What You Must Know About Building Your Brand for Carpet Cleaning Success

Differentiation and consistency are key. Without a clear, unique identity and aligned messaging, your business gets lost in the crowd and struggles to build loyalty.

Jen Crego [00:00:00]:

The other side that I want to mention though, which is I think not talked about enough, is what it does for your team, for your business. When they know your brand, like they’re number one, able to represent your company, your business far better than they could before because they know what’s important to the company from the, from the brand’s perspective. They’re not trying to make things up on the fly because yeah, it’s already established, it’s already documented. One of the, the biggest frustrations for employees is confusion.

John Clendenning [00:00:46]:

Yeah.

Jen Crego [00:00:47]:

Whether it’s confusion with their job, confusion with the company, confusion with, you know, other people that they’re working with. Confusion. That is a, that’s a stress point that like it’s, it’s hard to get over that if you’re an employee and you, and you are surrounded with confusion in the business, even if you don’t name it that, even if you don’t know that that’s what it is, you just like don’t really know the things. Just, that’s just a big stressor. And so from an internal perspective, internal meaning, you know, inside the business, when your brand is solid and your team knows, you know, all of the things, they statistically enjoy their jobs more.

John Clendenning [00:01:41]:

Yeah.

Jen Crego [00:01:41]:

And when they enjoy their jobs more, they do better and they do better. Customers like them better people, you know, and so like just from every perspective, a brand is done well. A brand is really happy.

John Clendenning [00:02:42]:

Hey. Well, welcome everybody back to another exciting episode of the Carpet Cleaner Success podcast. If you’ve been following along these podcasts, we have lots of great information, master classes and then interviews with successful cleaners and interviews with very smart people that help us all grow our businesses better and ideas that we, we need to have in place. One of the things that is really happening that I hear from every single day now I am on the phone literally daily, not just with cl, but potential clients, carpet cleaners in general, on forums, on chat groups, on panels, all that kind of stuff. And the word of the day is that holy crap, the ground is moving underneath us right now. If you think you’re running a decent enough business and you’re willing to keep it the way it was, you’re in serious danger. The economy, people are slower at spending and pickier than ever before. That middle class is kind of going, ah, the price of eggs, ah, the price of mortgage, all that kind of stuff.

John Clendenning [00:03:47]:

And it isn’t planning to get better any anytime soon. Right. AI tech, automation, robotics is changing the behavior of our consumers, the behavior of the marketplace and the way businesses should run a business. If you’re not changing, if you’re not feeling this massive need to change, hopefully this is going to be a wake up call for you. And we’re finding that consumers are more overloaded because there’s more people losing their jobs and jumping into careers like cleaning, home cleaning services and things like that because they see it as an early or an easier barrier of entry. So what I’ve done is I’ve brought my great friend Jen on. So Jen is the person I go to when I need advice on what the heck is branding, what are we going to do? Like what does this whole thing mean? Because I like you went, yeah, you know, brand branch man, you know, whatever. And what we know now, not just realizing we know now is brand has always been important.

John Clendenning [00:04:44]:

It has been the best brand with the best reputation in a marketplace wins. But in today’s day and age, without it you lose. Like you’re losing. So I’d like to introduce you Jen, say hi to the audience and hello everyone. Thanks for having me. Let them know a little bit about you.

Jen Crego [00:05:04]:

Yeah, so like John, I have an agency too, I have Margo where we serve aesthetic and wellness brands, wellness businesses. And yeah we, we use a lot of brand in that area. I don’t know, I don’t know how much you guys know about that, that it’s a very cont, very competitive market which I know, I’m sure carpet cleaning is too. So we have a lot in common there.

John Clendenning [00:05:35]:

Yeah. And I would say that your industry, because of your history and your industry, like one of the things that gravitated you towards that crowd, those people is because of your brand and branding. Acuum. Because it’s in carpet cleaning. Yeah. We all know the franchises, the chem drives, the Zerorez the again they kind of get brand. The rest of us, we probably think brand is a business card. Right.

John Clendenning [00:05:58]:

So I guess the question is we, when you look at local business right now, right. Just general don’t, don’t worry about the cleaners or home services. Like I’m sure You’ve hired people to come around the home and do different things and stuff like that, whatever it might be. But when you look at, you know, just the landscape of local business in general, what do you see that’s. That’s been changing, like, month by month, more so than ever before. That maybe took years for things to change. What have you kind of seen? Just like, just a couple things that might pop to mind that, like.

Jen Crego [00:06:33]:

Yeah, yeah. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is search. I mean, it’s so different now compared to what it was a year ago or even six months ago when, I mean, it used to be that, like, no one didn’t use Google. I mean, Google has become. It’s a noun, it’s a verb. It’s a. You know, like, it’s. When we’re searching, we call it Googling.

Jen Crego [00:07:01]:

Right. I mean, it’s, it’s been the, the. The. Just the base of everything that we know when we do online searches.

John Clendenning [00:07:13]:

Yeah.

Jen Crego [00:07:13]:

And that’s just not the case anymore. And now a majority of, of. Of people, we, yes, we still use Google, but right now we’re talking about AI and the platforms changing how people are searching. We’re talking about new generations coming into their era, their time of being, you know, adults. It’s like, you know, first we had the, the millennials, and now we’re getting to, you know, Gen Z and, you know, so. And they search for local businesses in ways that, as a Gen Xer, like. Yeah, it’s just, it’s very different now. And it’s, it’s, it’s changing daily, it seems like.

Jen Crego [00:08:07]:

So that’s.

John Clendenning [00:08:07]:

Yeah. And I guess the way to put it is AI isn’t just coming, it’s here. Oh, it’s already here.

Jen Crego [00:08:13]:

Oh, yeah.

John Clendenning [00:08:13]:

It’s rewriting how people choose, as we just said. On the other side of that, AI is also, as I like to say, has become the great equalizer. Right. So I just talked to one of our clients who is starting up a, an entire. Like the son of the owner, actually, he’s starting up an entirely different business. Nothing in the home service or cleaning industry. And he said, hey, John, you got to check out my new website. Like, we’re just having a meeting about him and his dad and the business and the, the, you know, the trucks and crews they have on the road and stuff like that.

John Clendenning [00:08:43]:

And he kind of helps out dad and stuff like that because he, he gets this stuff, but he, he does something entirely differently. And he showed me his new website, and I’m Going, that’s beautiful. Well done. He goes, yeah, I just spun it up in AI. He goes, now he’s good at AI. Like, he understands it. He’s, he, he is a marketer first. He’s like a he.

John Clendenning [00:09:00]:

He follows people like Alex Hermosi and Gary Vaynerchuk, and we have those kinds of conversations, he and I, on a regular basis. He’s off in a more of a tech, tech world. But he’s saying, yeah, right now, this website for me is starting to gain traction already because it’s light years better than the other ones that are around. And I said, for how long do you think that’s going to last? He goes, until the other guys figure out that they either their web marketing company realizes that the competitors are getting better and better and better. So you can’t stay with the old, you know, 20, 30, 40 words and stock photography on a page. You have to put what is actually working now, and you can use AI to help with that. So what we see is there’s a lot of old dog business owners, like, figuring that what worked a year ago, two years ago, 10 years ago is still working now, and it’s not, it’s breaking. So what do you think? What do you think causes maybe that idea of being asleep at the wheel more so now because of how fast things are changing again, not just the consumer in the search, but even, even business owners understanding that their competitors are just there, like they’re, like they’re running past them already.

Jen Crego [00:10:16]:

Yeah, I think that marketing is such a unique industry to be in. I mean, we’re used to things changing a lot and, and it’s just a very dynamic field to where you can have one thing changing at one cadence while the other wheel, the other thing is changing at a different cadence. And we’re used to managing all of those, those things. And then with AI coming in and it’s kind of blown all that out of the water as far as, you know, how fast it’s going. But most industries, if you remove the marketing side of it and you’re just looking at the job of what is being done, they move much slower at a much slower pace. And so they think that, I mean, the businesses that I talk to, a lot of them think like it’s. You’re exaggerating, Jen. Yeah, like that’s not happening.

