Optimizing Efficiency in Your Business with Kirby Zhang

0:01Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on fire brought Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like DTC Pod. Today, we'll be breaking down how to optimize efficiency in your business. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Kirby Zhang and the EO Fire Studios. Kirby founded 4Analytics, which is disrupting the commercial cleaning space with technology and AI. And today on 4Analytics, we'll talk about inefficiencies in your business, modernizing your operation, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kirby and our sponsors.

0:39Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Ever notice how the smallest changes can have the biggest impact? On Nudge, you learn simple evidence-backed tips to help you kick bad habits, get a raise, and grow a business. Oh, and it's the UK's fast-growing business podcast. A recent episode on how to win any argument shares decade-long research into persuasion from a world-leading neuroscientist. Listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts. Kirby, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:16Hey, what's up, Fire Nation? I think the thing that I would share is that every disappointment or every failure that you engage in or that you experience is actually an opportunity to really enhance whatever it is that you're doing and be better. I think a lot of people get caught up on, you know, they do something in there. They're like, oh, that's not how I expected it to go. And then they feel this monumental letdown. Those are all actually good opportunities to become much better at what you're doing. I love that message. I love that theme in Fire Nation. Today, we're talking all about optimizing efficiency in your business.

1:58I mean, there's a reason why I can create a daily podcast interviewing the world's most successful entrepreneurs literally daily, 365 days per year. And I've been doing it for 12 years now, one day a week. One day a week is when I do this because I have optimized the efficiency in my business. It didn't come overnight. It didn't come over time, but now I'm here and wow, I'll tell you life is good. So most people don't know it, but they're running what we would call Kirby, inefficient operations. So how important is efficiency when it comes to running a successful business? I think efficiency is the one of the main drivers in being successful.

2:41I think we do it every day just as people, you know, like don't take that route. Let's take some other route. But you're making choices like that because it's the most efficient. You just maybe doing it unconsciously. So what we want to do is raise awareness for it and say that, you know, you can make your business a lot more powerful than it actually is just without changing much. by understanding what you do and how you do it. Let's talk real world examples. What were some of the inefficiencies that you face specifically in your business? There was a time where I didn't work for some, I mean, where I didn't work for myself.

3:18I worked for someone and we would be tasked with selling stuff, contracts or cleaning things or whatever. and um we i just found myself that like 90 of the stuff that i did had nothing to do with the selling of the stuff which is my actual goal right like you want me to bring revenue in i got to do deals if you want me to do deals i have to do like i don't know fill forms out or i'm i just found myself filling out the same excel file over and over again and i just thought why is it that i have to do this i don't need to do this somebody else can like we can program this it's not that I'm too good to fill out an Excel sheet, but it's also not what I was being paid to do.

3:59And so when I got into this industry, what I really learned in terms of the cleaning industry, and it's not just cleaning, but it's like a lot of times there's these industries that are just very antiquated. It's like, we do things because that's how we've always done it. How we've always done it is not a good answer for why you should do something that way. It should be because it's the most efficient, because it is the most optimal based on the resources and time and whatever that you have. So I think that's what we're trying to do. We're just trying to make everything a lot easier, make everything a lot better for everybody.

4:37So let's get specific on how you fixed the issues that were inefficient in your life, in your business, in your day to day. Basically, I wanted to build a thing that fixes how people get cleaning. I'm a person who needs cleaning. I want to know what it costs. Just to get that one piece of information is excruciating. You'd have to call like 20 different people. Some of them don't answer the phone. And when you get these people on the phone, I discovered a trend. And the trend was they don't want to tell you how much it costs because they don't want to be wrong. And if you ask them, what do you need to know?

5:12They don't know. or they're like cautious about saying what they want to know what they'd rather want to do is experience what they need so i learned that this isn't just this thing in this type of industry or this type of business it's many like similar type of things that are like this so you would call someone they would want to come by and take a look at the place and you'd say well can i just tell you about the place and then maybe you can give me a price and they said no i i want to experience it we try to understand why that is and we wanted to like consolidate it into some sort of workflow where you could just literally push a button and you tells you how much it costs to clean the place and then you as the consumer can decide whether you want to do it or not i mean that's not terribly difficult um but because the cleaning industry has always done it that way it's kind of how it currently is and we you know really aim to solve that problem i don't know if I answered your question, but I think I got a little lost there.

