Future Job Pipeline: How Carpet Cleaners Create Consistent Work Beyond Lead Generation

Chasing only “hot” leads and ignoring longer-term nurture. Without building a job pipeline, you miss out on 67% or more of your potential market.

JOHN CLENDENNING
0:03

And if my good friend Chris is listening, yes, that crowd cheering is for you, buddy. So anyways, he, he always bugs me about it. Or ribs me a little bit about it. So there’s our crowd cheering. So anyways, welcome, welcome, welcome everybody. Love doing these trainings every month as you know, master classes. There’s running a cleaning business, running a home service business. Running a business isn’t easy.

JOHN CLENDENNING
0:28

If it was, everybody would do it, right? And we, we kind of believe in our heads that it’s easy. I think if you kind of dig into the numbers and the stats and know that 80% of all small businesses go out of business in the first five years, another 80% in the next five years, according to the Small Business Administration, and all kinds of numbers all over the place. I mean those are rough numbers. They change year to year, but that’s kind of the range. So those 80% and then 20% left, 80% of that, you’re down to what, 90, 94% of businesses go out of business by year 10. So in general, it’s hard to be run your own business, right? So small business is the lifeblood of the economy, as they say. But it ain’t easy. You kind of cycle through and what you do is you make mistakes, you learn.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:11

You don’t know what you don’t know. You kind of hope you follow. We call it marketing incest. You try and figure out things from other people on forums and stuff like that. Did they make it? Did they do it? Less than 15% of carpet cleaners ever get out of the truck. Less than 2% ever sell their business for more the equipment and less than half a percent, way less than half a percent. Ever get to scale where it’s a lifestyle business like over, you know, a hundred thousand a month and beyond kind of idea where they’ve got crews, they’ve got multiple divisions and they can then scale to 5 million, 10 million and beyond, right? So yeah, it’s to do that. It’s a business mindset, right? It really is what’s between our ears.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:52

90% of what happens in our life happens by the chatter between our ears. So it’s just something I’m very big and focused on as well for myself have been in my entire life. I was just a punk kid that played in a band, didn’t go to university, started a cleaning company in my early 20s, in 1995, got out of the truck within about a year and a half in a town of 30,000 people, built a seven figure business, all that kind of stuff. Right. And I have been teaching on this for 20 years, doing consulting while still running my cleaning businesses. Finally sold them all off to do this. Carpet cleaner marketing masters write the book, you know, on Amazon. Write the book and edit, like, all the stuff.

JOHN CLENDENNING
2:30

Right. So the Carpet Cleaner Success podcast, all that stuff, just to help, help out. Because there is a lot of misinformation and fud and misunderstanding and, oh, I think it just needs to be this way. I just need more leads. All that kind of stuff that we talk about every single month. And the truth is, you have to have a dedicated plan to grow a business. You have to have a thought process. You have to be intentional.

JOHN CLENDENNING
2:52

Right. You could have a buddy or a friend who’s also running a cleaning business. I talk to guys all the time. 20 years, you know, my business is 200,000 a year, 250,000 a year. And there might be some of you going, oh, that’s amazing. Yep. And they have nothing to sell. It’s the same business.

JOHN CLENDENNING
3:09

They got, kind of got the scale in four or five years, and they’ve kind of just. They’re just the guy in the truck, they hurt their leg, their mom gets sick, they need whatever and they got zero income. They get divorced, they lose. There’s nothing, you know, I mean, you didn’t build a business. You bought a. You built a job because you’re running as a, you know, you’re trying. You’re running as an operator of the company, but trying to get a business outcome. Thank you for letting me have that little rant, because I’m really trying to get in people’s heads to understand there is one.

JOHN CLENDENNING
3:38

There is a right way. Not one way, but there’s a right way. That, that anybody who’s ever built any of these things, well, any business, well, local business, whatever, you’ll see that there’s a linear path. There’s a lot of noise. Like signal versus noise is the concept here. There’s a lot of noise around that. But the signal, the straight line path is very specific and it always is. And it’s.

JOHN CLENDENNING
4:01

It, it. It is a thing. And most people don’t. They go off on one of the. The noise and that’s them gone. They didn’t keep down the path. And that is almost everybody, except for a very small few.

JOHN CLENDENNING
4:57

Right, so today I’m in the bottom corner. I’m gonna move up to the top. But we’re going to talk about building your future job pipeline. This is one of those things. So every single month I’m talking about one of those things. Things the like again, it’s not easy. You learn, you put in, you put in the, you know, have, have the identity, have the mindset of always be learning, always be growing. You put things in place that move you forward, systemize them, automate them, stack and move on.

JOHN CLENDENNING
5:23

There’s no one lead source. You should not be chasing leads anyways. We’ll talk about that. There’s no one lead source. There’s no one, one, you know, match your competitors. Oh, there three of them is a whole $99. I’ll be $389. That’s, that’s the noise.

JOHN CLENDENNING
5:39

The signal is the guys and gals that grow businesses. I was just talking to Amy, if you’re on welcome. The other day, you know, in the last 18 months or so, 24 months went from 1.2 to 2.4 million in carpet cleaning, right? Big, big business growing, right. How did that happen in that period of time? There was a reason for it, there was an intentionality, there was a building a business. Right? So if those numbers seem out of whack to you, there is an easy way to go from a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand in a year. Two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand in a year, right? There is, there is, there is a really easy way. We’ll talk about that at the end of this. Actually kind of walk you through a little bit of a paradigm on that.

JOHN CLENDENNING
6:24

But right now what we want to do is we want to talk about building your future job pipeline. Something you should have always done. But AI lead nurture can help it a little bit, a little bit easier, right? If you want to lean into this whole new AI world. If not automate it. If not, at least do it manually. Start good, better, best deal with somebody that knows what they’re doing, right? Straight up. If somebody has built a seven figure cleaning business, maybe they might know a little bit thing or two about building a seven figure cleaning business. If they’ve coached other people on how to do that, get out of the truck and work maybe five or ten hours A week running the cleaning business, managing it, running it, growing it, being the, you know, without a college education, as a guitar player in a band, there might be something there.

JOHN CLENDENNING
7:09

Right? So most cleaners chase leads today. Smart cleaners build jobs for tomorrow. What the seeds you plant today grow into the growth tomorrow. Without it, it never, ever, ever comes. So let’s see what that is. Let’s talk about that for a little bit today. So as. One of my favorite podcasts says, you know, welcome to today’s talk.

JOHN CLENDENNING
7:41

As I always like to say, let’s have a talk about this. Let’s, let’s, let’s chat this through. Okay, so, okay, so normal stuff. Turn off your cell phones. Unless you’re listening on the cell phone. Then don’t turn it off. That would be silly. Turn off Facebook.

JOHN CLENDENNING
7:55

I am not on Facebook. As far as this presentation goes, if you’re a cleaning home service business owner serious about growing, this is another one of those masterclasses. Maybe come back to if you’re good with AI. Maybe take the transcript out of this, put it into your AI chat, Talk about your business. Have your master prompt. You don’t want to. Don’t know what I’m talking about. Have a call with us, we’ll talk about it.

JOHN CLENDENNING
8:16

But. And have a convers. Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what John said. How do we make that happen? Right? You’re going to get some ideas because today what we’re going to talk about is why Ready now leads are only 3%. That sounds like a small number. 3% of your real local growth strategy. All of your competitors, except for one or two strategic thinkers who think of business not, not, not, not operating, not just doing, not just cleaning more.

JOHN CLENDENNING
8:47

I need to get more cat pee out today. I, you know, they, they’re thinking of business growth. Who’s got money right now? Who’s going to have money in a year from now and five years from now? Who are those people? Because I need to be back in that house again and again and again. And how do I do that? Don’t target the 3%. They have an eye on the 3%. We’ll talk about that. But they don’t target the 3%. They target the 97% in different buckets that you’re not even paying attention to.

JOHN CLENDENNING
9:15

They have an entirely different clientele than you do. So we’re going to figure out what that is. How to capture today’s buyers while building tomorrow’s job pipeline, how blank you guys are going to fill in the Blank by the end. So put your thinking caps on. Think of that, put it in the chat. At the end of the call you’re going to put in, you’re going to tell us what that blank is. Turn curious homeowners into future customers. Wouldn’t it be great that everything you do today lines you up for 1, 10, 20, 50, 100 new new ideal clients, not customers are one time clients.

JOHN CLENDENNING
9:50

Come back, love you, use you forever. How AI powered follow up helps you stay top of mind. And I’m going to talk about how AI is working to help make this a little bit easier. There’s a strategic level to it. It’s not just oh, give it to AI chat GPT. It’ll do it for me now. No, everything needs to be thought out well. Right? There is no easy button in life.

JOHN CLENDENNING
10:12

Live life the hard way and it actually becomes easier. Try and live life the easy way and everything falls apart. It becomes harder. Let’s just, you know, have those difficult conversations and things work out better than avoiding them. That all that stuff, all the stuff that mom taught us like probably. Right, right. So anyways, talked a little bit of who I am. You guys know me, but if you don’t own businesses, actually since 1990, started the carpet cleaning in 1995.