Jen Crego [00:11:19]:

That’s not how fast it is because they, they see their, their own, you know, rate of change in their industry and try to apply that to technology and AI and marketing, and it’s just it just doesn’t work. It’s so different.

John Clendenning [00:11:39]:

Yeah. And you and I have again that’s the other thing. So I give the people that know I’ve been in the industry for over 30 years ever since like actually even longer than that. I was, I started a window cleaning company in high school, the last year of high school and then went on the road with bands for a while. Did window cleaning in the day or the daytime and played bands at night and then eventually said okay, there go, you know, I’m settling down, I’m going to do something. And started the, the the cleaning career and built a multi million dollar cleaning company in a town of 30,000 people as the story goes. Right. So and so I have seen hundreds and hundreds of talk to thousands of cleaners seen hundreds of hundred cleaners lose years and tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars trying out bad marketing in the first place.

John Clendenning [00:12:24]:

That’s something I’ve kind of always helped with. And what I’ve also noticed even in the past is the ones that slow down to run faster. Slow down means do the right things, not try and leapfrog over the foundation. Get the core right and then build upon that core have always been the ones that scaled. It’s actually the stats are the Small business administration says 80% of all small businesses fail in the first five years. Another by the by 10 years 95% of them are out of business. 90, 99.997% of all businesses never make it to $1 million. Only $.003amillion dollar annual run rate.

John Clendenning [00:13:12]:

But the ones that do are 5,000 times more likely to go to 5 and then 10 million because they’ve once they’ve learned that they realize what they actually are, they’re the DNA of being in business is you are a marketer. First you get that right and now you create operations problems. Now you have to fix technicians and employees and phone systems like you get the operations right. And now you have as a CEO. Now you become, you know, you have to learn a new skill set yet again. Now you’ve got you know, normally by that point you might have business coaches and consultants and mentors and you’re learning finance and data because you’re running a bigger business that can get away from you pretty quickly if you’re, if you’re doing the wrong things for too long where it wasn’t as big of a deal when you were the, the guy in the truck or the person running the med spa that was pretty much the doctor themselves and maybe One gal on the phone or something like that. All of a sudden when you’ve got a big office and stuff like that, things can go south prec. Pretty quick.

John Clendenning [00:14:10]:

Right. So there is that progression. And what I’ve, what I’ve kind of noticed is that if people would slow down for a moment right now and not just kind try, try and find the next best tool that gets them a better Facebook ad or if they think that exists or, or keep jumping vendors and stuff like that without ever actually building the brand. So again, this fuzzy word of brand. So just a little bit on your experience where, where does like. So, you know, I guess, I guess we’re going to ask is, is like a lot of carpet cleaners, a lot of home cleaning services think that a brand might be that thing on the side of, on their business card or the side of their van and that’s. And maybe they wear the shirt. Oh, I’m all branded now.

John Clendenning [00:14:58]:

But brands beyond that. Right. So like we’ll kind of talk a little bit more about that later. But just give me a little quick idea of your history with why brand is important.

Jen Crego [00:15:14]:

I think that what brand really comes down to, like if I had to think of one word that says why brand is so important, it would really be differentiate. Because your brand, it is how you are seen in the world. How it’s, I mean it’s, it is everything about your company. And if you can’t differentiate, then why would someone choose you? I mean really.

John Clendenning [00:15:51]:

And, and yeah, and we’re going to talk about someone and then someone. Well, large language models AI. So even in Google at the top chat GPT owns 80% of the market share, but there’s a lot of others as well that people just talk to and ask these long rambling questions. Not carpet cleaner near me or how to get rid of pet pee or who can get rid of pet pee or whatever. It’s like, hey, chat. So you know, the dog peed on the carpet. Been doing it for a while. Kind of want to hire somebody that’s good.

John Clendenning [00:16:25]:

Don’t want to get ripped off. And this goes on like this could be this rambling thing. And us as marketers have to try and make sure that the clients show up for that in search and chat and all those kinds of places. But yeah, so we got the people and brand and we’ve got now AI which also seems to be a brand search engine a little bit more.

Jen Crego [00:16:46]:

Yes, yes, 100% yes. You know, just as people are trying to differentiate between businesses to figure out, you know what business they want to call on or hire the, the AI platforms they do the same thing. They want to know that they are surfacing is what it’s typically called now instead of like showing but just they, that they’re citing or servicing businesses that are actually legit. Because you know, it’s kind of like Google in the, I don’t know, early 2000s or something when they were, I can’t even remember which update it was that just wiped out just a ton of garbage sites because they were like, they, they didn’t appear to be legitimate businesses. And so it’s along those, those same lines. The AI, they, they can’t be showing businesses that aren’t actual businesses to people who are searching or people aren’t going to use those, those you know, chat tools to do search anymore. So yeah it, they’re definitely looking at all of the brand signals, the, the business signals and they, those signals, I mean some are on your website, some are your website but a lot of those signals are elsewhere. Yeah, brand to be elsewhere.

John Clendenning [00:18:22]:

And I think that’s a really good point because like AI buries average, right? So it varies. Average brands, new competitors can spin up quickly overnight because they can use, maybe they lean like again like the, like my client’s son who, oh look at this. Like you know, you know you got somebody who’s techie who’s 24, 25 years old, decides to come jump into the business. He’s spent the last, he or she spent the last 10 years streaming on Twitch, their video gaming. So now they, they can be social, they can be, they understand brand, they can go into chat, GPT, they can build, you know, they can kind of Alex Hermosi the crap out of their business and next thing you know, boom. They’ve jumped visibly into the marketplace faster than has ever happened before. And the old folks are like the people that have been around for a while are being caught off guard. At the same time ads are costing more because there is the cost of ads are going up.

John Clendenning [00:19:16]:

Google’s actually losing clicks. It’s getting more searches but it’s losing clicks. So Google’s losing clicks, losing money click pay per click. If there’s no click they don’t get paid. So ad costs are going up and, and conversions are looking a little bit worse because volume’s down and all that stuff. So, so y. At the same time homeowners are cutting non urgent like the, the middle class are just cutting non urgent tasks in their home. So now all of a sudden you got like Even sort of a tighter and tighter and tighter fight.

John Clendenning [00:19:45]:

This noose is getting tighter and tighter and tighter as well. And so you could say, you know, you’ve got your reviews, you’ve got your referrals, you’ve got your trucks on the road. It feels stable. Everything kind of feels the same. Maybe you’re off a little bit from last year. Maybe you’re up a little bit. Maybe what, everybody all kind of feels stable. But the problem is the old playbook is quietly already eroding right behind you.

John Clendenning [00:20:06]:

So can you imagine, like, your trucks are on the road, the phones are silent, because AI is saying, who is the best looking all over the place. Think of AI as a eager assistant you just hired from, you know, like a, you know, you got an intern from college, they’re going to, they’re going to work for you for a couple of months. And like, it’s like, hey, I need new tires for our vans. I don’t like our old tire shop or they closed up or whatever, and you walk away and, and, you know, your, your, your new eager assistant goes, okay, boss, I’ll go find some for you. They call around, they check out, they text their, their friends. Anybody know of a good tire shop? Like, they do all. They check social media because where else would they look? That’s where they live, right? Also, let me see if I got anything on my Instagram. Is TikTok talking about, like, they do all of this kind of stuff? They check Reddit now.

John Clendenning [00:20:51]:

Well, guess what? AI does. AI doesn’t go to Google and do a keyword search. When you look at the results, it’s not page one stuff. It is the ones that have happy customer stories and interactions because the AI is going, hey, who out there seems to be credible? Oh, my God, I keep seeing this, I keep hearing this, and it’s authentic. It’s not lean content. So there’s. And stuff like that as well. So the AI is just trying to act like somebody who goes, I don’t know, much better.

