Hello, my friends. I'm so excited for you to listen to this solo episode this week.
Just a little advisory warning. There is cursing in this episode. So if you have little ears,
put those earbuds in or save this one for later. Enjoy.
This is Filthy Rich Cleaners presented by ZenMaid, the podcast where real cleaning business
owners share what works so you can earn more, stress less, and make your business filthy
rich.
Hello, my friends. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am
your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean. And in today's solo episode, I want to do a little
story time and lessons learned from the past couple of weeks, specifically relating to
bidding a federal contract. I get so many questions about federal contracts and getting
government contracts for janitorial purposes. And I want to talk about it a little bit today.
And spoiler alert, we did not get the bid.
And I'm very happy that we didn't because it would have meant going literally abysmally
low on our price. So I want to talk about the process. I also want to talk about posting
and interviewing for the job before we even knew if we had the contract or not. We shall
get into this if this is your first time here and you're like, who is this lady? What is
she talking about? Welcome. I am so happy you have joined us in this fabulous little corner of
the internet. I own a cleaning business in Western Wisconsin with three locations,
about 30 staff members, around 1.5 million a year in revenue. And I run it completely remotely
from Savannah, Georgia. As you can see, I voted. There's my little Georgia peach. I hope you all
voted today. It's too late now by the time you're watching this, but I hope you did last Tuesday.
If that is interesting to you, if you don't mind cussing and inappropriate comments
occasionally, you are in the right place. We talk honestly and frankly here. What is that scary
shadow? Okay, it's Bassett, one of my many cats, and it looks like a demon is over there. That's
Jenny. Bassett's over yonder. Kitty is wandering. And Lily, my border collie, will come in here
occasionally. So those are my pets. Bassett's standing right in front of my pink light. So
if you guys see a giant shadow, I'm not about to get devoured by a demon, hopefully.
Right? I guess we never have full guarantees of that or anything in this life. So whatever
happens, happens, right? All righty. So without further ado, let's talk about it. We got an email
or two even from contractors looking to receive a bid from us for a government facility. And to
give you just a little bit of details about this facility, it was probably, I think, an hour and a half away from our office, our closest office, maybe a
little under that. It would be a five-day-a-week account, office spaces, nothing unusual or
anything like that. But it is a federal facility, which means we have to go through the bidding
process of a federal facility. So oftentimes, how you're going to figure out that these
jobs are even available is because people from all over the country will start contacting you,
wanting you to be their sub, if you will, their subcontractor.
Isn't that right, Bassie? Yeah, they want to get a cut of the money
without doing any of the work. Not that I'm against contractors. Everybody get your bag,
however it is that you can ethically. But the problem is, is these folks are not from
anywhere around here typically, and they're just looking for a local cleaning company
to actually do the physical work. And then they just put a percentage on top of that and take
their little cherry on top percentage. So that is how that works. That's actually how we
have our largest account. It's a federal research facility that we've had for years,
and we're the subcontractor on it. We are not the main contractor. So that's exactly what happens.
We bill our contractor. They bill the facility. We get paid through them. They get paid through
the next step with just their little markup on top. I don't know exactly how much they have on
top of our current facility, but I do know, I know they're not listening to this, that we are
going to be bidding it directly when the contract is up for renewal because it was a five-year contract.
So all of that being said, that is how we became alerted to this new opportunity that was coming up
for bid. And we then, of course, immediately went on to the sam.gov website to find the opportunity
directly so that we could bid directly and cut out the middleman. We did not have any interest
in going through a contractor above us for this if we were going to win it. We wanted just to bid directly. There's no reason
for us to go through a contractor for this. So I know that there are ways to turn on alerts
on the sam.gov website. And if you're like, what is this, Stephanie? We'll link it below.
This is where you can find all of the government bidding opportunities is going to be on sam.gov.
Now, you do need to register there. So if this is even something that you have any interest in,
just go ahead and do that right now so that you can get these alerts.
