obviously in a kind of a multipolar world, where I think the clear institutions that used to steer that global economy have been massively weakened.


Welcome to another episode in the Michael Jordan series collection we are doing 23 Michael Jordan videos in 23 days today we are looking at John Starks and Michael Jordan and the rivalry between these two players and John Starks tells the story of Michael Jordan's trash talk he also talks about what happened in these fights the 54 point revenge game when MJ was down 2-0 in the playoffs and lastly he tells the story of when Michael Jordan came out of retirement to drop 52 points on his own teammate Scotty Pippin and he talked trash to Scotty as well these are the stories and I hope you guys enjoy the video if you've been enjoying the series I'd greatly appreciate if you guys could help me out by hitting that like button let's aim for 5,000 likes for the next episode tomorrow be sure to hit that subscribe button and hit that notification so you're notified when a new episode releases there's also a playlist that has every single MJ story that has been made so far on the top right of your screen and in the description box and also be sure to check out the full content and footage used in this video in their entirety which is in the description and on the screen right now I don't want to keep you guys waiting so I hope you guys enjoy the video you know whenever you get a chance to play against someone like Michael Jordan for me personally the one-on-one matchups was fun to me because the level of competition you know that he brought every single night you had to raise your game up and so in college I used to have my wife movies on the road if I couldn't tape the game I used to have her tapes out of Chicago boys games and so I'll watch them when I come home and so I used to study him all the time and and so when I got the opportunity to play against him I had already played against him in my mind does he talk a lot on court no he don't talk unless you talk to him and you don't want to do that Michael Jordan has ignited the crowd he started that by talking to the young John Starksman he was talking he was talking at the time would he tell you what he said what he told me for the night over you gonna be calling me mr. Jordan you know so I knew being a player that I am you don't want to get him riled up he already coming to play but if you start talking noise to him he's gonna take you to another level he gonna take his game to another level we know over the years he's expressed that he always respected you as somebody that guarded him and I thought you know you guys had that kind of relationship where he did show you respect for the way you played him and how hard you played against him did you ever have that moment with him when you felt like he's about to snap I better back off the bulls had made short work of their first two playoff opponents but they knew that the Eastern Conference Finals would be different because in this long awaited series they would be pitted against their most bitter adversary in last year's playoffs the New York Knicks had physically punished the bulls the anticipation been there all year long and we understand that in order to get into a championship that we have to go through Chicago and we understand some Sunday it's gonna be all I will I played very well that first game against him I love I'm a very competitive person that everybody know Michael Jordan was the ultimate test and John Starks would step up and accept the challenge with Starks containing Jordan the Knicks gained confidence with every play fittingly it was Starks who would close out game to an emphatically stake New York to a two-nothing series lead at the end of the game I went up to him I say you didn't get Mr. Jordan out of me tonight I think in game number three in 93 where we got to a little scuffle in Chicago he thought that I was trying to attack his sword wrist I guess he had a problem with wrist at the time and I slapped at the ball and hit his wrist by accident he was so frustrated what was going on obviously coming off of the big media blitz about him going to Atlantic City the night before game two and of course that much talked about visit to an Atlantic City casino by Michael Jordan on Thursday before the assembled media that has been covering the Knicks bull series Jordan gave his version of the trip it's attacked in my private life and I really didn't like it I don't I don't agree with it but I felt a need to come out and express that and tell the truth so you guys can quit hallucinating and taking it further than what it is and I think they're just kind of bored over into that whole altercation I think he was disgusted with what happened and Michael had to respond Michael could make things up to motivate himself we didn't have to make anything up here this was real and they end up kicking me at the game for whatever reason I'm not sure why but they kicked me at the game and I remember you know the media coming up to me and you know asking me questions about what happened and what have you and so I just went into you know I didn't play against Michael Jordan long enough and I know when he agitated and he pretty much just agitated over what went down you know with the media and them reporting that he went to Atlantic City and what have you and so I can remember Patrick coming to me that single night and Michael called him and told him that tell John I'm sorry for that you know he apologized you know because he appreciated what I said I stayed up to 2 30 in the morning myself you know watching TV you know and some guys you know may like to go out but like I say that's his business and shouldn't be publicized that's all it was he was just frustrated about what was going on and I wish he would have said it in person but you know sending it through big fella you know that was good enough bulls had been ignited and even more ominously Michael Jordan was about to be unleashed held down by the next through the first three games of the series Jordan would be shackled no longer complete he had scorched the mix for 54 points of the bulls 105 points he accounted for 51% of the offense we used to get scouting reports on certain guys and you look at scouting report and they say well you can take you right in a way you knew like to go left with certain people and then with Jordan I think you said it just said good luck that's it that's all it's yeah good luck on him it's just like good luck yeah and obviously he was the ultimate competitor to play against so he was special in that way yeah plus he had a will like no other player that I ever played against certain guys I can get to mentally but him I could never get to mentally and believe me I tried my best but you know he was that special player that you couldn't break his will you know if anything you just taking them to another level I can remember you know doing this is doing when he retired and Scottie Piffin had a all-star benefit game in Chicago and he was having a hard time selling tickets this is in 95 the summer of 95 and he talked Michael into playing and soon as he announced Michael was playing the ticket sold out in our Michael had a game high 52 points and leading his team to a 187 to 150 victory the fans not only welcome Jordan back they also got their first chance to see him go one-on-one with tipping he found himself matched up against Scottie Piffin which I saw today with he and I it's been going practice every day you know when I was playing against him it was kind of tough because I didn't want him to embarrass