6:12But I mean, the idea is to make it all flow a lot easier. So we can learn a lot from businesses that do things really well. And, you know, frankly, like commercial cleaning is an operation where if you don't do it really well, you're probably going to be out of business because the competition is there. It's real. And a lot of places it's very high. So what are the first steps to modernizing a commercial cleaning operation today? I think the first thing is to understand your strength. To allude back to your first question, part of the thing about efficiency is I met a lot of really cool people all over the country that clean.

6:58There's over 600 service providers in our network. They all clean different things. They, they, most of them love what they do and they're very efficient at that, like the, the act of cleaning that I am not good at. Like, I'm not a good person. I mean, I'm not a good cleaner. You can ask my wife, she'll tell you, you know, I just leave stuff around and I, my, my, my attention to detail when it comes to cleaning isn't good, but like, they might be really good at cleaning something, but they're not, they might not be really good at the other elements of their business that they must execute, that every business does, right?

7:35You got to send invoices. You got to make sure that you bill for the service. You got to make sure that you, you know, hold the client accountable if you show up and they're not there. There's like, now you're just wasting time going there and you can't service the place. So these elements, they might not be very good at. So the first thing you got to identify is like, where is it in my business? Like if I have a cleaning business, what are the things that I'm good at? What are the things that I can make something automate or streamline to improve what I'm currently doing by taking the things that I'm not an expert at and just focusing on my skill, which is cleaning?

8:15With so many established players that are out there in the industry, we talked about the competition. Is it even possible for a new commercial cleaning company to succeed in today's day and age? I think the answer is absolutely yes, because cleaning very much so is relationship driven. And, you know, it that's not like an AI or a data thing. That's just like, you got to know your customers, people want something that is familiar to them. So if you are, you put in hard work, take care of your customers, you take care of your people, you absolutely have an opportunity. And it's not complicated. It's just cleaning.

8:57We got to do it all the time, every day. Everybody has to do it. It's kind of an endless sort of thing. So there's absolutely lots of opportunity. I mean, you can go out, go to Home Depot right now and be a cleaning company. Fire Nation, there's a lot that we can learn from people who are doing it right in their industry to apply it to our industry, to our lives, to our day-to-day. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thinking our sponsors. Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship. More things added to your to-do list every day and less time to accomplish the things that matter most.

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12:36How could I apply this to my life? So again, let's say in your area of expertise, and how would you say that we can assess if our cleaning operations are competitive and effective? I think what you got to do is like really know where your strengths are. You know, things are really segmented right now. And I believe that like understanding what you excel at, where you need to improve to make this sort of very well-rounded cleaning environment is the most pivotal. And then developing relationships, keeping your resources close to you, and letting your business scale organically instead of trying to infuse cash or something synthetic into it.

13:24I'll tell you, I grew this business never trying to advertise. I never advertised it. I never sold it. I just let people talk to each other. And so one person would talk to the next person and they would grow on top of just cleaning is not the only type of business that's applicable to if you provide a quality service that people want, and you solve a problem that people legitimately have, your business will sell itself. And that's kind of what I want to really make sure that the listeners are getting is that this applies across industries across verticals. And I I want to talk specifically about dollar-dollar bills, which is what the heck are the primary revenue drivers in commercial cleaning?

14:04I think somebody outside the business wouldn't even know what that is, myself included, but I think it's pretty important. You have a responsibility to not only provide the service but to educate the customers in some sense. The problem with cleaning is that there's this perception that the most important driver of revenue is price. In other words, you have to be the cheapest price. Many times I can tell you that in my operation, we constantly lose quotes to folks who are much, much cheaper than us. But what ends up happening is if you calculate the quote-unquote the cost in not a two-dimensional form, not just how much money does it cost but how much resources does it cost me, what ends up happening is what I provide to my customers are much cheaper because you don't have to go back.