You are ready to go on bidding. So you're going to have to do some registration.
You're going to have to get a D&B number, a Dun & Bradstreet number, most likely.
And you just got to jump through some hoops to basically register to be eligible to bid on these
jobs. So I would suggest just doing it. You never know. It's not going to hurt you. And that way you
are prepared if this is an avenue you ever want to go down. So that's how we found out was we were
getting contacted. And so we went and found the job and we went and saw when the walkthrough date
is. And so typically with government facilities, at least this has been our experience, they like
to set up one walkthrough with everybody, with all of the people who are interested in bidding.
They want them to do the walkthrough all together. So they just have to explain themselves once and
everybody is having, there's no unfair advantage or anything like that. So that's what that looks
like. So I had a manager or two go and do the walkthrough since I am not physically there in
the state. Of course, I'm down here in the South, y'all. Up North, they're taking care of business.
So they went and did the walkthrough and it's kind of fun because then you can scope out the competition, like
who is showing up to bid it. And I am not throwing shade to anybody, but maybe I am. Holy shit. The
people that just show up in sweatpants to do a professional walkthrough. Oh my goodness. Put a
polo on, put some real pants on. Okay. This is a government facility, right? Like this is why people
don't respect the cleaning industry, right? Put some real pants on, please. When you go do a bid,
when you're doing the work, whatever, wear your yoga pants, et cetera, whatever is comfortable.
But let's just, you know, look like we didn't just roll out of bed. Okay. Salty bitchy Stephanie
over. I'm sure they are lovely people, but perception is everything. And first impressions
are a big deal. All of that being said, they did the walkthrough. You ask their questions,
like everybody's asking questions about things. You're hearing the different details. So the goal
is to ideally take as many notes as possible. You could take measurements if that is something
that your business does. We do not take measurements, but we do take videos
on walkthroughs whenever possible. And they did allow us to take walkthrough videos and that's
very, very helpful in the bidding process. 'Cause then you can watch and actually look at it again
because most likely you're a bit nervous. A lot of times they're walking through the spaces very
quickly as well. So it's just, it's kind of a blur. So if you can take video, be bold, ask,
but the worst thing they're going to say is no, they're not going to kick you out for asking.
I promise you that they will most likely let you do it. And that is super duper useful when you
remember what just happened or what I just saw. So that is very useful. Make sure you're getting
details on specific products or anything that they need. Like for example, this facility,
we had to bid to supply all expendable items like toilet paper, paper towels, soap, all of that
stuff was included. And these are the exceptions to our rule, which is we do not provide those
things. The only time that we provide expendable products is in these federal bidding situations
where that is the only option. Otherwise we simply won't do it. It's too unnecessarily complex
and most places are just fine doing it themselves. A lot of times they'll ask, but again, you can
just say, no, we don't do that. We just supply our cleaning supplies, but you need to take care
of your toilet paper and tampons and stuff like that. You know what I'm saying? So this one did
require that. So obviously asking questions about usage and all sorts of things. So what typically happens
is then you do the walkthrough and then there is a deadline for the bid. Folks might still be
submitting questions. And anytime somebody submits a question to the contact of the facility,
they're going to post and let everybody know and do like an amendment to the request for proposal.
RFP is what you'll see oftentimes it called. And then everybody has access to the same
answer and information. So it's as fair as possible. So when it comes to government jobs,
many of you may be aware of this already. So I'm not
attempting to mansplain here. It's just, I want to make sure I cover as much as I can
in this conversation. Typically with government jobs of any flavor, they are required to get
three bids every option year or new contracting period for no favoritism.
Like the goal is to limit favoritism so that somebody doesn't just give their,
their buddy the job directly. You need to get three quotes minimum. And
so we did the walkthrough and put our price together. And actually I,
I pushed back on the price. I thought it was too high. My managers were very adamant that we go in
high on this to make it worth it. And high as in our typical prices that we aim for,
which is $60 an hour for commercial. And I know, I know some of you people listening right now are
like, Stephanie, you can't get that for commercial. That's not possible. It really
is. It is. I promise you it is in different areas of the country. My business is in rural Wisconsin.
