Building Lasting Customer Relationships and Company Culture with Carpet MD’s Chris Sutton

Request private feedback immediately after the job, then politely ask happy clients to leave public reviews on multiple platforms (Google, Yelp, Facebook). Incentivize staff to encourage reviews at the job site.

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I was going to say there’s one other thing that really seems to separate us from our competition and that’s communication. Yeah. So, uh uh you know, we let every client know and and we follow through that 2 days before their appointment, we’re going to give them a friend of the reminder. We’re going to text them uh the day of they’re going to get a phone call when the technicians on the way and uh they’re going to get an email or a text no later than the following day just to make sure how we did. Because

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you know what? Let’s face it. I don’t care how good any company is, you’re not going to get it right every time. No, it’s just not going to happen. And we want to know and fix it uh before they’re just sitting in stew and going, I paid $500 for, you know, we we don’t want that. That’s that’s not okay with us. And so we get right back out there and fix whatever it is. Welcome to the Carpet Cleaner Success Podcast, a show created to inspire carpet cleaning business owners to build

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their own thriving residential and commercial cleaning business. Your host, John Clintenning, has built and sold successful cleaning businesses for multiple six figures over his 30-year career and is the founder of Carpet Cleaner Marketing Masters, a digital agency that turns your online marketing into a lead generation machine. Tune in as John shares proven tips, strategies, and expert interviews to help fasttrack your success in the carpet cleaning industry. [Music] Part of what we’re doing here today is

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to so like we’re an AI powered agency now. We’re using we’re using AI um a lot to build command centers and client stuff so that we don’t have like at the beginning we ask you a lot of questions then we don’t have to ask you a ton of questions after that and the nurturing process happens um going forward. So, so what that means is you guys don’t stop what you’re doing. Um, when when when a leader inquiry comes in, if they filled out a form, they might be shy. So, that’s called a um, you know, like, so

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if they fill out a form, it’s a smart connect. Let’s try and get them on the phone right now. If they absolutely if they decide to still be shy, which again, there’s a reason why people fill out chats and forms now, but a lot of us as business owners wait till the end of the day or as ad office admin people, hey, I’ll get to that after lunch, right? And we’re in a world now that when somebody sends an email or a text, um, they care about the answer in five minutes or two minutes, one minute. So,

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this is to kind of get us old dogs up to the new the new world where that is considered like somebody who is like our kids that sit on their phones all day long. Yeah. Yeah, Dad. Because they just got asked 20 questions by 20 different people in 20 different apps and they’re going back and forth trying to have a conversation or watch the movie and they’re doing this. They’re in that world where they expect that immediate interaction. And I think it’s funny because I got a buddy of mine

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that uh like um we we’ve been friends for decades and it’s like he’ll send me a text two or three days later I’ll answer I’ll send a text back with a question to and and we choke like you know um you know other family members will turn around, oh my god, I can’t believe that. How did you not get back to them? And how did how do you guys not have the and it’s like we don’t care like right we it’s not an urgent conversation. And it’s a friendly conversation that next time he he gets a

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chance to look at it, send me I never feel bad about it, he never feels bad about it and that’s our relationship. But there’s a lot of people that are why didn’t they answer me in five minutes? You know what I mean? And and so that’s what this is that’s why we built that in. Um and then the nurture sequence is Yeah. Like you text, you email them. Um and then you let it you you wait a couple days, you come back, hey, did you ever get this solved? We’d really like to help you. Would you like somebody to

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come out and do a quote? Um the other thing that we talk about is like our done together marketing has three major pillars. So on your side we talked about that at the beginning. So the three major pillars are um you need to get you need to be getting a volume of reviews. The best way to do that is recognition our tool because we found that feedback first, not just we found like there’s actually called the Aberdine research console that um spends millions of dollars a year making sure that service

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businesses understand the voice of the consumer and they test all that. If you ask people for an internal survey, you can get 50 to 70% of people filling that out. You will never get more than about 10 to 15% of people writing a review and the review sits sits privately on Google. if they didn’t make everybody goes to Google. Nope. Only about 60% of the people that don’t have a name in mind go to Google. So, how many people don’t have a name in mind? Well, probably we know in our industry if

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they’re brand new, if they don’t have a a reference or somebody, there’s probably about 75% of the population um 60 to 75% of our of the people going to hire a cleaner don’t have a name in mind the first time. Right? So, so the so if we say like if we we start with that there’s a crowd of people that already have a name in mind. Their friend told them, somebody else told them, right? But if they don’t have a name in mind, they go to Google, they’re just looking to solve a problem. They’re

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either going to do research, so they’re the top of funnel and they’re just going to find more information because they’re a thinker or they’re a reactor and they’re just finding today, right? So the that’s now your crowd. um of the people that go to that that that that are now don’t have a name in mind, just over half of them go to Google. The other half don’t. So now you’ve taken that 75% of the population who’s hiring a carpet cleaner don’t have a name in

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mind. Only about now we’re down to about 37% maybe as high as 40 go to Google. Right? So um of that crowd, right? So, so it’s getting a smaller and smaller smaller crowd of people that are actually So, Google reviews are great, but this fact that everybody says that they’re the only thing that matters um is well, that that’s silly to say that anyone thinks the only thing that matters. Yeah. Right. And Google matters to the people on Google and that’s the only people it matters to, right? Um but

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everywhere else, like that’s why we say it’s done together. So the reputation or the the the reviews and reputation side of it is get feedback from happy customers because that can be put into the marketing material and then let the review system ask them for the reviews second. And what we find is we’ll get as many if not more because we ask hey could you mind taking these really kind words you said and post them on Google, Facebook, Better Business Bureau, wherever we want to send them and some

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people go you let me do it everywhere. So that whole idea of send a text message somebody get a Google review, right? That’s just become the world. Um, everybody just send a text message, get a Google review. Oh, that makes sense. Look at all my Google reviews. But you have no Yelp, you have no Facebook, you have that only solves one audience, right? Why not do the same thing but in a more constructive way? So that’s our one pillar. Our second pillar is the project stories. The reason where where I was

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going with that is we need to be telling happy stories um um happy customer stories into the marketplace. I don’t care if like I mean we’ve got some I was on a training call yesterday for um they invited me to talk all about AI and stuff like that. It’s a group called Normie but Normmy is um um Robert Petty John and those guys that have been around the industry for years. Um it’s the indoor air quality side of of the industry. So, a lot of these guys are former home inspectors that said, “You

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know what? I just want to be an indoor air quality inspector.” And normie is a training and certification program backed by the um CleanFax and ISSA um association, Jeff Cross, that um that does all that. And they asked me to come and speak about best known in your marketplace and you know, using AI as a soloreneur and all of this kind of stuff. Um and the girl that was right after me, Becky, was great. She’s teaching social media and she’s te teaching these guys that are our age to

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say, “Well, you should grab your phone and every single day you should be, you know, if you walk into a job, you should be going, hey, you know, it’s Chris here, carpet MD. I just walked into this job. I want to show this dirty.” And we’re going like, we should, but nobody does, right? And of the whole audience, one guy goes, “Yeah, I finally got on to doing that.” And it was really uncomfortable at first. And again, he was he was around our age, right? So it’s sort of like and that so what we do with

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the project stories is try and make it you’re never like you might find that one technician that’s good at it making videos get them to do it give them an incentive but okay easy lift the easy lift is filling out the project capture stories so Gerard is going to meet with you if you guys haven’t already had the meeting part of the first month um to train you on uh it’s really simple but how to use it it’s on the bottom of your website he has not yet we have submitted two of those already

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perfect yeah so if you’ve submitted you watch the training then they’re going to be looking at it between him and Sera. They’re going to be looking at them to police them, as we like to say, to make sure that the first couple coming in are good. Um, and then give you any suggestions on how to do it a little bit better. Um, if needed, because ultimately what we’re going to do is give you one or two of those a month as a story out in the marketplace. But what we use, so we’re going to put

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them on social media. We’re going to put them on Google Maps. We’re going to do all all the other ones you give us, we just grab the pictures from and use the pictures on Google Maps and everywhere else. But we’re going to find the best two. wait a couple of weeks to see if the client left a feedback internally or review publicly so that we can add those all together. If they didn’t, we’ll still run it. If it’s a really good um project story, um but that what that is is the other thing we’re going to do

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with those is over time we keep adding those into that that nurture email sequence. So, we’re going to add those into your website, but we’re going to add also add them into that first two weeks. Hey, by the way, I haven’t heard back from you, but I just want to tell you a story of one of our recent happy customers, right? recent might be a year ago, it might be a month ago, it might be like we’re just feed those in. So, it’s just a part and then even like all of the clients what or all the

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leads that don’t turn into clients, they start getting a monthly message afterwards as well. So, if they ghost you, they went with somebody else, right? They might go with a different person. They might decide not to do it right now. They might have been just right thinking about it. It happens. Um the one we did yesterday was a small but a good one. Dog pooped and smeared poop all over a uh uh sofa cushion. Okay. All of those. I mean, it was it was awful. Came out perfect. Yeah. So, loved that one. Um,

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that tells a story because then when we put that up on social media, you guys join those groups like we we show like those those homeowners groups and all that stuff. You join those groups and then you um um you share that in from you your own personal Facebook um privately like you you join the group as a person. You’re a business owner, part of a business owner group on Facebook or on LinkedIn. You share that in and then um and no call to action. You’re just doing ah shucks, you guys are great. Ah

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shucks, you guys are great. And it brings people back to your website which helps SEO um boost the website, but it also creates those real estate agents and interior designers and other business owners that are starting to that are following more and more. Oh, look at Carpet MD. Oh, look at Carpet MD. Oh, look at this Chris guy. This carpet this company he runs. My god, they do a really good job. and you just start building that um digital version of Howard Partridge stuff, knocking your doors and handing out donuts, right?

