Episode 5: The journey to becoming a leader with Ricky

[00:00:00] Welcome everyone to the art of transformational leadership.

[00:00:02] This is a podcast where we discuss all walks of life

[00:00:05] with amazing leaders, their failures, their successes,

[00:00:09] and we wanna hear their stories and their journeys

[00:00:12] of how they landed where they are today.

[00:00:14] And I am so happy to have a special guest in his studio.

[00:00:20] But Ricky, I don't want to do your intro.

[00:00:22] I was just reading it.

[00:00:23] I saw you have five companies, the six on the way.

[00:00:26] I want you to introduce yourself. What are you doing? What businesses are you involved? You got routes, right? They have the cleaning company. Tell us about them. I don't wear it or anything. No, no, no, no, no. This is not intentional, not intentional. No, so yeah, the software company that we have is route. It is a software company for the commercial cleaning industry, residential, coming soon. But no, we're here to, we're empowering the industry with tech data and most importantly community.

[00:01:42] We have three solutions, Libby.

[00:01:43] Again, being a tech founder, you know, these things, right?

[00:01:45] Is we've got a marketplace, we've got our bid product, And RCM rounds out where we wanted to become the total facility solution. The one thing we were missing in the beginning was maintenance. Not just handyman, but maintenance services. And what that did for us is allow us to really be the term of a total facility solution. We love being a single source. And the other way you can be single source is if you offer a variety of services.

[00:03:04] And that's what we do all around the cleaning.

[00:03:07] Awesome. focus in residential, but then I have a software, Woot Recruit, which does recruiting, and it's so similar to route where you're trying to save everybody like the hassle and the headaches on that end when it comes to cleaning, and I'm trying to do it on the recruiting side. And then I just launched another software, which does estimates for residential. You're not stopping.

[00:04:20] Now you got your podcast.

[00:04:21] No, I don't have a podcast.

[00:04:22] And so there's like so many similarities,

[00:04:23] and the fact that we're both Latin, right?

[00:04:26] And our families are involved in our businesses. I know people ask you this all the time. I get it as well. I came from a family business, worked around my family, saw my family work together as a kid, saw it not work, saw it work. And I would not say I've mastered it at all. No way. No way. But what are some tips, like leadership tips, you know, like you use different words on bringing people in because it's lonely at the top. You don't want to be in the top by yourself. You actually want to be on the bottom and have everybody else above you. Right? So in family, we'll take it the wrong way sometimes and family is passionate. So they want to do, they want to help more than they actually should, which isn't a bad

[00:07:00] thing.

[00:07:02] So I'd say empat Okay. And it works phenomenal. So then, cause yeah, I mean, think about it. When I see, you know, my mom talks to me like 10 minutes ago, she's not, she, we're texting work though. So if it was Slack or WhatsApp, you could see the difference. It's like, ah, it's a WhatsApp message, got it. It's business related.

[00:08:20] Yes.

[00:08:20] I like that.

[00:08:21] So I do the same thing with my husband.

[00:08:22] I do the same thing with my husband.

[00:08:24] We have a private Slack channel where it's just me and him.

[00:08:26] Cause sometimes I'm not, it was funny because when I first started, none of my family worked with me. But as I grew, the companies, loved the culture that I had. I was having this great time. And they're like, literally my mom took a pay cut

[00:09:41] to come work for me.

[00:09:43] So cheers.

[00:09:44] Seriously, my mom does the same thing.

[00:09:46] And she's like, this, things happen, especially when you're go, go, go. But I would tell you is, what has happened is, I've taken time as the biggest capital that I have, right? The biggest value that I have. So I don't care about how much I get paid. I care about how well the companies can do. And if the companies can do better and better

[00:11:00] as I bring better, more people on, smarter people,

[00:11:04] be hardworking people, to take more of that time away,

[00:11:08] to lead and manage the business, right? why you are successful, because I got to tell you the people that I see that are organized. They're just, they're a different level of a person. Like they're not only is their brain organized, but like everything around them is organized. So when you said you had organized it, I was like, that's why she's got this stuff going on. You should see the systems and processes we

[00:12:22] have in the, in like, in organize it. That days over. No, okay. Well. Yeah, your days over But you're blocking out that time Okay, saying this is my time to shut it off. Okay, so it's still part of the schedule And so is your time off like Personal stuff like that. Oh in my calendar. It has who's cooking dinner on what night date nights

[00:13:44] Oh, yeah, when we get done, I'll show you my calendar. You're gonna laugh

[00:14:40] I read that book. It was like, oh my God.

[00:14:42] That's me.

[00:14:43] He understood me.

[00:14:45] But it's all entrepreneurs.

