02. CORE VALUES ARE THE DIFFERENCE MAKER WITH ASHLEY WHALEY

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

cleaning, people, core values, respectful, clean, company, house, podcast, adrian, utilize, question, delegate, schedule, team, business, years, cleaners, day, home, laundry

SPEAKERS

Rob, Intro, Ashley, Adrian

Intro 

Welcome to the get rich, slow podcast. This is the stuff we and our expert guests Wish we knew a decade ago to get the most out of our financial life will provide you with insight into wealth building activities and practices that can expand your net worth exponentially. get insight from top professionals who will reveal how to build wealth the long way work smarter, not harder and identify your financial blind spots. With over 25 plus years of experience as licensed real estate professionals and a long track record of winning for their clients. Robin Adrian will teach you what it takes to be an everyday real estate millionaire.

Adrian 

Hello, future millionaires. Thanks for joining us today again on the get rich slow podcast. Today we’re joined by Ashley Whaley. And of course I have my regular co host, Rob delevan. With us from delavan Realty How you guys doing

Ashley 

today? Hey guys, how’s it going?

Adrian 

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for joining us today, Ashley. Yeah, thanks

Ashley 

for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Adrian 

So Ashley is the owner of more free time cleaning, the premier cleaning company in the Portland metro area. And she we’ve known each other for what, six to seven years professionally, personally, and you’ve been a huge inspiration for me. I can’t say enough great things about you and your business and your business mind and growing a business from zero to incredible in a relatively short amount of time.

Ashley 

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I know we met I always base how long I know somebody on the age of my children. So Macy is seven. She’s gonna be eight. So I want to say we’ve known each other for like, seven, eight years.

Adrian 

Yes, that’s about right. Yes. And and I will say the audience across the universe will know I’m pretty sure my seven year old son Russell has a little bit of crush on Mason. He’s always said perked up. It’s what AC is coming over. Okay. Yeah,

Ashley 

that’s so sweet love.

Adrian 

So adorable. Russell’s a cutie. Oh, yeah, they, they, they have a good time. Um, so we’re gonna go through just a few questions for you get to know you a little better. And hopefully you can drop some of your wisdom on us. So starting out, please just tell our audience, why did you get into your field? And what is the main driver that just improves, you’re continuously improving your craft. And you’re amazing at that.

Ashley 

Yeah, so I started my first cleaning company in Minnesota when I was 19 years old. And I literally was working downtown Minneapolis, and I was at a call center. And I just it was a Saturday like a beautiful Saturday, Sunday or summer afternoon. And I was just like, I cannot make one more call, like I can’t, I can’t do this. And so like I shut down my computer and turned in my headset to my manager. And I was like, I’m so sorry. But I’m out of here. Like, I gotta go. And I’d always had this love for cleaning. And I always just had an entrepreneurial spirit, I don’t even really know where it came from, maybe from my grandpa, my grandpa was kind of a entrepreneurial kind of a guy. But, um, I just honestly saw the potential for working for yourself versus working for somebody else, just the freedom that came with it from a timing, you know, scheduling standpoint, and then also from a financial standpoint, I just was like, you know, I could charge this amount, and then I could work for myself or I could go and get, you know, X amount of dollar an hour job. And the two of them were just not matching up. And so I just saw tons of flexibility, and more freedom within time and resources at such a young age to get into business for myself, but then fast forward to where we’re at now, you know, 15 years down the road. And that little cleaning idea has turned into one of the top rated cleaning companies in the Portland metro. And so, there’s a lot of story in between, you know, 15 years is a long time. But um, you know, that’s really what I saw was just flexibility and freedom. And now what I see is just number one impact. I mean, we’ve got the best team, in my opinion, where we’re actually able to sew in to our team and add value to their life and provide them with a great working environment. We pay our team very well. And we just you know, we’re more than just a cleaning company, in my opinion again, and we really just we take to heart who we bring on and we really want to add to them whether they you know, we don’t intend intend for them to stay with us forever. But we hope that once you know they do find something else that they have learned and grown along the way, along with honing in on their cleaning skill.

