Family support is so crucial to the success of any business,
and we're going to talk about that today.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now today's question comes from a brand spanking new house cleaner,
she's just getting involved in the business, and she wants to know,
"How do I get family support?"
Okay, that's an excellent question, because in any business, especially the house cleaning
business, you need family support.
There are people that you live with, that every single day, you're going to come home
with a whole bunch of new information.
It's going to be information about your customers, it's going to be information about the way
that you cleaned their house or something that happened at the house.
And your first inclination will be to spew that information on your family.
Your family doesn't understand because they weren't there.
It's like when your kid tells you something that happened at school.
You love your kid, so you listen, but you weren't there, so you don't really know how
bad it was, and so you try to understand, but something gets lost in the translation.
All right, so we do have a private Facebook group that is for professional house cleaners.
If you own a house cleaning company or if you work for a house cleaning company, come
on over, because there are about 4800 people there that know what you're going through,
we feel your pain.
When you say, "Oh my goodness, this happened at a house."
We're like, "Totally been there, we got your back, we know what you're talking about."
Your family, on the other hand, they do not know.
When I got involved in the house cleaning business 25 years ago, I didn't have a Facebook
group, I didn't have a network of people to talk to, and when I would try to share my
stories with people, nobody understood.
I have a sister that lives in Bend, Oregon, and she's a professional organizer,
and she understood.
I would call her up on the phone, I'm like,
"Help! This just happened at a house, what do I do?"
And she'd say, "Okay, well let's think through this."
And she was my sounding board to share ideas with and help spin ideas so that we could
come up with solutions.
Now you need support from your family, because you're going to be gone a lot, and there are
times when there are what we call, emergency cleanings, where a customer says,
"Oh my goodness, my house just flooded.
The flooding crew is coming in to do all the restoration.
But there's a bunch of other stuff in my house that I need you to come help clean."
You're like, "Okay, let me drop what I'm doing, and I will come right over."
Well, what just happened to your family?
So, you're leaving your spouse and your kids, or your parents behind while you run over,
and you take care of someone else's house and family.
So, there's a little bit of jealousy that goes on like, "Hey, Mom or Dad likes them
better than us," kind of a thing.
That's not the case at all, so in order to get family support, you have to ask for it,
and you have to make your stories understandable, so the people that you live with, understand
they come first.
The family that you're helping comes second, and although this seems like an emergency,
the real emergency is, "We have bills to pay here at home, and in order for me to help
pay these bills, I have to go help these people for a few minutes.
So while I'm gone, can you hold the fort down?"
That's an American idiom for, "Can you take care of everything here at the house, while
I go take care of this other family?"
When you ask for help, and you explain what you need, the people at home can jump in and
cover all the bases.
That's another American idiom, cover the bases so that you can ... What it means is, make
sure that everything is taken care of at home,
so that you can go take care of this other family.
So, when you explain what you need, to your family, your family then can help you.
So, if it's just you or your boyfriend or girlfriend, or it's just you and your spouse,
then you need to make sure that, not only do they understand but then when you have
time with them, that you are 100% present.
You don't want to take that time and say, "You know what?
I just don't have time to hang out with you tonight, because I'm just so tired, I had
a really long day, I've been cleaning all day, I just need a nap."
No, no, no, no, no, no, you need to show up present to the relationship.
And so, you need to make sure, that if you're out helping other families all day, that you
pace yourself, and you reserve enough energy so that when you come home you can still be
a spouse. So that you still have time for your partner, so that you still have time
to show up in the relationship.
When I say show up in the relationship, that also means bring opinions.
You can't show up in a relationship and sit there like a bump on a log and have no opinions.
If someone is trying to share information with you,
you need to have something to share back.
It's like a ping-pong game. If I throw an idea at you, you throw an idea back, I throw
an idea at you and we have, what's called a conversation.
If you just show up, and you just sit there like a bump on a log because you're so burned
out from cleaning during the day, you did something wrong.
Now you are taking it out on your family, and that does not build family support.
So, if family support is what you need, you need to be present with your family when you
are, with your family.
Does that make sense?
You want to make sure, that you explain to your family what you need.
It could be something, saying like, "I have five houses to clean this week.
Every one of those houses is going to take four hours of my time, at the end of the four
hours, I'm going to be completely exhausted. So, I'm going to go, clean the house, I'm going
to come home and take a 30-minute nap.
At the end of the 30-minute nap, the rest of my afternoon and evening is yours."
Then what happens is this.
You go and you clean the house, and you come home and you are beat, and your family is
like, "Hey, Mom needs a nap."
Or "Dad needs a nap for 30 minutes."
After the 30 minutes, they know what comes next, right?
Because you cued them in, and so because they know what to expect, they'll be quiet and
they will let you sleep for the 30 minutes, because they know at the end of the 30 minutes,
you're coming back and you're coming back full force, so that you can pay attention
to the things that matter most, which is your family, and when you pay attention to them,
they will give you all the support you need.
If you are running a business, especially a home-based business, and especially a cleaning
business, you need family support. You need people who understand what you're going through,
because physically it's a tough business, and mentally it can be a tough business when
you have people micromanaging you all day, every day.
It can be a tough business when people don't pay you on time.
There are lots of weird nuances with a house cleaning business.
So, the last thing you need, is a bunch of people that you know and love and care about,
and are trying to support, that don't support you back.
That's the worst thing ever.
Make sure that you clarify what you need, and make sure that when you come home, you're
100% there, and you will get all the family support that you need.
All righty, that's my two cents for today, and until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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