JOHN CLENDENNING
10:37

But I started a window cleaning company in high school with my buddy Scott. I could not speak red faced in front of class, skipped out every time, puked in the bathroom every time we had to do a presentation and or anything like that. Scott did the talking, I did the thinking and I was a solid C student in school by the way, just so you guys know. So this isn’t, this doesn’t come from anything super special, but yeah. And I left high school early to go on the road with a band for a number of years and did window cleaning down the side of 40 story buildings, high rise window clean, stuff like that on the side. Ran my own company, started some janitorial and stuff like that. And then finally drummer got his girlfriend knocked up the whole, the whole story. Had to do something, started a carpet cleaning company, moved to a town where I didn’t know anybody so I wouldn’t walk in the door of somebody I knew.

JOHN CLENDENNING
11:24

And that’s where I started. I’ve owned cleaning franchises, cleaning businesses, bought businesses, sold businesses, duct cleaning, carpet cleaning, janitorial, maid services, all that kind of stuff. Once you learn how to do this, you can, you can just add, you can just connect. Right. I was the, I turned out to be the, you know, a, a business owner that Happened to be in the cleaning industry, not a cleaner that just happened to be, you know, own a business. So I’ve lectured on stages, done many three day, three day elite retreats. I’ve done run coaching programs since 2000. I’ve won Marketer of the year with things like GKIC and stuff like that or run her up in the top, the top five in the winner of the, of the group that kind of went to Disney’s and did all that kind of stuff.

JOHN CLENDENNING
12:10

Longtime marketing consultant, strategist, wrote the book, got another book coming out and write content for Clean Facts and interviewed all the time there. Me and Jeff once a month do something but you know, all that kind of stuff. And I’ve sold all the divisions off because we don’t have 401ks. Invent, learned how to invest, invested all of that. Started carpet cleaner marketing masters. There’s who I am. All right, so a little bit about it. You know, the people we know.

JOHN CLENDENNING
12:39

There’s good buddy Jeff Cross, Issa cleanfax. If you’re not a member of Issa, join the association. That’s us. That’s for cleaners, right? Lots of good stuff there and could, you know, there’s Howard, there’s Dusty, there’s Mark Sager, stuff like that. We’ve, we’re all kind of done things together over the years, right? That’s the point. But more importantly is we also Free Decades help you guys do what you need to do, grow your business everywhere, all the time. We help make our clients the top carpet cleaning brand in the local marketplace so they can attract the best clients, charge the top rates and be booked out for weeks in advance. We don’t do that for them.

JOHN CLENDENNING
13:24

Nobody’s going to do that for you. Your mom’s not going to solve your problems anymore, right? That, that kind of thing. We, we do it with them. We help make our carpet our clients the top cleaning brand because it’s a done together system. What you do the right way, that’s not showing up in Mrs. Jones’s house, that’s a little part of it. But what’s the marketing all around that, right? What’s all the stuff that you do that builds you over all the 70, 80, 90 other choices? And right now with the economy slowing down and people getting laid off because AI is taking over their jobs and all of this kind of stuff, what happens in that world is the same thing that happened in 2008, 9, 10, recession. People go and start up cleaning businesses.

JOHN CLENDENNING
14:07

If they’re displaced, they go and buy franchises you know, in pressure washing, carpet cleaning, anything like, it’s like some drop years. Like there’s, there’s tens of thousands, right? The numbers in the tens of thousands that are being permanently laid off at a, any given time right now due to this massive AI disruption, kind of up and down and sideways. But it, it is a freight train rolling down the highway because it takes menial jobs. There’s a report at one point that 50% of all jobs aren’t needed. They’re just there to create momentum in the economy while AI is starting to take those as well. So anybody sitting in front of a computer, right, Robotics is coming. Elon Musk’s Optimus robots. 100,000amonth rolling off the assembly line by this time next year is the goal.

JOHN CLENDENNING
14:50

A million by the year after a month, right. Those are fully dexterous, can do most menial service jobs and a whole bunch of other stuff, right. They could download how to fix a pipe. Think of that, right? So all that kind of stuff. So that’s the world we’re into a dystopian world. We’re into a very weird world. How do we still run a cleaning business in that, how do we become like how, how do we grow? Well, you got to become the best known brand, we call it the best known cleaner. You got to become the best known in your marketplace, online, offline, everywhere.

JOHN CLENDENNING
15:20

So people go, I want them not at the cheapest price. It’s not incest marketing, incestuous marketing where oh I’m just going to match everybody else’s price. No, we’ve got clients and people in my coaching program that their average residential job is north of 800 bucks. There are some people, there’s fellows I talk to, there’s people on my podcast, residential job, $2,000 because they’re in a marketplace where that’s legit, that can residential customer and they get called back two and three times a year. Right. Mia talked about it a couple of little like we’re we’re chatting and, and they had a job where the customer was $2,100 or $2,500 something in that range of carpet and upholstery cleaning like cleaning services and then booked while flying back to her second home before coming back to their area booked the, the multi system duct cleaning because the big homes, big neighborhoods obviously they don’t come from discount ads. They don’t, they don’t, AI doesn’t find you from, from being the cheapest or anything like that. But they booked a 63, 60 $500 duct cleaning job on the back end.

JOHN CLENDENNING
16:21

So that was a nine thousand dollar client. Think of that. When’s the last time you had a nine thousand dollar residential client that within two appointments over the course of 30, 45 days and they’re going to call back again before the end of the year? You have lifetime value clients that are 100 and $200,000. What we really care about, make sure we have a lifetime value client at least 10 or 20,000. Is your average client worth about 10,000 in repeats and referrals? That doesn’t come from $200 jobs. That doesn’t come from $169. Three rooms in a hall. That’s everybody else.

JOHN CLENDENNING
16:53

And again, you can start there. But how do you move from there to be that, that business owner elite class where your technicians are making 70, 80, 90,000 a year? Or like Jorge, 130 $540,000 a year technicians? Right. How do you do that? These are the guys I talk with. These are, these aren’t the guys that are sitting on the forums talking about how to get, you know, cat pee out of a carpet. These are the business builders that have long since left the forums. That’s where we want to talk to you about right now. So, okay, so how do you do that? Right? Omnipresence. Omnipresence.

JOHN CLENDENNING
17:27

You need to be everywhere your ideal client works. You need to get in their brain. There is nobody that sees an ad once and calls that company unless they are either in a dire emergency or the worst customer to ever get. Think of the things you’ve bought that you care about, right? If you don’t care about it, price is your commodity. Price is that. If you care about it, who’s going to come into my home, go into my bedroom, around my jewelry, around my underwear? Like literally. Let’s think about it. You don’t even let your best friend in those rooms.

JOHN CLENDENNING
18:03

We’re going to let this guy in. Do you think they did a little bit of due diligence? Do you think they care a little bit more? Do you think the best clients care a little bit more and do things entirely differently? And you go, well, John, I don’t get any of those customers. That’s not who I attract. That’s the lesson right here. If you don’t attract those people, somebody else is. What’s the difference? And they do it so subtly you don’t even notice it. Right? So omnipresence, you want to maximize the opportunities to generate a qualified inquiry. Not a lead, an inquiry.

JOHN CLENDENNING
18:37

Qualified. If your ideal Client should be giving you minimum 350, 400, $500 is your average job. And if it isn’t, you are way behind the times right now. I’m going to tell you straight up, you shouldn’t be running pay per click ads or anything like that. The math doesn’t. Math, it doesn’t work, right? So, but when it does work, you can be running local service ads, pay per click ads, next door ads, Facebook ads to build your brand presence, you know, every door mail. You can be building out referral partner networks and, and giving referral rewards and relationships. And like all the poles in the water as we talked about, you can be scaling and systemizing because you have the luxury of room in your budget.

JOHN CLENDENNING
19:20

And if you also know how to double the retention of your average client, you just doubled your business. You’re doing 200,000 a year and you just get people to come back more often. More people to come back more often. Like not 20% of your database. And oh, I kind of, I hear a lot of people coming back. I don’t care if a lot is not a statistic, you’re not a business owner. If the answer to something is a lot, you’re a business owner. If you say, well, 62% of my clients repeat within one year or within 18 months or within two years, figure out how to get that number.

JOHN CLENDENNING
19:54

Because if it dips and all of a sudden you only know that it goes down to 58, goes down to 54, what’s the problem? How do we solve this? Because you’re being strategic, right? So as you do you run your business, think about ways to just up level in game theory. Think of video games. How do you level up a little bit, right? Just a little bit of time to. Eventually you’re fighting the boss and you’re, you’re, you’re, you know, you, you, you’re, you won the game. How do you get to that little. You start off like crap. We start off, I started off, I’m not a video gamer. I started off Super Mario like crap.