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It’s the digital version of that, right? It’s just another layer. We should be doing both. Um with the Facebook stuff, we’re going to need some serious help on that. I know. I heard that Baylor is being a little bit tough on getting access. Well, it’s not really just him. It It’s been a nightmare for the last year and a half. We had gotten hacked uh uh and then we got banned. Uh they completely shut mine down. Every time I try to do a personal one myself, they shut it down. Yeah.

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Um it honestly we’d probably be better off just starting from scratch and rebuilding. Yeah. Like if if you have a page like a a Facebook business page that he he manages. He’s just got to like I mean he two things. One he should add you as a like if you’re not available as a min anybody in the family, anybody in the but whatever. But you need to add like you should own your stuff and if you you can’t own it because you don’t have an account. Um but you got to be in the back end of the business manager and

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you’ve got to own that. Um and then um if you need Baylor to stay in the the loop, that’s fine. But then he’s got to add us as a manager of the page. Um and and a manager of any ad account that’s set up just so that we can get that started. Um and send me have them send me the information. Yeah. Uh on that I will send that to Baylor. say, “Hey, make these guys an admin. Here’s the info.” Yeah. Get it done. Because then that way and if if he’s tied the Instagram to the Facebook, once

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we’re the ad admin of the Facebook, we’re also the admin of the Instagram. But Christian will do that. And then that way we can do our like all all we want to do is post. If if you’ve got again a a personal account, um you the wife, anybody, then Yeah. We’re going through my wife and she’s not amused about it at all. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it’s just a matter of like where we’re trying to get at is more or less like this is sort of like the digital version of a BNI, right? You

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join these groups, you share out happy customer stories and a few of the blog posts that we post every now and then, maybe a press release, this thing that we’re going to do the interview in a, you know, three or four weeks it’s going to be out like we’re we’ve got a queue right now of podcast. We’re going to use it internally right away, but it’s going to come out onto the podcast and you’re going to have been interviewed by the carpet cleaner success podcast and it’s

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you can make it like we’re going to put it on yours. Hey, look at, you know, we got interviewed, blah, blah, blah. And then you can make it a bit of a big deal. Hey, if anybody wants to learn about our company and where we came from, I got interviewed by um the biggest podcast in the in the carpet cleaning industry. Nobody’s going to care about like I mean the real estate agents stuff like they’re going to well I don’t I’ve never heard of carpet cleaner success podcast. Well, you’re

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not in the carpet cleaning industry, but there’s going to be a few people like some of them are going to listen to it to hear your story and that just enders you to them even more even if they’re just lurking in the background. Perfect. So, and that’s the whole idea. Plus, Another thing I wanted to talk to you about real quick is uh uh uh doing a uh uh telephone uh answering service. Okay. Yep. On that. So, uh did you say that the one that you recommend works where our phone will ring so many times if it’s not

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roll over and stuff like that? Yeah. I would Yeah. Reach out to Rachel. It’s the the callstudio dot double check if it’sca or.com the callstudio yeah.com and just let her know that you’re you’re from us that you uh that we rec like that you’re one of our clients. Um she works inside service monster house call pros and carpet cleaner lead pro her team. Okay. And they can do third number rollover. They even got admin service. They can do outbound calls if like they they charge per time block, right, for

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those like inbound calls, they just charge when they book. That’s it. Um outbound there’s a minimum of six bookings a month. If you don’t if they don’t end up you say, you know what, I never sent the phones to you. Well, they have to bill you for six because you’re kind of they’ve got some infrastructure costs and stuff like that. So, it’s just six is their minimum. Um at like 25 or $30 a booking, it’s nothing, right? It’s like under 200 bucks. But um but beyond

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that, they just charge per like they literally like it’s covered by the first six calls anyways. Um they just bill you that way. Then they do have the ability if you wanted to have outreach calls, database calls. Um we her and I have been talking about they do it by the the sort of like the minute or the hour right now, but um if you wanted to have somebody call 10 real estate agents a week to try and book two or three um Howard Partridge coffee dates where you’re going to have a conversation about referral or reward

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programs or um or doing outbound calls to you know the if you’ve got a list of a list of commercial businesses, the type of commercial businesses you want. Um, if you give them a list, they could call and do um, uh, like a quote, you know, find out who who does their carpet cleaning, like just just does the outbound call like I used to have Heather in my office do. Hey, here’s a list of all the chiropractors start. Here’s a list of all the dentists start here. So, we had our guys stop by. I

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would stop by just to do free spotting and get put my face in front and every year or so we would go back through the list of all, you know, all the dentists, all the chiropractors, all and so she just always had like slower days of the week. Um my office because she was eight hours a day. The phones wouldn’t be ringing on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons like a lot. It’s Mondays and Tuesdays are busy, especially if it’s sunny. Fridays are busy, right? The middle of the week, that’s where all the

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bookkeeping gets done. follow up with, you know, client um like the the annual reminder calls and the, you know, check-in calls and stuff like that. So, we would give her that list of, you know, over the course of, you know, this month, try and get me in to do commercial quotes, try and get me to sit down and have a coffee date with another uh um real estate agent to provide, you know, to talk about or property manager or interior designer or whatever. I stopped by the carpet stores and the furniture stores, but

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uh everybody else, you know, real estate agent doesn’t necessarily have an like I’d go into the offices and hand out and do the the real estate office thing, but we would start chasing, you know, if we had two or three real estate agents that referred us from the Remax office, we would pick the list of all the other we’d go to their website, find all the other agents, and start calling and saying, “Hey, a couple of the guys in your office already used us. You might have seen John pop in with donuts and

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stuff like that every so often, every month or so, um every two months, whatever, or the candy bowl that we fill up. um just um he’d love to have a c coffee with you and just talk about, you know, a referral reward relationship. It’s it’s it’s really valuable for real estate agents to have, you know, somebody on hand that you can ask questions to about flooring, carpets, all that kind of stuff if it needs to be replaced or if it can be salvaged to sell the house and things like that. We

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can we always do those free assessments and stuff like that if we’re partnering together. So, we’d love to sit down and talk about that. Right. And then all you’re trying to do is have more and more of those me because we are in a recession. Like there’s like I no matter how many times like you can do a headline right now. Are we in a recession? Oh, we’ve been in a recession for a year. Oh, we’ve been in a recession for a month. Oh, it looks like we’re on the verge of recession.

00:18:16 – 00:19:20
We’re not going. No, unemployment’s going up in like, you know, oh, interest rates and all of that kind of stuff aren’t coming down as fast. tariffs and blah blah blah. All of it is is causing creeks in the economy that are job numbers and productivity numbers are right now very similar to 2008 2009. That was a scary period of time that all the data looks as bad as that. It’s just sort of kind of being masked by, you know, all the other distractions in our world right now, right? So, but

00:18:48 – 00:19:40
it is showing up and we there is a whole bunch of carpet cleaners that didn’t last as long as us that this is the first time they’re realizing that cheap leads are gone. You know, all that kind of stuff. And you actually have to work to run the business. You actually have to work the business, work the database, work the referral sources. And one out of a hundred in any marketplace will do that. Maybe two in a in a really competitive marketplace. The other 998 are going to hang on for dear life. And

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half of them are going to go out of business, I believe, in 2025, 2026. Um, it started about a year ago. It took about a year for them to run out of money. A lot of them are starting to run out of money right now. And I’m hearing it every single day from people I talk to. There are carpet cleaners every day going, “Well, my Facebook ads don’t work anymore. My my local service ads don’t work anymore.” I said, “What else do you got on the go?” Well, that’s it. That’s

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where I got all my work. I was doing as much as 20,000 a month, 30,000 a month. I go, “What are you doing now?” Five. And they wait they waited till it got down to 5,000 before they decided to try and figure out how to solve it. Wow. That’s insane because they had no clue because they had they had a a marketing company that knows how to run Google ads or Facebook ads and that was Yep. all your work’s going to come from there. So I talked to a bunch of guys in the Chem Drive franchise network and literally

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head office. That’s all they taught for years um to the head to them is just run more Google ads. Just run more Google ads. You all the other stuff is useless. Just do more Google. And it’s like, no, all the other stuff that Joe Polish taught us, that that Howard Partridge taught us, that, you know, Dan Kennedy taught us that, you know, now in the world today, it’s it’s um um Alex Hermoszi, Frankie Finn, all these guys. They’re all just students of that same that same sort. That’s how you run a

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competent business. And it’s it’s it’s less than 5% of business owners understand that. The rest of them stood in front of a money stream for the since quantitative easing started in 20101. They stood in front of people having more discretionary income and buying stuff and that crowd has dried up probably permanently. I don’t think that middle class crowd is coming back. If manufacturing gets a renaissance and there’s all, you know, somebody can go and they’re not a robot and they can put

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a door panel on the side of a car and because of that that that affords them a house in the suburbs, a boat, two cars and a, you know, and you know, and a cottage. That used to be the the dream is like, you know, I could sit there and just work at a factory, you know, and um you know, and for that live the American dream. That was the middle class. That’s where all these people would get carpet cleaning and and landscaping companies and all and maid services coming in. That’s gone. Like I mean that entire

00:21:25 – 00:22:28
crowd um it disappeared and then they then we had a recession and they tried quantitative easing and then they handed out free money and now that’s all come home to roost again. And again, like him or hate him, Donald Trump, some whoever’s advising him is like, you’re either going to decide to just do a term, don’t worry about it like everybody else is doing, and and let the hit the fan to the next generation, or somebody’s got to break the system and solve it. Yep. Like, and that’s don’t again, it’s going

00:21:57 – 00:22:49
to create a lot of haters. Um, and it may not work. Like, we don’t know because it’s it’s it’s the future. We can’t predict it, but that’s what’s actually happening right now in like I’m Canadian. We just Canada just elected a Liberal government again for the fourth time, even though we’ve gone from being number one in the G7 for um productivity and stuff like that and and uh gross domestic product per person 10 years ago to the last in 10 years because of our