John Clendenning [00:21:20]:

Let me go check everywhere. Search everywhere optimization. And it’s got to be done. Well, you can’t have stock photography on your website and, you know, and babies and lying on carpets and family and dogs sitting on couches and like, all the same, we offer 100% satisfaction guarantee because your competitors offer 90%. Like, what do you say? Like, what are you saying there? Right? So you have to have a compelling reason why you’re different. You have to stand out. You want AI to find you. But even when AI gives two or Three recommendations as an example.

John Clendenning [00:21:53]:

You want the people go, oh no, I’ve heard of ABC Carpet cleaning. Call them. I’m gonna, that’s the one I want. Because they’ve also seen you offline that your brand is not just on the Internet. Your brand is in the mind share of your audience. Who is interested in your ideal audience. So if that’s golf course road people, you know, 55 plus living in high end condos with their baby grand piano overlooking the river, you know, and, and, and right. Like if that’s the ideal client who’s still got money paying for these services in home services and having their, their, their people come and do their things, then they, they don’t just need to find you on Google.

John Clendenning [00:22:31]:

And they’re not just looking there, but they’re, they’re, they’re chatting with friends there. So there’s the outside of, of the whole, the outside of the whole AI world. Your brand had better be strong. And you can use AI to help build better scripts. You can use AI to help build better conversions. You can, like there’s a lot of things you can, that somebody can use it. If it’s not you, it’s a competitor that’s getting better and better and better and sharpening their saw because it just gives you that little bit of tactical advantage. But you also need to know that AI is also trying to give the consumer a tactical advantage.

John Clendenning [00:23:05]:

So those two things are kind of slamming together right now all at once.

Jen Crego [00:23:08]:

They really are. And you know, if you think it’s, if you think that the, the marketplace is competitive now, I think just wait a year, it’s gonna be really competitive.

John Clendenning [00:23:21]:

The pace of change is insane.

Jen Crego [00:23:23]:

It really is. And you know, there’s, there are, if you’re, you know, in the US there are a lot of layoffs happening like, and, and it’s getting harder and harder for people to get new jobs when they’re laid off.

John Clendenning [00:23:46]:

Yeah.

Jen Crego [00:23:47]:

And what are you gonna do if you have to pay bills but you haven’t been able to get a job? You might start a business.

John Clendenning [00:23:58]:

And so we saw that in 2008, 9 like the recession, everybody got laid off and all of a sudden every, every marketplace got flooded with more people doing those things.

Jen Crego [00:24:08]:

Absolutely. And so, you know, the, the running our businesses like status quo, that is, that will not save you, you know, in the very near future.

John Clendenning [00:24:21]:

Yeah. So let’s define a brand then. We know it’s not just a logo, it’s not just a business card. A brand is a lot more than that. Like your brand. You’re like, you like. I firmly believe that every business actually even, even just a starting out carpet cleaner. I’ve had this conversation with, with a fellow that Zach, if you’re on, if you see this Zach, hey, how’s it going buddy? Just starting out a brand new carpet cleaning business.

John Clendenning [00:24:46]:

He’d run one before but he moved to Florida and he’s just starting out and he’s like, you know, I’m kind of helping mentor him a little bit and stuff like that. And because I’m excited he knows what he wants to do and he wants to build it right this time from the ground up. Right. So it’s, we’re discussing things like okay, well who is your ideal target avatar? It’s not everybody who, who you’re actually targeting because when you speak to them you’re going to be speaking differently. Where you’re going to find them. You’re going to find them differently. The people on golf course road don’t look at thumbtack. They don’t look at Groupon back.

John Clendenning [00:25:26]:

You know, they, they, they’re not doing that. They don’t care about the three rooms in the hall for $99 Facebook ad. Right. But they do care about you and your wife and your kid in an ad saying hi, I’m Zach, this is my family. I want to be your carpet cleaner. Here’s why I’m different compelling sales proposition. Here’s why I started my business founder story. Here’s what I absolutely guarantee that if you try me, you will not be dissatisfied.

John Clendenning [00:25:48]:

Because if you, if, you know, if you’re not happy, I will be back and re clean it. If you’re still not happy, of course I’m going to give your money back. But I’ll also help you find somebody else who can get it better and cleaner so you get the end result you want so that there’s never any, you know, you’re getting what you want even if you believe I can’t deliver. Now I know I can deliver better than anyone else, but I need to prove that to you now that’s a better message then you’ve and you’ve got your logos and your, your, your taglines and stuff like that so that when you define your brand, let’s, let’s break that down a little bit. We’re just talking about the kind of story and proof and clarity and trust what all goes into it. Like what it. Why like the. From what we just talked about, your impression of what your knowledge of what brand actually is and does yeah, so.

Jen Crego [00:26:31]:

I mean a brand, of course there are lots of. Not lots. There are more of the. The technical. Like the. Technically the definition is da, da, da, da. To me, I think of a brand is. It’s almost like this is going to sound lofty, and I don’t like to use lofty language when it comes to brand.

Jen Crego [00:26:53]:

But it’s like the soul of your business. And you can’t describe a soul with a logo. You know, like a little design like that. That’s just not how it works. Now does that logo or a graphic like that, does it help inform what people think of that soul? Sure. But it is. But it’s not the soul. The, you know, the logo is not the soul.

Jen Crego [00:27:23]:

So brand is all. All the things put together. Like, like, you know, like you mentioned your positioning, your messaging, your target audience. It’s who you. Who you are, meaning who your. Your business as a business. What you’re saying, how you’re saying it.

John Clendenning [00:27:48]:

Where you’re saying consistently too. Because how many people. Not just consistent fonts like don’t. Don’t mix. Sans and sans ser. My God, seriously, people stop doing that and don’t use Comic Sans anymore at all. But that’s just a terrible font. But it’s not just like, again, even that.

John Clendenning [00:28:03]:

That make sure that your message is consistent everywhere they see it because it. And your. Your technicians are learn. Learn wording, they learn scripts. The. On the phone. What’s said on the phone is said in the house. It matches.

John Clendenning [00:28:16]:

Like, here’s why we do this, ma’. Am. Here’s what we’re all about, ma’.

Jen Crego [00:28:18]:

Am.

John Clendenning [00:28:18]:

Here’s what, you know, like, it’s like all of it, all of it ties together with when they look out this window and see the truck and when they, you know, when they hear the name in public or the, you know, the van drives by and they go, oh, those are my guys. Right. Like, all of it ties into a mental. Like, again, you said the soul. It becomes a feeling. It really Building a feeling to the right audience.

Jen Crego [00:28:38]:

Absolutely.

John Clendenning [00:28:39]:

That attracts the right and repels the wrong.

Jen Crego [00:28:41]:

Yes. And part of it, with a brand, I believe it’s. It’s that intangible. Like this is. I kind of describe it this way. Sometimes you’re. Let’s say you’re walking down a city sidewalk. I’m just outside of Seattle.

Jen Crego [00:29:00]:

So there. There are some pretty sketchy areas in Seattle. But let’s say you’re walking down the sidewalk and you see a person coming your way who maybe it looks like they’re dangerous for whatever reason. I don’t know if I, if I’m supposed to say this kind of stuff but you know, you might not feel very safe, you know, walking towards that person. You might not know why. You might just feel like, you know, there’s this and there’s that and it just doesn’t feel safe. So you cross the street, see someone else there and like almost everything is the same. Like they look the same, they may be dressed the same, but the person is just different somehow.

Jen Crego [00:29:52]:

Like they’re, they, they. You don’t get that, that bad vibe from them. Yeah, that’s.

John Clendenning [00:29:59]:

No, I love that analogy. Like we’ve got a friend, a mutual friend, he’s on our marketing podcast, Brad. And the first time I met Brad, six years ago, he’s a big scary biker looking dude. I walked up and he like I literally had to like there was the only seat left in the, in, in at the, at the Mastermind. And I’d never met him before. First time I was there he kind of looked over big scary looking guy, smiled. I went, this is going to be cool. Like I, I normally, I’m not a big guy.

