Carpet Cleaning Recruitment Marketing: How Better Messaging Attracts Better Employees

The skilled trades face a shortage of candidates due to retiring workers, cultural stigmas, and employers relying on outdated, transactional hiring methods that fail to address employee desires for meaning, growth, and recognition.

THOM VAN DYCKE
0:00

And so I think our role— yeah, exactly. And trades are AI-proof. And I think guys or businesses, entrepreneurs like us who want to keep helping people leverage the tools, we are— we’re building sort of an AI net around ourselves as well by being on the forefront, right? So we can help our clients implement. But a lot of these other clients that just want to stick with the traditional, you know, print, digital, all that stuff, like, It’s not sustainable for me as a consultant.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:09

Hey everybody, welcome back for another exciting episode of the Carpet Cleaner Success Podcast. Um, today we’ve got somebody that reached out to me on LinkedIn, so we’ve got Tom Van Dyke on the call today, and he’s another fellow Canadian. So don’t hold that against us. But so we’re gonna talk to Tom about sort of messaging in the business, especially as it relates to employees. We do know that as you start to grow your business, attracting the right employees and not rattling through 10 to find the one good one can be a big problem. But how your business messages in general also helps attract the right people. It’s like how you do anything is how you do everything in the world. And that, that whole messaging around your business really helps as well.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:54

The right employees wanna work with your company. And Tom’s got experience in this, in this, this, this, this whole realm. So welcome to the podcast, Tom. Really happy to have you here.

THOM VAN DYCKE
2:04

Thanks, John. Pleasure to be here.

JOHN CLENDENNING
2:06

Yeah, it’s great. So tell us a little bit about, um, about your, your history. I do know, again, some of the notes we’ve got, and thanks to Rika for pulling our notes together as we always do. Um, but, um, 19 years as a pastor, got into this. Tell the little story. What got you into— like, what was that all about? What got you into marketing? Like, where—

THOM VAN DYCKE
2:21

where— yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
2:22

What makes Tom tick?

THOM VAN DYCKE
2:23

For sure. I was, yeah, I was 19 years as a pastor. I was a youth pastor first, very young, and ended up working at a church in southeastern Manitoba. It was great until it wasn’t. And it was a very large church. So we had 4,500 people, 80 staff. It was a big church. And during the pandemic, they went through a challenge.

THOM VAN DYCKE
2:45

And that was my, it was like my chance to leave. And I was 40 years old at the time. And, uh, so I just, I always kind of looked forward to being 40 because my dad went farming at 40. So I was like, something’s gonna happen. And sure enough, it was. And that was right at the beginning of COVID uh, so everything was shut down. It was kind of boring also. And, uh, I happened to have a book on my desk called Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller, and I had bought it for the church to read, and I just hadn’t bothered.

THOM VAN DYCKE
3:14

And so I looked at the, um, I had nothing on my calendar. So I said, I’ll read it. And in the back of the book, it says you can certify with StoryBrand to become what they call a certified guide. And StoryBrand, for those people who don’t know, it’s a framework that uses story, the hero’s journey, as a model for your messaging. So it’s not about telling your story. It’s about using the framework of storytelling, which is, which humans have just kind of evolved to find meaning in the world, through story. So if we find meaning in the world through story and we use that same pattern in our messaging and marketing, it’s gonna help them. So I certified with them, started my business and was, I just was really successful right out of the gate.

THOM VAN DYCKE
4:00

So as I started growing as a copywriter, started working for other marketing agencies, I white labeled for them, means I went, did their writing for them. And then I started meeting a lot of other copywriters who were struggling, started coaching them. That was very enjoyable.

JOHN CLENDENNING
4:16

Nice.

THOM VAN DYCKE
4:17

And, but it’s really hard coaching solopreneurs and a lot of copywriters are working on their own. And the statistics tell us 86% of solopreneurs will not make more than $100 grand. So it’s hard for them to hire a coach and that kind of thing. So I have, you know, slowly morphed into just small business. I really focus on small business now. And not just, we talk about messaging, but messaging kind of touches everything. So, you know, it touches your positioning, how you show up in the market. It shows up in your marketing and your strategy.

THOM VAN DYCKE
4:51

It shows up in your sales and then it shows up in how you reengage clients as well. So all of those 4 areas are what I do. And quite frankly, I think, I mean, we’re gonna get into this, but trades have a marketing challenge that’s unique in that they market to get more employees as well.

JOHN CLENDENNING
5:10

Yeah. And I— everything you just said there, like, I came across Donald Miller a long time ago and really loved that messaging as well. I’m a Dan Kennedy student. We talked about that a little bit ahead of the call. But so unique sales proposition, Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, Jeff Slutsky, the grassroots marketing, guerrilla marketing stuff, all that. And I call it a compelling sales proposition because, you know, so I talk about our core foundation, which really ties into all of, all of what— why I love Donald so much is, um, and that messaging and is— and the idea of getting your message right is that if you’ve got a compelling reason why people should choose you over everybody else that you can clearly articulate, that becomes that story. If you’ve got a risk reversal guarantee that puts all the onus on you, that becomes another step. That’s a Dan Kennedy moment, like great story and then take all the risk on, like to the point of absurdity, right? If you’re not happy, not only will we give you— come back and reclean.

JOHN CLENDENNING
6:02

If you’re still not happy, we’ll give your money back. If you— and if you can find somebody else who can get it cleaner, get the stain out, we’ll also pay their bill to do that for you. You will get the cleanest carpet cleaning no matter what by hiring us, even if somebody else does it at the end. It’s like, that’s an insane message. Never needs to happen if you know your job well. But it’s right. And then you have your founder’s origin story and your impactful branding. You get those 4 things right, storytelling is all part of how you take that and put it into— now it becomes your your message to attract employees.

JOHN CLENDENNING
6:33

Now it becomes your message to your website to convert better. Because as you said, we are creatures of sitting around the campfire or the fire, you know, in villages. The Bible is just a collection of great stories handed down over years.

JOHN CLENDENNING
6:45

You know, everything is just— we are narrative-driven creatures. So if we, we know that intuitively in, or in our soul, and then we go out and we sell Features. Well, I use a truck mount 8670, you know what, like all this kind of stuff. And the average customer goes, what? What’s that?

THOM VAN DYCKE
7:03

Right. They don’t care.

JOHN CLENDENNING
7:05

They don’t care. And employees don’t care about that either. It’s the message is why would it be great to work for this great company that has a great reputation in the marketplace, tells a great story. People talk about them and tell their stories. I call them happy customer stories. You’d be telling customers happy customer stories in your marketing everywhere you possibly go because AI now picks it up, but prior to AI, humans wanted to hear those stories, right?