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Liberal government. They just hired it again because they they were the the fellow on the liberal side, Mark Carney, was able to um he’s a globalist banker. That’s what he is. He was never in politics before. Um he advised the Liberal government for the last how many years. Um he’s all about green energy and carbon taxes. He makes like Al Gore and um all that he makes money off of the green scam or the carbon scam and and he’s just he’s now the prime minister of Canada um because all he

00:22:55 – 00:23:49
played on was Donald Trump bad. We got to go chart our own course and Canadians went oh okay. Oh, the last 10 years and the fact that you no no kid can afford a house and everything is way more expensive than even you guys have it. Like it’s like insanely expensive. Um doesn’t matter anymore. You’re you’re going to solve this. They’ve been brainwashed. Brainwashed Donald Trump problem, right? So anyways, so anyways, that’s what just happened around here. But that’s not

00:23:22 – 00:24:09
going to help anything either. So what we’re doing like again even this podcast is is trying to help out some of these people but it’s also our marketing system is like like you can’t you know it already but you can’t sit on your laurels um that’s why we have done together there’s three things we need you to work like project stories reputation and communications making sure you’re getting back to people right away. So, we built a tool for each of those, right? So, that’s our collab

00:23:46 – 00:24:40
together. And then we have the conversations. That’s the the coaching, the free stuff, um about all of this, you know, referral reward programs and and again, do you you guys do it in house? Do you want Rachel or her team to do some outbound calls to set those up? But can you end up landing one or two new referral partners every single month and one or two new commercial jobs that you’re going to that are going to become contract? like a chiropractor that’s going to be every six months or um a a a

00:24:13 – 00:24:58
condo that’s going to be once a year or a school that’s going to be once a year, but it’s like 5,000 10,000 bucks and now you got one, now you got two, now you got five like we did when we started our business. Like, can we reinvigorate that all over again? Um, and set the business up for the next generation that’s going to take over from us. Right. So, Right. Yeah. Because we do build up to a point, I did it myself. You build up to a point where you kind of rest and it’s like,

00:24:35 – 00:25:26
you know, talking to Howard, it’s sort of like you either rest or you hand it off to somebody else in the company, hire that role and let them continue on doing what you did because it’s still what got you there. So you we tend to pause because hey, I’m comfortable. But if we get back like get back at it with a goal in mind to retire, sell, whatever, now we know what we’re building for. So now we have a why again. and now we put it in place or we hire somebody to put it in place and the

00:25:01 – 00:25:55
new guy buys the business. Here’s how we got here. If he stops it, the business will do that. If he realizes it, the business will keep doing that. Right? So, that’s our goal. So, what we’re going to do here is I’m going to do um like all we’re going to do is talk about um I’m going to introduce you um and we’ll just have a like it’s just sort of like meeting the owner um interview um Sure. and um you know and uh just the story behind the company, things like that.

00:25:28 – 00:26:27
just going to ask some questions and uh just have a fun conversation for about 30 minutes and wrap it up. So, let’s do it. Okay. So, I’ll just do a a sort of like one of those TV show silent countdowns and that gives my team a break that they can find in this this transcript. So, okay. Just give me a quick second here. Make sure everything’s turned on. Yep. All right. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Carpet Cleaner Success Podcast. favorite part of my podcast is when we get to interview

00:26:00 – 00:26:59
business owners who have been in business for years running their carpet cleaning business. And as we know in in our world about 80% of all small businesses fail in the first 5 years and about 80% of those that are left fail in the next 5 years. So about 4% of businesses across the country, small businesses, local businesses last to the 10-year mark. Anybody who has lasted that and well beyond knows something, has something figured out intuitively or strategically. And that’s why we love to

00:26:29 – 00:27:26
do these these interviews is to is to catch up with those types of people. I am talking right now with Chris Sutton from Carpet MD in Oregon. And um we’re going to talk a little bit about the business, the history, how we got here, plans going forward, and all of that kind of stuff. So, thanks so much for uh for jumping on this uh this this this this podcast, Chris. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Good morning, John. Good morning, everyone. Hey, so what we’re going to do is just start off a little bit of uh snapshot on

00:26:57 – 00:27:53
on you and your business. Um just the general information um you know, how long you’ve been in business. Um you know, obviously we mentioned it was Carpet MD already. So, um employees, teams, things like that. Um the specific services you focus on. So, let’s just kind of talk a little bit about the business first before we get into the rest of it. Um, just kind of tell us, uh, what got you into it, like how long you’ve been in business. Uh, well, uh, always been an entrepreneur. Um, worked for, uh,

00:27:25 – 00:28:24
Stanley Steamer eons ago, couple years on their trucks, couple years a commercial sales rep over seven counties. So, it gave me a kind of an idea of what was going on. Um, it was only later I learned that they weren’t like the best carpet cleaners out there, but uh, but they’re a good company, you know? I mean, they’ve built a solid, uh, company, solid brand, like they’re really well. Exactly. Exactly. So, uh, a few years later, uh, a partner and I, uh, who I bought out years ago, decided, hey, you

00:27:55 – 00:29:02
know, let’s do something together. Uh, said, hey, I know about carpet cleaning. I know, you know, both the commercial side and the residential side. Um, uh, he had some money, so we, uh, we put it together. Uh, we didn’t have much. It was 2006, so just before the recession, we had, uh, uh, by the time we got everything, we had $2,000 of operating budget to make it or break it. That was it. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was it. And so, yeah, bootstrapping it. So, we beat feet and, uh, put like free room flyers on on tens of thousands

00:28:29 – 00:29:29
of doors. Wow. Uh, that year. tens of thousands and uh uh uh and we made it work. That’s awesome. So now we’re 19 years later. Uh we made it through that recession. Uh going to make it through this one for sure. Uh and uh you know, we’ve we’ve performed over 19,000 jobs. That’s incredible. And what’s the team look like now? So that obviously started there with you and the partner that you bought out. What’s what’s in 19 years? How’s like what’s the company look like

00:28:59 – 00:30:08
now? Well, now we have we went from one van, we’ve got four. Uh we’ve got uh four technicians, uh an office manager, and myself. Uh my wife’s the secretary of the corporation, so she’s behind the the scenes as well. Um and uh we offer a we went from just s doing carpet cleaning and upholstery cleaning to we added on carpet repair, then we added on tile, uh then we added on air ducts, then we added on hardwood. Um, you know, we can we can strip and and and uh finish floors commercially as well. Uh,

00:29:33 – 00:30:24
so yeah, we’re pretty wellrounded. Yeah, that is. And yeah, I think again there’s depending on the size of your marketplace and your focus and that’s that’s you either go wide like that more and more services to solve the problems of the of of the homeowner. um starting them up, sometimes buying out a competitor that’s got a a good service, good database, maybe an employee or at least some equipment, but and then adding that on. We I did that myself with made services and stuff like that.

00:29:59 – 00:30:51
We bought existing ones, so we didn’t have to start from scratch. Um you know, you’re starting with other people’s problems, but also other people’s um gains and and and direction um and and that kind of thing. Or you go deep if it’s a large market. If you’re like, you know, you know, LA or you know, right, we’re not pick New York, Manhattan, stuff like you can be just an upholstery cleaner and and just be like the high high-end upholstery cleaner or whatever and just

00:30:24 – 00:31:22
go really deep with one one specialty service kind of idea. Um, and because there’s just such a volume there that you can carve out your little niche, other times you carve out your name and your brand as the cleaning experts, which you guys Yeah. Can’t can’t so much do that here. Uh, you know, we’re we’re 35 miles west of Portland. I’m in a huge metropolis of almost 800 people. Exactly. Exactly. So, uh, but you know, we we serve two counties and and some decentsized cities, but you know, we don’t have

00:30:54 – 00:31:45
anything super large. No. What is the total population of the two counties um that you’re that you’re in? Roughly like it it’s under a million. Yeah. So, so again, good good for the audience because some people like, you know, it’s like how can you, you know, is it there’s a lot there’s a lot of people that are thinking one, we’ll get into it a bit, employees are hard to manage. I’m just going to do this by myself, which the the good and bad of that is what happens if you want to go

00:31:19 – 00:32:11
on vacation, what if you have a sick family member or yourself that you have to take care of for a period of time, right? You know, what are all those life things? How do you still make money um you know, when you’re self-employed? Those are so employees are really important. And I think growing to that that level even in areas that aren’t millions and millions of people, how do you how do you strategically become the three four truck operation in in in you know across a couple of counties? Well,

00:31:45 – 00:32:42
it’s more services. It’s it’s getting really good name recognition and then going wide like that as well. Um what would you say services for sure doing a great job. What are some of the uniquenesses that you’ve you’ve definitely had in place that like why you over the competitors that allowed you to last 19 years when I’m sure you’ve seen other guys come and go um you know in in the in the cleaning industry that just couldn’t make it in the the same market. Right. Well, we did a little research

00:32:13 – 00:33:16
when we first were getting started. Uh, you know, we noticed that there was just a crap ton of uh uh of that midlevel service uh companies out there and uh we certainly didn’t want to be, you know, the the bottom feeders that are, you know, $99 for a whole house. Yes. Right. Uh either. So, you know, that left us with the option of being, you know, really high-end, high quality. Um, so you know, we started with a slogan, you know, if uh you’ll get the best cleaning you’ve ever had or it’s free.