John Clendenning [00:30:28]:

I kind of, you know what I mean? Like whatever. And he’s got tattoos and all that stuff. Big teddy bear. Nicest guy you ever met. But yeah, exactly. Like it’s like there was a feeling that came off of him that wasn’t like, that wasn’t the same as somebody who looks like that but also looks, you know. You know, if you looked closely you probably would expect to see like brass knuckles and blood dripping off of them as well. You know, kind of idea they just got in a fight because they just have a mean personality.

John Clendenning [00:30:53]:

Right. So. Yeah, and that kind of thing. So that’s, yeah, like that, that sentiment, it either attracts or repels.

Jen Crego [00:30:59]:

Yes.

John Clendenning [00:31:00]:

Yeah.

Jen Crego [00:31:01]:

Yes. And, and it, it sounds, or it might sound weird, but even like little things like, like the fonts like that you, you were just mentioning like serif font with the sans serifont font, stuff like that. I mean is it dangerous? Like you know, in the same way? No, but little things like that, they still give the person that uneasy feeling that there’s just not something there or there’s, there’s something that’s not quite right about this brand. And so that’s why all those little details, that’s why we nerd out on like, you know, fonts and stuff. And like ah, you can’t do that on a graphic. That’s why it’s so important because it, there’s a lot of opportunity for people to get that uneasy feeling however it comes up.

John Clendenning [00:31:54]:

Yeah. And there’s therefore there’s a lot of opportunity that for the ones that get it right.

Jen Crego [00:31:58]:

Yeah.

John Clendenning [00:31:58]:

And nowadays it’s required offline. You might not be showing up online or found or. The world of online is changing and you’re, you’re, you’re not seeing in search as much anymore because things are changing and the world’s still unstable. As we say, the sand is shifting and we don’t know where it’s going to land. Well, you better be the one that more people refer. You better be the one that the real estate agents, interior designers refer because you know they have a good feeling about you. You’ve met them, they go back and look at your stuff and go, ah, these are the kind of guys I want. They were nice when I talked to them.

John Clendenning [00:32:26]:

They have this great positioning. They’re the type of people I want in my client’s home. So I don’t care if they’re more expensive. I want, I want somebody who’s going to do the job right if I’m going to refer them. That comes through in a brand. Like a brand done well is not just the messaging, it’s the, it’s the lingo. It’s again, it’s everything that look in the feel and just that intangible at the end when you get it right, the whole thing just makes you sigh and go, these are my people. Right.

John Clendenning [00:32:54]:

For the right person.

Jen Crego [00:32:55]:

Yep.

John Clendenning [00:32:55]:

For the right target artist.

Jen Crego [00:32:58]:

Yeah.

John Clendenning [00:32:59]:

Yeah. So I’d like to say like, yeah, your brand, your brand is the clarity of who you serve, why you’re different and how you consistently show up. So both humans and now AI can identify you as the best option, bring you forward. So you know, you want to be that default choice when your ideal customer searches wherever they search. Right. So, so if that’s the case, like I think we’ve kind of really hopefully people by this point again talking to a branding expert. Hopefully you get that this isn’t just this lofty woo, woo, Maybe someday. Because someday six months from now you could be 20 years in business and six months from now out of business because things are shifting that much.

John Clendenning [00:33:42]:

This is the biggest shift in human history. We, it’s the fastest level of change. Like change is fast. This is ridiculous. And it is the big shift because it’s taking over everything. We’ve invented something that can invent everything else from this point forward as well. So it’s inventing the way we interact the way we do things as well, how work works, right? So let’s, let’s kind of, let’s kind of talk a little bit about. So if we, if we know we need it, what is a real brand strategy? Like if you need a brand strategy to then anchor everything else on so that AI can find you, so that customers can find you, when it, you know, you know when somebody mentions your name, you go, oh, like on, on Facebook and you go, hey guys, I’m looking for somebody to clean my house.

John Clendenning [00:34:30]:

I’m looking for whatever and somebody, people mention this and this and they, oh, I know those guys or whatever. That all. That’s not, you can’t just rely on guests anymore. That’s not, it’s not a thing to guess at and hope you get right. Because that can take 10, 20, 30 years. We all know folks that are, you know, 20 years in business and still the guy in the truck, lovely guy, does a great job. But wouldn’t it have been nice to take a two week holidays or two months off to, to deal with your ailing parents or grandparents or whatever and the business still ran without you, right? So a brand gives you the ability to capitalize and grow around it, right? So, so we, there’s things that, you know, the components of, of a great brand strategy that then act as a foundation. That everything else, all your marketing, everything else gets built upon is because you know what you stand for, you know what your identity wants to be.

John Clendenning [00:35:30]:

And it takes a, it takes a bit of research. So like part of it is market and competitor insights and research what else goes into it. Like if, so if we could see what the market can bear, what the competitors are already out there and stuff like that. If we’re changing our current, we’re upgrading ours, we’re getting to a better level, we’re getting better customers. We don’t want to be three rooms in a hall for $139. We want to be three rooms in a hall For 500, $600. Because that also exists in the exact same market. They’re just doing things differently.

John Clendenning [00:35:58]:

That becomes a Persona. So what else we’ve got, we’ve got market research, we’ve got competitive analysis, we’ve got Personas of your ideal customer. Might be a couple of these Personas. But that, what else do we have? Like what else becomes part of sort of building that brand strategy to start with.

Jen Crego [00:36:16]:

So that, yeah, so we, we also want to look at like what’s the brand personality and the brand voice. And so I mean that can be as simple as, I mean, just to give an example, a business that is super witty, like, they’re, how they, how they talk, how they show up, how they’re, they’re branding, like, you know, visually. And their messaging, it’s all very witty. And there’s some that are more like very professional. They would never want to have that, you know, witty messaging, you know, for their brand. So voice and personality goes into that a lot. Looking at, you mentioned competitors, you really want to look at your competitors and see, like, how are you different if you are, if you’re, if you’re looking at your business and saying, oh, like we have 20 years of expertise, fantastic. But chances are your competitor also has 20 years of expertise.

John Clendenning [00:37:35]:

Somebody does. They’re there. Yep.

Jen Crego [00:37:37]:

Yeah, it’s, it’s kind of like saying that, like, oh, customer service, like we are. We’re. Customer service is the utmost importance to us.

John Clendenning [00:37:47]:

Yeah.

Jen Crego [00:37:47]:

Nobody thinks that’s a differentiation except for.

John Clendenning [00:37:51]:

The person saying, you’re still, you’re still a commodity. Yeah, it’s like that’s an expectation by everybody.

Jen Crego [00:37:56]:

Exactly. That doesn’t make you different. And so it might be that there maybe there isn’t like one thing that you can think of that makes you different. Meaning, like, maybe you’re looking at your business and your competitors and you’re like, yeah, I’m the same. Yeah, I’m the same. But start to combine the things. Like, maybe it’s that, like going back to the whole witty thing, maybe you do have the 20 years of experience and you, you know, you do have these things that are the same, but you have these other two things that are different. Maybe they’re smaller, but they’re, but combined they’re actually bigger or that your business really is witty and that’s the differentiation.

Jen Crego [00:38:45]:

So not that it would be the only thing, but. So no.

John Clendenning [00:38:48]:

And that’s a neat one because there’s a fellow I talked to recently, Robert, who runs a multi, multi million dollar carpet cleaning company. He’s just added on flood restoration last couple years and it’s already grown to a couple million as well. Because he gets it. He’s a marketer first. Has been. He started out living in his car and, and doing cold calls for another cleaning company. And then. And grew, grew, grew.

John Clendenning [00:39:12]:

So 25 years in, 20 years of his own business and he’s, you know, multimillionaire carpet cleaning company. Part of that is also being disruptive. So Marcus Sheridan from they Ask youk Answer, and I can’t remember the name of his New book yet? It still haven’t gotten it. We’ll be getting it soon. But it talks about one of the things you have to be. One of the seven things you have to be in this new AI Age is, is disruptive. You have to stand out and be a little different and a little contrarian as well. So.