THOM VAN DYCKE
7:28

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
7:28

And potential staff want to hear those stories. So let’s go down that rabbit hole a little bit. Like, so working with these small businesses, you nailed one thing like that 86%, which is really— my numbers are 85% of carpet cleaners or home service cleaning providers, homes, my niche, um, stay left in the truck. It’s the same math you just said from a solopreneur, like copywriters fit in like We all, because there’s a cap when you don’t know what you don’t know, you can’t move beyond that cap. You gotta learn that difference.

JOHN CLENDENNING
7:57

Then you can move beyond the cap. And that’s a smaller crowd. And this is one of those differences is how do you articulate and tell your story better, um, so that you do attract better employees when you actually do grow and don’t wanna be the solopreneur anymore. And you can start creating that, that, that staff. And the average service business does have Michael Gerber’s E-Myth problem. The E-Myth is the entrepreneurial myth. Oh, I’m good at doing the thing, therefore I should run the business that does the thing.

THOM VAN DYCKE
8:24

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
8:25

I’m good at being a mechanic. I should, I should run the business to be a mechanic. No. Well, if you do, you should never turn a wrench again because you should be growing the business. So carpet cleaner.

THOM VAN DYCKE
8:32

Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
8:33

Same thing.

THOM VAN DYCKE
8:34

I know. Blue collar in general.

JOHN CLENDENNING
8:36

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s go down the blue collar side of it. When did you start working? So you copywriters and doing copywriting and then you switched to being sort of working with entrepreneur business owners and stuff like that. And you came across this moment where you went, oh crap, and homes and service businesses in general have this problem in spades. What did that look like? What was— how did that creep into your awareness? Like customers, you know, experience?

THOM VAN DYCKE
9:00

I think I’ve never niched down. I’m fascinated by people like you who have really hyper-niched down. Now you came out of that industry and so that makes a lot of sense. It’s often been hard when you do the trying to figure out where do you fit, you know, in terms of a niche. I have friends who are StoryBrand guides, all they do is car washes. They’re hugely successful, you know. So that’s interesting. So I think that you have to let the market speak to you though.

THOM VAN DYCKE
9:24

And so one of the things I looked at was who needs me and blue collar, I think, has been largely underserved. Now, the more you look into it, the more you realize, oh, there are quite a few other marketing people out there. But I didn’t know of a lot of people who were into like doing exactly what I did, all 4 growth levers, you know, positioning, sales, marketing, LTV. So that was one reason. There’s another really practical reason though. I wanted to look for people who have a really sustainable job and the trades are extremely sustainable, blue collar. I mean, the millionaires are coming out of the blue collar world because, and they’re completely AI proof. So I can help them implement AI.

THOM VAN DYCKE
10:13

And if I’m a thought leader in the area of AI, I can help them do that, but they’re not gonna be replaced. So, you know, if my main clients are, let’s say, marketing agencies, I go, well, marketing agencies, they like, there’s a risk there, right? How much of what we’re doing is gonna be taken on by AI eventually.

JOHN CLENDENNING
10:35

An accounting agency, like, like, look at what—

THOM VAN DYCKE
10:37

Exactly.

JOHN CLENDENNING
10:38

Xero can do now. You don’t need— like, the accountant can look it over after the AI’s done the entire books and reporting, and if you really need to still pay him.

THOM VAN DYCKE
10:46

Right. And so I think our role— yeah, exactly. And trades are AI-proof. And I think guys or businesses, entrepreneurs like us who, who want to keep helping people leverage the tools, we are— we’re building sort of an AI net around ourselves as well. by being on the forefront, right? So we can help our clients implement. But a lot of these other clients that just want to stick with the traditional, you know, print, digital, all that stuff, like it’s not sustainable for me as a consultant. So I looked at trades honestly from that perspective. But there was another reason and that’s my son.

THOM VAN DYCKE
11:22

He has a construction company. And so he went into the trade side of high school, got his Red Seal in carpentry.

JOHN CLENDENNING
11:30

Awesome.

THOM VAN DYCKE
11:31

When he was 21, he bought his boss’s business and since then has acquired another construction company. So, he’s 23 and they’re doing, you know, they’re doing incredible work. They have a— so, I’ve been very interested in figuring out what works well for him and the blue-collar space, whether you’re talking about construction, skilled trades, or carpet cleaning, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference in the challenges they’re facing right now. Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
12:02

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
12:03

I think there’s a lot of similarity as you bounce around in the blue collar industries.

JOHN CLENDENNING
12:09

Yeah. And there’s similarity. There is a first mover advantage. AI is the great equalizer. Everybody looks the same and commoditized.

THOM VAN DYCKE
12:18

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
12:18

If it’s done like, again, everybody can have a great website, maybe not a StoryBrand website and maybe not a high converting website, but now they don’t need to have like a a Wix or Weebly basic, you know, absolutely garbage, nothing site.

THOM VAN DYCKE
12:33

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
12:33

They could get a little bit better at it. And 6 months from now, it’ll be one click on GoDaddy. Does that mean it’s the highest converting one? No, it just means every carpet cleaner now looks the same again. Now the customer doesn’t know what to do again. Right. So, so blue collar does run into that where, you know, they, they may— some of them will embrace and jump ahead. So I’ve got a friend who runs— he’s at $5 million going up to $6 million a year. because he, he learned marketing, he learned growth, and now he’s buying other companies even outside of the cleaning and restoration niche.

JOHN CLENDENNING
13:04

He, he just bought a window chip, um, um, company and stuff like that because it’s the same. It’s, it’s manage employees, manage team, manage marketing, get the message out, all of that kind of stuff. But he will run, for example, he’s the first guy in his area, town of half a million people, doing $5 million a year. Um, first guy that had, um, AI Voice and chat, but not on the main line to answer the phones. The office gals are still so much better at the human connection.

THOM VAN DYCKE
13:31

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
13:32

But he runs it on third number rollover if nobody’s available as a better answering machine with a little bit of intelligence. And he runs it at night so he can run pay-per-click when the clicks are half the price. He can get pay-per-click having a conversation to book them in for a call the next day, not a job.

THOM VAN DYCKE
13:49

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
13:49

Don’t try and book a job and have the crew running. The staff will call you tomorrow. And, you know, is it something you’d like to call in the morning or the afternoon? Hey, afternoon would be better. I’m a shift worker that— or like, I work at the hospital. That’s why I’m calling you at 2 AM.