00:32:45 – 00:33:45
Yeah. So that pretty well forces you to do a good job if you want to eat for sure. Yeah. Plus the free rooms that you did, you know, offering the free room to get the house, right? It’s both steps. Good marketing is that mafia offer that people can’t they feel dumb to refuse and then it’s up to you to to sell the services, sell the reason why and bigger job and then repeats and turn them into lifetime clients. Correct. And 19 years later, we still have some of those clients that we had

00:33:15 – 00:34:14
year one. Yeah. You know, uh as a result, so you know, by doing that that great job, you really retain a lot of people that way. Um uh they don’t want to go look for something else. Yeah. And I hear all the time, you know, uh, yeah, you didn’t hear from me last year cuz I went ahead and tried this other carpet cleaner that was cheaper. Uh, yeah, I won’t be doing that again. Yeah, those are some of your best customers. I always said like the the customers that tried you kind of thought, well, there’s the

00:33:44 – 00:34:27
there’s the standard, right? Because they didn’t know any better. Maybe it’s a first time hire a carpet cleaner, right? Um, and then, you know, they’re that 35 40 year old sort of like family. They they’ve got discretionary income now, you know, a couple of kids and I’m just going to get this solved for me now. We’re not renting the machines anymore. We did that when we were young couples and kids. We’re now we’re now going to be adults about this. We’re going to start

00:34:06 – 00:34:56
doing some adulting and we’re going to hire somebody. And you happen to be the first one that they hire and they go, “Oh, that’s carpet cleaning. That’s cool.” Right? And then all of a sudden they try somebody else. Oh, wow. That my my guy Chris charged me $500. This guy’s saying it’s 120. Right. Let me try that out. Oh, that’s what you get for 120. Right. Exactly. And the person that that’s okay what $120 got them. They’re never your right client anyways. They’re always going to

00:34:31 – 00:35:20
be difficult. But the ones that the light bulb goes off and goes, “No, for you know, once or twice a year, a couple extra hundred bucks is not going to break the bank.” You know, I spend that on Friday night to go out to, you know, out for dinner with friends and stuff like that, you know. So, why wouldn’t we invest a couple extra hundred dollars um and and do it right, you know, and then get them back for tile and then get them back for area rugs and then get them back for other stuff. Right. And now,

00:34:55 – 00:35:46
one of the other things that absolutely one of the other things that seems to separate us as well, uh we’re not afraid afraid to educate the client, you know, say, “Well, I’m shopping around.” Well, here’s what you want to ask every carpet cleaner, you know, when we talk about do they use an all fiber rinse? Do they prevacuum? You know, things of that nature. uh be sure to check their their reviews online and their Better Business Bureau ratings thing, you know, things like that. And they’ll do that and a lot

00:35:20 – 00:36:05
of them end up calling back as, “Hey, uh you know, uh they’ll ask me specific questions about, you know, about their carpet. Hey, what can I do to take care of this?” Well, here’s what you could do to take care of it yourself. You know, we’re not afraid to do that, you know. Uh and people appreciate it. I think so because that whole um there’s a couple there’s a there’s a a lot of nuggets you’ve just said in this short little period of time already. The the

00:35:43 – 00:36:40
foundation of a great business you you have already sort of um capitalized on like the foundation before you can do any really good marketing a compelling sales proposition. Why you guys over everybody else? So you’re talking about the fiber rinse you’re talking about like that’s the experience like the the benefits to them not the features. a feature is I use, you know, um, you know, the the SX12, you know, um, for my my tile. Customers know nothing about this mount, this butler, this, and the whatever.

00:36:11 – 00:37:08
But the benefit is to you, here’s why I go the extra step. I And we call it our 12step blah blah blah process. And you you get to manufacture a little bit. That’s exactly what we do. Yeah. Yeah. So, you you you create a compelling sales proposition. Why? You’re in a class of one. Nobody let none of your other competitors do what you do. There might be guys equal to you. That’s going to be rare, but they you’ve made it. You’ve got your own systems, your own processes. And actually, there are a few and we

00:36:40 – 00:37:29
refer each other back and forth in the area because you know that quality. You can go out for lunch with them and you can hang out and you can become buddies and it’s not like you’re fighting that. You’ve got the risk reversal guarantee which is again the best risk reversal guarantees are the ones your competitors go, “Oh, he’s nuts. I can’t believe he’s offering that.” because it’s the for the number of number of people that take you up on it, right, is good. Like if if you

00:37:05 – 00:37:55
if you screw it up, go back and fix it. If I’ve insisted more people take their money back than would have asked me to take their money back because, you know, we got into one, we thought it was going to come out good. You know what? We were wrong. Yep. Yep. And be honest that that that that authenticity, you know, gets around as well because it’s like, hey, who should I hire for a carpet cleaner? Well, I’d actually say Chris and the guys over at Carpet MD because they came to our house, thought

00:37:30 – 00:38:20
they could solve the problem, realized they couldn’t, gave the money back, and we replaced the carpet. What? Your carpet cleaner? What? Yeah. So, we’re going to use them for from now on because that, you know, a lot of people worry about today’s dollar, not not, you know, not tomorrow’s um repeat and referral. We’re in a business where if you’re always chasing new leads, like we hear this all the time. I need new leads. I need new leads. I need new leads. Do you need new

00:37:55 – 00:38:58
leads or do you need better lifetime customers? Because a lead is worth two, three, four, whatever your minimum job is the first time you show up. Most people dip their toe in the water, so it’s a smaller job the first time. Um, do you two $300 and never see them again and keep finding more of those and hope they come back? Or is it the customer that eventually spends $500 to a,000 $2,000 a year every single year for 20 years and now you’ve just made 2030,000 $40,000 over the lifetime of that client in the

00:38:26 – 00:39:25
lifetime of your business? Which which do you want? $200 or $20,000 from from a from a home, right? And one of them you get by just in and out get money and the business will the bands will rust out and the business will go out of business in a period of time. any economic slowdowns or hardships, you’re now on the wrong end of the stick. Or Yeah. Or the other side of it is you’ve got clients that as they mature and have more discretionary income and move from their 30s to 40s to 50s and then

00:38:56 – 00:39:39
eventually maybe to that, you know, adult living because the kids have moved out and you’re now the condos and stuff like that and they get you to come and do the condos, but all of a sudden their children are getting married and they’re going, “Mom, dad, who is that company you guys used to have coming in the house?” And now we find the longer you’re in business, right? You you start getting second generation. That happens all the time. It’s hilarious. All the time. Yeah. So, because they remember you when

00:39:18 – 00:40:01
they were kids, they were like 8, nine, 10 years old and the carpet cleaner showed up and Yeah. I was out on the trucks for years and watched a lot of them grow up. Yeah. It’s incredible. And then, so you’ve got the founders story as well. That’s part of um a part of it is like why you guys are in business and how people know you. Um and then your impactful brand messaging. That’s just the four steps. It’s it’s compelling sales proposition, risk aversal guarantee, why you’re in business, the

00:39:39 – 00:40:34
founder story. Um, and like why they should trust you. You you can’t hide behind a a logo or a even a franchise name. You’ve got to why did you buy it? Why are you doing this? What is your reason why? Because people buy from people. The brand needs to support it and be visible in the marketplace. You have to have massive brand awareness and grow the best known cleaner version, but you have to be a good known person as well. Um and then and that’s you’ve got lots of those videos on YouTube and you got

00:40:07 – 00:40:59
those things where people are learning who you are even a podcast like this. So um absolutely marketing. Yeah. So go ahead. Well I was I was going to say there’s one other thing that really seems to separate us from our competition and that’s communication. Yeah. So uh u you know we let every client know and and we follow through that 2 days before their appointment we’re going to give them a friend of the reminder. We’re going to text them. uh the day of they’re going to get a phone

00:40:33 – 00:41:24
call when the technician’s on the way and uh they’re going to get an email or a text no later than the following day just to make sure how we did because you know what let’s face it I don’t care how good any company is you’re not going to get it right every time. No, it’s just not going to happen. And we want to know and fix it uh before they’re just sitting in Stew and going, I paid $500 for, you know, we we don’t want that. That’s that’s not okay with us. And so we get

00:40:59 – 00:41:52
right back out there and fix whatever it is. Especially in the world of social media as well, that’s really important because it’s like um there is a conversation going on about your business whether you’re involved in it or not. It’s already happening. There are people talking on Facebook groups and and next door groups and things like that you know you know referral. Absolutely your name’s mentioned and or one of your competitors and people ah no I tried those guys or hey yeah I tried them they

00:41:26 – 00:42:20
came back because there was a problem. They solved it. they gave the money, whatever it is, it the reputation is already out there. If you’re not involved in that conversation or monitoring that or or again doing all of this great stuff, just understand that you’re actually cutting yourself off at the knees without even knowing it, like why is my phone not ringing? Was it the the last two years of sort of just trying to take a buck from everybody or was it, you know, you know, have you gone that extra mile? So, um the other

00:41:53 – 00:42:40
thing you mentioned as well that just comes into all of this and why you’ve built a successful company just like success leaves clues as they say is you talked about um you know even if you’re if you’re calling around here’s things to ask the other car the other companies so that you know you’re getting a quality job even if you don’t go with us. There’s a lot of subtle psychology in that even just saying that because you got people going wow these guys are that honest that they’re even telling me

00:42:16 – 00:43:07
how to shop for their competitors. That’s rare. But what you just also said is the fact that you’re saying that means you have a script that you have a way that you talk to customers that has been proven to work. So you refine it, you get it better. It’s it the script and you can monitor that. You can say our booking percentages have gone down. Are we getting off script? Um is there something we need to improve? Things like that. Our technicians aren’t upselling as much or packages or extra

00:42:42 – 00:43:23
services. Are they forgetting to say that little, you know, it doesn’t have to be salesy, doesn’t have to be come across spammy, but hey ma’am, by the way, we’re in the home right now. Um, while we’re anytime we’re in the home doing any service, you get a bit of a savings off of any of our other services. Here’s our little sheet on that or let me tell you what that is, whatever your process is. Um, so if you do need anything else while we’re here, the upholstery area rugs taken back to

00:43:02 – 00:43:54
our studio, anything like that. Um, yeah, there’s there’s a bit of an incentive to have it done while we’re in your home doing something else. just wondered if there’s anything else else you wanted to add on. If that technician says that, which is also part of a prepare for your your appointment email or that goes out or something like that, you you’re now just starting to like that’s all marketing, but you’re just starting to plant seeds all around the education marketing, not the sales, not