We are able to get 60 an hour and we've done a lot of work in order to be able to command those
types of prices for commercial. I know some people are like, you can only get 30 for commercial,
but there's no point in us even going near that type of price because we can't make any money and
pay our staff and all of the expenses. It just simply does not make sense. So I was arguing the case of going in more at
$50 an hour because I was like, we're not going to be competitive. They're going to go for somebody
cheaper. And they all argued, well, everybody else is bidding through a contractor, right?
So there is going to be a middleman add on. So whatever the local company, whatever their price
is that they give to the contractor who's actually doing the bid, well, they're going to have to add
some on, right? So we have some wiggle room there. So that was their logic. And in my mind, I'm like,
we're not going to get this. It's going to be too expensive because they did mention
really watching the budget with their decision making. And it turns out that that truly was the
only deciding factor was price. And what I mean by that is come to find out they were going to
take the cheapest price regardless of any other details, regardless of if we put a cover letter
together explaining our proficiency and our expertise in facilities of this size and just
all of our background information of our reliability,
dependability, quality control processes and procedures. None of that fucking mattered
because it all came down to price. And so the reason I'm telling you guys this
is to not get your hopes up that government work and federal work is going to be your
guys's ticket to success in the cleaning business world. In fact, I think that arguably
it is one of the most difficult routes to go and actually think you're going to make
the margins that you want to make. They are so price motivated. They are going to
oftentimes take the lowest price. The only reason that the facility we have, the only
reason we got that because we were not the lowest price is they had specifically gone
out of the norm and said, this is not about lowest price for that facility that we currently
have. They were like, we are so tired of dealing with all of the problems of our current
vendor and the constant turnover, the quality issues, et cetera, et cetera, all of these
problems that they were having. And so they were willing to forego the whole lowest price
thing in order to get quality. And that's exactly what they've gotten with us. They've
been incredibly happy with us. We have killed it there. I'm very proud of how we've handled
that facility. But that comes at a cost, of course, because if one of my managers has
to be out there every two weeks doing an in-person QC, that is part of the bid and contract is
you need to have eyeballs on
to make sure it's getting done correctly. So that costs money. All of that overhead
costs money. It's just, it's so expensive. All of that to be said, that is an outlier
where the general rule of thumb is they're going for the lowest price. So I'm not saying
this to dissuade you from going after federal contracts, but I just want you to be aware
that almost always that is what they're going to be fighting on.
So all of that to be said, we did bid it at the 60 an hour of what we thought it would take.
And we did not get it. In fact, we were able to see how much the winning bid got. And it
was like a fifth of our price. And we simply have no fucking idea how that company is doing
that. Other than maybe they have one individual cleaner that they found locally and they are
willing to work like employee wages. There is no like business entity. I mean, maybe
it's a cleaning business, but an individual owner, you know what I'm saying? Where it's like owner operator and no shade to that, but there is absolutely
no way. I mean, it was, it was kind of, it made me feel better that it wasn't even close
because there's simply no way in any reality that we could become competitive on price
and take that job. There's no way, you know, and I'm saying an hourly rate, it is bid flat
rate. So let me just give you guys that caveat. If you're confused why I'm speaking hourly,
I'm talking about our internal hourly, what we were aiming for. We estimated that it was
going to take us, I believe, four hours per visit, like three to four hours. 'Cause there's more
tasks that would get like rotated throughout that were quarterly. So we kind of had to like
balance all that out. And then you also had all of the supply costs. I do not understand. I do
not think we were off on like time or anything like that. So I don't get it. And I don't really
care to get it because that person is about to, you know, work their, their tails off for not a
lot of money. If it makes sense for them, that's awesome. It did not make sense for us. So I'm,
I'm happy. I don't feel any sort of remorse. I'm glad we bid it. It was a
learning opportunity. We honed our skill at the bidding process. It was just an extra practice.