JOHN CLENDENNING
20:27

I never made it to the end, right? I like Tetris, right? I, I was not a video gamer. I’ve got friends and family and all that that are just absolutely amazing video gamers. Well, they all started off sucking at the first game venture second game, eventually made it to the end of the game, learned a little bit of skills, got better. Next thing you know, you know, decades years later, they’re just amazing at it, right? That’s their thing because they leveled up a little Bit at a time. Well, let’s do that in the game of business, the game of life, right? Qualified inquiry. Maximize your brand impressions. Nobody hires you if they don’t know like, and trust you. How long, how many impressions does it need for somebody to know enough to be aware? Now they’re aware of you to some degree.

JOHN CLENDENNING
21:13

It isn’t one. Cold outreach. It isn’t an email. It isn’t. I tried door hangers. I tried every door mail. I sent it to a neighborhood of 5,000 people. I spent $1,000 on every door mail, John.

JOHN CLENDENNING
21:26

I sent postcards to 5,000 people. I got zero phone calls. That means tells me not a single person has heard from you, knows your brand, and knows you at least 11 to 20 touches ahead of time. Like what? Yes, 11 to 20 touches ahead of time. Actually, I’m gonna move myself into the top corner, so didn’t need to leave myself down the bottom corner anyways. Yeah, 11 to 20 touches, that’s called zmod zero. Moment of truth. Learn it, read it.

JOHN CLENDENNING
22:00

Google did it. It’s just studies. It’s not, it’s not somebody’s guess. Like you can guess that a supplement or a medicine works, or you can do a double blind, controlled study, not across ten people, but ten thousand. A hundred thousand people. And then the outcome is. And the fringe cases and the variables now start to shed light. Right? Same idea.

JOHN CLENDENNING
22:23

Brand impressions, you need to be known before they’re ready. And this is what we’re going to talk about today, a little bit as well. And then once they are ready, you got to convert them. How do you convert not 20%. You got 10 phone calls today or this week, you convert two of them because you suck at the phone. How much does it cost to clean three rooms in the hallway? It costs $165. Okay, thank you. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
22:51

Cost 250. Oh, my God. Yours expensive. Thank you. Right. How do you convert two of them at 200 bucks, you made 400 bucks. How do you convert five or six? Right now at $500 with the right script, the right messaging, the right positioning, the right follow up and then, you know, call back tomorrow, call back a couple days later. Now all of a sudden you got five of them.

JOHN CLENDENNING
23:16

At 500, you just made $2,500. And Buddy over here made 400 bucks. So you’re way ahead. You’re $2,100 ahead for the exact same ads. Oh, my leads suck. No, no, no, you do, right? Take ownership. If you’re not able to convert, that’s a. You do you know about scripting? Do you know a little bit about psychology? You know how to the.

JOHN CLENDENNING
23:37

The flow of a conversation? Or do you want a button on your website to book your whole entire schedule for you? Do you think that’s a thing? Without any context of why you’re more expensive than the competitors? Do you think they know so much about you and love you so much? Are you going to go just buy the very best, you name it, what’s your thing? Right? Are you going to hire the landscaping company that’s twice the price of the other guy? Without having any context why they’re twice the price. Some people are hiring the landscaping company that’s twice the price of everybody else because that landscaping company has a story to tell. What they do differently, they do four times as much value for only twice the price. And they prove it. And the right people go, holy crap, I’d rather pay $2,000 a year for that landscaping company than $1,000 for that one. Can you tell that story? You maximize conversions, getting that out in front, having those conversations, staying in touch, right? And now all of a sudden, maybe over time, you land another couple of them. Now you got seven out of ten. Buddy’s over here, still only got two.

JOHN CLENDENNING
24:41

Not good on the phones, not good on marketing. Has a website with babies lying on carpets and families and dogs sitting on couches and thinks that that’s okay. Knows nothing about what causes people to buy. Can’t even pause to think about why do I buy things? Hmm. Maybe why I buy things is similar to why other people buy things. I’m not that reactionary either. Right? I think I. Look, I need, I need.

JOHN CLENDENNING
25:03

I need you to play on my emotions. I need to. Why did I buy more for this TV than this tv? Because the sales guy told me that your buddies are going to be happier when they come over to watch the football game. And I’m into football. How did he know that? Because he asked me those questions. It wasn’t. Guess it wasn’t random. He went to the boss at the end of the day and go, Yep, I sold 10 of the higher end TVs today.

JOHN CLENDENNING
25:24

That’s not a scam. You got a great TV. But he was able to influence you, right? And if it’s a high end electronic store, he knows he was already walking in the door in the first place. My dearly departed father in law used to buy the most expensive TVs and stereo equipment I’ve ever seen in my life because that was his thing. He had people on call at the, at the, at the stereo supply store on call, who knew that when the best thing came in, they would just call him in for a, to come and listen to it, come in and give it a try, right? Because he might buy it, he might swap in, trade up, do his thing, right? And all because it was his thing he cared about. He was a tool and die salesman. So right there we have clients that want clean and healthy and, and all of the feelings that we can give them and they want, they want security and all that. It isn’t given in our industry.

JOHN CLENDENNING
26:19

That’s not just what everybody does. Talked well and understood well, you maximize conversions and now you’ve got seven out of ten, not two out of ten. Your average job is $500, not $200. Now you have $3,500 for the same ads that this other guy got 400 bucks worth of revenue and thinks marketing sucks. And you’ve got $3,500 from the same marketing channels, but with a better conversion system built on and you’re $3100 ahead, first time customer. Then you got to really like the whole thing is you’ve got a machine in place where your average job is double other people’s because you know how to do that, right? So now you’ve, you’ve, you’ve got double the money that this guy’s got. And then you also know how to retain these people for 5, 10, 15,000, $20,000 lifetime value. Half of them are never going to be seen again.

JOHN CLENDENNING
27:08

The other half are going to be done. Well, you stay in touch with them lifetime clients. Now you didn’t just make $3,500. You know that half of those people will be worth, say 10 grand. Keep the numbers simple. We got seven, so four of them stick around forever. At $10,000 low end lifetime value. You just made $40,000 to this guy’s 400.

JOHN CLENDENNING
27:35

He knows nothing about anything. I just said you’re learning it, you do it. You put it in place. Hey, so hopefully you like that rant. So that’s what today is about. If that excites you, let’s dig in a little bit. Right? So the smart cleaners build tomorrow’s jobs. As most cleaners are chasing two days leads, most carpet cleaners focus on the people ready to book today.

JOHN CLENDENNING
27:58

But that is a tiny, tiny part of the market. So what do we mean by 3%? Well, Chet Holmes, ultimate sales machine. If you haven’t read it, haven’t listened to it, read it, listen to it. We are students of Business. Learn this stuff. Again, I didn’t read in high school as a solid C student. Learn this stuff. You drive around, you sit in front of windshield time all the time.

JOHN CLENDENNING
28:19

If you do, we’ll go for a walk. You know, if you’re in the office, go for a walk, learn this stuff. Because this knowledge moves you forward. Right? 3% are ready to buy right now. In any market on average. 3% are ready to buy right now. That’s everyone. Every, everybody’s fighting for.

JOHN CLENDENNING
28:38

Oh, my Google Ads, my go, my Google local service ads are in front of yours. And I’ve got, I’m in pay per click ads. I’m going to get the pay per click ones. What if the ones that don’t go to pay per click. Well, you know, maybe I’ll get Google Ads someday, you know. What about AI mentions? No, it doesn’t. I rec, I think AI recommends me. I don’t know.

JOHN CLENDENNING
28:53

I, I, I type into Chad GPT and it mentions my name. Do you think it’s because you’ve mentioned your business name before? Don’t know. Like you have an actual, there’s a strategy or is it a game? Right. Let’s, let’s play strategically. Right? But 3% are ready to buy right now. And everybody’s targeting those, everybody’s trying to get a percentage of those. 3%, 6 are considering her right now, but not buying. They’re not reaching out and calling today.

JOHN CLENDENNING
29:19

They’re considering it. They’re weighing their options. They’re thinking. They’re trying to understand the price points in the marketplace. Do you have a guide, do you have a guide on good, better, best pricing in the marketplace and what the discounts are versus the higher end and where do you guys fit in? And questions they should ask, are you, are you in their world at all? Are you helping or are you just hoping? Right? So we called it your total addressable market, your tam. Right. If you have a pay per click operator and they haven’t talked to you about your tam, fire the pay per click operator. They have no clue what they’re doing.

JOHN CLENDENNING
29:54

It’s not, you know, set up automated ads. Right? You’re not providing performance max go away. Right? 30% not thinking about it. They’re dormant, but they’re easily awakened. You can educate these people. You can get in front of them. They’re still in the same place. They’re seeing what their friends are doing and they go, oh, honey, you know that really funky love seat or couch sectional in the basement? The kids have been bouncing on the teenagers have been, you know, sweating up.

JOHN CLENDENNING
30:29

Do you know we can get that cleaned and it’s going to come out really well. Nancy just did, right? How did you tell them that? Nancy’s not going to tell people I just hired my carpet cleaner. That that doesn’t happen maybe once or twice, a little bit. But how do we let them know that Nancy did. We’re going to talk about that a little bit. 30% don’t think they’re interested. But with the right messaging and that right trip, you realize they are. I don’t want to do this myself and I can’t not ever do it.