John Clendenning [00:39:41]:

And in that, like, Robert’s got Facebook ads running out there. Like, you know, there’s, there’s ads where, you know, everybody else runs, hey, you know, I’m doing something crazy. I got this super crazy discount. Robert’s about, you know, no, I don’t get a discount for you. But he’s dressed up like Hank Williams singing a song that he wrote with AI and in the ad, in the. So it stops the scroll, it’s kind of, it’s this Hank Williams standing beside a, you know, a carpet cleaning van. And, and it’s a little jingle about their company that sounds like he’s singing. And it was all done with, you know, he’s techy enough that it was done with a little bit of AI and still fits within the minute.

John Clendenning [00:40:15]:

Well, what it was was funny enough and unique enough to catch the attention. He’s got other pictures of him lying almost in a Playboy pose still with his clothes on, mind you, on top of his vans, right. And stuff like that. So Robert’s kind of like, he’ll push the envelope. He’s like, he’ll get in with influencers and, and stuff like that, local influencers, and be on video with them and. Because that is his, that is his Persona. But he’s got 11 trucks on the road. He’s got like, he ain’t the guy in the house.

John Clendenning [00:40:44]:

He isn’t even the guy going out doing quotes or anything like that. But he is the driving force behind the brand. And they are the number one brand in their town and their city, their area, and nobody can compete. He just stands out everywhere. Everybody wants to be with him. He is not worried at all about AI but he’s also leaning into it very heavily in the right way. He’s not trying to get it to answer all his calls and book all his jobs because no, there is still a human element that human needs to be involved, but it’s there as a compliment and as an add on and that kind of thing as well. So a clear positioning is like, you’re really clear on who you are.

John Clendenning [00:41:22]:

Your messaging is on point. Right.

Jen Crego [00:41:25]:

I want to just mention really quick that what’s, what’s fantastic about what you just mentioned about Robert is That, that is not going to work for a lot of people. Like, that’s what works for him because it’s, it’s authentically him. And how weird is that going to be to some people that we are saying that it’s authentically him while he’s using AI to do it. But like to someone else that, that would, you know, have other characteristics or qualities about them that, that would be infused in their brand. They will have other things that they can use AI to amplify. And so, so it’s that, that differentiation for Robert, it’s not necessarily because he’s doing those things or that thing, but it’s because he’s, he is, that’s an extension of himself, that, that it’s right for him, for his business.

John Clendenning [00:42:26]:

Yes. And when you get yours right, another client I was talking to, like, the whole reason why they got into carpet cleaning is their daughter had allergies and they, they realized they down the rabble down there and then got somebody in to clean everything, clean the house, clean the upholstery, clean the. All that just de. Dust the house. And all of a sudden, child’s allergies started to clear up. Less meds, less, less issues, all that kind of stuff. And went, holy crap, there is something to this cleaning thing. Got laid off and went, you know what? I am going to open up a healthy home cleaning business.

John Clendenning [00:42:55]:

I’m not going to be the cheapest, probably going to be the most expensive, but I’m going to target people that have children with allergies and tell my story. He didn’t even realize how unique that was, that that became his brand identity. But once you flip that script and you get this right, everything starts to change. Because instead of chasing leads, there should be no, nobody should be buying more leads. Buying more leads means that you’re not running a great company. You should be. You should have first hustle to find the right people that want what you’re offering that’s uniquely yours. And then when you’re running ads, ads are just a pool in the water.

John Clendenning [00:43:31]:

You have multiple different ads running on different places. But when people know you and then they go, oh, I know those guys. Boom. There’s your pay per click working twice as good. Oh, I know those guys. Boom. There’s your Google Maps working twice as quick. Oh, I know those guys.

John Clendenning [00:43:45]:

There’s your Facebook marketing working twice as good. Oh, I know those guys. There’s your yard signs, your vans, your door hangers, your flyers. Like everything’s worked because you’ve, you’ve identified your to the right people, your unique difference. You’ve so you got your reviews, your ads, even your, your profiles and on all your social medias all have the same trust identity. They all become you, they all show you as the obvious choice and it just, everything just anchors everything else. It becomes this omnipresence which we talk about a lot. You integrate all your marketing together.

John Clendenning [00:44:19]:

It’s not about more Facebook ads or more this or more that’s that. It’s about omnipresent. Building that foundation and then using that foundation to attract the right people, show up the right way, impress the crap out of them so much that they, you are remarkable. Which means you, they are able to remark about you remarkable. You are actually remarkable, you know, remark worthy. You’re able to remark about you because you’re that amazing. Not just as a cleaner or a med spa or whatever, but, but as anybody. They’ve walked in the door of you’re not the Starbucks gal that dismissed them and here you go, here’s your cup that we get everywhere.

John Clendenning [00:44:57]:

Now it is like you, your staff, the right people get attracted to your company. You reward the right people, you can charge the higher prices. When you get it right, everything changes. And that’s always kind of been a thing. But it’s even more so now that when the economy shrinks because unless you’ve gone through 2008, nine, 10, you didn’t realize what that was. They started turning on the money printers in 910 and they didn’t turn them off, they doubled them or 20x them during COVID It’s only recently they went, oh shit, we’re going to create an entire generational economic problem. Well, we already did. Now we’ve got to pull back, we’ve got to solve this.

John Clendenning [00:45:36]:

And solving it is painful on top of it all. So we’re as a world just trying to figure this out while we’re emerging a brand new technology and in so we get this right and we are now the only company that AI recommends. Just like Roberts, we are the only company that people recommend. When, when people see our ads or AI recommend they go, they know it. It all ties those pieces together. The phone rings, your prices are higher, jobs stick, stress drops, kind of feels good. So what like I guess, I guess so. My question to you would be when a business nails this clarity and consistency, I mentioned a couple of transformations.

John Clendenning [00:46:21]:

What else do you do you notice when they kind of, when they kind of become the default choice or it just, it just starts to fit better and everybody Starts, you know, saying, these are the guys you want. They might be a little bit more expensive, but go get your oil change there, go get your, your carpet clean there, go get your, you know, whatever there. When you get that, and AI is getting that as well, what do you notice, you know, happens when a brand is that good?

Jen Crego [00:46:48]:

First of all, when, when a brand is really that good, when it’s dialed in and you are, the, the business is, Is showing up online, not just in one place, but in multiple places online, it. It really amplifies every single dollar that you put into marketing. Like, and I wish I had the statistic with me, I should, I should have looked it up. But, like, proven that your paid ads are far more effective when you have a brand that people know about, when you have a brand that people recognize because they’ve seen you in different places. So of course, when you have all of your marketing aspects as they’re amplified from your, Your brand, you’re gonna get more people that get in touch with your business without going through your ads because they already know to call you. They already know to, you know, go to your website or, you know, or wherever. So of course that makes a difference for growing your business. The other side that I want to mention, though, which is, I think, not talked about enough, is what it does for your team, for your business.

John Clendenning [00:48:09]:

Yeah.

Jen Crego [00:48:09]:

When they know your brand, like, they’re, number one, able to represent your, Your company, your business far better than they could before because they know what’s important to the company from the, from the brand’s perspective. They’re not trying to make things up on the fly because it’s already established, it’s already documented. One of the biggest frustrations for employees is confusion.

John Clendenning [00:48:46]:

Yeah.

Jen Crego [00:48:47]:

Whether it’s confusion with their job, confusion with the company, confusion with, you know, other people that they’re working with. Confusion. That is a, That’s a stress point that, like, it’s. It’s hard to get over that if you’re an employee and you. And you are surrounded with confusion in the business, Even if you don’t name it that, even if you don’t know that that’s what it is, you just, like, don’t really know the things. Just. That’s just a big stressor. And so from an internal perspective, internal meaning, you know, inside the business, when your brand is solid and your team knows, you know, all of the things, they statistically enjoy their jobs more.

John Clendenning [00:49:41]:

Yeah.

Jen Crego [00:49:42]:

And when they enjoy their jobs more, they do better. And they do better. Customers like them better. People, you Know and so like just from every perspective a brand is done well. A brand is really.