me on the court but you know Michael's one of the greatest players ever played the game and it's tough to shut him down and I can remember I'm on Michael's team which I was thankful for that I'm playing on his team and Scottie called himself stacking the team against him and he said before he went out just give me the ball and move out the way so who is on the court and everybody gave him the ball and him Scottie went one-on-one for the majority of the whole game and he lit Scottie up from like 55 points he had dropped in 52 points I hadn't played all summer so I've been working out for the last three or four days just trying to get my win back and get some of my touch back you know anytime that I want to pick up a basketball and go back out and play I can do that and if there's any doubt that Michael's come back at the top of the game well his performance put all of those doubts to rest it was one of the most incredible things that I've ever seen in my life a guy could not play basketball for that long practiced three days and didn't have 52 points Jordan's appearance guaranteed a packed house for Pippin's charity event but it meant a lot to him personally as well I really didn't have an opportunity to play my last game in Chicago Stadium I played in Phoenix what I did at the end of the game in terms of kissing the floor goodbye was truly what that was it was an opportunity to say goodbye to the stadium as well as some opportunities of playing on the stadium it meant a lot to me it's given me a lot and it's a mutual love and mutual understanding and you know it's just time to move on you know he's been playing baseball he stepped out on he told Scottie don't you ever you blame the stack of team against me again but that's you know you get to you get the width is great and that's what made them great when you playing against them you know you just in the mix and and you concentrating on trying to beat them but the one spot that I really enjoyed when he was talking about him and you know and he had to take a break yeah I'm not sure if I remember that he had to take a break tearing up emotional yep it is way that's how I played the game that was common tell a don't want to play that way don't play yeah you got emotional about it because to me I'm looking at it and and I'm saying to myself okay he feel like people he was misunderstood as a player now you really understand what made them such a great player and his passion for the game is level of of competitiveness that he had during this time he's always thinking ahead and you could just see and his man is always working you know what I mean and I will say this he probably was the best fundamentally sound superstar that I didn't play against you know from the standpoint of he didn't do a lot he just got the spots on the court you know what I mean it's just like a surgeon he just get over here I want to get a shot there I'm pump fake you take one or two drills I'm get to that spot right you know what I mean and so you never see him hardly see him take a bad bad shot right you know always on balance he was just fundamentally sound that's I think that's why the game was so easy to and I hope you guys enjoy the video if you did please help me out by hitting that like button let's aim for 5000 likes for the next video here are two new episodes that I think you will also enjoy so be sure to check them out and I'll catch you guys in the next episode tomorrow take care


What's everybody jcm for jazby's case breaks calm? We just sold out 2019 20 panini revolution basketball Because this is a eight box intercase break pick your teams number 22, and we're giving away the pelicans in This break so the way this works guys if you bought two or more teams You are entered automatically to win the pelicans in this break, which would have been a $350 team or more actually So the way it is you buy two teams you get one entry you buy four teams you get two entries you buy Six teams you get three entries So they go all-cart ship So there you go So here's a randomizer from Adam Kelly down to Robert. I Alphatize the customer names as you can see pelicans are still left there But Adam had a one two three four five six spots that equals three entries Bryce had two spots equals one entry Colin had two spots equals one entry David Bruins had two spots equals one entry Derek had one two three four five six spots that equals three entries Derek only had one inch a one spot Joe only on one spot Juan had one spot Mark had one spot Randy had two spots equals one entry Richard had two spots equals one entry and Rob had two spots equals one entry So there you go. That's everybody here. We copied and pasted it now. Let's roll the dice number one gets the pelicans after nine times six in a three one two three four five six seven eight nine Boom nine times Robert there you go one spot molded it at the top There you go. Let's alphabetize it All right, here you go. And I think Derek said earlier guys that We didn't pull a galactic in the first half of the case so there could be a Galactic hiding here and then ultimate collection hockey number 11 just sold out So we'll be doing that after this and I'm sure Nick will help out and post up number 12 once Once you get to minute Yes revolution basketball So it looks like we may be able to see one galactic here. We got Brandon Clark Camber Walker We got Jordan pool fractal Lift off the honest We got Jimmy Butler vortex 40 out of 50 for the heat Adam with that one There you go Joseph no, they're saying that galactic has not been was not pulled in the first half So it could be here there. This is an autograph or it could be a galactic Good luck and Gordon to 149 impact and it's a grant Hill autograph Detroit Pistons edition There you go, and we got a Zion rookie revolution Right here as well for the pelicans Just a little base, but it is I on and Pistons Alexander with that one on car AJ just the only house that sold out was ultimate collection hockey, which will be coming up after this Other than that nothing else NC football is really close to you guys just five and seven left or five and six left Six around our block five left straight up shockwave Jammer at rookie revolution Okra for And oak Paula to 100 cause Donchich Supernova All right. All right next box guys half a true after this nice Devin white. All right. Well, I got orders coming in I Don't know what they're for but they're coming in make sure it's down to three Incase that 14 five and six up the NT Must be coming in for Something else or maybe actually treasure timeless treasures was selling out and then pack break is at 14 Common country. I'm not too sure man price did go up a little bit, but I Don't know. Maybe maybe we will I just I don't know the we are not Kristoff porzingis autograph pony for Dallas it's going to Rob and We got a car many times to one for nine impact for the Minnesota T wolves Let's go. It looks like you got AJ Jeff Nick and Jeremy You guys should just start your own called Anderson's case breaks. I think you guys can do it Definitely a little bit of nightmares, you know, obviously, we're gonna make mistakes here and there But if we ever do make mistakes, it's usually just the last name or first names Those are germane yesterday Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's happened plenty of times actually All right guys. We got the galactic here Sunburst to 75 Anthony Davis for the Lakers Zion liftoff And we have a rookie Luca Sam Nick galactic for the spurs Colin with the spurs. There you go. That's gonna sell. Well That's a rookie galactic There you go. Very nice and fion do to 149 impact next box RJ liftoff RJ Barrett autograph for the Knicks Knicks Rob with that one. Also, this one people think it's something crazy Hunter We got Kevin Houdier Impact to 149 All right, two more boxes guys Next box seconds last box guys. Whoa out of 50 rookie revolution cubic the keel Alexander Walker for the pelicans Guys last one good luck. I think we will Nick I keep on being orders come in so I don't know what they're for but Boxing that goes orders and we got a cubic out of 50 Grant Williams. Very nice Celtic's going to Richard He's I on base and we got Bernard King for the Knicks Shockwave Cubic Steph Curry and a dumb boy. All right guys, so again ton of numbered stuff rookies You know in different variations of the cards to be top-loaded, but here were some of the bigger stuff in autographs We got one two here is the galactic. It's a rookie Sam Nick Three four four out of the eight autograph boxes and a little rookie's honor as well Appreciate it guys. Jasper's case breaks calm


Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter. This is smart business moves. It is Wednesday, February 24 It's almost my mommy's birthday Yeah, yeah, almost Is Olivia up there? She was a little while ago. I was gonna turn for you guys No, you know, she must have gone outside Bob and Carol's anniversary. Those are my in-laws Janice's parents 59 years Gosh one more year. That's a big what's 60 year anniversary? What do you get? Like gold and gold silver gold Over 50 golden. Yeah. No isn't golden is 50 silver is 25. So I bet diamond diamond Yeah And they knew each other like in grade school or something they've known each other for 71 years Wow Yeah, that's a long time. Hey, Denise Good to see you. I got a Diamond 60 years is diamond. I had a feeling hey Linda Alrighty Hey ladies doing today. Yes, you're coming back some more KPI torture We did we did good yesterday. Oh We we we got through a really hard Topic yesterday Tom, which I think it's a it's a new idea a new idea in our industry And it's a new idea for You know just The people that we normally interact with hey Robin and So I'm really glad that that we have a lot of engagement around it We gave people a chance to see this idea and how it can work. Hopefully people like noodle down in a little bit overnight our Really have discussion with myself as to you know, did we want to go down that path or not? Because we could have finished that discussion two days ago if we didn't but it's really important and It's something that's novel concept to a lot of people now, but in a couple of years I think it's going to be commonplace Yeah, everybody's going to be doing yet. There's too much opportunity If we can get on board with the idea now We can we can get ahead of it and make more money than what we would if we didn't Yeah, and be in front of it instead of behind it and trying to chase it chase it down All right. Well, you had some new info for us today some other kinds of numbers, right Tom Yeah, happy to see and hear about some of some of the COVID numbers are improving improving a lot they one of the metrics that Everybody tracks Hey Robin, we're gonna be talking about we're gonna be talking about KPIs and we're gonna be normalizing Some some allowed an actual times here in a little bit and then we're gonna move on from that today But we're just kind of doing a update on some some current events, I guess She wants to know what we were talking about Tom because she hit the what before you ever opened up the COVID thing It was the normalizing times Robin is what we were talking about We're gonna we'll get back to that a little bit too. It was all this stuff here that we were having so much fun with yesterday We're just excited to Be bringing that to the industry too because we know that it is going to be a really big deal It's just something that people in our industry We're such a small little industry that you know, we don't what we're not cutting edge I have a lot of this stuff, but some things we can be so Yeah, and when we are it's it's gonna help us and we're gonna be more profitable and we're gonna be Building, you know better businesses and making better jobs and providing better service and We won't be hating life Although, you know, it's not hard to kind of get in a in a rut in this business where we're you know I've heard more than one when business owners say they hate their business I'm sad when I hear that but I also have heard that more times than I like to think about Be honest. Have you ever been to a point where you've just asked yourself do I really want to do this anymore? I Actually have come once Yeah, you know, I had been I mean it's a long time ago, but there were there were times when And not only me, you know, I had friends and family members telling me to Isn't it time yet to get out of this whole cleaning thing you've been doing to Almost use profanity there. No need to go there. But you know, so I've been fortunate to never have anyone that wasn't supportive I've been very fortunate that way Good news though the positivity rates for covert are going down There was a kind of a benchmark that often has been bounced around like five percent or less Positivity rates. So like less than five percent of the people are getting tested or positive That's kind of been a benchmark for for, you know, a lot of communities To start, you know loosening up a little bit and start, you know, moving towards behaving more like things Look at this Is one of the most positive people I know yay That's awesome Robin. Thank you. Thank you Yeah, the positivity rate on the national level is below five percent Which is pretty cool because it wasn't you know that long ago maybe a month ago it was more than twice that and Was going up now just because the national levels below five percent doesn't mean that You know, everybody's an awesome place I'll drop this link if anybody wants to you know get more information about the particular state that they're in This is Johns Hopkins and they've got they've got the best data out there. Oh, yeah, definitely nice credible You know if you're in Alaska, that's awesome. You know, they're like 1.7. However, they're still at 22 So they're not, you know, they just lost some some wood to chop in Alabama Show me Washington real quick Fingers tired One look at you. All right. That's good. I love it Vermont would be awesome. Wow, no kidding 1.5 Vermont. Oh, wow You see this one spike right here. There's something goofy with your data Yeah, line is not awesome in terms of how they report their numbers. They have some violent swings cuz You had none zero and then They kind of got all the paperwork up and turned it all in at once I don't know on one day What the number of cases is dropping? Anyway Did you see that that was not good wait, what's with Puerto Rico one hundred percent? Yeah, but look, they're they're only doing like five tests per 5.2 tests per hundred thousand people Yeah, but every single one is positive. Yeah, but you're so you're like if I only have five tests for 100,000 people, you know, you're only gonna give it to like I Shouldn't be laughing Well, look South Dakota is pretty terrible at twenty two point three and they're up this week I got to go with some friends. I went to school with last night and we were we were doing all of this through text But we were swapping Tiger Woods jokes and that's not cool either, but I don't know what your woods jokes are He was you know who he is The golfer he was in a bad car wreck yesterday. Oh, he was no, I didn't know. Is he okay? But he like messed his leg up Landed