00:43:28 – 00:44:11
you know, so you’re educating them. Oh, by the way, I want to educate you that you can save a little bit of money. You’re going to if you need your upholstery, your mattress, your area rugs, your stuff done. here’s a way to save. Have us do it while we’re in doing something else. There’s a like that’s an education. That’s not that doesn’t come across as salesy. It comes across more consultive. But if you don’t have those scripts, those moments, those ideas in

00:43:50 – 00:44:42
your company and then make sure your technicians get them. You never get there. You never get that. You know, how do how do how do you get $500, Chris? Well, it’s all of these things, right? It’s not any one of them, right? You show up in uniform, not jeans and a t-shirt. the van isn’t rusty and leaking oil in the driveway. They show up like this. Yeah. It’s all of it. Absolutely. Yeah. So, absolutely. So, in that world of market, like the marketing stuff like that, I love the way you started off with, you know, you

00:44:15 – 00:45:02
needed to get work. So, you shoe leather to pavement, free rooms, knocking on doors. I’m sure you kind of popped into commercial places as well and did all that kind of stuff and just get known, get known, get known, hustle, as we say, get the hustle going. Um, and then there’s a point at which, you know, you start turning the corner a little bit and you, you know, the hustle keeps going, but it’s maybe a little bit lighter, but then you’ve got other marketing going. You’ve got you’ve got

00:44:39 – 00:45:39
more more money than time you can invest in marketing and stuff like that. What is some of the things that you do to market your database to come back? Um, and what are some of the things you do to market to find the next new people that fit your ideal customer profile that will pay the pay pay your premium charges? Sure. So um uh obviously having a good web presence uh really helps with that. Uh uh all their online reviews in different places uh everyone that calls you know why did you go oh well I saw

00:45:10 – 00:46:07
your reviews. Yeah. You know um so it’s really important to build those up. Uh we we send about to keep people coming back. We send three to four postcards out per year. Okay. To our existing clients, everyone that’s used us like the past five years. Yeah. Type of thing. Uh we don’t really go too much beyond that because who knows where they are. Um yeah, five years is about that that about that limit. They’ve probably like if you’ve got the first class mail, it comes back to you and tells you they

00:45:38 – 00:46:28
moved. That’s that’s helpful. We we used to do that about once a year, put the first class stamp on it, pay the extra money um so that we could at least find out if they um um they moved or not. But you know the rest of them it would show up to or occupant kind of idea just in case. Right. Right. Which is that’s fine too because we get some of those as well. Yeah. Uh but uh uh uh it keeps us busy all winter, those two, because we send one out mid January, so everybody’s ready to clean up from Christmas.

00:46:03 – 00:47:00
They’re starting to get some income back at that point. Uh we send one out uh uh usually around the 1st of uh April or uh you know, mid-Marchch to April and then uh spring get ready for spring kind of thing. Yeah, get ready for spring and then uh uh um you know Easter type of thing. And uh then we usually send one out uh before Thanksgiving, about a month before Thanksgiving. Hey, let us take care of all your your needs. Family’s coming, you know, we’ll we’ll take the stress out of it.

00:46:32 – 00:47:29
Yeah. Type of thing. And that one gets in their head not only Thanksgiving, but it’s so close to Christmas as well that again that I I one thing about good marketing is it it it some of it plants a seed for the next, right? So, hey, I I you know what? My family’s coming and they’re slobs. I’m not going to clean before they show up. I’m going to clean after. And then your January one hits. Oh, yes. So, some people, yeah, I want to I want to look great. I I want to take, you know, I

00:47:00 – 00:47:46
want I want to look like Supermom or whatever, right? You know, and the other ones are going to like, nah, let them trash the place. I’m going to clean up after Christmas and after everybody shows up and makes a mess, right? Yeah. And I’ve got clients that wait every year for those because they know they’re going to get discounts. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s almost like your reminders. Well, what we used to do um was the reminder um uh the the So, I started like, you know, the the the 12-month reminder. You’re here’s your

00:47:23 – 00:48:09
anniversary, here’s your anniversary bonus. I I’m I I’m one of those I don’t like giving discounts. I like giving if you do this, I’ll give you more. If you do this, I’ll give you even more. Like, so it’s it’s bonus marketing. That’s a good way to do it too, right? So, as opposed to teaching them that, you know, prices come. Sometimes in the winter just to keep the trucks busy you do have to like we used to do the one way we were able to give a discount out without sounding like a

00:47:46 – 00:48:40
discount was instead of marketing a price or what every third room free in the winter every third piece of upholstery of equal or lesser size free. So couch love seat chair the chair is free right when you’re in the home that’s an extra 20 minutes 30 minutes and5 $10 worth of solution. So your out of pocket is is about 30 bucks with a technician’s wage for 20 minutes, an added 20 minutes or one extra room, every third room for free. Well, third size, that’s a bedroom. That’s that’s

00:48:13 – 00:49:04
another three minutes, right? So, but it it comes across to them like a great savings. It feels like it’s 33% off because every third room, but you know, eco lesser side. It it’s a great way to to not market price, but still make them feel thrifty or or you know, that kind of thing as well. Yeah, that’s a good that’s a good way to do it, too. Although I have noticed even though like my winter one is our biggest we do a big discount for the for January because we want people to call right uh

00:48:39 – 00:49:27
when it’s it’s slow you’re half you’re half the size you want to keep the truck so I give them a 20% discount but here’s what we see our our job average actually goes up up isn’t that incredible right another great marketing one is a tip a tip for everybody is another great marketing one is you should raise your prices um once every year or two um on something it may not be the whole company wide I’d raise, but maybe you raise your carpet cleaning prices. Maybe you’re going to raise your

00:49:03 – 00:50:10
upholstery prices. Maybe you’re raising your protection and sanitizing or deodorizing. We do. Yeah. So, when you go to do about two cents every year for carpet cleaning, one one good marketing thing, you don’t want to you don’t want to sort of beat the same key on the keyboard, but one thing that worked really well for us was we would plan our our price increases in the spring. Um, and we would send out one of our spring mailings would be um the uh price freeze. So, our prices have gone up or are going up. Here’s all the

00:49:36 – 00:50:21
reasons why. It would be a mailing multi-step. So, we’d send it out in a mail. We’d follow it up with an email. We might even send a text blast on it or a phone call, but a multi-step just to say, “Hey, are you interested? Oh, by the way, a couple weeks ago we sent this. Just want to see if you’re in. Hey, final notice.” Most people respond to final notice, by the way. If you don’t sequence it, you never get to there. But when you do good marketing, you get to that point, the price freeze,

00:49:58 – 00:50:46
all the offer is, we’re not going to take the price up for you. It’s not even a discount. And the number of people go, “Oh my god, oh yeah, no, I I I want the price freeze. I don’t want the new price yet. I’ll wait till next year.” And it it’s weird how the price freeze one um works so well as long as you don’t again you can’t do it every month but if you do it once once a year on on a different service or something like that um you do the price freeze or if you have a system

00:50:23 – 00:51:10
that every year your price is going to go up a little bit. Hey our prices are going up a little bit like we do every year. I want to lock you in for a price freeze. Right. Um though that promotion works really really well. And then one of one of the other ones that we add we added in was when we realized our anniversary. So, we would send out month 11, pull a list out of service monster of everybody that hit 11 months since their last cleaning and it would be a list sitting on the desk beside Heather.

00:50:45 – 00:51:34
Um, and there was a mailing that went out to all of them and then she’d like wait two days because it took about two days for the mail to start hitting. Um, and then she would and physical mail so they don’t miss the email, right? Actually do physical mail. It still works. Pick up the phone and call to chase that piece of mail. If you don’t get a hold of them, trigger an email that’s ready to go. send did you know that and even maybe a text message but you got to be very careful

00:51:10 – 00:52:00
in text messages they work for fir the first couple times when they’re brand new in your company after a while that you’ve got to be really careful or oh they’re texting me all the time now and it becomes the negative it stops working anybody tries text messages goes oh it works amazing okay are you on your 10th one or your second one right because there there’s a that you have to you still have to do great marketing with mailings and phone calls and and stuff like that but what we did is we found

00:51:35 – 00:52:33
out that was so successful that that we would market them month 11 during the anniversary month and then a final notice right near the end of that 12th month. So what we started doing is a good friend of mine Vance Morris actually tal taught me this one or gave me the ideas um is month 10 early bird month like with a couple of extra bonuses and things like that. Um month 11 early bird light. So all of a sudden the same message maybe slightly different postcards or mailings and phone but there’s a couple things

00:52:04 – 00:53:11
stroked off. you no longer qualify for those. Month 11, month 12 is your anniversary month. You don’t qualify any of these other things now because you’d missed the early bird, but you do get the anniversary month. And then month 13 is um extended one month only, right? The anniversary, right? So that 10, 11, 12, 13, four months worth of anniversary marketing. Um we increased our our campaign return on investment. So for every postcards, we did it with postcards and letters. There would be a personal letter for me

00:52:38 – 00:53:27
in the middle of that. There would be um a phone call. There would be um like we would just sequence this this out over those those four months. Um and like a couple touches each month and then the next one and a couple touches and then and and it’s again it’s it’s advanced level marketing, but once you’ve got it locked and loaded, it just happens. Every month you’re pulling a list of people that just hit 10 months and start them in the process. Next month people hit 10 months start them in the process.

00:53:03 – 00:53:57
It might be 20 this month. It might be 40 this month because it’s whatever it was a year ago, right? Of the people that qualify. Maybe it’s not, you know, 90-year-old granny on the 12th floor of the apartment building, right? Maybe she doesn’t get it. Maybe she’s not a she’s a sealist client that gets good marketing but not the heavy lift. But it is the family, you know, on Golf Course Road, right? In the 30,000 foot home. They definitely get month 10, 11, 12, 13 messaging. Right.