Adrian 

Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. It was a few years ago, I don’t know if I ever even told you this story, but one of your cleaners was in my house. And I had not gone to the bank, like I was supposed to. And I had some cash, it was like, an envelope of cash with $100 bills in my office, and it was just sitting Wow. And I didn’t even think about it. And you know, it’s in my house is in my office? Well, you guys were in there. And one of your cleaners was like, you know, you might, like they brought it up to me, like, you know, you might not want to let that sit around. tiling is one of those things, what do people what are people most afraid of when it comes to, you know, somebody who’s cleaning your home Come in, again, is to see those things and have an opportunity for, you know, the little bad devil on the shoulder to, you know, make them do something right. Your person and I totally should tell you her name. I’m sure she’s, you know, I don’t know where she where she is now. But she obviously got that. And there. I can’t say enough about that culture. Yeah, I created there. So that’s incredible. And to do it, in your industry that I don’t think normally focuses on culture, and core values. That’s pretty amazing.

Ashley 

Yeah, core values of everything. And that was a major thing that we did at the beginning of 2020, was we really took the time to identify what our core values were as a company, and they are, have fun, be honest, find solutions and be respectful. And so that be honest, one really ties into what you’re just talking about. Because when you’re in somebody’s home, it’s such an intimate thing. And so you want to have that, that integrity, that honesty, not just with your team and you know, employer employee, but also with employee cleaning company that you’re hiring team member that’s in your home clients home, like there’s so many different interpersonal connections there. So honesty is 100%. So important,

Adrian 

right? And it’s it’s just huge. Knowing, you know, having that trust factor. That kind of leads to my second question for you is, how do your services better set up a person to build wealth?

Ashley 

Yeah, so that’s a really good question. And that kind of goes back again, to something that we changed up in 2020 was we really, and we rebranded our company, so the name of our company is more free time cleaning, which really touches on the clients. Number one pain point, the number one reason why somebody hires a cleaning company is because they want more time in their schedule to do the things that they love, whether that’s going on adventures, because the Pacific Northwest is full of adventure, or it’s spending quality time with their families spending quality time with with their spouse, and what that looks like, especially for people who utilize their services, they realize that their time is worth more than what they’re actually spending on utilizing a cleaning service. And so I think people who are building wealth, or who recognize the importance of building wealth, they realize that they can delegate tasks to somebody else who is going to be more efficient at them. And so for example, most people and they clean their own house, especially depending on like how much traffic they have going on in their house, whether there’s, you know, 10 kids and four dogs or, you know, two kids and one cat, whatever it might be. And they’re typically spending an entire Saturday cleaning the house. And honestly, it typically falls on the mom, or the woman of the house, like let’s just be honest. And that can add stress, it can add more chaos, especially if it’s a you know, if everybody’s working and and what ends up happening is that okay, that whole Saturday is now gone. And then what Sunday is left, and then it’s like back to the grind on Monday. And so when you utilize a service, basically our team can come in, get the job done, and then get out and like you’ve got a nice clean home versus you spending all day cleaning and then what ends up happening to like when people are cleaning their own home as they’re organizing, or they’re feeding the kids or they’re taking the dog on a walk or they’re doing their laundry and then you know it’s it ends up becoming more than than cleaning but it feels like you’ve been cleaning