but not his arms. He needs his arms, right? I guess you need your place to play golf too That's where it all starts it. It's kind of bad. Oh, no, he's kind of drove on the road for no understandable reason and Driving is a part of golf and it kind of anyway. Let's not go there. Oh, I get it. I get it now. All right I get the driving connection Let's go back to code for it for a little bit go through this We got a we got a we got to get back to our spreadsheets here. We don't We don't want those API's This is some pretty awesome news that it looks like the J&J vaccine is going to be approved for like emergency use by the end of the week and both Moderna and Pfizer are doubling down on the amount of vaccine that they're going to be pushing out. So You know, it looks like we're gonna be a wash in vaccine here the next couple of months Which is it's gonna be good? Right now I still I'm approved to get one But I still haven't been able to find anyone to give it to me everybody's out Look, but it looks like that's gonna lighten up here in the next week or so Why me think that that's just a matter of time and the belief is that pretty soon We're we're not gonna be supply constrained anymore. We're gonna have vaccine and be trying to You know coach and course people into to taking it Yeah, well right now they we're not having that problem. That's for darn sure Um We looked at this over the last couple of days we've seen this about the changes to It's PPP and they're gonna be giving preference to companies that are less than than 20 employees This was announced Monday But for the next couple of weeks if you've got a company with more than 20 employees You know, I would follow up my bank if you're still trying to get approved but They might not Castlekeepers we've got several branches and a couple of them have less than 20 employees and All of a sudden like today we started getting these emails asking more questions and trying to You know, it sounds like all of a sudden those applications are more important than they were a couple of days ago Nice go figure nice. Yeah Here's something that's new And this was this came out today and this is more Coming coming out of the White House that they're changing some of the rules in terms of how PPP applies to like self-employed people and in independent contractors You're an independent contractor contractor you really don't have a payroll per se and You really didn't benefit a lot from PPP, but they changed the calculations for for for for these classifications to term you PPP based on top-line revenue, which means they're gonna be getting a lot more money Hey, and Oh, but those rules don't go in effect until I think the second week of March That's almost here next week What their talent saying though is if you one of these if you're you fall in these categories and you've already applied or you apply today You get your money based upon the old rules What they're saying is if you're like an independent contractor or meet this new criteria you might want to wait until Okay, maybe it might be as early as next week wait until next week and do it because you'll get more money Okay, oh, that's good information for sure They feel like that information What else is there right? Yeah, this is very very true. Yeah You know sitting around, you know having a cookie and potato chips. Hey, I got an idea Formula for Most of the changes though have been in everyone's best interest not always I mean, there have been a couple times where it was like ah darn but but not too much like with the You know when they made the change to the PPP about how much you could spend on what how much you could spend on another thing It was like darn why they changed that and they messed this all up They didn't really matter in the end anyway because the form is just like How much did you spend? How much did you have so it didn't really matter where you spent it or anything it was like it It's all easily easily forgiven So It seems it seems like it was gonna be so hard Yeah, it's gonna take so much work and wow There's so much work to trying to track every single dollar where you're spending it from which pool from which account Yeah Not so much. No, not so much ended up being pretty unnecessary That's okay. Better to have it done and not need it than not have it done and need it Okay. Yeah, yeah, trust me on that. Just trust me You don't have to process it. All right, so it's to some team. Are you all ready to get back here again? We spent some time talking about I guess the math behind rate adjustments and I guess What we believe to be the most I mean, I mean the numbers speak for themselves You can maximize your your your value out of your your cleaning professionals and every account if you go through the process of Figuring out the productivity rates of your cleaning professionals and applying those productivity rates to actual job times to get the Normalized job times and you use those to determine if you're pricing correctly And if you do that, you're gonna wind up Doing adjustments for the for for the right customers and not doing adjustments for ones who who don't need them and you're gonna What it does it gets you out of the mindset of well If I'm looking for $45 an hour and if I look at every job that I do an average if it comes out to be 45 You feel good about it, but Some of them you're making 55 and some of them you're making 35 or less and the ones that are less than 45 You want to know it, but if you don't go through the process of doing this normalized math here Then you can't really do it with confidence Maximizing the amount of money that you can make off of your labor hours because remember we always go back to That's where you're gonna be able to make the biggest impact in your company is by impacting that labor And we're told that well, this is hard Going through this exercise is hard. I don't want to do it. I'm okay if some of my jobs I'm really not making that much money on and I Think that we're focusing on the wrong hard things. I mean cleaning homes is what's hard, right? Okay, but no Tom like I don't think you fully comprehend though, none Well, you know around So that and that's not true. Okay, so Here's here's the thing that you don't comprehend There's two things that are really working against people One is people are just not as comfortable with spreadsheets period as you are you know that already That for you spreadsheets are very second nature. Just this this this the other other people have to think to fill in one box It's like, okay So what is it that I have to put here again? and if this number is divided by this number, which one do I put in first and So it's much harder just that piece Okay, on top of that, you don't even do the spreadsheet Central and they don't know makes the whole thing easy Okay My point is you don't really have a realistic understanding of You know the the daunting depths and breadth of what this is When Because you're so used to you know made central just does it it's like Yeah, why just push that button That's not what it's like. So it really is It's harder than you think it I think it's harder than cleaning homes I'm sorry. I I would agree with the majority of people that think this is harder than cleaning homes Cleaning homes, I could pretty much get you know Eight-year-olds to clean homes a lot of times, but I'm not finding anybody that can do this for me. This is difficult So and when you don't know when you don't understand it and you're not familiar with it You you're not familiar with spreadsheets and you don't have made central most people don't