John Clendenning [00:49:59]:

And even on a simple level it helps you with things like scripts and stuff like that. I mean just like there, it’s so many things there’s like we talk about like it’s like once you get your custom avatar, you know what words you’re going to use and now you can teach your technicians and your, the gals on the phone and stuff like that. Booking the jobs, the CSRs and stuff like that. You can teach them the lingo as well. So in my world when again running the cleaning companies I would, I, I learned this stuff. I was in the truck for about a year and a half in 95 to partway through 96. Grew in again town of 30,000 people. Shy kid was doing 10,000amonth because I learned some stuff and then learned some more and then bought out competitors.

John Clendenning [00:50:34]:

That’s another, you know, whatever. And changed. They had bad, bad branding. Brad didn’t know what it was then but I was able to start adding it into what I was doing. That was different. We were consider. I get it, I get phone calls instead of how much does it cost to clean three rooms in a hallway? It’s like hey, I understand you guys are probably more expensive than the rest. How much, how much extra would I have to pay to get you? Those would be our average phone calls.

John Clendenning [00:50:58]:

Because I was getting marketing right without realizing I was also getting brand like a unique personal brand. Right. But what it also meant was when I was teaching whether it was Cheryl, my first, my, my first receptionist on the phone that was part time at college, part time working for me way back in the day. And then Sheila and I’ve had Heather was the longest and stuff like we, we had scripts. I had, I wrote out scripts. I learned neuro linguistic programming. I wrote out scripts and ways to help help the customer overcome their biases and listen to what we had to say. So you, you, you give them what they think they they’re asking for while you weave in what they should be avoiding and, and what they like education based marketing as they call it.

John Clendenning [00:51:42]:

But one of the things we’d always say is we can’t give you an exact price over the phone because we haven’t seen your home. What we can do is give you a fairly accurate estimate. We have a couple different package options that are going to be available to you. When Joe the technician shows up, you know, when he’s there to do the cleaning, you start painting the picture of him already being there even though they haven’t booked yet because that’s again part of gets in their head part of the psychology. But you know, so based on what you’ve told me and blah blah blah, on average sizes and yada yada, depending on the spots and the stains and the size of the rooms and the furniture, you’re going to be looking at say somewhere between 250 and $500. Again depending on which package and the areas you want. There’s a morning or afternoon work best for you and you just keep rolling through. And so then what happens is the technician gets out to the job and the very odd time I was given a quote $250 firm and Joe can go well no actually ma’, am, that’s really weird.

John Clendenning [00:52:34]:

Heather would normally not say that. What she would have probably told you is that all we could do over the phone is give you a fairly accurate estimate based on average sizes because it’s site uns scene and on the day of cleaning I’m going to come out, I’m going to do a full thorough pre and literally by the time they get to that point you, every single time I would train the technician, you could watch the homeowner’s face drop and go oh my God, I did hear all of that. Because again, it’s sort of like you know, an accident happens. Whatever somebody gets, you know, you know, knocked off their bike by a car or whatever you ask the witnesses, every single witness will have a different eyewitness experience. Right? Because we don’t actually. So if connect. So if, if part of your brand gets into people’s heads and it’s your Dunbar numbers but it doesn’t really matter, they start getting into the parts of your brain where they remember you and they remember again. You can surface that by connecting.

John Clendenning [00:53:25]:

So if now all of a sudden AI knows who you are, pulls that up, you show up in the home, your person on the phone says the same thing. The, the, the once they book the job, you anchor that job by marketing to them between the moment they book and the moment you show up. If you’re not doing that like I mean marketing like we train the blueprint for success, how to market properly. But you want to be marketing at every stage business before, during, after all the way through relentlessly. And until you sell the business like this customers get marketed to for their entire lifetime. And that’s how you grow a million dollar business. Right be one of that.003%. But you know, again what happens unfortunately is a lot of businesses hear Stuff like this, and they go, that makes sense.

John Clendenning [00:54:12]:

And maybe they write a little thing down, and six months to 12 months later, I’ll figure that out next. I’m more worried about this right now. I’m more worried about this. Let me figure that out down the road. And I’m. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s ever been a good idea, because I talked to businesses that are 10 and 15 years in business, and they’re just running year one, the 10th time, the 15th time. They’ve never actually grown and learned anything. But every month, you wait, right now, competitors are training the algorithms on them.

John Clendenning [00:54:43]:

Right. People are getting this right. You’re basically the get around to it crowd is going out of business. They literally are, unfortunately, faster than ever before. The good news is, I guess there is still this window of opportunity right now to try and get in, get up, get ahead, build it right. You know, redefine what you’ve done, Even if you’re one year in business or 25 years in business. Let’s go back to the drawing board. Tear that apart and redefine that.

John Clendenning [00:55:13]:

Right. So can you. Have you ever had experience? Can you share any sort of insights or examples of somebody who maybe hesitated too long on implementing something like this and how much harder it becomes down the road, even in the old days, let alone in today’s day and age, where. Where it’s moving too fast?

Jen Crego [00:55:34]:

Yeah, I mean, I, I talk to. I talk to a lot of business owners, but I’ll. I’ll just. Most of the time it’s med spots, so I’ll. I’ll just talk to them. And there are so many med spas that I talk to who they’ve. They’ve only been in business for maybe a few years, and. And a lot of times, if they haven’t worked on their brand yet or if they thought their brand was the visual, the.

Jen Crego [00:56:03]:

The. The logo. Yeah, they’re. They are struggling to the point to where they’re like, I just need. I just need leads in front.

John Clendenning [00:56:13]:

I need leads. Yeah, that’s a good. Really. If you’re saying that right now to yourself, that is a really good sign that you haven’t gotten it yet. You haven’t figured. You haven’t put the dots together yet.

Jen Crego [00:56:21]:

Yep. I, I love the aesthetics and wellness businesses that I work with. And I. And the industry is fantastic. But there are a lot of those businesses, especially med spas, who kind of live and die by ads. Like, they just. They want leads. That’s all they care about.

Jen Crego [00:56:43]:

And that My company, that’s not our audience. That’s not who we want to work with. I mean if they want to work with, work in a better way with building a brand than we would. But because we see that that’s exactly what those businesses run into. They have to just like run ads. Run ads, run ads because they don’t have the foundation that it takes to not do that. And so it’s very expensive. Like very expensive compared to the same med spot down the street that has a brand and they’re, they’re both running ads, but one without a brand.

Jen Crego [00:57:28]:

I guarantee they are paying more for every single lead that comes in. Yeah, like so. And think about that. If you are running ads right now and you don’t have an intentional brand, you are putting more money out the door on every single click.

John Clendenning [00:57:51]:

Yeah. And not only more money out the door, your conversions are half, right a quarter. So there’s always that roi. It’s like, you know, Dan Kennedy always says he who can spend the most to buy a qualified inquiry wins because the lifetime value is what you should be going after. I’ve got one of our clients, George, who his, his highest lifetime value residential client, residential cleaning client has spent 200 over just over $200,000 in their cleaning business in the last 15 or so years. Just as the last cleaning, he did a $3200 duct cleaning job, two furnaces, big, big ass house. Like we’re talking 10,000 square feet, maybe 15,000 square foot, 20,000 square foot house, big ass house, mind you. But this person has spent you because they get their tile, they get their area rigs, they get their carpets, they get their ducks because right, that he, he was attracted to the right company and the right message and that kind of thing.

John Clendenning [00:58:50]:

So, so yeah, so the lifetime value is the most important. So even if the ads cost more because you know, for all the reasons they cost, they cost more when you don’t, they also don’t convert as well. So you’re trying to get that conversion, that return on investment. Your average job might only be 2 or $300. When you then the brand that has the best reputation in the Marketplace can charge 5, 6, $700. Add some bells and whistles that add to that, make that value even feel more special to the customer. And now you know, you can put on the corner guards and roll out the red carpet and give them a bottle of spotter and, and, and, and you know, three free spotting visits over the next year and stuff like that because you just got $800 for three bedrooms, a hallway, and a flight of stairs. Not 150.