00:53:30 – 00:54:22
Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Right. So the better, like again, it’s the nuance of do something, get it started, and then can you can you circle back and iterate a little bit better. Good, better, best is I learned years ago is good is good enough. Minimum viable, get it out the door. Free room offer, you know, tens of thousands of homes, you’ll get busy, right? It’s a volume game. It’s it’s a minimum viable, easy to do. Now, how do you Okay, well, now that I do that, do I deliver how do

00:53:56 – 00:54:46
I deliver better client experience? How do I do door hangers and yard signs? Give out my free bottle of spotter. That’s a little bit better. How do I eventually do client database reactivity? People love the spot out. Yeah, exactly. And you just do that kind of stuff, right? So, it’s running these companies is is just getting something going and then just iterating better and better and better and better and better. And our job is to sort of Japanese um kaizen constant and never- ending

00:54:21 – 00:55:14
improvement. Can can we tweak something? You don’t you don’t always have to be touching stuff, but here’s the return on investment. So, we took our return on investment from about 15 to one on our normal reminders. For the amount of time and effort and money it cost us to mail the mailings, we’d get about for every $1,000 we spent to remind somebody it’s anniversary. Um, we would get $15,000 back worth of work. Um, when we started doing, okay, well, let’s do a trial. Let’s let’s add a month and a month and,

00:54:47 – 00:55:49
you know, and do some more marketing. If it if we still only got 15 to1, it was a lot of extra effort for no reason. When it went up to 25 to one, 23, I think it was 23 to1 return on investment, we went, “Holy crap, there’s another for every thousand we spent, another $7,000 coming back to the company.” But also coming back to the company meant there’s also a client, a customer, one-time customer that turned into a repeat client. they we got back in the home to more people because we influenced them

00:55:18 – 00:56:14
with good marketing. Now they’ve seen us twice. The rule in carpet cleaning is um or home services three times, right? If they if you’re in the home three times um you’re you’re probably the one they choose from this point forward. First time, 80% chance they won’t call you again. Second time, 50% chance they won’t call you again. third time, 80% chance you’re locked in as their person until they move on in life for some reason, like elsewhere. Move out of the house, move out of the neighborhood, do

00:55:46 – 00:56:32
something else, something life-changing, right? Um, you’re their guy. So, again, marketing helps you get into their mindset before they jump jump ship and find somebody else. But then if you do a great job and they find somebody else and you’re the right person, they come back and now they’re locked for life anyways because they go, “I made a bad decision. I’ll never do that again, Chris. I’m going to use you guys from this point forward.” Right? So things like that. Um so so a lot of good stuff

00:56:09 – 00:56:59
there about like again we’ve got into scripting, we’ve got into um um how you’ve kind of marketed through through the years in the company and stuff like that. How do you operate like the operation side of it? Let’s let’s talk about employees a little bit because that is a a sort of a a bone of contention with some people that decide to stay very solo um for a bunch of different reasons that we talked about could could become a threat to their business. a SWAT analysis, strength,

00:56:34 – 00:57:30
weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A threat is what if you can’t do the work for a month? What if you break an ankle and you can’t work for four months? Like that’s a threat. How are you solving for this? But so, but the other side of it is how do you operate a company that allows the technicians to feel valuable, respected, and deliver the level of service you want them to deliver? So, how have you over 19 years figured that out? Because we we don’t we’re not born with that. We have to go,

00:57:01 – 00:57:57
“Oh crap, that was a bad hire.” Or, “How am I gonna get him to actually show up and not stink every day?” Or and actually talk to the customer and deliver the experience I want properly, put the booties on, roll out the red carpet, use the corner guards and all that. How have you found operationally you’ve been able to sort of keep that ball in the air? So, uh, you know, we have a a fairly lengthy interview process, uh, that that really helps. So, uh, first of all, it’ll be my wife, myself, and my office

00:57:30 – 00:58:29
manager altogether. We let them know, hey, we’re a small family business. We’re just looking for people that, you know, will will fit for, you know, for us and that, you know, and vice versa. So, they’re, you know, we put them at ease. You know, we’re not interrogating you here. Uh, we interview them, then we talk about it as a group. the ones that we decide, yeah, you know, we think uh this might be a good fit. We then offer that let them come on for two days, okay, as a test run. So, we let them know,

00:58:00 – 00:58:47
look, you’re going to come on, you’re going to actually get to see what you’re doing. You’re going to get to do a little about what what you’re doing. You’re going to see if you actually like it in the first place, make sure it’s a good fit for you, and we’re going to make sure that you’re a good fit for us at the same time. So once they pass through that, you know, we we’ve noticed uh for one uh we used to have a rash of people that would stay about four months

00:58:23 – 00:59:14
and they’d be gone. Yeah. That all stopped when we started doing that. Yeah. Because now they already knew. And we explained to them, look, we’re going to pour thousands of dollars into you for for this training. It’s it’s not cheap. So we want people that are going to stick around for at least a year or more. Yep. Uh uh and so that’s why we do this two-day thing. and and and it works. And one of the things about that I love is that when they’re out in the truck doing a ride along with another

00:58:49 – 00:59:37
technician. Um there’s a buddy thing like it’s sort of like you know young guy to young guy usually you know um is who we’re hiring is physically able to move a couch and things like that. So we’ve had I’ve had girls work for us as well. They just happen to be really strong and could also they you know they could go on and become a firefighter if they wanted to. That type of girl. Um but you know we’re not hiring maids like I ran a maid service. maids don’t move for, you know,

00:59:13 – 00:59:56
like it’s a different class, right? So, so you got these people sitting in the truck together and, you know, they’re going to be friends. They’re going to be buddies and stuff like that, but you’re gonna like you can go back to your technician going, “Good guy to work with.” No, not at all. He seems like a nice guy, but you know, he was whistling out the window to every girl we passed and blah blah blah and he’s, you know, like you would have known that in the interview. A lot of people interview

00:59:34 – 01:00:32
really well or even if they’re walking around the shop learning the equipment and doing an interview in Exactly. Okay. They they they impress you and I really well. They’re they they’re on their best game. When they get out with somebody else in a truck and they’re and they kind of let their guard down, that’s who we need to know who they are. So that that ride along a lot of problems. It does. It really does. So So yeah. And so a lot of people talk about finding it hard like 10 years ago a

01:00:03 – 01:00:56
little bit easier to find employees. um a little bit harder now because there’s just sort of felt like people didn’t want to work as hard anymore. Um I think that’s changing a little bit with the with with actually it is over the last year two years. It we’ve definitely seen a change in that uh uh starting to get easier again because that was it was brutal for a while. It was it’s like nobody wanted to be a plumber. Nobody wanted to be a tile setter. Nobody wanted now getting

01:00:30 – 01:01:34
back into the trades is starting to become a thing as well because a lot of the other jobs are going to be replaced by AI anyways. You know what I mean? Like everybody be a YouTube influencer or whatever or a video game, you know, um consultant or whatever they thought they could do out of their basement, you know, and that kind of thing. And I think now we’re getting back into, you know, maybe dropping $50, $100,000 on a university degree that gets you a job at Starbucks is not the best approach anymore. Again, no. Maybe

01:01:01 – 01:01:59
when we when we can pay 25, 30, $35 an hour for for for a carpet cleaner. Keep that technician for a couple years, maybe longer. But some of them, hey, you want to go through trade school and and become, you know, an electrician at $80, $70 an hour, whatever, a welder, that cool. Well, thanks. You know, we’re back at we got you at 22, 23, 24 years of age. We’ll help you by the time you’re 30. Move on to something else if that’s what you want to do. Um, we did that early in the it became, we found that there’s a

01:01:31 – 01:02:23
period of time where our average employee got to about 35 years of age that were the only ones showing up for interviews. Um, and I do see it circling back around again. Now, as the world around us and economy changes, people really say, “What can I like?” People are always going to need to clean. I don’t think Elon Musk’s Optimus robots or whatever are going to start cleaning carpets anytime soon. They’re going to replace factory jobs and they’re going to replace, you know, and then AI is

01:01:56 – 01:02:51
going to replace admin jobs and things like that. So, but they’re all of those people are still going to need their stuff cleaned. We can’t get away from cleaning, right? So, Nope. Nope. That’s one thing CO actually did help with an awareness of of cleaning. So, everything else it sucked, but you know, but at least it it did something. Uh you know the other important thing is John that that uh uh once you have the employee that you treat them well. Yeah. You know treat them like humans

01:02:24 – 01:03:21
not numbers. We treat them like family. Uh we occasionally do outings you know like uh next month we’re going to take everybody to a a huge video arcade. We’re renting a room having you know lunch. We take them out to a you know I take them out to Ruth’s Chris for for Christmas. Yeah. Uh you know we do things like that throughout the year. Um, you know, and then we offer them bonuses, too, for doing a good job. Every fivestar review they get, they get an extra 20 bucks. Well, that’s $2 an hour, $2 for that

01:02:53 – 01:03:48
day, you know, and uh uh so, you know, they really love that, but my but the uh you know, the customers and clients love it, too, because they’re incentivized to do a good job. Yes. you know. No, and I think yeah, I think any of those ways that you can reward performance like it’s sort of like I think it was Ken Glickman taught me this eye power or something like that, but it was like um one side of it is um you you give you give them everything they possibly to set them up for success and

01:03:20 – 01:04:09
then you monitor well enough like every now and then I used to drop around with like um water and and and snacks and things like that as I’m out and about meeting real estate agents and and doing you know commercial walkthroughs. quotes and stuff like that and you know maybe going back to a spot that came back or something whatever like I’m out and about working the business as the owner. I was only in the truck for a year and a half in my early 20s and said okay town of 30,000 people this is great but I

01:03:45 – 01:04:33
want to hire employees and not be the guy in the truck. Um one of the things I do is I stop around so that they knew that once every week or two I would find out if their van is vomited all over the driveway. Like the doors are wide open. They’re in the house and every door of the van is wide open and half the stuff is falling out. um that they’ve got the you know the red carpet rolled out inside the home. They’ve got you know indoor shoes are on inside the home. Their outdoor shoes are sitting on the