JOHN CLENDENNING
14:01

He’s the only guy running ads at 2 AM. Now he’s got a bit of an arbitrage moment, right? So lean into AI without having to be an AI guy. Lean into good marketing and good messaging because you’re— you’ll stand out like a sore thumb against your competitors, and that will give you that advantage. In a trade, in a world where until Elon’s robots start cleaning carpets and doing electrical and doing plumbing, you know, at some point the Optimus robots might do that, but at this point we’re still protected.

THOM VAN DYCKE
14:30

So, right, exactly.

JOHN CLENDENNING
14:32

Yeah. So let’s go down that road. So a little bit about messaging. How do you— how do you— so you, you kind of realize that trades have a need. The Sun story is awesome. I love the fact these buying businesses starting from scratch is painful. buying something existing and growing upon it and then buying the next one and growing upon it is a hack. It is like, if you can afford it and do it.

JOHN CLENDENNING
14:50

Um, my first business was from scratch. Within a year and a half, I said, oh, heck to the no. And the second one, I bought an existing one, and everything else I bought from that point on was an existing business started and run that I found a gap I could improve and, and add to the fold, right? And I think there’s a there there in that, that moment. But, um, so what kind of messaging do you find is working then? Like, what is— what would you say would be the way that you would refine a message for blue-collar trade, um, to get that— the messaging right that would, when they are growing and need to attract the best employees so they don’t end up with a bunch of duds and a whole entire problem now managing a company— the better people are easier to manage. How does that happen? What is— what does that turning the corner look like?

THOM VAN DYCKE
15:31

So in every story, you have a similar— you have a similar experience, okay? You’ve got a hero. Yeah, the hero has a problem. I like the whole man in a hole version. So, hero’s walking along, falls in a hole, then along comes a sage elder type, you know, an Obi-Wan Kenobi. They drop down a ladder, you climb the ladder out, and there’s transformation on the other side. So, it’s 3 scenes.

JOHN CLENDENNING
15:56

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
15:56

Disruption, I want something, I can’t have it. Confrontation, the guide confronts you in the hole, in your problem. Throws down a ladder and then invites you up the ladder into transformation. So, it’s disruption, confrontation, transformation. Now, when you’re dealing with customers, there’s the customer is the hero. Always, always, always, always the customer is the hero.

JOHN CLENDENNING
16:21

How many of our clients think they’re supposed to be the hero of the story?

THOM VAN DYCKE
16:24

Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
16:24

No, it’s not.

THOM VAN DYCKE
16:25

Right. It’s never the brand. Nobody gives a rip that your granddaddy started your carpet cleaning company, you know, after World War II. Like nobody cares. Yeah, make— talk about the hero and their problem. Now, what’s interesting is in your— in the line of work that you, that you have with carpet cleaners, it’s very SEO-driven, local SEO-driven, right? If I need a carpet cleaner, I don’t need a compelling story. I need a compelling reason to maybe pick you if there’s 3 or 4 or 5 other competitors.

JOHN CLENDENNING
16:55

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
16:56

But there, it’s, it’s actually really important to just be discoverable. Okay, so that’s one thing.

JOHN CLENDENNING
17:01

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
17:02

But when it comes— because, because the, the arc of the story is my customer has something that they need cleaned, it’s dirty, so they need to overcome that so that they’re not embarrassed or whatever the reason. Okay, so it’s clean, healthy, all that stuff. But when you’re dealing with, with employees, it’s a different story arc. So now let’s say your employee is the hero, or the potential employee is the hero. They’ve fallen in a hole. What’s that hole? Either they don’t like their job as it is, they’re not getting paid enough, The hours are terrible. Maybe the boss is horrible. All of these reasons, right? But really what they want to become is a successful human being.

THOM VAN DYCKE
17:42

That’s really what they want. They want meaningful work that makes them feel like they’re contributing to the world. So when your company comes along, you’re no longer selling a product to help them overcome. You’re inviting them into a position that can help them become something. And this is really interesting. So every story is either about overcoming or becoming. And I think when it comes to the story that we— the kind of ads that we write, we need to talk about who we help you become as a human being, not just we pay you more or you get, you know, you start with 3 weeks of holidays or, you know, benefits or any of that stuff.

JOHN CLENDENNING
18:25

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
18:25

We talk about who we help you become. And I think that’s a very, that’s a much more attractive, a much more attractive storyline, even for carpet cleaning.

JOHN CLENDENNING
18:38

And no, it is. And then I could just think of the dozens of carpet cleaners I hired and the evolving landscape of hiring employees. We got to that whole point where as well, whether you called it quiet quitting or every, you know, anybody could cycle through a job within months and stuff like that. It was hard by the time you got somebody trained. they wanted to go off and do something else. It became even harder. There’s a lot of carpet cleaners that said, you know what, I’m just going to do it myself. I’m just going to stay a solopreneur because this whole hiring thing sucks.

JOHN CLENDENNING
19:07

Well, what was their hiring thing like? Upwork and ZipRecruiter and, you know, the same ad everybody else ran. And then they get 150 resumes and, you know, 5 of them are local, you know, whatever, even if they put a filter on. Right. Yeah. And then one or none show up. For the interview. And none of it was like, again, that’s in marketing in general. You have to market to attract a great employee.

JOHN CLENDENNING
19:32

You have to market and market well. You have to, you know, to bring that offer. And you don’t want to be marketing on features, which is what you just mentioned is like, right?

JOHN CLENDENNING
19:43

Like, you know, your marketing should never be about the features and the size of your truck mount and your this, like that when you’re trying to sell the job. It should be what’s the benefit to the client? We use this because it dries quickly. You’re drying an hour back to using it. You’re like, the benefit to your life is more. So you might want to pay a little bit more to have a premium quality cleaning because it gives you all these benefits that the discounts can’t.

JOHN CLENDENNING
20:04

And those kind of things, you start selling your message. Well, employee side of it obviously makes sense. What is your— you know, people want a career path. It’s hard to have a career path through, through a carpet cleaning company. Like what I incentivize my guys to do would be Um, you could own the business someday. You could buy— well, I sold 5 years ago to Carl, who had been with us for 14 years. We had other guys interested. We had other guys that started up their own cleaning companies.

JOHN CLENDENNING
20:30

And it’s like, that was not in the same area. They actually moved back home. One guy moved out back east to Halifax, started his own cleaning company from everything he— and it was like, I will mentor you. I will—

THOM VAN DYCKE
20:39

Totally.