John Clendenning [00:59:37]:

And it’s a. The customer’s more than happy to pay you that because they’re also more affluent. And that $800 ain’t that much. You know, in the grand scheme of things, they’d rather just get it solved with trust and care. And you walked in not looking like you were about to rob the place. Like everything, everything about it just felt the right way from beginning, middle, and end and then all over again. So. Yep.

John Clendenning [01:00:02]:

So I think, yeah, I mean, I think we’ve kind of nailed this. Like, if, if, if you, if this conversation hit a nerve where you’re going, holy crap, I get some of this. I get none of this. I get a bit of this. I don’t know if I’m doing this right. Whatever. That’s good. That means at least you get it.

John Clendenning [01:00:17]:

You understand that this is an inflection point in human history. Are you going out of business or becoming the one that stays in business and flourishes? There is a moment right now where that exists. You’re kind of standing at that crossroads. One path keeps you doing what you did before, and it’s going to work less and less. The other path builds and makes you work easier life, easier job, and, and puts you in the. In the driver’s seat in front of everybody else while the chaos is happening around you more and more every month. So, so one thing that we did. So Jen and I have been talking about this concept like we actually are on a podcast every single Friday called the AI Marketing Experts Podcast with a couple of other great, great.

John Clendenning [01:01:04]:

Brad was one of the ones we mentioned. Chris and, and, and Laura as well, Mark. Great marketers in their own right, their own agency. And Jen and I have kind of had these conversations for a while and how much this has changed. We’ve worked together on AI. We build AI tools all the time. We build AI agents. We work for our own companies.

John Clendenning [01:01:22]:

Like, you know, we like to work with great companies and then build great stuff that helps them grow even in better, help them build their brand, their authority and their visibility. Get the brand right. You can build the authority and the visibility in the marketplace. So what we’ve kind of decided to do, we do this with our own clients. So this is an internal process that Jen and I had a conversation about and, and kind of built out together in the background, built a product as tools, what we’re calling the local brand awareness takeover package. So as a branding expert, Jen has told me five to $15,000 is what is, is what this is worth in, in, in the real world. This is what agencies, brand agencies, Madison Avenue, those kinds of people that actually get it, know it, are, would sell something like this for Madison Avenue.

Jen Crego [01:02:21]:

I’ll just say Madison Avenue. It would be a lot more.

John Clendenning [01:02:23]:

There you go. Probably, yeah. 150,000, 1.2 million, whatever. Exactly. Right. Actually Mel, she used to, there’s, I can’t remember his last name, but she used to work at Oogle V and yeah, and she used to charge, just like charge $1,500 to have a one hour consultation for business, local businesses like after she left Ogilvy. And 5 to $10,000 just to do a basic brief. Right.

John Clendenning [01:02:46]:

Because that’s, because that was a fraction of what it would have cost and it’s still valuable for interior designers and, and you know, you name it like cosmetic surgeons, stuff like that. So, so what we’ve, what we’ve kind of put together if anybody is interested, it’s just sort of a beta thing right now. We do it with our own clients internally. So I’m just going to explain what it is, but if anybody, if this resonates with anybody, let me, me, let me share what’s available sort of as a one off. Get this right once for now and build everything out. Be up from that. Right. So what we’re talking about is getting a brand.

John Clendenning [01:03:18]:

Get figuring out your brand guide. So figuring out all of those things that differentiate you, it starts by having an actual interview. I do it as a podcast because now you can build your authority. You’ve now been interviewed on the Carpet Cleaner Success podcast. So we can, we will interview and promote that. And all those little snippets you see on social media, we’ll give those to you to promote as well. But what we’re going to do in that interview is learn all about you. Then when the interview’s over, we’re going to ask you a bunch more questions because what we’re going to do is take all of that information and then do what we normally do with our own clients.

John Clendenning [01:03:50]:

We’re going to do a deep demographic study of your competitors, your marketplace. The trends are, is it trending up? Is it trending down? Is there new industry moving in, has, you know, know like all of those kinds of things to know where the market is feeling and fitting and where you can fit in based on who you are, what you do and all of this. And then so you, you get that, that authority podcast put out in the marketplace, you get an entire media kit to set yourself up as the authority. So now every real estate agent, interior designer, all the, you know, carpet store, maid service, if you’re not a major, if you’re carpet cleaning, you want to, to partner with maid service, all of these people are going to start hearing about you and knowing about you because we’re going to show you how to share those out on social media. So I’m different and here’s why. So we have that conversation. What we’re going to take from that as well is we’ll build your entire brand guide package. So your brand positioning statement, the who you should like, who you market, your unique and compelling sales proposition, your risk reversal guarantees will come out of this conversation as well, a little bit of back and forth which then guides you to your voice and messaging guide, your visual identity.

John Clendenning [01:05:03]:

Now you’ve actually got one of those things where you know, you’re running an ad, you need a flyer, you’re doing whatever, you’re getting some postcards done by postcard gurus or dope marketing or, you know, postcard mania or anything like that. You send them the one pager, here’s my fonts, here’s my colors, like you, you now look big and fancy for one. But it’s all staying on point. You, you know what’s going to what, what it’s all going to be about and then you get what we call a brand implementation roadmap. We do this with all of our new clients, we meet with them, we have conversations, we do consulting calls, we come back with an implementation roadmap to have you go from here to being one of those 003% million dollar cleaning companies. And hey, say you don’t want to make a million, you only want to make half a million. Have three trucks on the road and you’re not in one of them and you can go golfing. That’s cool.

John Clendenning [01:05:49]:

You can be 60 years old and by the time you’re 63, 64, you work 20, 15 hours a month and the business still runs as your retirement legacy. That’s cool too. All of these things are doable when you get this stuff, right? So it includes, you know, the, the stages of growth to get from wherever you are to how to get to the next stage and then the next stage because there’s very specific things that fit in here that if you don’t know it, you’re shotgunning, you’re trying that. Oh, I think I should do this, I think I should do that, John. I think. Well, no, no, right now you’re, you’re only doing 15,000, $10,000 a month, $20,000 a month.

Jen Crego [01:06:23]:

Month.

John Clendenning [01:06:24]:

You should be spending this much of revenue on marketing. It should go to, between digital and offline. Part of it should be your database. Here’s where you need to be focusing right now. Here’s what your, your, your, your investment into your marketing is going to get you. And we know because you have the brand guide, you have the brand positioning, you’ve got the before, during and after the sale marketing moments and all of that kind of stuff all put in. And then the other thing that we like to do internally, both Jen and I have done this and, and other ones on our call is, is we use an AI board of advisors. So we have built a board of advisors with some of the smartest people that ever lived on planet Earth trained into it.

John Clendenning [01:07:02]:

So the Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet and Alex Harmozis and Gary Vaynerchuk and, and, and all like you can probably remind me a few other ones that are in there as well. And we, the board of advisors is where you would go and say hey, I’m looking at solving this problem, I need to do that. What would I do? Now we don’t run multi billion dollar companies where we can hire these people and have them on our board. But in the world of AI, when you build it on their knowledge sets and their meetings and minutes and history and books and all of that kind of stuff now you can tap into their wisdom at any time. So what we actually do is we, we would build that board of advisors and train it on your brand and your guide and your company. So take all of that data and say oh by the way, all about, just that, not about this, not about this, that, that, this one business and all of that as well. So that, and then have a master class training of how to implement all of this step by step in your business so that we record, hey, here’s, here’s phase one, here’s phase two. Here’s the material you got, here’s how you use it.

John Clendenning [01:08:08]:

So step by step implementation. So basically a business in a box kind of blueprint, kind of what franchising was trying to be for, for decades. Literally done the proper way. And then a one on one consult. I’m a $500 an hour marketing consultant, business consultant for the cleaning industry since 2007. I will give you an hour of my time included in that as well as a growth coaching. So all of this stuff you basically get the entire business layout set in front of you waiting for you and not for $5,000. That would be great.