14:57We don't have no shows. We don't have a person who says they're going to do one thing and then does half of it. And so, you know, if you take the cheaper quote, you end up spending the same amount of resources. It's just in a different form, just in time. The driver of revenue is to be the most competitive from a resource space, not a money space. And Fire Nation, that's really critical because there's a quote that I love from Seth Godin, which is, the problem with the race to the bottom is that you just might win. And believe me, that is not a race that you want to win. You don't want to be the absolute cheapest and continue to undercut your competition and have them undercut you because before you know it, everybody loses because you can't operate a profitable, successful business in that manner.

15:44You want to say, this is where I need to be to provide exceptional service, exceptional value, and stick to that. And believe me, the cream rises to the top in these areas. Now, AI is crazy these days. So I want to talk about the potential for automated aspects of cleaning services. That includes robotic cleaning devices and automated service scheduling. What does that look like? I think we have to be incredibly careful. I won't name any names, but I'll say I went to some conference last year, and everybody just stuck AI at the end of their company name, and then they expected to raise lots of money.

16:24I think first we got to be careful. Is there actual decisions that are being made? And if so, the way that I find it most helpful is I think people have this perception that AI is like I put in an input and it does something. Instead, what we should do is just use it to be a supplement to help us make the right decision. So if I want to schedule a clean for whatever date, instead of saying schedule my cleaning, I would want the computer to say which date has the lowest probability of some sort of conflict or whatever. And then you as a human can then make the final decision. I think if you use it in that context, it's relatively helpful.

17:09And the data is becoming better and better. So what we have to see from it should be much better or stronger as time progresses. Now, Kirby, we talked about a lot of things today, but if you could just take a step back and say, what's the most important thing from this topic that we're talking about here today, which is all about optimizing efficiency in our businesses, what is the one thing you want to really make sure that we get from our conversation today? I think what's most important for the for for anybody, anybody who's listening, anybody who can even take away anything from this podcast, I would just want to share something inspirational and say, just don't don't ever let anybody tell you that what you're trying to achieve is is is not worth trying to achieve it.

17:57Or basically, don't ever let anybody tell you no. You know, like I grew up visually impaired in Beijing, China. Like odds of my being, you know, successful or even where I am are quite low. If I would have just thrown in the towel and said that, you know, I think that that's, you know, that's not a good way to look at the world. I think if you just set your mind out to what the goal is and have some tunnel vision, some perseverance, you know, you got a good road ahead. So if you wanted Fire Nation to connect with you, to learn more from you, what is your call to action for our listeners today?

18:37So my call to action is this. We are building a brand. It's called Cleanable. Our vision for the future is quite simple. One day, you should be able to pull your phone out of your pocket and push a button. somebody cleans your office our business right now is for commercial uh properties only um but if you are listening and you think you can help in any capacity i am not trying to like just raise money or anything like that we need all the help we can get and we are not discriminatory on what you know how you can help even if you like hey you know what would love to write a blog post about you or whatever go to cleanable.com right when you go to the site there's a landing page fill a form out we'd love to get in touch with you and if you think you have something to contribute or if you think that i might be able to help you in some way if you're trying to build your clean cleaning business or you want to know how to get customers or whatever it is that you're trying to do if there's some value that i can provide you connect with us the more people we have in our network the more people in relationships i know the the better life is so that's what i'm after fire nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with KZ and JLD today.

19:44So keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Kirby, K-I-R-B-Y in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Kirby, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you so much. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Kirby for sponsoring today's episode and Fire nation's successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal, to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. We're talking step-by-step.

20:19Visit thefreedomjournal.com, and I will catch you there or on the flip side. Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Ever notice how the smallest changes can have the biggest impact? On Nudge, you learn simple evidence-backed tips to help you kick bad habits, get a raise and grow a business. Oh, and it's the UK's fast growing business podcast. A recent episode on how to win any argument shares decade long research into persuasion from a world leading neuroscientist. Listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.