JOHN CLENDENNING
20:40

All as an employee. And then as you move on, heck, I’ll mentor you for that too. Like, that’s cool. Right. So, we shouldn’t. Yeah. So, that’s part— how do you put that into an ad? How do you say, hey, we understand? Or what we’ve started teaching our guys in the coaching program is what I used to do. And one of the other guys in the group, George, is great at this, actually having the business cards that you walk around with and say, wow, you impressed me.

JOHN CLENDENNING
21:03

If you’re ever looking for a job, go to this link or give me a call.

THOM VAN DYCKE
21:06

Yeah, that’s really good. Because you know what I see? I think a lot of this, John, has— it has so much to do with leadership.

JOHN CLENDENNING
21:14

Okay.

THOM VAN DYCKE
21:15

And the best leaders, they create a healthy culture, right? They understand that there are systems that need to be in place. We need to pay our guys on time. We need to honor them. I mean, the most tangible way we honor employees is with bonuses or profit shares or whatever. But it’s about more than that. It’s about recognizing work that’s done well. And you’re talking about somebody recognizing work done well before they’re even on your job. That to me, That to me communicates such a deep curiosity about the human being.

THOM VAN DYCKE
21:47

I know that person’s going to be a good leader because they, they, they’re watching. Um, when I was a youth pastor, I, uh, we, we’re a foster family, so we’ve had lots of foster kids. We’ve had 30 foster kids.

JOHN CLENDENNING
22:00

Okay.

THOM VAN DYCKE
22:00

And, uh, one day, I, I, one of our kids was real tricky that we had. He was a real tricky kid, didn’t have a lot of friends. And as he was waiting in line for, um, the bus, I noticed that a neighbor kid Um, he had— I had told him, when you get out of the car, you don’t cut in front of the line. And he went out and he cut in front of the line, and I was about to yell out, hey, go back! I told you not to do that! And the kid, our neighborhood kid, said, it’s okay, Pastor Tom, no problem. He can cut in front of me. And then he engaged him and talked to him and treated him like he was special. And I wrote that kid— I wrote him a thank you note.

JOHN CLENDENNING
22:37

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
22:37

And I learned the power of an adult writing thank you notes to kids, actually writing them out.

JOHN CLENDENNING
22:45

Yep.

THOM VAN DYCKE
22:45

And his mom came and told me, she said, he’ll probably never say thank you. That card is on his mirror. He reads it all the time. Like, that’s the power of noticing that somebody did a good thing and rewarding them with words.

JOHN CLENDENNING
23:01

It’s huge.

THOM VAN DYCKE
23:01

We’re, we’re, we’re so used to the superficiality of social media. It feels like a reward. But it’s not a real reward. So, when a human being recognizes that grocery bagger who just goes the extra mile and says, by the way, look, you got a good job here. But if you’re ever interested, I want to talk to you because I’m impressed with how you work. I mean, that is huge. That’s huge.

JOHN CLENDENNING
23:29

And everybody should be on looking out for those. Like, again, that’s part of being a business owner in The E-Myth. You should not be the technician. As an entrepreneur, you should learn leadership skills. It doesn’t come naturally. Where are you learning them from? You should learn, right? So yeah, when you do see the, the guy at the bagging the groceries or the, you know, at the cell phone booth in the mall, and, you know, every time you walk by, the smile— they’re not the one just sitting with their head down on the phone. And, and, and you walk up and talk to them and they’re very engaging. Couple of interactions and you get to know that it wasn’t just a one-off.

JOHN CLENDENNING
23:57

The guy at Tim Hortons, the guy at McDonald’s handing you your coffee.

THOM VAN DYCKE
24:00

Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
24:01

You know, I have handed cards to all of those people. I’ve had the odd one become employees, like where, right? And yeah, now you, now you can send them somewhere, whether it’s just, you know, good, better, best, just a phone call and have a conversation or send them to a page on why our business. Like, what is the message? Like, what, what is the, you know, what is the— they’ve now got a moment, as you said, just like your, um, that neighbor kid who now has a moment of, wow, I got recognized. It sticks out. It stands out in our brain, right? When I write paychecks, when I wrote paychecks, I would write a little personal note for real. I would pain over it. I’d actually get anxiety going, oh gosh, it’s payroll again. I have to pause, spend about half an hour to write a few checks because I want to actually write, add to it a little personal note thanking for something they did over the last 2 weeks since the last paycheck.

JOHN CLENDENNING
24:54

If I can at all.

THOM VAN DYCKE
24:54

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
24:55

Because they’ve heard all the negative stuff. I’ve already complained about the fact the truck came back dirty and blah, blah, blah. And I’ve already, you know, I want to— but thank you for going back to Mrs. Jones’s house and actually solving that problem. And we got a testimonial letter because of it. Really appreciate you taking that extra mile. It’s required. It’s part of the job.

JOHN CLENDENNING
25:12

But I appreciate them for doing it and not skirting on their responsibilities. It stands out as well.

THOM VAN DYCKE
25:18

Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
25:19

So, how do we represent that ahead of time in a job ad, in a— on a landing page about, you know, that this job is going to give them that feeling that might be the moment in their life they’re not getting the right feeling from the job they’re in, the company they’re at?

THOM VAN DYCKE
25:36

Well, I think anytime you go away from generic marketing and generic job ads, there’s this fear attached to it. There’s anxiety because we like what is safe. So, probably, you know, we need to do the things that are a little bit maybe a little nutty, feel a little bit dangerous to stand out. And we know that we’re gonna either— that we’re gonna make some mistakes and, you know, maybe turn away a few people. But think about it. Think about talking about most people apply hoping for— hoping to make money.

JOHN CLENDENNING
26:13

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
26:14

We offer you a way to make a life.

JOHN CLENDENNING
26:17

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
26:17

You know, Like inviting people into something bigger than a paycheck. You might think that carpet cleaning is about cleaning something that’s dirty. It’s not. It’s about restoring pride to someone’s home. Do you want to be part of the pride restoration team? Right? You, but you don’t just say, hey, we’re looking for workers. We just need, we need, we need bodies. You know, we need breathing. We need—

JOHN CLENDENNING
26:44

And that’s how every ad comes across.

THOM VAN DYCKE
26:46

Totally.

JOHN CLENDENNING
26:47

Yeah, show up.

THOM VAN DYCKE
26:49

So one of the best things you could do is like we talk about it. I mean, a lot of companies do this, but you talk to your customers and you gather testimonials from your customers. Why would you not gather testimonials from your best employees? Why would you not go to them and get a net success score? You know, figure out what you’re doing really well and use that language and you’ll attract more of those people. Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
27:16

Is that a good— I’ll pit in that for a sec because I love— there’s 2 things that you just said there. So, a Net Promoter Score, a net score from your employees. How am I doing to you?