Adrian 

all day, right? Sure. If you’ve got kids, you can’t really just clean for two hours. Can you just go Oh, you guys take care of yourselves. We’ll be fine. I’m gonna go and step away from everything. Yeah, right crash so what you’re touching on is This concept, Adrian, I’ve talked about this quite a bit over the years is, if you delegate that task, you should, let’s say it saves you 10 hours a month, right? What’s cool about and that freedom, and it’s in your business name, but that freedom is take five of those hours and dedicate them non guilty, right to just, I mean, if that means you add to your, you know, Marvel Avengers movie watching binge, right, 17 or 20, yeah, whatever it is, like, enjoy, right, yeah. And then the other five hours, put it towards something productive. And the concept there is you’re going to be so much more recharged during that other five hours. And here, and here’s the the benefit of this. And it doesn’t matter what you’re delegating, whether it be, you know, Adrian, like, you know, we’ve talked to bookkeepers, you know, cleaning, we have, you know, how many more examples of areas in life, you know, people that clean their own rooms and gutters and things like that, that they’re spending time or, you know, and accounting and finance and so on. At the end of the day, is you’re not as good as the professional at that task, right? So do what you’re really, really good at and you’re passionate about, and then delegate the rest and your bandwidth is going to blow up. Yeah, I think my wife would agree with you. I’m definitely not. That’s enough. That’s, but it’s incredible how that works. And that is a wealth building tool is wealthy people, do they hire people to do things? And you know, they don’t hire people? Because they’re lazy. They hire people? Because they’re so much better at what they do. Yeah, and yeah, and, and so forth. In your world, and this is a question I’ve kind of been looking forward to, in your world, how can a just a lay person or audience figure out whether their house cleaners truly top of their field? And you have examples of this? and Adrian, and I have always said this, the example piece from where we’re coming from is, the top 20% of people in our profession generally make 80% of the income? Yep. Yeah. So they do the vast majority of the transactions. So there’s a lot of people. So that’s how we couch that question. But every industry is different. So what how does yours lay out? And what do you different? What do you do differently? And how does a person know that they’re getting a Ashley and more free time cleaning? And versus? I don’t know, I don’t want to get sued. But Mary man’s right.

Ashley 

Yeah, no, that’s a really great question. And that’s honestly probably one of the harder questions for me to answer because I don’t like, quote, unquote, like bashing other companies, or,

yeah, we’re the band’s gonna listen to this.

Ashley 

But I think what really sets us apart, and probably our number one competitor is like that single gal who’s just out there hustling, trying to get by kind of like what I was in the very beginning of my cleaning company career, that’s what you want to call it? Sure. And a lot of times people will go with that, you know, single gal, single guy who’s just a one man show who probably isn’t insured isn’t you know, bonded, doesn’t have all the right tools doesn’t have a team or if they’re out, they can’t, you know, call somebody else in. And so I think that that’s, that probably ends up being our biggest competitor versus like another big name, brand. And what we really like to just talk with that individual who might already have a cleaning person, but they’re looking to work with more of like a company versus just like a one man show. What I can really do is speak on experience and say, you know, what, I’ve been there, like, I’ve been that that one man show, and I know what that that cleaner is going through. And in our experience, what we found is that when we actually operate full on as a professional business, that is truly what sets us apart. So going back to core values, we run and operate our entire business on our core values. I’ll say him again, have fun, which, who doesn’t want to work with a company that loves to have fun, like our team literally shows up with joy, and they’re excited to be there and they’re excited to clean? versus like, man, I got to clean your house again today.

Rob 

To go to you know, like, Yeah, okay.

Ashley 

Yeah. So we show up with joy. We’re excited to be there. We’re good. We’re gonna have them. We are honest, like we just talked about, we’re honest from you know, the time you give us a call to the time we get to your house to clean and we run that core value through our you know, through our hiring system, through bringing on clients through everything that we do, finding solutions. There’s been I actually just put together a podcast today on this third court third quarterback You find solutions. And I love working with people who are solution seekers who can figure it out. Right. And that is something that we not only as business owners do, but we instill that in our team. And we, when we’re hiring people, we ask that question, you know, can you give me an example of how you have had to find a solution to a problem, whether it’s small, whether it’s big, but there’s things that come up in our industry all day, every day, where it’s like, oh, gosh, the dog is barking, and he won’t stop, like, what what can I do or walked out of a house, or, oh, I don’t know how to lock up the house or, you know, whatever that might be. And it’s like, okay, we’re going to find a solution, like the last, the last solution to our problem should be putting our problem onto the homeowner, like, we’re going to do whatever we can to figure it out. And then being respectful, being respectful is so key, in anything that you’re doing. But we really pride ourselves in keeping a great attitude, and being respectful, not just to ourselves as business owners, my husband, and I mean, Avery, like, we’re incredibly respectful to one another, we’re respectful to our, our team, our staff, I mean, our team is everything to us. And we really do our very best to let them know how much we appreciate them, and then say to our client, and so we love working with people who are truly grateful, and who are excited to have us there, where it’s not, and we’ve worked with, with people in the past who haven’t been super respectful, and they treat their cleaning company like, oh, you’re just the cleaning lady, or, oh, here you go, you know, clean my house, you know, we’ve worked with people that are like that, and we’re, we do, we try to do a good job of kind of weeding those those people out. And so we we utilize that on on all aspects of what we’re doing. But I really think like the core values are a huge thing that set us apart. And we, you know, like I said before, to where we pay our team incredibly well. And we’ve got, you know, top notch supplies that we use, and we’ve got systems so everything that we do, has a system in place. And that was one of the huge silver linings of 2020 was we had plenty of time to figure out what we wanted, like what we had to do to put good quality systems in place. So there’s a system from the time somebody inquires about a cleaning till the house gets cleaned, and you’re on to the you know, your next scheduled cleaning. So we’re very systemized when it comes to things too.