So I see that as valuable and also, you know, not every job is going to be for us. That's just
simply the case. And so I just wanted to tell this story one to just educate, educate you guys a
little bit about commercial federal facilities and what that is going to entail. I just want you to
know that it's not always going to happen and that's completely fine. Whether you have been living
under a rock or you're just here for the cleaning horror stories, it's time to tell you about ZenMaid.
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want to say that a lot of times when you get reached out to by different contractors or even
sam.gov or whatever, however you find out about these jobs, oftentimes it's like you need to go
now. The walkthrough is like tomorrow. That happens so much where it's super short notice
and you feel very frantic in having to get something done. Because for us, the walkthrough
was on like a Thursday and we had to get the bid in by like next Tuesday, the Tuesday after or
something. So it was like very time sensitive. We had to get it done and like block off time to talk
about this. So that is something to keep in mind too is just bandwidth now of bidding it. So I just want you to
know all of this before you get disappointed by the reality that is government contract work.
Again, I'm so grateful for our facility that we've had long-term, but it is the only like
long-term account that we've had that is federal because we have had like one-off jobs that we have
gotten through like Fort McCoy, which is our military base. So there has been like one-off
jobs there, but long-term this type of contract, meaning directly from the federal government,
we have been a subcontractor under contractors at Fort McCoy for a longer-term project,
which many of you guys are aware of that lasted for six months. But as for like years of a
contract, this is the only one that we have successfully won. We have bid multiple and
it's just, it's so price sensitive guys. And if they, they are, it is a race to the bottom,
truly. And that's just not a race I want to participate in and win. I'm okay with
going for it. Okay. I'm never going to tell you not to bid something, but
do not bid below what you know you need to make, because if you do, that is going to be a hellhole
job that you are shackled to for years. So if that's not something that you want,
even if you're like the money would be so good. Is it so good? If you, if it takes longer than
you think it's going to, when you actually have to hire for it, when you have turnover,
when you have to go clean it because you can't get anybody hired there, is it such good money
still? And you, you got it lower than what you normally would go for.
So like I get it. It's steady. I would rather pursue other types of jobs that can get us more
internal hourly rate, right? Just more profit in general. So those are my two cents there.
I did want to talk in the second half of this episode about hiring for this. And I know that
this might sound insane, but we literally, as soon as we knew about this job and that we were
going to be doing or submitting a bid, we listed a, uh, a job on
Indeed for it. And we clearly, we didn't get it. So you may think that that's insane,
but I want to showcase to you the level of proactive quickness you need to go about
when it comes to hiring, because that is going to be the biggest challenge,
especially with these federal facilities, when they have pretty extensive background
checks typically, and you need to make sure that you have time to get those background checks ran.
And if that person doesn't work out that you can get somebody else in there. So this is exactly what
we did. Another reason, like, well, there's several reasons. Okay. So reason number one is
that this job was going to have to happen very fast. They wanted to start pretty much ASAP by
like the end of the month. And so that would be very quick. It might've been even within a couple
of weeks at the time of the bid. And so we didn't have time to wait to see if we won the bid and then
start hiring. It's too late. And the main reason why it'd be too late is the location, right? We could have covered it
if it was within our typical service area, we could have absolutely covered it just with our
current staff and just hired it for it as we went on to take off that workload. But it was too far.
It would make absolutely zero sense for us to pull any of our current staff and pay them to drive out
there because we would have had to. It's driving for work purposes, right? And then once we get
into the winter and the roads are bad, that is such a far drive that they could just be cleaning
normally and not, you know, hazarding long distance travel during the winter in Wisconsin. So it would not have made
sense to pull our current staff. So that means we would have to hire. So we wanted, the thought
process was, let's put job listings out there to even see what we get because it's a very rural
area that, you know, all of it is very rural. But this particular area that the job was,
and it's called Fountain City is where it is for all of my Wisconsinites who know where that is.