THOM VAN DYCKE
27:25

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
27:26

That’s not a light bulb. That’s not a writer down or to anybody in the audience because it’s just like, if you think about that, like we always think, well, yeah, our customers. But then this is the punching bag, sort of, at least in the back of our heads, even if we don’t represent it that way. They’re sort of like, my employees are supposed to do all this stuff. Oh my God, employees are so difficult. Because you don’t have the leadership. You don’t have the—

THOM VAN DYCKE
27:44

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
27:45

If you say, hey, how am I doing? Am I helping you the way you expected me to? Like, help me out there. The other one that we did internally, which I thought— I did it with the agency. I started doing it just at the last few years of running the Molly Maid franchises and all that kind of stuff because the book came out. Before the book came out for Love Languages for Business, Read Love Languages, right? Kind of, kind of, kind of told we have to read the Love Languages book at some point, right? It showed up. You know, we had to do the John Gray Venus and Mars. We were kind of told somebody had to, you know, somebody in our lives said you probably should read the book. And Love Languages is another one we got. We got to learn our love languages, John.

JOHN CLENDENNING
28:25

Okay. I read that book and I went, cool. Home life. Yes, absolutely. I need to know the love languages of my employees. Was my first thought out of it.

THOM VAN DYCKE
28:35

Right?

JOHN CLENDENNING
28:35

Right. Because that’s part of what we’re talking about is like, if we know what— does money actually feed them? What if it’s that note? What if it is that extra day off because they really value that because they volunteer, they have hobbies, whatever? What if that’s their bonus? What if like you need to know what it is that makes them go, wow, I really appreciate my boss and my job for that. They get me.

THOM VAN DYCKE
29:00

Yes.

JOHN CLENDENNING
29:01

So correct. And how do you put that in the job ad? Because that’s part— again, now you, if you build this system, now it becomes how you be unique in the way you represent it, you know, to, to the potential candidate in the marketplace and those testimonials from your, your, your, your current staff and even departing staff, like even folks that you’ve had.

THOM VAN DYCKE
29:24

Totally.

JOHN CLENDENNING
29:25

and move up. Like one of my— one of our employees, Mark, became an optometrist, went back to school, went to 5 years university, was only on part-time for a while, right? He is a former hockey player, blew out his ACL, became carpet cleaning technician, decided to go back and become an optometrist. And I’ve said, beautiful, how do we adjust your hours? Let’s make this work, right?

THOM VAN DYCKE
29:42

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
29:43

Because you’re helping people through their life. Well, guess who still messages me every now and then, 20 years, 15 years later? I still hear from Mark, right? Right.

THOM VAN DYCKE
29:51

And see, I think, I think that’s so important. We have to, we have to be good humans first. Just be a good human. Just be a good human. That will go so far for you. Can I ask you something? And this relates to a follow-up question, but what would you— what is kind of the lifeblood of carpet cleaners? I want to know if it’s the same as other trades. Like, how do they— the best kind of business that they get, what is it? What’s the best kind of marketing?

JOHN CLENDENNING
30:19

For the carpet, the technician themselves, or for the—

THOM VAN DYCKE
30:21

No, carpet cleaning.

JOHN CLENDENNING
30:23

Okay.

THOM VAN DYCKE
30:23

Like just to get more business.

JOHN CLENDENNING
30:25

Yeah. So what is— so what is that? So actually what average carpet cleaners think is they need more leads. And what an actual carpet cleaner needs is what I call a core forever engine. They need the great clients who respect what they’re doing, who can pay for them to come back again and again because repeat and referral business is the most important to grow a company.

THOM VAN DYCKE
30:47

Good, good. I’m on the same page.

JOHN CLENDENNING
30:49

Okay.

THOM VAN DYCKE
30:49

Repeat and referral. What if you got repeat and referral employees?

THOM VAN DYCKE
30:57

Right? See, one of the things that we do in the messaging is we put together a one-liner. One-liner is a very, very simple formula. It’s actually really hard to get it right though. It just says problem, solution, result. Here at Carpet Cleaners Anonymous, we know that your mother-in-law can’t see your carpet dirty at the holidays. That’s why we offer a holiday special so that you can open your door without fear and trepidation when you’re— okay, whatever. Here, this, we do this so that you can do that. That should be short.

THOM VAN DYCKE
31:34

It should be 2 sentences. My example was too long. It should be 2 sentences. It should be short and punchy and memorable. And what you should do is once you have that written down, You should stop randomly your employees with a $50 bill and say, give me the one-liner. And if they can do it verbatim, you give them a $50 bonus because when they can speak the language of your messaging, think about it.

JOHN CLENDENNING
32:00

Yes.

THOM VAN DYCKE
32:01

So, you just hire an 18-year-old. He’s on college break, okay, for summer and he’s leaving. And I live in a small city, 20,000 people. So, lots of family, you know, you’re leaving the supermarket and you’re next to your uncle and your uncle’s, hey, where are you working for summer? I’m working at this carpet cleaning place. And he goes, oh, well, what makes you any different than the others? Well, Uncle, one-liner, boom.

JOHN CLENDENNING
32:24

Yep.

THOM VAN DYCKE
32:25

Or he’s going to a bonfire with his friends and they’re like, well, why are you working over? Like, why’d you get that job? You know, why not working on the farm like everyone else in this area? And he goes, no, no, it’s this one-liner, boom. And you’ve turned your employees into the greatest marketing force and the greatest recruiting force. And I think that the same way we reward people even financially when they bring us new business, you might have a referral kickback or something like that. I think we should think about how do we give a bonus, a hiring bonus to people who bring in the best staff.

JOHN CLENDENNING
33:05

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
33:06

You bring in somebody, sticks around for 6 months, I, you know, I give you a check of X number because you’ve helped us grow the business. I learned those kinds of strategies.

JOHN CLENDENNING
33:16

Yeah, my— the Alternative Board tab, it’s called. Um, Brian McFadden, probably not listening, but if you are, I’ll send you the episode. Um, that was one of my consultants over the years. And, um, when we were going through a bit of a— that late, you know, 2015 to 2020 employee crunch and stuff like that as well, we were coming up with ways around this because I always had a $300 bonus, $150 if they, um, if they get hired and the second $150 if they make it to the 90-day probation, right? That was it. Any employee, right? So Brian sat there one, one day in my office right across the desk and said, okay, so you got all these employee problems.