01:04:09 – 01:04:56
red you know that we know that they’ve changed to do the cleaning things like that. I’ll come afterwards to make sure in the right neighborhood they did door hangers. Um not every customer allows you to put a yard sign. We always did yard signs and door hangers. Um and I’d want to see that that was them. So I’m policing that they’re doing their the routine job that I knew generated more work. Um and then we call the customer, follow up with the customer. Um, send email surveys to the customer to say,

01:04:33 – 01:05:31
“How was your experience with our company from beginning to end, including your time with Tommy the technician?” And get get their input privately. Absolutely. I love private feedback before public reviews because the private feedback, they’ll be way more honest. Public reviews, they’re going to couch it. Either either not do it because, well, I wasn’t really happy. I’m not going to do it or they’re going to try and do what you think they want. a pro a feedback gets the intel you need to go I got some

01:05:01 – 01:05:49
things to fix here like or something like that like you actually get some of that that and especially from your best clients have been around for years you know what Chris we’ve used your company for years that last guy wasn’t as good and it’s nice to know that because now it’s a coaching moment now it’s like exactly so Yep. Yep. And then the marketing mind of mine, by the way, I’m not sure if you guys do it or not, but marketing mind of mine is on social media. Like, we’ve got

01:05:25 – 01:06:22
to be social. Um, how you run your company is also part of that social. So, if you’re doing those outings and the Christmas parties and stuff like that, that is the great personal content to mix in with a great, we call it a social media recipe, but you want to have, you know, things that are like we call Martha Stewart type content. like your audience is a lot of it is homeowners that are into green living, children, pets, you know, that kind of stuff, decor. So, if you’ve got some posts on

01:05:54 – 01:06:39
your social media just about things like that, just just that they’re interested in how to do better, how to take care of that kind of stuff. Now, they come to your page and go, “Ah, these guys understand me. They know me.” Then you share some before and after stories of good customers, um, reviews you got on Google and things like that. You share around the the web, all over the place. So, now you’re building your reputation. And then you share some behind the scenes. Now you share some of that. You

01:06:17 – 01:07:10
can share your education in there as well, like your weekly blog articles or your, you know, different things like that. Educate people. But now if you share that and pin them to the top for a month or so of, hey, we just did an outing with the team. And they get to see people, you know, in their civilian clothes, not in a uniform and things like that, right? That bonds people. Oh my god, that was the kid that was in my house. That was the technician that Right. And it gets, you know, now you’re using social media

01:06:43 – 01:07:40
for what it’s meant to be is social, right? It’s, you know, you can make sales out of it, but you’re making psychological impressions that eventually make a sale. So, absolutely. So, just another little marketing tip on that one as well. But, um, so, as we get close to the end of this interview here, what would you say would be some of the, um, biggest wins that you’ve had over the 19 years in the business, but also personally? How’s it like a win that the industry the business has has given you

01:07:12 – 01:08:06
personally? What would you think would stand out as a as a big win? And then we’re going to actually ask about a challenges that you’ve run into as well because it’s it’s not all sunshine and roses as well. But like first like what what’s it what are some big wins um that just really stood out as a company big win and then personally a big win for for because of the company? Sure. Uh company big wins. Um I mean we we’ve gone up in sales every year uh for 19 years. So we yeah we’ve we’ve

01:07:38 – 01:08:52
got a good great track record there. Um uh two big wins. I’ve I’ve uh accumulated two other companies in the meantime and integrated them into ours. So that huge moment huge moment. Yeah. So uh done that twice 2017 and then uh just uh a little over a year and a half ago we took on another one. So, uh, that really increased our our size and, uh, gave us, uh, a really huge foothold in a in a area that I had been trying to for years, but it was this company that was stopping it. Yeah. Okay. And then you got the right

01:08:15 – 01:09:10
the ability to take buy them out. Yeah. That’s awesome. Exactly. So, that was perfect. Growth by acquisition is a great strategy once you’ve got your legs under you and you’ve done the hustling. Growth by acquisition. Um because then when you go to wrap up the company and sell it, you’re going to be selling it to somebody as a bigger entity that doesn’t want to be the guy in the truck. They want to take over a turnkey solution and the value of that is way more that the the thou the hundreds of thousands to

01:08:43 – 01:09:54
millions extra you get because you built that is is your exit plan, right? So really good on you. That’s awesome. So perfect. Um the uh uh uh other big things for for me personally um uh I was able to buy up a home, the home that we’re in now. Got an acre, fruit trees, you know, it it’s awesome. So went from a, you know, renting an 1100 foot house where I raised the kids in to uh to now owning a house in the country. Um so so that’s amazing. Um, you know, we’re we’re able to take uh uh quite

01:09:18 – 01:10:16
often now we’ll take off for three three and a half weeks. We’ll just leave. Yeah. You know, uh I’ve got a great office manager that can run things, you know, and and wonderful technicians. So, you know, I’ve got a lot of freedom with that. Um uh the other another milestone was actually getting off the trucks completely. So, the last two and a half years I’ve just been running the company instead of the company running me. Um, and you know, and it’s nice. Uh, you know, I had my first great grandkid a

01:09:47 – 01:10:51
year and a half ago. I’m I’m done with that. Yeah. Yeah. You got to be grandpa now, right? Really? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, uh yeah. Uh you know, a lot of uh a lot of a lot of boost in lifestyle and freedom and you know, spend time with the wife, spend time with the kids. Yep. The reason why we do this, right? This is Yeah. last year we just bought ourselves a job. Then it’s a it’s a problem because 20 years later you’re just spinning year one the 20th time. Exactly. I mean

01:10:19 – 01:11:17
you got a plan to grow. Yeah, you do. You know, last year we were able to uh take my my one of my daughters, son-in-law, and one of my grandkids and we flew him down to LA and and did the amusement parks. Oh, that was awesome. Yeah, it was it was great. So, but if you have to take a Friday off because the buddies say, “Hey, you know, let’s go golfing.” Cool. I can do that. Absolutely. So all of those things are reasons why I’d never get in a 9 to5. No, not at all. And that’s the reason

01:10:48 – 01:11:36
why. That’s the that’s the dream. So if we always keep that why in our brain and then what are all the steps that we need to do? Reverse engineer to get there. Realize it’s not cleaning carpets. It’s that cleaning carpets is ah damn, I got to go do that$25, $30 an hour task when I should be doing the working on the business. I’ve still got to add put that into my time, my clock. There’s a lot of people that get so tied up and out. I’m just out cleaning. I’m out cleaning. I

01:11:12 – 01:12:00
go home. I’m tired now. I got to go home. You never build business. You’ve got to be always, you got to be the marketer of the company, the street chief strategist. You bought this thing for a reason. You grow. And if you’ve got that mindset, you’re always watching your numbers, realizing, I don’t know how to look at numbers. Now, you’ve got something to learn. You’re the business owner. Teach me, Mr. Accountant, what numbers I should be watching. Show me my reports. The bookkeeper, whatever. You

01:11:36 – 01:12:23
can’t just put your head in the stand and go, “Nope, don’t need to know the numbers. Hopefully the bank account figures itself out. You’ve got to learn the that you’re in business. So, be a student of business. Right. Right. Every time you’re driving around, don’t listen to Joe Rogan or or your, you know, favorite country artist or death metal or whatever you that’s not what you listen to. Um maybe your technicians do. Tell them turn it down. Definitely don’t make sure other people

01:11:59 – 01:12:45
hear the the the death metal coming out of the carpet cleaning van or anything like that. But as us owners, we’re listening to podcasts. We’re listening to I remember the days sitting there with cassette tapes on the end of a pen rewinding it while I’m listening to the next one so I could put it back in the case beside me. Right. Anytime anybody jumped in any vehicle I was in, they’re going, “Oh my god, John, what were you listening to this time?” It’s like, “Yeah, it’s there’s my library of things

01:12:22 – 01:13:07
that it was cassette tapes, then CDs, and then eventually digitally, iPods and stuff like that. Um, and podcast and all that.” But we’ve got it. Oh, there’s a good idea. Oh, there’s a good idea. And it doesn’t always come from carpet cleaners. It doesn’t always come from cleaning people. It might be listening to something where all of a sudden a mortgage broker, a dentist or something goes, “Oh, here’s how we do that.” And you’re going, “Holy crap, I could do that in my

01:12:44 – 01:13:36
cleaning business.” Right. So, um, yeah, always getting ideas is part of the job that we have. So, that’s absolutely pitfalls. Um, you’ve gone through this the the slowdown like again you started the business and then ran into a recession within two years. Um and then you we went through like period of growth and then COVID that was a big uh a big shakeup in people’s mindsets at least. Now we’ve got a little bit like those are some pitfalls. We all have personal life pitfalls and everything

01:13:11 – 01:14:25
else like that. What are what are some of the biggest um sort of pitfalls in the business that um that you learned from that you would say to somebody who’s one two three four years in business? Um if this happens, keep an eye out for this kind of idea. Um I think the biggest thing especially with employees is is you know making sure you’re checking up on them, moderating them. um uh the uh the communication before we had all the communication, you know, uh we we wouldn’t find out about, you know, uh

01:13:47 – 01:14:45
Joe Blow not doing a good job, you know. Um you know, we had a and you’re going to have a bad hire. Let’s face it, there’s no way around it. Eventually, you’re going to have a bad hire. You know, we had a guy that uh he would do great one day and he’d do just garbage the next, you know, and we were able to figure out that fairly quickly before we lost too many clients. Yeah. Out of the deal. Uh and and get rid of them because you’d hear good feedback, good feedback, good feedback, and then