right? So they're going to have to do this with the spreadsheet. It's daunting It's daunting So do it I don't think we we need to I think we've given everybody the idea Hopefully you guys have noodled on it a bit and you're able to see the wisdom of the normalizing and how to go about that And then over time we'll be adding some more of this in absolutely But you know, we have now spent two days on normalizing because it is difficult I think people are just gonna have to accept it absorb it and then Begin to figure out how it can work. Maybe in their businesses Because that that's the key piece right and like we've been saying all along don't have to do everything You just gotta you just got to do some stuff get those green numbers up get those red numbers going down and It's gonna be a win and I know that you think that yeah, but this one will make numbers move really big in a really good way At at at the very least as long as we're aware and we're thinking about it and we're looking beyond The obvious. Yeah, the obvious in this industry is Get more leads book more jobs clean more homes and run the credit cards and And that's you know, and if I'm not making enough money, I just need to do more Yeah, I need to to put more jobs and You know, I mean booking more jobs is an opportunity to be more profitable, but you know, hopefully we've we've Made been making the point here in an effective way that It's not sufficient. There's more to it than than than that. Yeah, absolutely that you Got to be able to you got to be able to Be watching that profit margin how important that that piece is right really really always focusing in on that net profit No matter what your size is Right because as your company gets bigger. Do you want that enough profit to shrink? No, you don't It would be really nice to keep a nice healthy net profit. No matter what your size is, right? And sometimes you can get lucky and be profitable, but we want to Make it happen rather than just happened stumbled across that So, all right, so we talked a lot about rate adjustments But now we we when we have talked about rate increases. We've talked quite a bit about rate increases I don't think we ever shared any rate increased letters I think we were going to do that at some point in time So maybe we could do that Let me right here Yeah, I letters get a couple of Generic you want so that we can get the Some of those for people But rate increases we've hit on this a lot We just don't have any bullet points But let's throw some bullet points on here because the whole point of this is these are things that you can do so One of the things under rate increases is do them monthly if you do them monthly you get your money faster So you get more money coming in sooner when you do them monthly and there are other benefits as well, which we already talked about Um, do your rate increases? Go ahead. I'm sure it's the anniversary day I mean, there's no rule saying it has to be every 12 months, but I like anniversary day. Yeah, and I think that's the easiest way to keep people on track too Yeah, and if it's not anniversary date, then what is it for you, you know Some people have an audit gate for for their different, you know They do all of their audits on the 15th of the month and so they do their pricing or the rate increases After they do the audit. That's fine, too. Whatever works But anniversary is a nice date that all of our clients have I'll give you an exception to that for the work that we do for other businesses like we do some offices and You know vacation rentals and stuff like that. It's a b2b relationship.  I mean, it's kind of the same activity the same people But we're building a company as opposed to a consumer Yeah, we we do all of those in fourth quarter going into effect january 1st Because that's where most people's budgets are and we found over the years It's like if we try to do a rate increase in june, you know, even though that might be their anniversary day So we're already got our budget together for this year. We didn't plan for that. So Oh, that makes good sense stick that on there tom bullet point for b2b That's a really good point So maybe a different line because we don't want this under monthly This is going to be done annually. I would be annually. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point That's really really important to know and that's so true. I've had I've had that happen to me where they're like That's not in the budget Our budget set All right, all right. What else do we want to say about rate increases as Something that they oh consistently. So don't Once you start don't stop Make sure that you keep doing them Also, um, I think that setting the expectation with the client is so helpful. Leslie mentioned this yesterday, too I think it was less Maybe it was robin Talk much from now. You're going to be getting a 5% increase. Yeah, it was robin. Yeah set the expectation in advance uh, there was um There was something that you were talking about tom about I can't remember how How you brought it up, but it was about like if the cost of living is at Two and a half percent. You don't want to raise your rate by just two and a half percent because you're not going to grow you're Yeah, I mean Inflation is relatively low. It's less than two percent now has been for for a good while I mean there there've been times In our lifetime that it's been pushing 20 percent Where do you find that information tom? I think that would be really helpful for people Oddly enough, um, it's the department of labor Okay, um I hear you typing, but I don't see anything happening as I'm doing it over in the wrong place Be our labor statistics I mean here's some other sites that probably easier to use but this is kind of the official You'd have to drill around in here a little bit um I like that calculator. What was that? us inflation calculator. Oh historical right, so maybe not I love calculators So these are the rates by recent. Oh, this is this is so easy just right there on the thing Can you drop that link in for us tom? Sure? All right So you definitely want to be raising your rates more than just the rate of inflation because if you did it exactly at inflation or Heaven forbid less than inflation. You're actually losing ground instead of gaining ground and so the the point of your Your rate increases is to be growing your business not shrinking it Now these inflation rate numbers though if you read the fine print on how they calculate these numbers and I haven't done that in a while. So I'm a bit sketchy on the details, but I know that they don't often reflect A lot of things. I don't think they include energy like things like gasoline which can be more volatile And I don't think that it necessarily reflects Things like if minimum wage goes up significantly for you your business That you know 1.4 percent They do these one these calculations here. They they have this thing they call a basket of goods And they change that from time to time, but it's Just normal junk at you buy some of it is Like a tv set for instance and the price of those has gone down over time So that kind of makes it look good the cost of goods, right? Yeah, so tom, how does this compare to the cola Um schedule because that's usually what I use the cost of living adjustment And that's usually where I go to get my information About what I'm doing There it is. Yeah cola I don't know how this is calculated 1.3. I thought for sure you would Well It's 1.3 percent pretty close to standard living. I'm sure there's there's uh the cost of living. I'm sure there's You know a correlation