THOM VAN DYCKE
33:55

Yep.

JOHN CLENDENNING
33:55

And like, or finding the right employee, the right people that could carry on this great message, be great in customers’ homes, buy in, Like to the one-liner, all that stuff, and then be able to— then that, if they feel pride in that, they will put the booties on, they will roll out the red carpet, literally, they’ll put the corner guards on though, because they have a care moment all the way through because they bought into the message and therefore it becomes part of their identity on the job, right? So they identify with the job properly and things like that. So you’ve tied that. He goes, so where would you possibly find somebody else you could give that $300 to? Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
34:32

What do you mean?

JOHN CLENDENNING
34:34

He goes, well, at the time he goes, so I would say, how many churches do you clean, John? I go, we have a church program. We clean like 15 churches. We, we, we show them how to— the congregation can tithe back and the cleaning becomes free. It’s a whole program I teach on it. It kind of—

JOHN CLENDENNING
34:48

Like, we do, we do a lot of churches because I walk in and say, how’d you like to get your carpets cleaned for free? And that’s my opening line, right? Um, to, uh, you know, the gal behind the counter at the church, right? And next thing you know, I’m talking to a pastor and we talk about— we give them sale or the testimonial letters of all the other churches we’ve done. You can call them up, ask them about it, right? You know, it can get to the point of being free depending on your congregation. But here’s how we run the program. Anyways, she’s— he’s going, so when have you gone back to the church and said, hey, by the way, we have this $300? He goes, maybe even ramp it up to $500, whatever. But we have this ability to give you money. Do you know any— could you put the word out if anybody or they’re— they, they have a son and a nephew, you know, whatever, um, that would fit this profile. Again, not written as well as what we’re talking about now, but would fit this, this profile for the employee, um, wants this type of rewarding career. Um, if, if we hire them, if they pass the interview and, and get— do the ride-along and the other technician loves them and, you know, likes them well enough to say, yeah, we can work with this guy, does a ride-along day and then gets hired, we immediately pay.

JOHN CLENDENNING
35:49

Thank you for finding the person we hired. And then if they make it to 90-day probation, we pay the rest. He goes, so every one of the churches you just, um, that you clean for, I would suggest— I wouldn’t even call them. I just walk in the door, John, because that’s what you do now. Um, and he goes, the other one I would do would be, um, the, um, um, baseball association, the young male baseball. Like, and I said, why is that? Because his sister turned her out to run the Ontario Baseball Association, something like that, whatever. But the idea was that most of these folks that are 19, 20, 21, like, think your son’s age, right? Um, and the, the association tends to know through the coaches and stuff like that who’s struggling even at work and career or between jobs and stuff like that, kind of like the church knows that as well. Well, these, these are kind of tight-knit and they’re also athletic.

JOHN CLENDENNING
36:41

How many hockey players or baseball players, um, like who’ve been in junior sports their whole life, um, how many do you know that stand out slightly differently than the average gaming kid in his mom’s basement for the last 10 years, right? As being somebody who’s a little bit more community-minded, a little bit more able to talk to people around them and be a little bit more comfortable in their own skin. There’s something about sports and teams And that whole development process that brings out— and churches and all— that brings out the best in people, that you’ve just weeded down to at least a better crowd, right? And you pay them something and give them—

THOM VAN DYCKE
37:21

I agree. So I think it’s great. Yeah, I mean, you think about the Baseball Association, they’re probably always raising money and trying to get, you know, at-risk kids into the program. Yeah, for every, for every good employee that we get out of your association, we will sponsor a kid. Uh, to play ball. Like, it’d be amazing. Amazing.

JOHN CLENDENNING
37:39

Amazing.

THOM VAN DYCKE
37:40

Yeah. Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
37:41

And then there’s a marketing opportunity there as well, because give me a backlink from your association back to the website if we give you a sponsor, right? You know, you get a little SEO boost from a local—

THOM VAN DYCKE
37:49

Totally.

JOHN CLENDENNING
37:49

Right? So yeah. And, and there’s a whole bunch of— because that’s the other thing, like, this is a little off topic on what we’re talking about, but I think it’s just interesting, is that what we’re talking about is being a real human. Real humans that own real businesses talk to real humans. Right. They— back in the day, it might have been dad or grandpa down at the barbershop talking to the butcher and the other. And they all know each other and they all respect, you know, when you respect each other, you refer people and stuff like that. Then we decided to hide digitally behind everything, right? Business is still done. Your best referral partners, the best real estate agent or interior designer or whatever that’s going to refer their clients to you is because they like you.

THOM VAN DYCKE
38:25

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
38:26

The relationship with them is not because ChatGPT said to recommend you. It’s not because your SEO did better for that. They also still need to really— and that, that where the average customer who doesn’t have somebody in mind might go to Google, other people will ask their neighbor, their friends, their, the flooring store where they bought it, the interior designer, the whatever, and they’re gonna trust an endorsement. And, and that’s never changed. The human connection, finding employees, growing a great business, It’s still about, again, walking around those business cards and handing them out. It’s still about being authentic and real in the real world, not just hiding behind a computer and a digital screen hoping to get more leads, right?

THOM VAN DYCKE
39:09

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
39:09

Pick the phone up and call your customer the day after and make sure they’re happy with the job. And were they happy with the technician? And when they got a wow, give your technician that bonus and say, dude, customer was raving about you. I’m sure we’re going to get a Google review. Don’t really care right now. You did an amazing job. Here’s your bonus. Here’s a bonus. That was a wow of the week.

THOM VAN DYCKE
39:27

I think that’s really hitting it on the head. I’ve done a study on the difference between during a recession, how much money people actually keep investing in marketing. And the really interesting thing is that the companies that maintain their marketing budget through a downturn or recession, they don’t make up the difference in the recession. But on the tail end, because recessions never end or never last forever.

JOHN CLENDENNING
40:00

Never last forever. Yep.

THOM VAN DYCKE
40:01

They go through the roof when people are ready to spend again because they didn’t lose touch with their customers throughout. And I think that if, you know, it feels, I don’t know if this is the truth or not, but Spending on your own employees feels to me like one of the best investments you can make. Like, it just feels that way. I don’t know why. I don’t know why people hold back so much there. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s—

JOHN CLENDENNING
40:30

Could you imagine if you had 20 testimonials of past employees for your carpet cleaner or 10 or 5, right? On a landing page or in a job ad. By the way, here’s some of our former, our Current and former employees, and here’s their— because you took a Net Promoter and a, like, an internal survey review. And with the little button that says, hey, by the way, we might be using this in our marketing. We’ll share your first name and just the letter of your last name, whatever. But, and by the way, here’s what our employees say about working here. So not, you know, like, not a glass ceiling or whatever that’s called, or glass, whatever, the websites of that. But literally, you internally, because you care, you’re gauging. And then you use that.