JOHN CLENDENNING
31:02

And then there’s 30% that are just slobs, hoarders, no money whatever. Like they’re just not in your market at all. So you got your total addressable market. People with discretionary income. Not everybody, not 90 year old grannies, like lovely people probably in the retirement home probably don’t need us, right? Not 20 year old, 15 year old, you know, people out living on their own, you know, kicked out of the house or left home or whatever. Probably not. Probably not. Our ideal client, right, we know our ideal client.

JOHN CLENDENNING
31:35

But the ones that are definitely not interested, they’re off the table in our total addressable market, right. They’ve already got somebody, they love them, done. Well, the person who’s calling some other business right now while we’re talking on a channel you don’t market to should never in your natural life call you. If they call somebody else and that other person does a great job indoctrinating them, doing a great service experience, wowing the crap out of them at a price higher than the competition would be ideal. Staying in touch with them, following up with them. Having a cadence of communication that educates them and keeps them in their world. Give them a free bottle of Spot Mover with your logo and your name on it. Put a honey do list magnet, not a, not a van on the fridge.

JOHN CLENDENNING
32:26

Good, better. Best fan on the fridge. Better than zero best actually something they’re going to use forever. Sticks to the fridge, writes on it, all that kind of stuff. Family makes notes on it with your name at the bottom that ain’t going nowhere. There’s our guys. You’re just brand impression every day and there’s a million ways you can do that, right? So you want to make sure that you have that in place because your competitors, the good ones do and some of the definitely not interested are because somebody else did this once and they’re so good at it, this person will never look again. They shouldn’t.

JOHN CLENDENNING
33:05

And when you do it right, they shouldn’t look again either from you. Right. So most carpet cleaners are fighting over 3%, 97%. The rest of the total addressable market. We know 67% will probably need cleaning within the next 12 months. That other 30% you’re probably not going to get to, you can drip on them. They could. They’re in your total addressable market that your ideal client in the ideal home, all that kind of stuff, Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
33:29

You’re just kind of waiting for that opportunity where somebody else screws up and it may never happen, but There is a 67% of the audience that nobody else is really thinking about. Most cleaners chase today’s leads. Smart operators build tomorrow’s jobs. Are you building tomorrow’s jobs? Are you a smart operator or. Most cleaners write that down. Chasing only today’s leads is a race you’ll always lose. Every competitor is there too. Google Ads, local service ads, Facebook.

JOHN CLENDENNING
34:00

Everyone is bidding for the same 3% and the price is going up and up and up. As we know, local service ads started about what, 15 bucks, $17 an average phone call in most markets. Now it’s over 40. Some markets that we have clients that are over 80. And it’s still making the money. If you got the right business, $80 a phone call, not a problem. If you book over 50% of them and your average job is over $500, your 3 to 1, 4 to 1 ROI is locked and other guys are not even trying to play the game. Stop running ads.

JOHN CLENDENNING
34:29

You know, it’s a hamster wheel running ads. Stop getting leads. Right. There’s no compounding effect, no future pipeline. It’s just a constant grind. If it feels like that this, what we’re going to talk about is really going to be helpful. Cost per lead keeps rising. We talked about that.

JOHN CLENDENNING
34:43

And the. You’re invisible to these other 67 to 97%. Right? The smart way is to think about the other 97 and make sure in front of the 67 that other 30 is just going to be lurking there. And, and you may pick up some of those as well. So the other 90% are the future customers. They aren’t ready today, but they will be. They still like again, they still want to clean. So whoever’s top of mind at that moment, when they’re ready, wins.

JOHN CLENDENNING
35:17

Are you already in their head, dormant, not thinking, Curious. Notices a stain, starts to wonder. Researching, Googling, asking AI for answers. Right. Are you giving answers to questions on Google? And is AI picking Up your answers to questions. Are you part of the answer engine? Do you know what I just said? Do you have an SEO provider who understands what I just said? What is not a tactic, it’s not more backlinks, it’s not more dribble content. In fact, as of May 8th, 20 days ago today, Google algorithm update again. AI update basically said content that is, that is the same as anybody else’s just won’t even show up in AI mentions.

JOHN CLENDENNING
36:05

It’s just the same. You’ve got to be unique, authentic. AI is actually trying to be what Google and the world has always wanted is authentic. Somebody that go, hey, let me go find that out for you. Let me go do some good research. Let me not get bamboozled by somebody who can scam me. Let me find out what’s actually being talked about in the marketplace, right? Comparing a few quotes, a few ideas, right? Are you willing to go into the home and do a quote or no, not you. Nop.

JOHN CLENDENNING
36:36

I’m not going, I’m not doing quotes, I’m not driving to somebody’s house. No. Or are you willing to go in and have a conversation? Because it’s an ideal client and if you’re going to be like some of our clients, they never give a price on the phone. They only like the high, high end, they only quote, we will set up an appointment. There’s no way for me to know until I see, let me come out. If they don’t let you come out, they’ll never going to be an ideal client anyways. And they have sift sorted and screened themselves out of your work. And then when you show up, you can influence them and you can decide if they’re a good client for you, right? It’s not about getting a job.

JOHN CLENDENNING
37:14

I need as many jobs as possible. That’s because you’re desperate and you’re chasing leads. When you build an intentional business, that’s not a thing. They book with the cleaner they already trust. How did you get to that point? Stay top of mind, be the cleaner they already know when the moment arrives. Educate early, give value before they’re ready. Become the trusted expert in their life before they make that first call to book zero moment of truth zmod 20 touches and impressions from the very first all the way through to holy shit, I got to use these guys. Time is here and that’s them.

JOHN CLENDENNING
37:57

And then you continue to educate on how often they need to right? Naturally, nurture automatically. AI keeps your name in front of future customers. AUTOMATIONS AI MANUAL if you Know what to do, one or the other. Manual, automated AI choose. Capture today’s buyers while building tomorrow’s jobs. Right. So we’re going to talk about the difference between lead generation and lead nurture. Most of you, the majority of the market is targeting lead generation.

JOHN CLENDENNING
38:34

Not even a clue what lead nurture is. The company’s going from 1.2 million to 2.4 million. The people that are doing $800,000 or sorry, $800 job averages, the ones that are have a pipeline of potential customers following them and great customers coming back. Nurture, you need both. So front end lead generation, you attract new prospects. Google, Facebook, every door, mail, referral partners. Walk in the door. Right? SEO, social media, yard signs, door hangers, referral programs.

JOHN CLENDENNING
39:23

Get people into your world. That’s lead generation. A lot of people say, but if they don’t book, I hope they remember me. I think they do. I’m special. My mom liked me. That’s nice. They don’t know you completely out of their head the second you walk away.

JOHN CLENDENNING
39:42

Most of the time might be remembered to dinner time. If you’re funny, unique, different, that’s about all you get. Back end profits come from lead nurture. Build relationships over time before they ever book. Build relationships after they book to stay with them for life. Emails, sms, AI, follow up conversations is now the new world where you can actually be very, very, very natural. As if you had an office full of people that just, you know, read red, red back up on the customer. Oh yeah, Mrs.

JOHN CLENDENNING
40:17

Jones. Oh yeah, Mrs. Smith. Oh, yeah, you know, whatever, Mr. Mr. Mason. Yep, yep. Yeah, he has that little dog, doesn’t he? Yeah, well, that’s right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
40:25

I wonder if that dog. The dog, yeah. Had a broken leg last time. Oh my God. Wonder if that dog’s still good. That’s a note. That’s a follow up. Hey, just.

JOHN CLENDENNING
40:31

How’s it going, Mr. Mason? Just wondering. It’s been a little while since your last cleaning. Blah, blah, blah. Stay in touch. Hopefully Fido’s doing well, right? Oh, Fido passed away. That’s so sad, right? Oh, but you’ve got new puppy, Milo. That’s awesome.

JOHN CLENDENNING
40:45

I’m sure you got lots of pet stains, right? Forever follow up campaigns. Reactivate past contacts, give them a mafia offer. If you’re targeting the right people, the right people in the right neighborhoods. Do you think somebody sitting in a gated community, in a 2, $3 million home, 5,000, 10,000 square feet, is the wrong person to come in and give a free room of cleaning to, to try you out? Before they’re ready to trust you. I would say that the person in geared to income rental downtown probably is the wrong person to give a free room of cleaning to but give a mafia offer of some sort of PJ one of our part of our coaching program he built a million dollar a month cleaning business giving away free cleaning and then all the other good stuff. That wasn’t the only thing. It isn’t like oh I’ll do that. I’m going to be a millionaire.

JOHN CLENDENNING
41:49

There’s a business to run but you convert them into future customers. So lead flow is rarely the problem. There is so many places you should have a pole in the water. These are actually all the poles in the water that we teach and talk about. They’re like you just there’s layer ones, layer twos, layer threes. I actually say paid ads happen after you fix your leaky bucket. If you don’t fix the leaky bucket, paid ads just pours fuel on a bad fire. It doesn’t save your business.