John Clendenning [01:08:46]:

Not for $2,000, but for the price Jen and I were thinking was 497. Under $500, under the price I even charge just for an hour of my time, and you get 5, 10, $15,000, whatever value you think that that’s worth all of that stuff, but it is worth at least that. But it’s worth millions to your business if you get it right. Because the alternative is you literally fall off the map and go to zero. And that could be six months from now, that could be a year from now.

Jen Crego [01:09:15]:

Now.

John Clendenning [01:09:15]:

But you’re always already feeling it. If you’ve made it this far in the podcast and you’re understanding it, I know you’re already feeling it. The ground is shifting. Everything’s changing. The phones aren’t ringing quite as much from here. You might be getting a few more from here, but everything is moving. And do you really know what that means and where that is? This gives you that opportunity to get that. So, Jen, because we put this together and you and I, like, I bugged the crap out of you to kind of, of, to kind of help me with this and stuff like that.

John Clendenning [01:09:45]:

Anyone who’s actually listening and, and sort of ready to take control of that, what, what are your thoughts to that from the clients you work with? Like what, what do you think that, like the, the again, the people that listen to this are, are people that own cleaning businesses, carpet cleaning, maid service, pressure washing, like home cleaning services. So why do you think that this would be something that might, might be something they should consider a little bit more than not?

Jen Crego [01:10:13]:

I mean, I go back to some of the things we’ve already talked about. Like, thing, things are changing. Things are getting even more competitive every day. It’s, it’s definitely not going to get any easier. No, put it that way.

John Clendenning [01:10:31]:

We got that nailed. Yeah.

Jen Crego [01:10:33]:

Yeah. And so like, if you are new and, and haven’t really put time or energy into your brand yet, this is the time to do it. And if you’ve had a business for a long time and you haven’t put that, that dedicated effort into your brand, this, like, this really is your opportunity because what it will do for your business is like night and day compared to, you know, a business without a brand and with a brand, and if there are other businesses that are doing it and so as they’re doing it, if you’re not you, you’re. You will get left behind. Unfortunately, it is, it’s that it’s that.

John Clendenning [01:11:27]:

Omnipresence moment where we all know that plumbing company that just seemed to grow and grow and grow, and now they’re on all the billboards, they, they sponsor the hockey team, they’re on the bleachers, they’re on the back of the bus and all that kind of stuff. And then there’s a lot of other plumbing companies, but we all know Tiger Plumbing, or whatever they’re called. And it was because they understood marketing, they invested in omnipresence, and they also built a great brand. Somebody knew that back then. And, and again, if you’re that guy and you’re listening to this going, I got this nailed. And, and I’ve got it all figured out then cool. We’re trying to train the guy that hasn’t figured this out that’s in your marketplace. Because they’re like 99% of businesses don’t figure this out.

John Clendenning [01:12:10]:

Now, 5, 6, 7% of them could have skid by a bit on, you know, thumbtack ads and discount carpet cleaning and things like that. And I do text message marketing. Yeah. Well, about the fifth or sixth time. How many stops do you get? Right? That’s not a thing. That is a tactic that can be used well in the mix of a series of messages, like your dentist does. Hey, don’t forget your appointment’s coming up tomorrow. Hey, whatever, A week from now and tomorrow and all that kind of stuff.

John Clendenning [01:12:37]:

But if they start texting me every single week, remember to brush your teeth and make sure you floss, John. And it’s smile and shine week or whatever. Okay, unsubscribe. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Right? So same thing happens to us. We can’t. Like, you’ve got to be a welcome guest, not an annoying pest. You’ve got to come across as, as a friend and a thought leader and an authority.

John Clendenning [01:12:58]:

And all of that comes from first defining who you are in the marketplace and then putting all of the assets in place that support that and then layering in one at a time, the right marketing, the right poles in the water that pull some, some people over here. Some people only go over there. Some people only end up on. Get all of their, Their, their client or their, their service providers from next door. Some people only do it from Yelp. Some people only do it from asking people on, on Facebook. Some people only do it by following their favorite local influencer on Instagram who also shows them how to, you know, is the beachbody coach or the, you know, pampered chef person that cooks every night on Their Instagram. And by the way, I just had a carpet cleaner in.

John Clendenning [01:13:43]:

And here’s what he did, and here he is. Wave everybody. Well, that. That’s a paid sponsorship. Just so you know, all of that works well when you have the right defined brand in your company. You have that brand guide and then you build everything on it. And it works in the world of AI because AI needs all of that now. Because AI is trying to be a real person, not a keyword search.

John Clendenning [01:14:04]:

Right.

Jen Crego [01:14:06]:

Yep.

John Clendenning [01:14:06]:

Cool.

Jen Crego [01:14:07]:

And one more thing about why now is. Is the right time and this is the right offer. I’ll tell you. There is. I mean, of course we use AI as a tool to do some of the work on the back end, but there is a significant amount of human work that goes into a brand strategy. And I promise it’s worth more than 497, I’ll tell you that.

John Clendenning [01:14:33]:

Yeah, it’ll take way more than an hour of somebody, a person like mine’s time in the development. This. There’s a lot more that goes on to get you to that point.

Jen Crego [01:14:42]:

Point. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I know being in these kind of, you know, economic times that we’re in right now, John, you were really adamant that you wanted to keep it as affordable as you possibly could.

John Clendenning [01:15:01]:

Yeah. So the price of 1 average carpet cleaning job, really, if you think about it, because, yeah, the average carpet cleaner should be about $500. There’s 4 to $500 average or higher. We’ve got clients that are 8, $900 average residential jobs because they’ve just upped their market, got a better brand and worked. Worked through. But, yeah, so the price of one job to define the entire rest of your business, probably not a bad thing. And I know I’m absolutely batshit crazy. I was a carpet cleaner for years first, so I understand what.

John Clendenning [01:15:30]:

What I would feel was a decent enough price to pay. This is. This is kind of just a founder’s moment right now. It will not be staying at 4:97. This is just, you know, again, and this is just a podcast. We’re just having an interview. We talked about this. We put this together from stuff that we were doing internally anyways.

John Clendenning [01:15:48]:

But somewhere on the page or in the description or down below will be a link for you to, you know, just reach out and inquire about this and kind of a. Well, you know, we’ll be doing a. A couple at a time and then putting on a wait list and. And all that. We do it internally all the time for our clients. But. But for our paying clients. So we’re going to do this and including that one hour consult of how it all fits together and how you can grow a million dollar business, there is a proven million dollar growth plan.

John Clendenning [01:16:16]:

I’ve trained on it, I learned it, I adapted it and I’ve trained on it since 2007. And I’ve had got lots of friends that have made the million dollars. Lots of friends and clients. There’s lots of friends have gone well beyond. There’s other ones that say, you know what, I’m quite comfortable at 6, 7, $800,000 and taking home $200,000 a year myself. Thank you very much John. I will sit here. I never like the complacency and comfort level but everybody does their own thing.

John Clendenning [01:16:39]:

But, but yeah. So this 497 is here for now. Whenever you’re seeing this, it may be gone. If it’s, if this is months and months and months from now, it’ll be a different price or, or something like that, but it’s still something that you absolutely need in some way, shape or form. So if not now, when you know, if not this, what Ask yourself those questions and just see. But take all the information from this call and just realize this isn’t something that you slowly put in place over the next 6, 12, 18 months. Everything is moving much faster than that. So run as fast as you can in the right direction and do not run off the wrong direction and have to try and veer back because there won’t be time.

John Clendenning [01:17:28]:

It’s a weird world we’re in.

Jen Crego [01:17:31]:

Yeah.

John Clendenning [01:17:32]:

All right. Well that said, I thank you so much Jen for joining the the call. I hope they got everybody’s got a lot of value in the comments. Let me know what you thought of this, this type of, of of training and podcast as well. And Jen, and we’ll have Jen back when you know in the comments. Let us know anything else we need to know about her expertise and, and the stuff that she can bring to our audience as well. Definitely love having people on the, on the call like that. And with that said, say bye to everybody, Jen.

Jen Crego [01:18:00]:

Bye everyone. Thank you for having me take care.