JOHN CLENDENNING
41:08

Just like I said, I would take letters from one church to the other church going, this pastor loves us and loves our program. Would you like to be enrolled in our program too? And I started doing that with chiropractors and I started doing it with condos. Like, it was just, right? Why not be doing that with employees? It’s like, hey, here’s Mark, the hockey player turned optometrist, and the letter he wrote on exit thanking for how much we helped him get through to his new career. after 5 years and how accommodating we were and still writes me and says, dude, you’re still the best boss I ever had. And I run my own optometry clinic now because of you. And I was just figuring— I was just a dumb kid figuring it out. Like, I was literally in my 20s and 30s, right, trying to figure out how to be sort of a leader, sort of at this stuff, right? But I think—

THOM VAN DYCKE
41:53

You can be an incredibly messy human being. You can make a lot of mistakes. But when you’re a good human being, the, the, you’ll know you’re a good leader when your staff gives you the benefit of the doubt. When they go, oh, what was that about? Oh, did he ever say something stupid the other day or whatever?

JOHN CLENDENNING
42:13

Yeah.

THOM VAN DYCKE
42:14

But I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that that’s not what he really meant or that’s not, you know what I mean? That’s some great magic.

JOHN CLENDENNING
42:21

You’ve got some grace for him.

THOM VAN DYCKE
42:22

Yeah, exactly. It’s a magical moment. Just absolutely magical.

JOHN CLENDENNING
42:26

So, so we’ve got this, this, we’ve got these ideas of, hey, the message of what the benefit. So you’re going to be the guide. Again, love Donald, you know, this whole StoryBrand idea. You’re the guide to the client that you’re trying to get as a customer. They’re, they’re the hero of the story. You’re the guide to the employee. I love that shift. I love that idea.

JOHN CLENDENNING
42:49

Um, you’re guiding them on making their business, their career choice. This is a stepping stone or a point in their, in their career journey. It might be that they own a business someday. What are you going to get out of this? And you might be buying a company out. You might become the general manager. We might be growing. You know, we have 20 employees in a flood restoration division, and you’ve got your way to go all the way up to general manager someday. Like, they’re, you know, whatever.

JOHN CLENDENNING
43:13

Like, there’s, there’s— every company has a— You might just be the guy sitting beside the owner. And employee number 1, right? But that employee number 1 becomes chief technician who employs and who trains employee number 2. So you could get all of that with like you at our job and then represent that with a really low cognitive load moment of a one-liner. Can our employees say what our one-liner is to our clients? And can we state our one-liner for having a career with our company that works for the front office gal and the technician, right?

THOM VAN DYCKE
43:51

Absolutely.

JOHN CLENDENNING
43:52

What is that, right? Think of marketing. I always like— I learned this from a good friend of mine, Jim Allene. Um, and Jim told me, um, always be building your bench. Always. Don’t be— right, the whole hire Slow fire fast. Sure. If, if, if something comes up and you can’t give— you can’t give the employee any grace because they’ve not earned the grace and you have to say, that’s, that’s destructive, that’s going to damage my company. Sorry, I will give you 2 weeks.

JOHN CLENDENNING
44:20

I’ll give you a month’s salary. I’ll be nice to get you out the door, but I’m getting you out the door because I’m also not worried. I also have constant conversations with people that might want to work here someday because of everything they’ve heard and seen. Good marketing, good reputation marketing, build a great reputation and market your reputation. Also attracts better employees because they see that your reputation is preceding you everywhere in the marketplace, like potential customers will. Now you’re building a bench, you’ve got a process in place, you’ve— you’re talking to Little League, you’re talking to churches, you’re handing out cards, right? And you’re— and you’re going, but John, I’ve only got one truck on the road. Hey, we— you might want to have multiple. One of our clients, Tony, in this really weird economy of is it a recession, is it not, are people scared of their jobs or not, is AI going to be the AI job apocalypse or not in their industry, all that kind of stuff.

JOHN CLENDENNING
45:10

And Tony, in the last 24 months, built a million-dollar cleaning business. He just hit $83,000 a month, started brand new May of 2024. He now has 6, 7, 8 employees, right? So if you do marketing right and grow right, there is still an avenue right now where you can be like your son buying a different business out and stuff like that and growing. You can buy the competitors that suck, take their database and double their—

THOM VAN DYCKE
45:33

Sure.

JOHN CLENDENNING
45:33

The job load out of it right now because there’s a bunch of them having that recessionary aches and pains where they’re not marketing through a slowdown. So, they’re dropping 40% where the person that markets through might only drop 10%. But on the back end, they jump 30%, 40% like we said. So, right. So, yeah. So, I mean, lots of, lots of there, there, lots of good stuff going on there. What would be some of the things that, like, that we’ve talked about that would, would help even, you know, in that messaging even more? Where would, how would, like, like a little bit of brass tacks that, yeah, how would they work through what they’re going to put on a list, even if they take it back to ChatGPT and say, turn this into a much better job ad using a bit of a StoryBrand style or something like that.

THOM VAN DYCKE
46:14

Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
46:14

How, what, what are sort of those things that they wanna really start thinking about or focusing on?

THOM VAN DYCKE
46:20

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, you know, if there, if there’s time to read and they enjoy that, reading Building a StoryBrand is really good. I have put my own spin on Building a StoryBrand because I’m not gonna be a certified guide for much longer. Okay. And And so, I call it narrative marketing. I just talk about those 3 acts and stuff, but I have it written down and I have a webinar on my website that people can visit and look at. But I think it’s really about changing our perspective and waking up and saying, these people, it’s not that I’m giving them a privilege of working for me. I have the privilege of leading them.

THOM VAN DYCKE
47:01

Yeah, you know, like really changing your perspective. That’s far more practical than actually people think. Um, but then also just, you know, really understanding what it means to tell a compelling story. Um, I think that’s, I think that’s really, really core. And, um, so—

JOHN CLENDENNING
47:19

No, I think those 2 things are brilliant because, no, so leadership, I would say your 19 years as a youth pastor to pastor, you naturally understand the power of leadership and leading other people to, to, to the destination, right? Whatever. So leadership becomes, well, I do it here in the church to find Christ. I do it here in, um, in business, or a business should do that to lead the employee, not oversee and dictate. That’s a cool moment. And then, yeah, really the other thing you mentioned that I just want to is Do people read much anymore? I, I tell everyone, like, there’s a lot of window time in carpet cleaning, right?