[00:14:46] And a lot of us feel like we have ADD or ADHD.

[00:14:50] And in the book, he talks about how that's just a label

[00:14:52] so that society can figure it out.

[00:14:54] Keep the fingers out.

[00:14:55] OK.

[00:14:56] And I was like, oh my God.

[00:14:58] And I told my husband, read this book, please,

[00:15:00] so that then you understand me.

[00:15:01] Like where I'm coming from.

[00:15:02] Yeah, so that you understand me.

[00:15:04] So yeah, I love get off the phone. You know, like he told me like, you're home now. Like let's, we only have a couple hours to play.

[00:16:20] And being a four year old,

[00:16:21] for him to tell me, get off your phone.

[00:16:24] That told me he's seeing that I'm on my phone, you know?

[00:16:27] And that's Well congrats, right? Because you're one of the only women on the board.

[00:17:41] Yeah, I was one of the first to get in

[00:17:42] when I was the first woman.

[00:17:43] Another girl got in the same time as me.

[00:17:45] So we were, you know, he didn't have any women

[00:17:46] and he warned me. So it's great to have the family and the support, but I'll say it's a working progress. But for me, what you talked about building, I'm building that legacy, and the legacy is different for everybody. Oh yeah. For me, it's like the freedom and the ability to work how I want and when I want, until I want. And I think that my kids missing me for a few days

[00:19:01] here or there, or me missing a game

[00:19:05] and relative to the big picture, grounded. For sure. Well, I work out, I know that's everybody's first go to, but like I literally do, I work out three days a week.

[00:20:20] I invite my team on every Friday,

[00:20:22] so that's a cool piece for us to do together.

[00:20:24] And then I do as much as I can, I do my, man, if it wasn't for X, I wouldn't have got through that. Or I wouldn't have seen this, or I wouldn't have failed. So by the end, on purpose, I'm sweating, probably not the best time to take a FaceTime. I'm like, this is it, this is when I take the FaceTime. To document that moment, I go back, I have a library of all those morning runs,

[00:21:42] to just remember the moments that were good or bad,

[00:21:45] and what word, like of coffee, 5.30 in the morning. And so someone asked me, what would I do if I have small kids? Well, my 15 year old is home, still sleeping. So he can watch. They're still sleeping. But we just walk around the outside of the house. It has been phenomenal, unbelievable. I gotta try that. Just 15, 20, we started 15 minutes and we went to 20.

[00:23:01] Now we're a little extreme, we're like almost an hour.

[00:23:03] We're now running and walking together

[00:23:06] and then we stop and then we go do our own workouts.

[00:23:08] But think about it, Libby, and we haven't missed a day. We do them every single day. Now you don't have to do them every day. Cadence. It's cadence. It's a, we get up at 5.30 in the morning. It's a ritual. We just, we do it with coffee in our hand, casual. But it's been great cause it's a moment of like inspiration, imagination, talking, thoughts.

[00:24:20] Some of it's business, some of it's not.

[00:24:21] So it's like where we wanna do next vacation,

[00:24:25] kid stuff, like you name it.

[00:24:26] But we don't get that time all the time.

[00:24:28] But it's before boasting. It's not sharing the share.

[00:25:40] It's to drive your lesson or drive it.

[00:25:43] Yeah.

[00:25:44] And I thought that was amazing.

[00:25:45] And that's what you're doing.

[00:25:46] It's a way better way to look at it.

[00:25:47] It's what you're doing for your son though.

[00:25:48] Oh, yeah. It's like you're leaving a video. Oh yeah. Like almost like a video journal of your journey. Yeah, well think about it. Libby, like the first couple of years you were in business, I know I'm pissed.

[00:27:00] Me and my wife are like,

[00:27:01] we didn't take any freaking pictures, no videos.

[00:27:04] Like the first three years of us in the thick of it,

[00:27:08] we have nothing to show for. We've been building the cleaning company, building the maintenance company, building the podcast and the software. Our number one driver for the last three years has been an ecosystem, right? Because within an ecosystem, our platform, which happens to be our software, lives within the ecosystem. The network of people that we keep building and creating live within the ecosystem.

[00:28:22] At first, it was we're building, you know, us within these doors.

[00:28:26] Now it's all of commercial. And people are like why? Cause I have a cleaning company, I have a recruiting software that was made for the cleaning industry, I have the recruiting quoting tool for residential. Why I love it is it's such a people driven industry.

[00:29:40] Whether it's our employees or our customers,

[00:29:44] we're all about people.

[00:29:45] That's all we are.

[00:29:46] If we're a people driven industry and I love people.

[00:29:47] Oh yeah.

[00:29:48] So.