JOHN CLENDENNING
42:20

There is no amount of Google Ads that will save your business. If you don’t have a, a program in place to get more than the like have the average job two, three times that 80% of the other cleaners average job. You want to be in the top 20% and then you want to make sure your retention is that you know every an average lifetime value is 5, 10, 15, 20,000. What do you know yours is again knowing half of them are never going to see you again. The other half should be worth that. So now you know you’re building a business. We have one of our client case studies where for in paid ads they’ve spent $66,000 on, on, on paid ads over I think it was 24 months, roughly 30, just a little bit over 24 months and built a $1.3 million lifetime value book of business because they know their numbers, they know the average lifetime value of their clients. They know the retention rate.

JOHN CLENDENNING
43:19

The retention rate of these paid ad clients are being the same because they’re targeting the right people. They see and it’s, it is a $1.3 million book of business from $66,000. Yes, we’re that good at pay per click ads. Yes, absolutely. But we’re also that good at coaching and training and teaching on how to do all of that. And they’re great students and they understand how to run a great business. So paid ads are not the starting point. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
43:44

But you want to make sure you’re on Google Maps. You want to make sure you’re posting every single day. You got images going up, you’re, you’re at least expanding your radius. But because, not because more people are going to Google Maps, less people are actually going to Google Maps, but AI is picking up some of that authentic conversation with the daily posts about real stuff, real customer stories and all of that kind of stuff. You want to make sure your organic website is growing with a new piece of content or two every single week. Because that content is what helps has the businesses that are way ahead of you are doing anyways. You want to make sure it’s authentic. You want to.

JOHN CLENDENNING
44:15

There’s all this stuff that is just basic, this is just the foundation of, of running a company today. But I want more leads. John. You want a business, don’t you? If you chase leads, 20 years from now you’re still chasing leads. If you build a business, leads are added to an engine that’s already running, right? So that engine comes from, you know, social outreach, local awareness, repeat referral programs, JV partners, a great website that converts more people that show up to it than a crappy website. Do you even know what that is? You even have metrics on it, right? I like my website. That’s not a metric. Like has never been a metric.

JOHN CLENDENNING
44:53

Do you know how many people convert? What do they click on? Where do they go? Are you telling a story, a psychological story, like a story brand? Do you even know what that means? Right? Like there’s an answer to all of this, right? You want to be on all the online directories. You want to be on about 150 different directories. You want to be in the GPS’s, you want to be on Dun and Bradstreet. Like there’s, there’s a basic level of things that people can help you with. You don’t need to figure this all out yourself. You can read the book, right? It’s in the book, but you can read the book in two, three years from now. You can get set up or you can hire somebody in 30 days. Now you set up and you go do what you need to do.

JOHN CLENDENNING
45:27

You do your part special, right? You become a business owner like grandpa and dad did in the local marketplace as well. You get people referring you. Well, you get, you build a system. You have the technicians showing up and you rally them up. You show up on the jobs every now and then bring them a drink, but to check up on them and do a great job. You have yard signs and door hangers. You, you, you, you do the quotes and all you can get out of the truck and run a great business. I did that within a year and a half, 1997, starting in a town of 30,000 people.

JOHN CLENDENNING
45:59

Because I started learning some of this stuff and realized, ah, I got to get out of the truck.

JOHN CLENDENNING
46:03

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
46:03

Ain’t never going to grow the business. So how do I make enough money to have Stuart in the truck first guy, don’t hire Stuart. If you’re listening, Stuart. Doubt you are. Yeah, don’t hire Stuart as a carpet cleaner. Sure he does a lot of lovely things in his life, but I wasn’t great at what I did. A solid C student. Hiring Stuart was a solid C decision.

JOHN CLENDENNING
46:22

So network, you know, neighborhood marketing, all that kind of stuff. So. And then branding videos and helpful articles and press releases. It’s just a thing. It’s just business. Just business, right. There’s actual method for this. The business is.

JOHN CLENDENNING
46:35

There’s actually a digital dominance method that taps into your organic offline dominance method. It’s done together. That’s how you grow a business. Right. So the number one mistake I see most service business make not continually following up with their qualified leads. Lead generation versus lead nurture. Let’s just clarify the difference right now, clear things up. Lead generation refers to any online or offline marketing process.

JOHN CLENDENNING
47:00

But online, social media, content marketing, web design, emails, SEO, pay per click, used to engage and attract potential customers, Right? Pretty cool. Offline, every door, mail, walking in, showing up, like outreach, all of that kind of stuff. Right. Lead generation focuses on finding new leads. That’s pretty simple. Lead nurture is the process of building strong relationships with individual potential customers over time with the intent of turning them into loyal paying customers. Lead nurture there therefore focuses on communicating with a person who has already shown interest in your business but has not chosen you yet. Are you nurturing that relationship and what do you nurture it with? Buy from me, I’ve got a special.

JOHN CLENDENNING
47:50

There’s no nurturing about that. There’s nothing nurturing about that. Right? Why lead nurturing matters? Your prospects are doing the research. They may need to get sign off from their spouse. Other things are grabbing their attention. They are busy and distracted on the go, probably on mobile. Large, largely unfamiliar with you. Forget or may not remember who they contacted.

JOHN CLENDENNING
48:12

Take seven touches minimum just to make the first impression in the most point. People that call you, unless their dog just crapped all over the carpet, you’re the first name that came up and they need a service right now. People that call you have done some form of comparison touching and they go oh, I’VE heard of those guys. I’ve seen that van. I know that something is connected, connected, connected. What led you to call us today? A better question than that. Like, you know, you know, how did you hear about us? Terrible question. What led you to call us today? A little bit better.

JOHN CLENDENNING
48:45

You might get a story. What research have you done on us so far? Way better question. Matt Easton, king of persuasion, sales language, Easton University. That was one of his phrases. That’s really cool. May try someone else this time. You can still nurture those people. Are you mad if somebody called somebody else? I hope not.

JOHN CLENDENNING
49:09

So you want to take them from curious to customers, right? From curious. Take a look at this graphic for a second. Beautiful graphic. Thank you, Sirica. From curious. Hmm. Oh my gosh. You sent them an email.

JOHN CLENDENNING
49:22

You stayed in touch a little bit. You told them about, right? I’m ready to try these guys. That journey doesn’t have might not be a week. What if that journey’s a year? Are you staying in touch or is somebody else turn early interest into future book jobs automatically. They see your ad post on social yard sign ban. They opt into something. Download a guide, join your VIP club. Want to learn a little bit more? Go to your website, get pixeled, right? Have, have a way to follow up.

JOHN CLENDENNING
49:56

There’s a little bit of an like at the higher end, a little bit of inception there. Somebody comes to your website, you can actually drop mail at their door even if they didn’t click on anything, things like that. There’s a way to sort of if it’s an ideal customer, an ideal zip code, grab them right? Nurture AI, email, educate, build trust. Teach them about other customers like them that love you. Happy customer stories. We call it project stories. Reviews, tips, stay top of mind. How to take care of this.

JOHN CLENDENNING
50:23

How to prepare your carpet for you know, how to your, you know, for your family gathering. How, how to get your home ready for summer. How to get the pollen dust out of your home now that you’re closing the winters up and closing the windows up in, in the fall. They’re ready and they’re already, they’re, they’re, they’re already going to choose you. The goal Build a system that works in the background, nurturing future customers while you focus on today’s jobs. That’s the goal. Manual. Sure.

JOHN CLENDENNING
50:54

If you have to figure it out, automate it. Absolutely. Add AI to be even smarter lead magnets. Pet Urine Elimination Guide. Honest pricing guide for the local Madison area. Healthy Home Carpet Guide. Healthy home Air Quality Guide. Neighborhood offer campaigns Lead Magnet Lead magnet Lead magnet.

JOHN CLENDENNING
51:16

QR code campaigns. Scan for a free room. Offer for a safe and healthy home. Scan here. That could be a website they scan to, that could be a chatbot that chats them up. Hands off a guide, sees if they’re ready, hands it off to somebody on the phone to call them. Whole bunch of stuff. We build those kinds of AI agentic systems.

JOHN CLENDENNING
51:37

But again, there’s layers to this. Invoices and receipts. Scan to book your next cleaning and save 10%. Pretty easy one, right? Door hangers, Facebook posts, comment pet or comment com comment price in the comments and we’ll send you our pet recovery guide, our honest pricing guide for the local area. Every scan is a new contact in your future job pipeline. I didn’t get a job this week from that, John. No, but you got 10 new people, 15 new people you’re now nurturing. 200, 300, 500, a thousand, 2,000 automatically.

JOHN CLENDENNING
52:25

You’re, you know, you, you run happy customer stories on social media and you’re in the nerds. All of a sudden they see your van like, you know, it’s clean, it’s washed, it’s not rusted out. You’ve seen your technicians, they’re not vaping and spitting out the window like, like all of it just creates a. Oh my gosh. You show up at the clean up the beach with your crew all in uniform and you know from your company you, you give back. You do. Like, how did grandpa run the business? How do great people run great businesses? Charity golf tournaments, blah blah, blah. Little bit, a little bit more, a little bit more, right? That’s what business owners do.