between between how they do it, but um, I guess this affects people who um Social security benefits, I guess are affected by this federal retirement benefits Maybe yep Yep, all of that stuff is so I usually the reason why I use this, um cost of living adjustment and I use cola as um The number that I start with is because most people understand that especially like the Older people that are maybe on a fixed income too. They understand that there needs to be A cola that needs to happen because they get hit with it too so That's usually why I have used this remember we had this Thing that I sent out about too long ago from bernie sanders about I can't find it what If they go to $15 an hour, it's going to be like over five years or so You mean federally or what do you mean federally? Yeah, like 15 at a federal level But the individual states will do at that point, um That is still in the bill That the house is going to pass on friday If you can make it through the senate or not, you know, they don't know The senate's got another proposal where they'll take the minimum wage to ten dollars an hour But you know those are the type of things that have the potential of taking your labor Which is really your cost of goods sold, right? You're loaded direct roll, you know loaded direct payable to revenue number And it can make that go up a double digit increase bang just like that overnight So doing a rate increase of of of you know, three percent I mean that get that covers you for whatever the cost of you know, whatever whatever's in the basket of goods that Cost of living or this cola adjustment here is but that doesn't begin to make you whole if there's any So Don't don't you know, if that if any of those things become real and Take this When they do our minimum wage went up. This is a couple years back now by a a big chunk all in one year I want to say two dollars and 20 cents or something in one year and We had to make a big A big rate adjustment that year We just started in right after it was Um Signed in the law that we were going to be doing this and that that was a harder sell For our clients for sure because those You know, normally your rate increases are, you know Few bucks Right, we gave some examples the other day three five percent whatever you're only looking at Usually less than ten dollars But when you're having to adjust because minimum wage went up Over two dollars We had to make some bigger bigger changes there and on top of we had to be you know We had to raise for the cola as well as the Minimum wage going up. So that that was a trickier a trickier time. And I know a lot of people are dealing with that Colorado is talking about their theirs is going up again pretty significantly in 2021 maybe sometime this year april, maybe And PPP could be another example if you had to really For a large Period of time, especially if maybe you are doing a lot of commercial work and you're having to Do more with your PPP that That that that could be something too I mean PPE sorry guys Okay Any significant change in your cost structure? Yeah, you've got to pass that along Or at least try and if you don't and you've got to be careful also when I I don't think I have shared this story in a while that um Gas, do you guys remember when gas prices went crazy? Out of this world. They were up almost to five dollars an hour. They're like at four Yeah an hour. Yeah a gallon And so we tacked on a two dollar two dollar y'all A two dollar travel fee to our clients and I will tell you I got more pushback on that two dollars than I did on any other adjustment increase anything that I had ever done and A friend of mine up north april lane She added on I can't remember how much she added on it was a different amount. It was more I want to say five dollars But what she did was she positioned it that because All of her team members were solos and driving their own cars All of this money was going to be sent directly over to the team members and she got no pushback So you got to be careful how you position this stuff too So if your minimum wage is going up and that's why you're having to raise your rates Then make sure that the customer knows that you're doing it to go directly to some of this stuff Yes Oh, yeah gas was horrible. Okay. What's Sam got we do a price increase at the same time as a rate adjustment Do you separate them in the client letters that you can see each one? I think that might be stressful for them You should just tell them the reasons and give them the bottom line So we probably have different opinions on this. Um, I'll go first on this one. Um, I would not do I Would only do a rate adjustment if I have to do a rate adjustment. I'm not talking about price increases I'll probably roll it up in there But I'm going to call the whole thing a rate adjustment The whole reason that we're doing this right now is not because we're trying to raise your price It's because we have not priced you correctly For for whatever reason But ideally there would be no reason to ever be doing a rate adjustment and a price increase at the exact same time If you're doing a rate adjustment because say Somebody took all their carpet out now. They switched everything over to Tile floor with white grout All right, they they understand that that's going to cost more It's going to cost it's gonna But you need to help them understand right you need to help them understand Yeah, and there's a really good reason that is outside of we're not just raising your price to be Charging more and to make more money It's because this is an adjustment to your actual rate We actually Cannot continue to clean your home in the same amount of time with this new flooring that you have so, um Part of is a timing thing too, you know like If they put the new flooring in just you know, just put it in in their anniversary date Which will be the dates as you normally do their increases Say, you know two months from now You don't want to anticipate that and handle that as part of the rate adjustment You're not going to be giving them a rate increase two months after the rate adjustment. Yeah, right That's I so we're on the same page kind of roll it up. I understand how you got in the predicament sam That makes perfect sense Sam on it during the pandemic and I think there were a lot of people in that same boat So that's really good. I'm glad you pointed that out Um, a lot of people were not comfortable raising rates during the pandemic Which I totally understand people were losing their jobs And a lot of people just weren't working at all. You were losing clients like crazy People were afraid of the virus and they weren't even sure they wanted people in their home to begin with Give me another reason to cancel my service Last thing you wanted to do was be raising Right, so I I totally understand how that could happen So in that situation sam, I think that people are expecting a price increase. So this one is different and that I would still Not still in this case. I would Present it as a price increase That and then I would say all of the different things that were Why we're increasing because they know about the PPE They know about a lot of the stuff and if there is an adjustment piece in there too, then I might add that in But I would definitely do them together not separately But on the anniversary date Like especially if you're setting the expectation as a new, you know, when they're becoming A new customer that you know every anniversary date we do a rate increase. Yeah You send them a lot. We used to say send them a lot or you send them an email Yeah, letting them know