01:14:17 – 01:15:00
negative and then good and then negative. I’m like, what’s going on? So, you got to really watch out for that. If you’re not uh don’t have systems in place, uh you’re going to lose a lot. Systems are a big part of that. Like that I think that’s a key word that if people could write if you’re writing stuff down, you need systems for everything. Like you need to be the builder of systems. And that’s one of them is how are you going to monitor employees? It’s not sticking

01:14:38 – 01:15:30
your head in the sand and hoping hoping and praying. It’s like how are you following up with clients? How are you chasing falling around? What are the warning signs that you’re going to um Yeah. solve for or move them on? Exactly. And it, you know, and sometimes it’s just a retraining issue too, right? You know, or a life issue. How many times have you had an employee? Well, well, my wife divorced me. My my girlfriend broke up with me. I’m like, you know, you we we start to become

01:15:04 – 01:15:50
counselors as well. Like we’re we’re youth pastors a little bit as well as we get older. And it’s like all of that is like, “Yeah, here buddy. Let’s let’s go for a coffee.” Oh, yeah. It’s definitely you got to you got to be willing to be a mentor. Yeah. Because uh you know, you’re like I said, you’re working with mostly kids, right? Yeah. And you know, a kid that’s anybody under 35 for sure. Yeah. For us. Exactly. I we call them kids and we do and I I get in trouble

01:15:27 – 01:16:19
sometimes where it’s a kid, man. That’s just a kid. Right. Right. Right. Right. But you know, I mean Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got to help them out. You got to you got to you got to lift them up. You got to help them out and uh and be there for them. And if that if you create that two-way respect and you have that open communication, it works. If you don’t create that, they’re hiding stuff. you go to their car and they’ve got product bottles of your solution to take home because they’re kind of

01:15:53 – 01:16:34
stealing it to go do their own stuff instead of saying, “Hey, by the way, can I I want to clean my mom’s house on the weekend. How do we work that out? Um I I want to do the labor for free, but what do I pay you for that?” Right? As opposed to sneaking away with it or whatever, right? You have really great relationships with that, right? Oh yeah, your mom’s going to get Yeah, here you go. Just, you know, give it to them or Yeah, pay me 20 bucks for the solution. Take the van for the weekend. Go clean

01:16:14 – 01:17:19
mom’s house. That’s great. You know what I mean? Things like that. Yes. All of that’s we’re we’re doing good by them to hopefully they do good by us. So, so the second thing uh that I that I would, you know, tell somebody just starting off um uh I already had a little bit of a a marketing and management background a little bit. So, from day one, we tracked every single dollar that came in from what marketing. Perfect. And uh uh I’m going to tell you, we have saved tens of thousands of

01:16:46 – 01:17:53
dollars, maybe six figures by now on, you know, we knew exactly when to drop the yellow pages. Yes. You know what I mean? We used to do this this pink flyer in newspapers. And man, we got a ton of clients from it. Uh filled up our van uh solid for one month out of a 10,000, you know, uh run one time. And then, you know, but we tracked it, tracked it, tracked it. It’s going down, down, down. Okay, time to get rid of it. Angie’s list was another one. Best thing. Hey, we’re gonna we we got to the moment

01:17:53 – 01:18:44
of best thing ever and then I I my internet paused. So, just give me a quick No, no problem. So, yeah, you know, uh uh when we first started doing Andrew’s List, it really was it was the best marketing we’d ever done. Uh it got to where it it wasn’t bringing, you know, as much money in as you were spending. But how are you going to know that if you’re not tracking it? So tracking numbers things like so the way we always said because I didn’t know this at first like I was a student of

01:18:18 – 01:19:15
Dan Kennedy probably that’s where Joe Polish and a bunch of the other guys learned from and I went up the ch to those guys and one of those things that they teach you on that end is um you know every piece of marketing has to hold its own weight every like direct response and stuff like that. What I have found is that there is a small percentage of your marketing um roughly about 10% or so that should be brand awareness. So it’s not that brand awareness has no use at all like some of these guys say. It’s like if there’s a

01:18:47 – 01:19:38
reason why the personal injured lawyer pays for backup buses and billboards, right? The best one in town or the the plumbing company that everybody knows has, you know, things around in the right neighborhoods and sponsors the little league team. is if you take that percentage of revenue I always say 20% roughly 15 at a low end 20% at a at a sort of a m a good growth end um of revenue goes towards all marketing that includes shirts and bands and door hangers and yard signs but that also includes your

01:19:13 – 01:20:14
digital marketing that includes your database marketing and take 10% of that and put that towards brand building activities to the right um clientele right so what like you know chamber of commerce may not one to one equate to a dollar. May or may not, but it may improve your brand as long you don’t just join it and never show up. But if you attend, you you know, you flip burgers and pancakes at their charity events and stuff like that and you’re rubbing shoulders with the, you know, the G GM of the Mercedes

01:19:43 – 01:20:32
dealership and next thing you know, you’re cleaning, you know, hey, you should come out and give us a quote and stuff like that. You might be able to tie those together, but there’s a point at which you’re just sort of if you take that 10% budget, put it towards blatant brand building and becoming the best known in your marketplace and let the rest of the marketing brand build with a conversion element to it. Um, yeah, track everything. Have tracking phone numbers, have have codes that they have

01:20:07 – 01:20:57
to, you know, QR codes nowadays. Finally, like, oh my gosh, I loved I’ve loved QR codes since they came out. We finally now use QR codes because everybody’s um phone like picture taking app can read a QR code and send you to the the link that it was on. For years it was oh you had to download an app yet nobody use QR codes. Now they finally work. You can put them on yard signs. You can put them on door hangers. You can you can put them and get people to automatically be opted in or see the

01:20:32 – 01:21:28
thing you want to see. Um but yeah anyways track everything. Track everything you possibly can. And um yeah a good CRM helps with that. Service Monster, House Call pros, one of those where you can you can how did the person hear about us and put all of that in and you can now run reports. Um, data is the most important thing to running a business. It really is. Don’t hide away from the data. So, no, that’s really good advice. So, um, cool. So, I think we’ve covered quite a bit of quite a bit of stuff. I think of

01:21:00 – 01:21:57
a bit of a master class on how to how to make a company go from, you know, from bootstrapping and and handing out, you know, free room all the way to 19 years later buying acquiring other companies, um, mentoring employees and, you know, and things like that and and everything in between. What would you say sort of any any parting advice, famous last words, anything like that that would uh um you know, if you had to kind of put a pin in everything for um seasoned cleaners that are maybe struggling right

01:21:29 – 01:22:31
now during this time of the economy um or new cleaners that are see wanting to figure out if this is two or three years in the thing they should stick with. What would be sort of like a just any parting advice to the industry at large watching this? Um, you know, uh, as cleaners, we we we do our jobs well, right? We know all about it. Um, and you need to stick to that. You need to get out there obviously and talk to people, uh, like you were saying, going to to different dentists and, you know,

01:21:59 – 01:22:49
realators and things like that. But, you know, when it comes to the digital marketing and stuff, um, you just can’t keep up on it if you’re if if you’re going to do all these other things. If you’re going to be out there doing jobs, if you’re going to be out there uh introducing yourself to people, Google changes their algorithms like every other minute. It seems like pretty much, you know, uh and and there’s people like you, but that’s your job. That’s what you do.

01:22:24 – 01:23:26
Uh so we don’t have to worry about that. No. And I appreciate that. So I would say find find a good Yeah. Yeah. No, seriously. Seriously. I I would be lost if I had to do the Google ads, the LSA ads, and the Facebook stuff, and the, you know, and and how do I get my my, you know, bigger share of uh how we rank. Uh, that’s a full-time job in itself. And so, I wrote the book on it. Find the right people. It’s a pretty big It’s a pretty big book. It’s already it’s it’s it the

01:22:55 – 01:23:54
information is is timeless because it makes sense, but the actual places to do it the whole book needs updated again because it’s it’s two years out and it’s like okay the actual wheretos there’s there’s new law and AI has changed all of that yet again right so yeah it’s yep as the business owner because I ran cleaning businesses for 30 years same idea it’s it’s who how on a lot of things our role is to be the face the the voice the the mentors the reaching out the community, stuff like that. And

01:23:25 – 01:24:22
find the office gal that can answer the phones so you’re not answering the phones and doing the mailings. Find the digital marketing company that can keep up with that. Like find the who’s not how track the numbers, make sense of it, move forward, know your role, know the roles you need because absolutely try and do it all but that will stall your growth. Right. So if you agreed, you can have a speed implementation or you can be, you know, too worried about saving a penny that a year or two goes

01:23:54 – 01:24:37
by and you still haven’t solved it, the whole thing’s changed anyways. So, yep. Good advice to that. So, so I appreciate having you on, Chris. Thanks so much. I I know our audience is going to learn a lot. Um, I will pass across any questions that come in or any input that comes in because we we invite everybody to, you know, wherever they consume this, whether it’s on YouTube, whether it’s on our website, whether it’s on a podcast, um, to make a comment, tell us what you thought, all

01:24:16 – 01:25:04
that kind of stuff. We like to pass that on to the guests as well. And, um, so that that that you know that we we’ve helped the industry like it’s we’re not all in our own little bubbles. we, you know, if we can help more people do this thing better, um, it elevates the whole look of the industry anyways, then we don’t have, you know, the fly by nights and the discounts that we’ve always kind of had, but they they don’t have as much of a pull on the marketplace where it’s

01:24:40 – 01:25:27
like, oh, I thought carpet cleaning was only like, you know, a $99 thing with a rusty van guy showing up, you know, I mean, that we we want the consumers to realize more so that there’s a it’s there’s a quality-mindedness to this whole thing anyways. And the the more people transform their businesses, the more that message gets out everywhere as well. So, I think that’s a big part absolutely of the lift on this. So, I appreciate having you on. Thanks so much. I know everybody’s gonna en enjoy

01:25:03 – 01:25:18
this one. We’re going to get lots of good comments. We’ll we’ll share with you and perfect so much for for joining us.