JOHN CLENDENNING
52:58

Just a little bit at a time. Get outta your comfort zone, it becomes easy. Get outta your comfort zone, it becomes easy again. Red face. Couldn’t talk at school at all. Ran client appreciation events with bouncy castles in the middle of like the. During running the entire business. How did I go from there to there? Really great question.

JOHN CLENDENNING
53:16

I just did. Showed up and did a little bit more with my face. Red Good, better, best. Where are you in the spectrum? Manual, human follow up. That’s good. We talked about this, right? It says where most cleaners are. I’d say, meh. Where most cleaners stop.

JOHN CLENDENNING
53:36

If they ever do it at all. You or your staff follow up personally the next day, maybe a little while later, are you still interested? You follow up with your customers as well. Again, lead, nurture. Also think of it as customer nurture. We talk about that on different trainings, but similar ideas. Are you staying in touch with your customers every week or every month or once a year with a text message. Sort of. Maybe not.

JOHN CLENDENNING
54:02

You’re in the customer retention business. There’s a whole process to that. Without it, somebody else is stealing your customers and you’re not maximizing your database and you’re losing revenue. How to run a business. This is another one of those phone calls, text replies, relationship driven, personal touches, limited, scalable, time intensive. Right. And then you stop when you’re busy or overwhelmed. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
54:28

That’s what happens there. Better than nothing, a little bit better. Automated emails and SMS CRM pipeline stages that is intentionally built. Do you have a 50 touch email or email text message, voice, ringless voicemail and reminder to your staff system for every new lead that comes in that just perpetually. And you know when people unsubscribe and drop off and you change that, that’s intentional data driven marketing. Right? That’s the business we’re in. You do that, you’re one of the few that hit the run. A business that doesn’t need your full time and attention but makes the money that you can sell to somebody else.

JOHN CLENDENNING
55:10

Break your foot, doesn’t really matter. You show up in the office with a cast on. You do one of those things that Axl Rose had where you put your knee on it and roll around the airport. Stuff like that. Oh, it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter because the crew’s still going out. Clean carpets, right? Timed follow up cadence, consistent works 24, 7. It’s generic though.

JOHN CLENDENNING
55:27

Not personalized. It’s personalized. Maybe with tokens and stuff like that. It’s better than nothing. And it’s good like that. This is what we’ve had up until like 2026. AI powered is now the new paradigm. Can respond personalized, knows their history, knows the notes, has a conversation with them, can adjust and adapt.

JOHN CLENDENNING
55:50

It’s a training issue. Everybody thinks that AI is scan your website. I now have a chatbot that’s not. Hey, go read my website. Can you now answer all my phone calls? Sally who just walked in the office this morning, if it wouldn’t work for Sally that just walked in the office this morning, why is it working for AI? Good question. Right. Has to be trained. It’s got to feel human, not robotic.

JOHN CLENDENNING
56:14

But when it does that, you can scale personal touch at scale and you can find data. You can find out when people and the AI can help you. Hey, by the way, I’m noticing at this point we’re getting drop off. I suggest we change to that. That’s good data when it’s AI powered properly. Stay top of mind with AI powered follow up. Right. Hey, just checking in.

JOHN CLENDENNING
56:36

Can we help with your carpet cleaning project? Yes, I’d like more information. Great. Here’s a few options that may be a good fit for you. Off you go. Right. AI followed follow up. Without sounding robotic. How smart AI nurture works.

JOHN CLENDENNING
56:51

Respond within minutes. Right. Automation can do that as well. Personalize to their situation, ask them questions, triage the situation. As they say. Educate without selling. Because it’s trained on education like it’s. It’s.

JOHN CLENDENNING
57:03

You train it, somebody trains it, we train it. Right. It’s not trained on, you know, here’s my pricing. You want a job, right. If it doesn’t know, it doesn’t know. Educate without selling. Nurture as. As a.

JOHN CLENDENNING
57:16

At perfect interview intervals, all self adjust. That’s a built out system that needs to be thought through. Book appointments, I would say suggest book appointments for somebody to call them back or to do a quote. You don’t want AI trying to book Tommy the tech an hour south of town, 45 minutes north of town and back 45 minutes south of town as the three jobs today. Right. So I put a human in the loop. Have the conversation, but have AI do follow up, stay in touch, hand off to a real person who knows how to close, who knows how to sell, who knows how to book. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
57:54

What it looks like. I saw your pet owner guide. Do you handle cat urine? Absolutely. Cat urine is one of our specialties. We use three enzymes, process, neutralize, blah blah blah blah. You can even say hey, check out one of our happy customer stories right here. Take a quick read through that. What do you think? Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
58:10

Did you get a chance to read that? Did that link come through? Awesome. Right? You can train all that. Oh, got it. Two cats living room. I’ll send over our pet urine treatment guide and pricing. Sarah would Thursday or Friday week for a quick in home estimate. All done with AI. Lead nurturing is about this, right? 50% of sales stop after the first contact.

JOHN CLENDENNING
58:34

65% I’d say that’s even higher. Call back the next day. 80% never make it to day three. And real sales for real customers tend to happen for lifetime clients way down. Contact 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. So maintain a lead database somewhere somehow. Is your active lead list 10 times bigger than your customer list? If it’s not, that’s a good sign. You don’t know what I just said.

JOHN CLENDENNING
59:09

Do you have an active lead list 10 times bigger than your customer? Are you Capturing all the sources your leads are coming from. Do you know where they’re coming from, what’s working, what’s not, how it’s all integrated. Are you attributing first attribution, last attribution? Do you know what I just said? What contact information you’re capturing from each source? What defined lead nurture steps do you have in place for each contact source? There is different sources that are different parts of the funnel, different ways to talk to people. How many initial touches? Email, text message, live phone call. Right. Visit, you know, time, time to visit, one to three weeks and then you do a site visit, agree to buy, stay in touch, finally get, get the job. That might be the case. You need to build that manually or automated.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:00:05

Like manually could be Keely in the office was one of the girls I had Cheryl that started Mike college intern. That started when I was like 1997, 98 somewhere in there, probably 98. Cheryl is the college intern from Conestoga College that came in for half a day. Right. Helped me as we built out all these systems and all this stuff answered the phones work. Yeah, all that stuff. Right. We, we.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:00:30

And a lot of it was manual. We’re talking 1998. Right. Then we ended up with Sheila for a good number of years. Really helpful into a little bit more automations as the 2000s rolled out. Tasha eventually Heather. That was the 30 years of my company with different people running, helping run the office. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:00:55

Strategic follow up with all, all ideal inquiries. Add ongoing forever follow up for success. So strategic follow up with all inquiries, all qualified inquiries. Then a forever follow up forever until they buy or die. I love that really crude phrase, you follow up until they buy or die. Leverage automation so you’re not anything you repeat you can automate. So leverage it. Embed AI in 2026 and beyond where you can, we built a tool called Carpet Cleaner Lead Pro.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:01:35

If you’re a lead automation assistant, every single communication source can come into Carpet Cleaner Lead Pro. All predefined by 30 years of great marketing in workflows, behind the scenes and pipelines and, and all of that kind of stuff. But it’s a great place to have automation, have customer interactions. And now we’re starting to build AI as an option into that system as well. Right. So automate every lead flow, all the activity, all the contacts, all the pa. Like where did they come from? How do you score them? Where do they go? What’s it all about? Right? What reporting, spitting out the back end. Are you staying in touch with these people? For the long term, right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:02:19

Smart messaging start and stop specific campaigns simply by moving them from what stage are they in, where are they at, what did they follow up with, what did they say, did they do anything? Did they not do anything? You know, what is your, your, your chase sequence? Chase sequence is your first two weeks and that’s where you’re staying in touch very, very rapidly for the first week, a little bit slower for the second mafia offer. And then you put them into a long term nurture and if they show back up again, you put them back into a chase sequence. That’s new now because you know they came back around because you already have them tagged for that. Right? So campaigns include emails, sms, ringless voicemails, reminders to give them a real call. Messaging is personalized using smart automation and tokenization. AI voice can then AI and chat can be added on as add on services, handles inbound and outbound calls. When the phones are busy or after hours, I still think humans should answer the phones, but when they’re busy, this should be the third number rollover instead of a answering machine, right? Trained to be lifelike, answer questions, qualify inquiries, all that kind of stuff and be fully trained as if you were training somebody to come into your office and answer phones properly. That training is not a minute chat assistance built on the same knowledge base and database, but able to engage back and forth.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:03:43

And you want different chat assistants. You want a chat assistant for the QR code, right? Scan this QR code for safe and healthy home. Hey, what about safe and healthy are you interested in? Off it goes and then, oh, you, you’d like somebody to pop out, you know, you know, down the conversation. Is this something you’re looking to solve now or later? Oh, okay, later, sure. Let me send you some more information about customers just like you that have loved our services and why our found. Why like why we started the business. Founder story, why we offer the risk reversal guarantee. We do.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:04:10