that in the anniversary day, we took a look at, you know, your rate and everything's in a line and You know, there'll be no, you know increase You know at this time So you're planning to seed in their head even though you didn't do the rate increase They'll be expecting it that time next year Yeah, I I think in sam's situation it's a little bit different because She just didn't communicate anything about increases or adjustments during that time and I'm guessing a lot of people did Actually, I know a lot of people did I've talked to quite a few people that did this And so you want to get them back on track as soon as you think It's Possible to get them back on track. He might not want to write around for May for their price increase, which is their anniversary date or whatever We go ahead. I need to get it done. Yeah, I totally understand sam Yeah It does throw you off a little bit. I might still be looking for how I can Get them back on to their anniversary date. I would be trying just because It's easier to to to do them monthly And I like getting that money sooner when whenever I can I don't know that that's a that's a good good point right there. So And something else that I guess ties into this whole thought process of you know, it's now a bad time to do the rate increase is This is all negotiable You know, most customers will clients will take it and won't say anything Some may will grumble a little bit Some you might even have to haggle with a little bit Rarely does somebody just say, okay, I got this email saying there's a rate increase Just take me off the schedule. I quit without a discussion Yeah, that's rare unless it's big that like if you did a big if you tried to combine an adjustment and an increase Then you can have that happening But if you're just doing your standard annual increase, that's rare that people are just like nope forget it You raise my price again this year and I'm not having it five dollars. No way that doesn't happen often But I I love what tom said everything is negotiable if they are freaked out by that five dollar Price increase once a year You can negotiate with them, you know, mrs. Johnson, you are one of my favorite clients. I don't want to lose you Here are some options, right? You can either give them options or you could even not do anything You can let them keep their price if you want to you didn't want to change them at all How about asking them for a referral? Because if they give you a referral, that's worth way more than the five dollars that you were going to charge them anyway You're you're only limited by your imagination in terms of that you can throw into the Discussion to get more value out of out of the relationship If you're going to put if the your revenue per hour in that home isn't where it needs to be Well, what else can they do to help you with? And we've done that. I mean we we've we've over the years. We've had clients that give us gobs of referral business And we'll give them a discount. We'll clean them at a lower hourly rate because Because they're worth it. Yeah. Yeah, you're bringing me in so much business. Absolutely sure. I know that too. Yeah, absolutely um Sam so Let me just talk a little bit about the phone call versus an email or a text or something along those lines I know that a lot of people think that they should call if the number is bigger But and I'm not arguing that I'm I'm saying that people might like to talk about The I might like to have that conversation But I still recommend sending an email out first and laying out what the issue is and talking about what some of the options are Because when people first get hit with it, especially if it's a big amount of money A lot of people are going to be irritated their first response is going to be irritation Let them have that irritation Over the email and give them a chance to think about it and calm down and set an appointment and then Call them and talk to them if they want to talk to you. Some people do not like conflict You know that Sam Many people don't like conflict and they're not going to want to talk to you. So don't make them talk to you Give them the opportunity to get the email. That's a really good point. Liz. I'm going to add that under the rate adjustment Regardless of what mode of communication. I said email. I I think that is is is is good because It gives them a chance to think about it But the big deal is don't send them an email saying hey, we're going to raise your rate 30 40 percent 50 percent Because you might as well, you know, they're going to read that thinking that you just tell them to go That's off. Yeah, bleep themselves um Just tell them this is the situation and we've got here are some options that we have Yeah, that's a lot less threatening Lot less threatening Just just them knowing that there are options and I think we always throw in something like and if you have any other ideas We'd love to talk to you about those as well It just feels like oh, okay. This is in my it's in my control again for the customer They feel like it's under their control again So that that's a really big deal um Both of these are really important. You know, I mean we we've hammered on it, but They're it's hard for people to do, you know, I I think most cleaning companies Don't do these things well. Don't do them regularly Yeah regularly is the consistently they just don't do it consistently and really When it comes to cleaning businesses, I think if you could only pick one word Not we're not including profit. Okay One word That the thing that you need to focus on more than anything I would say consistency is going to be the key More than quality more than times more than anything Consistency is really big for what you provide for the customer is what I'm talking about right here So this that's huge Huge All right So anything else that you guys can think of that people can do with regards to rate increases how what Anything that we should be adding to this list to help people to do them and just get her done Oh, I do have one more thing So when you're afraid So a lot of times, you know, we've talked about this a lot Sometimes you're afraid to do rate increases. Okay. Here's how you get over it. If you're afraid Pick your least favorite clients, whichever ones you don't like. They're just rude. They're obnoxious You don't get paid enough whatever reason it is that you don't like them. Okay I just picked five of them and raise their rates And just do them the way you would do anybody else and just send out their Their rate increases and see what happens worst case scenario. They say No way. I don't like you. I'm never doing business with you again and you get to celebrate Finally, I'm rid of these terrible people And and there should be a correlation between you say at least favorite, you know, I'm gonna say least maybe least profitable too So that might be why they're your least favorite Because you don't make any money there Maybe you've got there, you know, you've done whatever necessary rate adjustments may have been necessary And even you've got their hourly rate to to where you you need it to be but Maybe they're on the fringe of your service delivery area.  