It's Fountain City right on the Mississippi River. And it's not a big town. So we're like, can we even
hire here? We've never attempted. So we had no idea what kind of market there was for staff for
this particular job, right? And for these government jobs, we do try to pay higher because we really,
really want that consistency. Like we want to reward consistency. We give good bonuses as well.
That's what we do at our one federal facility to incentivize heavily perfect attendance and perfect
quality because it's so much harder to cover if somebody calls out or quits because one of the
distance and two of the background check requirements. So we were like, we're not going to waste any time. Let's
start throwing the line out and seeing what we can catch and seeing if this is even feasible,
right? So Crystal posted, my HR director posted a job listing on Indeed and made it very clear
and transparent that this is for a potential position. We do not have the bid yet. We are
doing exploratory interviews in the beginning. We wanted to make sure that we were not
bamboozling anybody or that we were promising that there was anything where we just made it
very clear what this was. And we actually got a really good number of applicants and had some
really good applicants within the first week or two that we had on standby, ready to go if we did
win the bid. And again, it's just being really open and upfront if that wasn't something that
made sense for them. But the pay I know was enticing, the hours were enticing. It was a good opportunity if we
were going to get it. So I know that that may feel icky to some of you, but to me, that is just being
prepared because I would rather find a good person and then just communicate like, sorry, we didn't
get the bid, but then wait until after we got it. And now we're scrambling and maybe make a poor
hiring decision because we're so desperate. I'm telling you all of this to implore you to stop
waiting to interview people until you have the perfect full-time position available.
You should be interviewing all the time, all the time, because you do not know what is coming down
the pipeline. You do not know what opportunities are coming. And obviously in this specific
scenario, we had never hired in this area before. It's totally outside of our normal service area.
However, the principle still applies. We still have job listings going for all of our service
areas that we currently service the normal ones because we need to have options. We need to have
options. And it's not just negative, like you're going to fire somebody. It's positive. A big
opportunity comes your way. You have a big influx of leads. There is turnover. Somebody changes their
availability on your current staff because they're going back to school or they're having a baby.
All of these things are going to affect your ability to cover not only future work, but your
current work. So if you have a great crew right now and you're like, Stephanie, I don't need to
hire. Everybody's great. You don't know what tomorrow brings. You don't know what diagnosis
somebody is going to get. You don't know what's happening with their kids. You don't know what's
happening with their partner that they have to now move for whatever, right? There are so many
things that could happen just as it is in our life. We can't control all of that stuff. So all
we can do is control what we put into hiring, which is making sure we have active job listings
at all times and are doing interviews every single week. Obviously, you guys know that we
do group interviews on our first interview. We make it very transparent that this is
an educational group interview. It is completely virtual. We switched over to completely virtual
group interviews a long time ago and it works swimmingly. So nobody's having to drive or
anything. And we say, if we want to explore this further, send us your references. And then we will
set up a more traditional individual interview as the second interview where we can really get
to know them. But this filters out so many people and you do not waste your time on no-shows because
I'm going to tell you right now that probably three quarters of people, if not more, are going
to no-show even to a virtual interview, even to a virtual interview. So we don't want to waste our time
on all of those folks repeating ourselves a million times every single week. I'd rather
just present once. I'd rather have my HR director present once or twice, however many times she's
doing the group interviews each week, and then move on with the people she's actually interested
who could show up, who follow the directions of sending over their references, and who seemed
really attentive and interested in the position. So all of that to be said, that this is a
perfect example of why we need to be proactive and not reactive on hiring. This is where so
many cleaning business owners go wrong is they wait. They wait to hire until they are so
completely overwhelmed because they're like, I don't know if I can get them the hours that they
want. Well, then don't hire a full-timer, guys. Hire a part-timer who is flexible.
So many of my current staff who have been with me for literally years are still part-time,
it does not mean that they're going to be less dedicated to you. I promise you that.