What’s unique about us? Compelling sales proposition. The foundation of any good business is being different than everybody else so that the marketplace knows you’re different. If you’re the same, why would they buy from you? What’s so special about you, right? And then you seamlessly integrate that with your CRMs and stuff like that. The whole idea is to sync back and forth as much as possible with your current booking systems and stuff like that. Automated hot lead, follow up, multi channel follow up. Somebody comes in, they’re interested, called them cold leads, right? They’re not frigid cold. They don’t it’s not. They don’t know you, right? But they’ve entered your world, downloaded a guide, looked at something, did something Automate multi touch again.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:04:54

That’s that, that first initial chase sequence over two weeks. Automate with a mod mafia offer at the end of that two weeks. Can we get them to make a decision right now? Get me in the home. One free room of cleaning. Ideal neighborhoods. You can have zip codes put in street like with automations and A.I. now you can know what street they’re on. You can know if it’s a good neighborhood or not.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:05:13

You can identify that. You can have, you know, I know roofing companies that can, you know, use satellite photos, Google Earth and say hey, I know that you’ve got, you’re in a 5000 square foot home, 1500 square foot home, whatever. Here’s some estimates pricing. But they can also say we don’t work, we only work with million dollar homes. That’s at least 5,000 square foot home, right? And they just dismiss the rest and they know their market, right? Automate forever follow up until they hot and buy. So future job pipeline, a system that works today and builds tomorrow. Today’s lane, right? Facebook ads go the instant response book in five minutes. They already know about you, they’re interested you’re.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:05:55

They hop on the phone with you, you book them, right? Just you’re straight, you’re straight through, straight path to a sale. That’s not every day, that’s not every customer. But there’s people that already know enough about you. My friend told me about you. I checked out your website, all right? And next thing you know, they’re ready to book. Why? Because you’ve already gotten into their head just behind the scene. You didn’t know it yet. They only showed up in your awareness, in your world right now.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:06:19

But they’re ready. They’re ready. They just need to be taken over. The hump, right Tomorrow’s lane is they don’t know you, you yet, right? Chat GPT just recommended you and three other people as good for pet stains, as good for Berber carpet, as good for Haitian cotton couches. Because you have articles all over your website and in social media about happy customers who you solved Haitian cotton couch problems for. That’s the only way they know. And every other derivative and alternative. Think of everything, right? Viscous rugs, like, like what is it, what is it that you do? Do you have a story about all of it? Can you eventually get stories about all of it? Can you teach the marketplace that people love you? For all of these things, right? And lead magnets.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:07:05

And in it, they get into your world. Opt in. Get the guide. Start a conversation with AI. That’s an opt in because hey, what’s your name? What’s your email? Cool, let me send that over. Guess what? They just opted in by chat. AI nurture sequences. Local market, Local story marketing.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:07:19

Local story marketing. It’s what Google’s AI has just shifted to. I’ve been talking about this for four years now. It’s what human brains want. They want to be hearing stories about happy customers. Now AI Google saying, you know what, if it’s not unique, not local, not about you, I don’t care. As of May 8th forever. Follow up future job spot.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:07:37

Most cleaners chase today’s lead. Smart cleaners build tomorrow’s jobs database Gold mine. Old estimates, never booked. Are you following up with these people? There’s hidden revenue here. Or is that. Well, I’ll get around to it someday, right? We’re really busy. Are you really busy to the point of growing a million dollar cleaning business? Are you really busy? And at the end of the year, the number’s still the same. That’s not really busy, that’s just bad systems.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:08:06

Read the E Myth Michael Gerber. That will solve that one. Past customers inactive like database reactivation, QR scans and web leads. Referral partner list. Do you have a referral partner list? Are you growing? Well, I got a few real estate agents that refer me. Okay, so you’ve been in business about six months? No, 20 years. A few. Are you getting a few new ones every month or every couple months? That’s the business you’re in.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:08:35

Some of them move. Stop being a real estate agent, interior designer, maid service flooring store, furniture store, veterinarian, you know, you name it, you go down the list. The referral partner list can be really long. But they can also leave the property manager that has five, six buildings moves out of town or gets fired. Your referral partner list needs to be growing, not shrinking and not stagnant. Social media engagement, right? Comments like shares. Are you in all the Facebook groups for local business owners, local homeowners, all that kind of stuff, Right? Hopefully neighborhoods and current jobs. Did they drive past your van? Do you have a yard sign in the street? Do you know what I just even said? Do you know what that even means? If you don’t, you should be having these things in place.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:09:18

You’d be thinking about these things. You should be learning these things. The very best cleaners do this. All the rest don’t and most businesses don’t even understand that. They don’t even see this stuff. Well I looked at their website. It doesn’t say that they put an A frame at the end of the street. No, what does is the A frame at the end of the street.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:09:42

Another house is being made safe, healthy and beautiful down this way with a big arrow and a QR code for safe and healthy home. Scan here and your logo just like the real estate agents have a big A frame pointing down to the open house. We can learn from others. A well nurtured database beats a cold ad campaign every time. My Google Ads are running cold. Yep. How many people know you before they see your name on Google Ads? If they don’t know like and trust you, your Google Ads lucky to do a three to one ROI. Probably two to one terrible.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:10:14

If they know like and trust you, five to one ROI. If your average job is 500 bucks and they know like and trust you and your booking rate is now 55% there’s a gold mine. You’re just adding more people to a bucket that isn’t leaky. We talk about this every single week on our coaching program. The system that never forgets a prospect so you don’t have to Hot lead Blitz Day one to three Education phase Weeks two to four Month two to three Story phase project stories before and afters happy customers testimonials Right. Four to six Re engagement Still thinking about it. Imagine talking to somebody four to six months later that reached out to you in December. Thinking about carpet cleaning, thinking about getting their tile cleaned and you’re still talking.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:11:03

Hey, you still interested? Good businesses actually do this manually or automated or with AI now, right? Quarterly engagement, seasonal offers, newsletters, loyalty rewards. Things you do from six months on. There’s a map for this. This isn’t just made up. This is actually a blueprint. Part of a blueprint. Most cleaners stop following up after one day. Like think of what he just said.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:11:33

This is what you can do to build a million dollar business. Half million dollar business, lifestyle business. Run it from the golf course when you’re 50 business and most cleaners stop following up after one day. Become the cleaner they already know. Like and trust me, no consistent social media presence in the Again doesn’t mean posting on your yes. Do you post on your social media? Absolutely. Does anybody find it? Absolutely not. You know that this isn’t magic.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:12:02

How do you have a consistent social media presence that they find? Think that one through. I’ve got answers Totally different. Webinar, local Community group participation before after project Stories. AI in the real world. Out Tell the stories. Van visibility, QR codes all. I drive around in a white van because my HOA will not allow me to put a magnet or put a. Put a.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:12:25

Wrap a van. Heard that one before. More than once. I can’t drive my van home with wrapping on it because my HOA doesn’t allow it. Okay, park your van away from. Find. Find somebody who’s going to charge you 100 bucks a month to park your van at night, lock it up, pull it in somewhere, do what you need to do. Rent a locker, pull it in, jump on your scooter and drive home.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:12:54

The van will generate you thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Without it, you’re not trying to run a business, you’re trying to run a hobby. You sit in a driveway with a white van and a magnet on it. You have just repelled the neighbors, not attracted them. Right. We gotta try harder. Like, how do they like you? Authentic personal story, personality and stories. Are you telling your story or we do great carpet cleaning, we’re number one.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:13:25

That’s not a story. So, yeah, Nancy Jones called or Mrs. Jones called. Right. She just moved into the area and rent or bought a house. Everything seemed good. Turned out the old homeowner had put plug ins everywhere. Once the smell of plug ins left, the smell of the dog showed up.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:13:44

They gave us a call. We identified all kinds of areas. We peeled back some of the carpet, cut out under pad, found the big areas. I think they must have had a large lab or a large dock. We were able to treat the subfloor, seal it in, replace the under pad, do the enzyme treatment and the oxidizing treatment on the urine and save the fairly new carpet in really great condition just with a bad smell. How many urine jobs does that land you? Or do you go, I charge $30 a room to spray an enzyme for urine. That’s nice. We used to charge $75 for an area, about 10 baseball size spots.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:14:19

Average urine job between 500 and $2,000 to restore carpets with a guarantee. There’s a difference. You can do the better and the better customers want. The better the crappy customers want, the cheaper. Computing involvement, helpful tips and education. Transparent pricing information. Right. Again, I don’t agree.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:14:45

In putting your actual final prices on the website, you have to qualify your pricing. But I can give them tiers. Good, better, best how, how pricing works. Discount guys can only do this. Premium guys can also do this. And this is this. You have to decide what you Want real photos of real teams, real behind the scenes everywhere. Take every baby lying on carpet and family and dog sitting on couch off of everything you’ve got and then see what you’ve got naked and fill it with real stuff.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:15:15