We broke something at her house five count them five times in a row y'all Every two weeks five times. I was like Julie. I'm sorry. We can't clean air anymore Your house is jinxed for us. We can't do it It was terrible, especially when Some of the breakage is like, well, there's a scratch on my refrigerator and you guys did it and there's a You know Floor over here and you guys it's like That's absolutely worse. Yeah, maybe we did but I don't you know Yeah, we we don't remember doing that. All right, so test your plan on your least favorite And just if you're just still afraid just only pick five Because all even if all five of those people left you You're going to be in a better place just to get rid of the burden of these these awful Clients. Okay. I know a lot of times we keep these people that are just Sucking the lives out of our companies Um, and this is one way to to do it and if these least Favorite people stay Chances are good real good that the customers that you like will let that like you Are not going to have any problem either. So test your plan if they say you should have done a larger rate increase Probably probably it's true Maybe sometimes that's true um, all right anything else that we want to think about with Rate increases that we didn't say anybody have any ideas that's on the call That we didn't list here I think this is the bulk of it tom pick so remember you don't have to at all but But do do this stuff so pick how you're going to do it because this is what we got a green number here We want this number to be going up and you don't have to do everything But you need to do as many things as you can do to get this number up where you want it to be And if you're going to do these every month You want to go ahead and you want to get your customers together now who have an anniversary day in march Yeah, because you don't want to wait until You know, it's one week, you know, it's the third week of march and say, okay Well, I guess we need to do our rate increases for march yet because it just won't happen And they won't get done then they'll go out in april and then next year they have a really shortened amount of time Before the letter goes out in april. You maybe give them a couple of weeks or not They don't actually feel like they're increasing until may next year. You try to do it in march It's like it's only been a few months since you last gave me a rate increase. That's what it feels like so How quickly Between between the time that you announce the the rate increase and send the email How long do you give them before that increase goes into effect? So there's a lot of different schools of thought on the some people do it immediately Effective immediately. So even if your next cleaning is tomorrow, it's at this new rate Um, some people give two weeks notice so that everybody will be able to get one more cleaning I do mine at the beginning of the next month So like if it's like right now if we had done In february 4 march then the price increase would go into effect march march first How about you tom? What do you guys do? There is a time and i'm going back to when we were printing off Word, you know microsoft word mail merged, you know letters Yeah envelopes That that we would we give them like 30 days like four weeks um In part just because we figured well, it's going to be by the time we printed everything and You know got a lot of the mail and they got it. They're gonna lose a week anyway um That was probably even too long then you know today. Well, we'll pick like Uh a monday, you know no more than two weeks out And you know, we won't we won't make it immediately, but we make it pretty tight Maybe they get a cleaning in on the old rate. Maybe they don't we really don't care So like all of our price increases For how ours work is if you're getting a price increase if your anniversary date was in march Then your price increase is going to start march first So you're going to get the letter in february. We start processing them in february sometime and um, you know Because we do audits on them. So I would say most of our people will get an audit done They'll be done by the middle of the month So middle of the month is usually when the emails go out, but if you're not getting cleaned until March 14th, it's going to be a month until you're getting a Your your first price increase It's going to go up remember back in the old days when people used to write checks And people just are ready you checks right then like they get your letter And then they're very next cleaning you would tell them that they had a month and you're very next cleaning They'd have the new price a lot On the flip side of it too though, they'd be writing you checks with the old amount and you'd have to call them up and Say that you know, there's supposed to be three dollars more here Oh, or you won't catch it for um, two three months and then you're like, hey you owe us 21 dollars That would happen too. Yeah All right, anything else here? you know What do you do with? clients that are In a in a danger zone who aren't happy people that you you you are good clients or good profitable clients, but you know They had a bad complaint recently. Do you go ahead and Send the rate increase on the anniversary date or do you try to get into better standing first? We do We um, we we give it at least one more cleaning. We have to have a good we have to have a good rating Uh, we have a scale of one to five. So we have to have at least a four rating So you want you want that excellent or at least a good scorecard at least a good scorecard. Yeah, at least good So what do you guys do we look at that as well? I mean all of our audit Again, it's a made central thing, but you know the the whole control that does the The rate increase is that's one of the metrics that gives you like these are all the people whose anniversary date comes up On this time and you can plug in whatever Dollar amount you want, but it also shows you some of the metrics and one of them is They're they're their most recent scorecard score. So if it's bad, you say just say no, I'm not going to Not today Because you know, somebody just had a two scorecard or three scorecard with a lot of comments, right? Sometimes people don't want to give you anything less than that middle score They think it's going to make somebody feel bad But they got a lot of comments and I was that was missed Yeah, um, and then they get hit with a price increase right on top of that. It's like No They start looking I would I start looking I I would be interested in Who who do you have clean your house? Yeah, I'd be interested. Yeah, if if I'm going to be frustrated and disappointed I can find somebody else to do that for me Yep all day every day Yeah, that's a good one Um, so you should put that one on there Tom um rate increases and maybe as that bullet point is audit for quality or um service quality or I say, you know, you may want to wait I Think most of us would you know, it's easy to say everything is negotiable, but If you know somebody's not happy, you don't want to go ahead and stick their finger your finger in their eye Yeah, I agree. That's not the easiest All right. Well, I think this page is done Tom and we are at top of the hour So this kpi is complete Yes Yep, and we are Well, we'll see what we'll talk about tomorrow. It's we're gonna pull we're gonna start pulling all this together We're gonna be wrapping this up this this this whole larger kpis for profit discussion Well, we'll have some some work to do next week, but at that point we'll we'll be done. We're also Having some discussions trying to figure out how we can do some of this within zoom calls We could do this whole thing again in zoom. It would be completely different because people would have questions and we could Yep We could talk talk about the stuff have a conversation But um, it is top of the hour. So you guys take care. Thanks for uh, Helping helping out Sam. Good seeing you. We'll uh be here tomorrow 5 o'clock. Bye. Bye. Bye y'all