Adrian 

I would venture to say that the the one person shop probably does almost none of that. Yeah, can you systemize? Exactly. And they’re also i’m sure, exhausted?

Ashley 

Yeah, I mean, I’ve been there, I’ve been there where like, I’ve cleaned five houses in a day. And it is you just don’t have time to do any of the backend stuff. It’s because you are you’re tired. It’s hard. It’s hard work. And like even we have a we have a system for our rags. So we have a company that comes and gets her rags, washes them, dries them, folds them delivers them. Like, that was something we incorporated last year where we should have done that, you know, 10 years ago, but it’s still like the little details of things that just make a world of difference. We’re we’re very much so a turnkey company. Now. I mean, there’s always things to improve. But yes, that’s our focus right now is

Adrian 

culture admin is constant. Yeah, that’s great. We I think we’ve heard this mirrored a few times to rob, this concept of like, as you I think it’s great that you’ve built it out this way. But you know, as you stop being just you and you’ve got to multiply, multiply your efforts and your standards, you start to actually make a conscious decision about each of those standards, rather than just you know, you’re obviously passionate about what you do, and you hold yourself to a high standard. But actually putting those things into writing and putting them into practice and teaching the people that work for you those things, turns it into, you know, I get core values is it’s it’s a little bit overused of a term, but I love that you use it because it’s, it’s absolutely valid here. It’s not just a corporate buzzword. It’s really thinking about what are the most important things to my business. And it’s, it’s fascinating to me, you didn’t sit here and tell us you know, it’s all about a squeaky clean finish, or it’s about the shine on the floor, what you’re talking about is all interpersonal stuff. And those are the those are really the things upon which the floor is going to be sparkling clean, because people are happy, they’re not going to steal because they’re taken care of, you know, hopefully, you know, there’s, there’s this sort of stuff builds on itself and creates the result that you want, organically rather than saying, This is exactly what you have to do with every house. Well and what’s fascinating is, I mean essence, the core values and asking those questions as you know, is this fun? Is this respectful? Are Am I solving problems? And I’m missing the fourth one. But honest, being honest, right? But by asking all of those questions, you’re fun and creating that as a culture, you’re then attracting the people that are going to build wealth for you. And frankly, for themselves. You’d never think that somebody who’s a professional cleaner is going to maybe merge into something else. But I mean, look at you,

Ashley 

right. So totally,

Adrian 

it’s, it’s just, it’s that concept of culture first, and then everything else second. And there’s a million books about that. But, you know, at the end of the day, when’s the last time you talked to a cleaning company? Who actually focused on culture? And not you know, it? Like you said, Adrian, they’re not worried about the sparkling Polish of the floor? That’s just baseline. Right? Anybody can do that. So, um, what industry hacks Can you lay on the audience like, for? I doubt my wife ever will listen to my podcast. Oh, man, but anyway, what? What is just some simple things that the lay person can do maybe before even bringing on a professional cleaner?