5 star Google review strategy testimonials from customers, real customers. Video before and after transformations guarantees all that kind of stuff. Visibility creates familiarity. Familiarity creates bookings. Show up where they where they they’re. They’re ready, right? Facebook and Instagram stay in their feeds. YouTube, right? So you want to be on Google when they’re ready. When they’re ready.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:15:47

That’s what. Sorry, my eyes gloss. Show up when they’re ready on Google on the places that people go to when they’re ready. Show up in their feeds, right? So join those groups. Share out happy customer stories. Don’t share out ads and discounts. That’s not the business you’re in. YouTube videos how to you know how to Helpful tips and projects stay in their inbox when they when they arrive to you.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:16:10

Yard signs, door hangers mail. If they come to your website and leave. If they’re in the ideal zip code, mail them. There’s a there’s tools for that as well. Not cheap, not overly expensive, but there’s systems involved when you get to scale that help you get to that next level and reviews and referral social proof everywhere you don’t need to be everywhere you need to be somewhere consistently in front of all your ideal clients. Smart Cleaner Playbook the cleaner who wins the next three years is building their pipeline today. Running Top of Funnel Lead magnet campaigns Top of Funnel. Do you know what that means? Posting local story marketing content weekly.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:16:54

Google’s just algorithm just changed May 8th. That said, everything John’s been saying for the last two or three years is actually three or four years project capture stories we call it is actually real. Activate old estimates and past customers. Use QR codes on vans, signs and invoices. Running AI nurture sequences that set it and forget it. Build forever follow ups into your lead sources. There we go. Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:17:22

Another 75, 80 minutes or so in. We’re now ready to recap why ReadyNow leads are only 3% of the real growth. You’ve learned that now. How to capture today’s buyers while building tomorrow’s pipeline line. We’ve learned that now. How lead nurture did you guys get that right? Fill in the blanks. How lead nurture turns curious homeowners into future customers How AI powered Follow up automation manual Good Better best help Stay top of mind without Adding more mid work would be AI automation and then AI. Right? So what are your takeaways? First you know we got an AI, the ultimate AI marketing checklist.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:18:03

Go to our website, it pops up, fill it out, fill out the form, get the checklist. See how close you guys are to being the ultimate AI marketing checklist. Are you ready? Right. But implementation is everything. Take away at least three actions most people like. Most people fail because it’s not because there’s not enough ideas. I just gave you a whole ton of ideas. You just don’t execute.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:18:24

Right? The key to growth is taking immediate action on one high impact shift right now and continuing to do that. Put it on the list, get it in place, lock it, load it, systemize it, Go next, go next, go next. Right? That’s how you grow a business. It’s hard to do it on your own sometimes but you’ve got to work your way through it, right? Marketing is not a side activity. It’s actually the business you’re in. If you want to grow right, you can get lucky sometimes. You can buy a legacy business that has a huge history until people start dying off and you don’t get new referrals and you’re not showing up anywhere. You know you don’t have anything to sell when you go to sell.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:19:02

Well, I don’t know if I’m going to want to sell. Why? Like where’s your equity in your business? You bought a home to, to eventually get the equity out of it or at least transfer it off to your next right. You didn’t buy a business to get a job. Right? When you have a corporate job you’ve got a, you got a pension, a retirement, a 401k. When you own your own business you don’t that this is your business, right? You are the marketer of cleaning services. If you market every single day you are in that top elite tier. Right? The best businesses are not the best operators. They are the best marketers who then need to refine operations to scale, make sure they hire the right people, make sure they show up, make sure they have clean uniforms, make sure they know how to talk to customers, all that kind of stuff.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:19:45

Commit one major marketing shift this week and every week commit to it. Because reminder, AI is now the great equalizer. AI is now here I’ve been talking, I’ve been saying this for a year. March of 2025 is the first time I showed this slide anywhere. That was the two day private intensive. 275, 95, 297 with me and Jeff Cross from Cleanfax about the great AI shift coming this is from there AI commoditizes business that failed to differentiate. Everybody looks the same because you you can just do more with AI. If you don’t stand for something different and compelling I will blur you into the competition.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:20:29

Why should they pick you over you, over you, over you? No idea. You don’t stand out, you don’t tell them why. The winners will be authentic trusted businesses nurturing human relationships. Wow. I said that in March of 2024 5. That’s the algorithm. May of 2026. Interesting.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:20:52

Being the best known cleaner wins over having discounts and deals 100% of the time. A strong offer helps convert leads but omnipresent brand gets the call first. And an offer is not a discount, it’s it’s more for as a bonus if no one knows who you are a great offer doesn’t matter at all. Customers don’t buy based on price at alone at all. It’s actually number five, six, seven on the list. When you do all computer consumer studies it’s not number one. We think it’s number one. We market.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:21:21

Oh I all my customers care about the price. Is all your marketing price based? Yep. Gee, I wonder why you attracted people that cared about price. What about the millionaires that just got a $2,000 $3,000 cleaning today? Did they call you? No, none of those people call me. They call somebody. Customers don’t buy based on price, they buy based on respect. Price shoppers. There’s a K shaped economy going on.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:21:48

People that the majority of the mass middle as they call it are more stressed about money than ever before. 2008, 9, 10 recession feeling all over again. They got job issues, they got this, they got that right. Loyal customers with discretionary income aren’t deciding to not clean something and put it off. They’re not deciding to kind of wait a little bit longer. They’re deciding to clean and maintain the stuff they have. Are you targeting these people because they value your trust? Right. They’re repeat and referrals.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:22:27

Which one do you attract? There’s an exact blueprint for this. We talk about it every single week on the Blueprint for Success. It’s part of our coaching program. Just wanted to put it out there. We talk, we mentioned this. Now 2026 was the line in the sand year go down in history. The history books will talk about it. That this was the year that agentic showed up that AI went to scale.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:22:49

I’ve been using AI for 4 years over 4 years, like year or two before chat GPT came out right? This is now. It’s replacing jobs. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the future. It is not just a tech bubble. It’s not the dot com crash. It is a, an entire new industrial class and not entire new operating system for the planet. What’s happening behind the scenes? In my world, I run the AI Marketing Experts podcast, one of the co hosts every Friday as well. We are deep in the weeds on this.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:23:21

What is happening behind the scenes will scare the crap out of you. So the way people buy work and experience life has changed, has changed forever. They don’t Google search carpet cleaner near me. They ask long winded questions and they need authentic proper answers and AI needs to find those. So we do offer spots from time to time. Reach out to us by application only, but our blueprint for success coaching. We provide a lot of the stuff we talk about as kits. It’s not giving you the fish, it’s teaching you how to fish so that you know how to do it.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:24:07

But it’s all of it tied together in a community of people that growing together and love it. If you need a conversation about any of this, if you’re actually serious about growing, want to grow a business, want to kind of get from where you are. There’s a lot of stuck levels in carpet cleaning. That hundred thousand, 150,000 is a stuck level that some people never get past. You know, I did 30 years ago in 1996, a year into the business, past 10,000amonth and scaled. But a lot of people even in 30 years later hit that 250, 300,000 stuck level, can’t get past it. Half a million, that 500 to 6, 600,000 stuck level. And just like the stock market, if you stay stuck, it’s called capitulation, right? You do something, you have you do something change to bust out or you eventually drop.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:24:55

Those are only two options. You don’t stay stuck forever. You might be riding it for a couple of years, but it doesn’t last forever. It goes one way or the other. The market will move around you and if you’re not willing to adapt, it goes one way or the other. So we talk about that. You can go carpet cleanermarketmasters.com schedule team will reach out to you, have a little bit of conversation about your business, what you’re looking to do. We’ll have a conversation, either phone call or a zoom call depending on where you are in your business.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:25:21

And we’ll Talk about some of this stuff. Are you ready to make the change you need? Are you ready to be part of that smaller group that does things differently? Or do you just want more leads into a leaky bucket? Your call. Anyways, hope you found this valuable. We’re going to wrap it there. I’d like to be done in about 90 minutes or so. We’re just at that, that mark. So yeah, reach out to us, share this out to friends, you know, anybody else in the industry, stuff like that. If you found value in this, let us know.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:25:49

Right. If there’s something, take the transcript of this, talk to your favorite AI agent and say, hey, based on what John said and what I do, what are some things I can change? Right. I’m here to help. So jump on a call, let’s have a quick consult, see where you’re at. Right? It’s not a sales call. It’s not a sales call. I charge for consulting. This is an opportunity to get a, you know, a one on one and deep dive into your business and see if there’s things that can be fixed.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:26:14

So go check out the podcast AI or the AI Marketing experts podcast for sure. Carpet Cleaner Success podcast. Some really great interviews from really great carpet cleaners. If you’ve got a good story to tell that’s good in your marketplace as well storytelling, jump on the podcast, go to carpet cleanersuccess.com enroll to be a guest. We’ll give you some great marketing for free in your local marketplace and we’ll share it out for other people to hear your story as well. So kind of win, win for everybody. So lots of things in our world. But yeah, stay in touch like share, subscribe, all that kind of stuff and we shall see you next time.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:26:48

Take care.