THOM VAN DYCKE
48:01

It’s—

JOHN CLENDENNING
48:02

and anything like that. If you’re the business, if you’re, if you’re the owner and still in the truck, thank your lucky stars that you have a lot of university time because you’re not listening to country music or death metal or whatever it is your thing is. You are listening to these podcasts. You’re listening to Donald Miller, StoryBrand, the book. You’re getting, you’re getting your—

THOM VAN DYCKE
48:22

Yes.

JOHN CLENDENNING
48:23

Audible subscription and you’re maximizing that out every month. You are downloading things to listen to. You’re listening to The E-Myth by Michael Gerber and anything that you need to fix yourself, any sort of like the, you know, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and stuff like that.

THOM VAN DYCKE
48:38

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
48:38

You are now building a better you and you’re— so that you can build a better company. And because you’re now— that was what you signed up for. You didn’t sign up for somebody else to give you a paycheck. You get to go home at the end of the day, eat Netflix and— or eat Cheetos and watch Netflix, as I say. You signed up to be the role leader and the model of the company, even if you’re only just one person right now, so that you can build something that grows from there. So that whole leadership and then how you’re engaging in the study of personal growth and business growth at every moment gets you there for sure.

THOM VAN DYCKE
49:13

Right. Brilliant. I think that’s a great summary.

JOHN CLENDENNING
49:17

Yeah. So definitely, we’re gonna put the show notes. Everybody should go and check out that webinar that you’ve got. They should start thinking in that narrative-driven marketing. They really like marketing for employees, which we spent a lot of our time talking about here. But marketing in general, you’ve got to stand out. You have to tell a better story. Why should somebody choose one business over the other?

THOM VAN DYCKE
49:41

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
49:41

They don’t know. It’s the story moment, right? It is. Does this one feel better than that one in pictures, in sentiment, in the way they present the information? And does it feel right for me? That’s what a story done well imparts on the person. This just feels better. I’m willing to spend $400, $500, get my carpet cleaned by this guy than the guy for $169.95 who is the same price as all the other guys. That is just— that’s a discount cleaning. I talked to these guys and they explain why the value, the difference, right?

THOM VAN DYCKE
50:17

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
50:17

Our cleaning product, we could actually drink right in front of you. It’s that safe. Does that Do you matter about that for your family, your friends, and, and your kids and your pets and all that kind of stuff? Um, and, and, and is it dried quickly so it doesn’t leave mold and mildew, or at least wet for days that you have to dance around in wet socks? Is there a benefit? All of that takes a little bit more time and attention in the home, and we hire the right people that can put that time and attention in. And you’ll notice the moment they show up, they are gonna— I always tell our— always told our technicians, employees, I want you to come across Like your, your, um, your best friend did to your mom, or the way you talk to your, you know, your favorite aunt, right? I want you to come across like that employee because, you know, your best friend talks to your mom, oh, you know, Mrs., Mrs. Clendening, blah, blah, blah, and all this kind of thing. And afterwards you’re going, dude, you make me look bad. What’s going on? You’re like so respectful. Like your best friend should talk to your mom.

JOHN CLENDENNING
51:14

Like how your mom would wish you would be. Like, you know, I kind of like your friend a little bit more than you because he’s so polite and nice to me. The employees should come across like that regardless of what they’re like behind the scenes, what they’re like at a party with their friends, right? And, or come across like, again, you’re, you know, the way you would talk to your grandma or your favorite aunt or, or something like that, right? You always just treat them a little bit different. Like you, you elevate who you are. Um, and if you’ve got the right person who knows that, You hire the right employee because you’ve done all this stuff that we just talked about. Yeah. Now you’re building a company that you can trust that what’s happening in the home is the way you want it to happen in the home. Without that trust, you will never hire an employee because you, you could always do it better.

JOHN CLENDENNING
51:59

You will feel in your brain, right? So yeah, we got to get to that moment. So no, I appreciate that. So Any summary wrap-up thoughts, famous last words, stuff like that on this? And then where should they go to learn more about what we’ve just talked about from you? Because I mean, you get it, you nailed it. So where do we go?

THOM VAN DYCKE
52:20

Thanks. Well, I guess the parting words would be this. Don’t underestimate the power of understanding story. Don’t underestimate that. It’s clarifying. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s actually such a time saver. It’s unifying for your team. So don’t underestimate that.

THOM VAN DYCKE
52:43

Learn about the power of story. And then if people want to get ahold of me, they can certainly email me. My name is spelled a little bit different. T-H-O-M and Van Dyke has a D-Y-C-K-E. But you can email me just tom@tomvandyke.com. You can visit my website, tomvandyke.com. And I’m also on LinkedIn. So, if you’re a business owner and you’re on there and you want to connect, certainly look me up and I’ll be more than happy to.

THOM VAN DYCKE
53:07

And please let me know if you heard about me here. I’d love to send Jon a note of thanks as well. So, I look forward to connecting with your audience, Jon.

JOHN CLENDENNING
53:17

Yeah, I appreciate that. And send notes. There’s another one. Write handwritten notes anywhere you can to employees, to your wife, to happy Customers to vendors, everything. Like, the power in a handwritten note is insane. So as well, there’s another, another golden nugget. So appreciate it. In the show notes, we’ll get— we’ll put your contact information and all that as well so people can reach out.

JOHN CLENDENNING
53:37

And yeah, I really appreciate this message. I love having these conversations of helping business owners sort of get out of their own head and move in the right direction because it is a little bit rarefied. Once you get there, you realize you’re in a little bit of rarefied air and you are one of the community leaders and local leaders because you decided to put some time into this thought process. You get better employees, you get better customers, you grow a company, and we end up— all of us, we end up with a better life and better life for the people around us. So, um, I think, I think if we think in those ways and we keep moving forward like that, um, then I don’t care what AI does to our world because we have a reason to be here.

THOM VAN DYCKE
54:16

So I agree.

JOHN CLENDENNING
54:18

Perfect. Well, thanks so much. Appreciate it. And yep, if, um, anybody, uh, has any comments at all, I will share them like in the, in the comments and anywhere Spotifys and YouTubes and everywhere else this goes. Um, we will definitely share those back with Tom as well. And until next time, I appreciate everybody showing up, and thanks so much. We’ll see you again.

THOM VAN DYCKE
54:34

Bye now.