Ashley 

Yeah, so I love that question. Because, again, going back to adding value, I think, you know, for somebody who really does truly care about keeping a clean home, and maybe cleaning just isn’t in their budget right now, maybe it’s something that it’s a goal they want to achieve, they’re going to really, you know, hustle this year, and make make it a goal for 2022. There’s some things that the homeowner, the you know, whether you’re renting out to be a homeowner wherever you’re at, and can take upon themselves to actually get a hold of their, quote, unquote, chores. And so what I encourage people to do is to figure out a schedule that’s going to work for them. And so this is that this is what I do personally. So I clean cleaning happens on Mondays, and it happens weekly. And when you can have somebody come in and clean for you on a weekly basis. Oh my gosh, it is absolutely amazing. It is like I was talking to Kathy Winslow and she’s, we were talking about cleaning. And she used the word Deluxe. And I was like, Yes, it is like Deluxe, when you can have your house clean on a weekly basis. It’s Deluxe. But if you’re not there yet, you can certainly put cleaning on your schedule for you to do that yourself once a week. And once you get it dialed in, it doesn’t take very long. So what that looks like is you’re cleaning your kitchen, you’re cleaning your bathrooms, you’re dusting, and you’re doing your floors. And I would encourage getting a vacuum that goes from hard surface to carpet, that’s easy. I utilize a Dyson, animal viator, something like that. It’s a cordless Dyson. And it works absolutely amazing. But so I clean on Mondays, and figure out what what day is going to work best for you. And maybe that’s a Saturday if that’s when you have more time in your day. And then I have a laundry schedule. So I do laundry on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. And then I do my bedding on Sundays. And then I’ll typically do like an organizing project on a Wednesday. And that’s really how I keep things in line in task and it doesn’t get overwhelming because those are things that are never ending. I mean, dishes and laundry, those things are happening. They’re always accumulating. And then at the end of the day, I put my house back in order. So we have two kids, we have a seven year old and a four year old. And when they’re home all day, like the house just becomes crazy and chaotic. But I know that like okay, it’s at least I know it’s clean number one because I cleaned on Monday. And then number two after they go to bed, I put the house back in order and restore the peace. And so everything has a place it’s nice and tidy. And and then I always get the coffee pot ready the night before. Nice. So that way when the morning comes, I’m like, okay, it’s on and we have an espresso, but we had to, like acquire an espresso budget and so it got a little crazy. So we’re like, okay, that’s like another little hack of like, you want to save time get the coffee pot ready the night before and that way you’re not like super loud and waking up all the kids but, um, there’s I’ve got a podcast too, in regards to like systems and how to, you know, really dive deeper into those concepts. But it all just boils down to figuring out what’s gonna work for you and for your household. And then just sticking to the plan. Yes, it’s become overwhelming.

Adrian 

It sounds like you could do actually I know you could do a entire podcast just scheduling.

Ashley 

Yeah, I have a podcast out there on like, how to keep your house on a schedule.

Adrian 

Yeah, that’s awesome. Um, will you share the name for our audience where you share the name of your podcasts and the details there?

Ashley 

Yeah. Yeah. So it’s the more free time Portland podcast, and we are on all podcast platforms.

Adrian 

Excellent. So where can they find your business?

Ashley 

Yeah, so you can find our business on Instagram. So we, that’s probably the place that we’re most that we utilize the most. So, our our handle is at more free time cleaning. And then our website is more free time. cleaning.com. And that’s got all of our information on there.

Adrian 

I love it. Yeah. Well, there’s, there’s, there’s only about five more podcasts that we could do, actually. So everybody Wait, no, no. Thank you for being on this one. This Yeah. Thank you incredible. There’s, it’s, it’s so transcends, it’s so cool. That cleaning, which is so simple, becomes a business that you can grow and scale and create. And it’s at a level that, frankly, I would, I would expect anyone in your industry and frankly, anyone in any industry for small business would love to achieve the progress that you’ve you’ve achieved. So I love that. Thank you so much for being on for sharing your wisdom. Yeah.

Ashley  

Thank you guys so much for having me. I’m super pumped for you guys. You guys are doing huge things, and I just cannot wait to see what else has to come. 2021 is your guys’s 21 Yes,

Adrian 

check it out. All right. All right, future slow millionaires. time today.

Ashley 

Yes.

Intro 

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