It is going to mean that they are appreciative of the flexibility and are going to be with you
for the long term because they're not burning out on something that's not sustainable for them
and their family. So you can always hire part-time, slowly transition your hours onto them
if that is the situation. Or just in general, it's going to put you in a more powerful position
where you are not being held hostage and not able to get rid of somebody or whatever you need
to do in your business because you have nowhere else to put the hours, right?
So this is about having options. It's about not always having your eggs in one basket
and just hoping and praying that nobody quits ever, right? Or that what your business doesn't
grow ever. You need to always be interviewing. This is a great example of we were being proactive
despite the fact we did not know if we were going to get the bid. Turns out we did not get the bid,
but we wanted to be prepared to take action as quickly as possible
and also not to be hiring out of desperation because, oh shit, the job's starting,
just hire anybody, we'll figure it out later. We don't like to do that anymore. That is certainly
how I used to behave in the business and I definitely had to, it felt like, to survive.
But now we would rather wait and have a wait list or say no to work than to have the wrong
person on our team because that's how poisonous and detrimental that is going to be. And it's
actually going to be more costly because of all the time and money and blood, sweat, and tears,
that you have invested into this person with training and getting all of your clients to
trust them and transition. And then if they don't work out in a month and you saw the fucking red
flags, well, guess what? That's costly. It's not only costly in your time, it's also costly in
your reputation. It's costly in your mental health. It's costly in so many ways outside of
just money, but the opportunity costs of just waiting. Make a wait list, guys. It makes you
seem even more tantalizing and delicious when you have a wait list.
So that when you do get the right person is now you can put all of those waitlisted clients on
them. It's not a bad thing. It's not the end of the world. We've had to do that many times in
the business and group interviewing and always interviewing every single week. Even if you don't
have an opening is what puts you back into the driver's seat of your own business and not being
held hostage of making decisions because you don't got any staff. Okay. Please be interviewing
every single week. If you want more details on how we do that, I know that we have
some articles on the ZenMaid Magazine. I've done whole episodes on it. We'll link that down
below. Uh, and of course, join the ZenMaid Mastermind, guys. People talk about hiring all
the time. Talk about staffing, bidding. You can get help with bids if you're ever confused, too.
People are willing to help. It's, it's an amazing community. You do not need to be a ZenMaid
customer in order to be a member of the ZenMaid Mastermind on Facebook. We would love to
have you there. I love recording little exclusive, like,
Looms and screen recordings to show you how to do something. I just showed how to like connect
ZenMaid with Claude the other day in a Loom there exclusively. That's not anywhere else. It's
not like it's something super special. Don't get too, don't get too excited, but it is like, I do
like to share there and show you guys how to do things when I can. So that's amazing. I would also
highly recommend that you subscribe to the ZenMaid newsletter. Again, don't have to be a
customer. There are over, I think like 35,000 subscribers to the newsletter, giving out
practical tips every single week, straight to your inbox, short and sweet, just giving you things to
think about that are going to grow you both as a person, a business owner, and a leader. So I
really recommend that you guys subscribe. And then you can ask questions directly there. If
you respond to any newsletter and you have a question for me that you want me to answer
specifically, that is the best way to get my attention, if you will, is to respond back to
the newsletter. 'Cause guys, I just, I get so many notifications. All right. Just
ask in the comment section below or answer to the newsletters. And I will be happy to
answer it that way. Of course, guys, please give this a like, hit the subscribe. If you are not
subscribed on YouTube, I would so appreciate it. So many of you guys listen and you're not
subscribed. What's up with that? Or if you're on Spotify or Apple, whatever the fuck it's called,
please hit that like, and leave a review or rating. And that helps other cleaning business owners like
you find our sweet little community here. So I would just love if you would do that for me. I
really appreciate it. As for an emoji, leave me a little peach down in the comments if you made it
this far, because I'm in Georgia. A little Georgia peach now. Leave that peach down below, guys. And
I will see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye-bye. If you enjoyed this episode of
the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach
more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.
