How a New Company Reached 7-Figures in their first 24 months

Most hotel brands mandate at least three deep cleanings per year, with additional spot treatments or high-traffic cleaning as needed. This provides multiple large-ticket jobs per property annually.

JOHN CLENDENNING
1:27

Foreign. Hey, well, welcome back everybody to the Carpet Cleaner Success podcast. Got another interview right now with a successful carpet cleaning company owner. I’ve known Tony for about two years and Tony started his business about two years ago. So in the carpet cleaning world, we’re going to get into that, but Tony is Inlet Services in Virginia beach and Chesapeake Bay and that whole area. So welcome to the show, Tony. Thanks for jumping on.

TONY PARROW
1:59

Yeah, thanks for having me.

JOHN CLENDENNING
2:00

Yeah. So tell a little bit of story about currently Inlet Services. Like I got that right. Virginia beach on Chesapeake Bay. But what is, what is the company about? Like how, how big are the company right now? How many crews you got on the road? What are you doing? What do you service?

TONY PARROW
2:15

Okay, yeah, absolutely. So Inlet Service has been in business for just, just at two years this month and we do kind of threefold carpet cleaning, water damage restoration and then we just started doing Pressure also. And you know, our, our kind of niche is hotel carpet cleaning that’s something we really focus on and you know, it’s kind of a little bit about my background that we’ll get into. But, but like from a, from a crew standpoint, you know, we’ve been, like I said, we’ve been in business for, for two years. I’ve got three carpet cleaning wrap vehicles on the road every day, plus we have a, a pressure washing vehicle also. And then we have a maintenance vehicle that we kind of use on the restoration side. And so, you know, about 10, 11 text total and some salesforce office management and growing faster than maybe I wanted to. But, but it’s good, you know, and you know it’s, it’s a, it’s been a fun ride so far and we, you know, we’re going to keep, keep rolling that way.

TONY PARROW
3:25

So.

JOHN CLENDENNING
3:26

Yeah. And I think the interesting thing about talking with you is like you’ve come at this with a, like there’s two perspectives in the world of cleaning business owners. There is. I’m a carpet cleaner cleaning business that just happens to own a business. Right. And so, and there’s a lot of sort of stuck mindset around that, you know, I need to generate more leads versus I need to build a business. I talk to those guys all day long. And then there’s the other side of it is I’m a business owner that just happens to be in the cleaning industry and there, and in that world pressure washing makes sense, flood restoration makes sense.

JOHN CLENDENNING
4:01

If in my world, when the gal that owned the three Molly maid franchises came to me, who was a referral partner that I’d met many times because I met every maid service in town to refer our carpet cleaning companies over the years and she came to me and said, can you buy me out? And I’m going, oh hell no. I have no interest in running a maid service. Six months later, John, can you really, can you buy me out? I’m, I need to get out of this thing. I, I, I can’t sell it. You guys run a great business. I, I really would like you. And I thought about it and we ended up buying her, buying her out. And that’s how an existing business because I was the, I was a business owner of cleaning businesses.

JOHN CLENDENNING
4:34

So the janitorial, the duct cleaning, the pieces that we added on were just part of a good marketing machine, operations machine. And then the law of big numbers as we grew, right. Same idea that you, you guys are two years in and noticing all of that. So what do you think is like, so you did target a niche and that’s one thing that, you know, right from the day one when I met you, that was the. That was the goal. And there is a history to that. There’s a bit of a story how why you targeted the hotels and property managers and that sort of end of it. So let’s get into that a little bit.

JOHN CLENDENNING
5:05

What got you to deciding to own a cleaning business in the first place?

TONY PARROW
5:09

Sure, yeah. So, I mean, I’ve always considered myself semi entrepreneurial and, you know, I always wanted to be a business owner and everything. And I was in the. In the Navy for about six years. I got out in 2001, and when I got out of the Navy, I was here in Virginia beach and loved it here. It’s my home. I’ve lived here longer than where I grew up in upstate New York. So it really is home.

TONY PARROW
5:31

And. And you know, when I got out of the Navy, I started in the hotel business. I worked at. At a hotel at the Oceanfront in Virginia Beach. Started as a valet. I left there as a couple years later as a general manager of a small select service Hilton property. And over the next 20 years, I took various roles and moved my way up through, you know, just really a couple, like, local companies, but they all had, you know, franchises like Marriott. And back then there was Starwood and IHG and Hilton Hyatt.

TONY PARROW
6:02

And so I worked across all of those with, you know, companies that were based here in Virginia beach, but had a little bit of a national reach. And, you know, my last position in the hotel industry, I was the senior vice president of operations for a hotel company that had Hyatt and Marriott hotels and Choice properties and all that. And, you know, Virginia beach is a big, small town. You know, it’s not something that everybody everywhere has heard of Virginia beach, or maybe they’ve heard of it slightly. But what it is is a large tourism market and there’s a lot of hotels. So hotel rooms per capita is very high here. The resort beach in Virginia beach is the largest resort beach on the east coast, just in length.

JOHN CLENDENNING
6:43

Yeah.

TONY PARROW
6:43

Hotels that go from 2nd street to 42nd street and all that stuff. It’s just perfect for us, you know, ye hotel carpet cleaners, you know, so, yeah, so I decided, you know, I had a vendor that I used for many, many years, another local company, you know, friends. And I said, I trust, you know, trust him to use it. And eventually, you know, over time, he. He was recruiting, recruiting, recruiting. And finally during COVID and times were rough for everybody, I made that big jump in that career change and I moved over and I worked for this other company basically doing what Inlet Services does. And I did that for a long time and you know, a few years anyway and semi outgrew that and was actually looking to get back into the hotel industry very briefly. And then my business partner, who is also a, an old shipmate, we were in the, in the Navy together.

TONY PARROW
7:36

We served in the Middle east and we were on a destroyer out of Norfolk and owns a real estate company and he’s like, hey, you know, why don’t you think about doing this on your own? And I’m like, I can’t do it on my own. You know, like, I just, you know, I was always scared to make that jump. And he pushed me over the edge, which is great. And kind of no looking back. We share an office with the real estate company. We just moved to a brand new office. I have a big warehouse and then suite for Inlet Services. And then he has his, you know, 17 plus real estate agents, property managers and everybody else in the front half.

TONY PARROW
8:10

And it’s a great synergy and relationship. And we’re a big family with like six companies all and in total. But you know, my side being being the pressure washing and the carpet cleaning and the disaster restoration.

JOHN CLENDENNING
8:23

So that’s awesome. And there’s so many nuggets in that because. So a lot of carpet cleaners have a tough time chasing down commercial. Right. You came from the perspective there’s. There’s a couple things that stand out. One, you came from the perspective of, hey, I’ve had vendors pitch me, so you’re not scared to go out and pitch. And you also know a better pitch.

JOHN CLENDENNING
8:46

You also know like, hey, I’m. If I’m going to be targeting this market, I speak the language of the person I’m going to be talking to. At the other hotels, you had some, you knew some of them, you know, all that, that kind of thing. But the other thing you did know, and I always talk about the Disney experience. I learned from Dan Kennedy Joe Polish those days you talk about the hotel experience and you knew to come with not a bunch of technicians and a bunch of jeans and ripped T shirts, stinking funny and cleaning carpets that some guys show up like that after they land their hotel the first time and wonder why they don’t land 10 or 20 or get whatever. So you’ve got two things there. One, you knew the industry, you knew kind of pain points to be able to talk to it. So I would like to talk a little bit about sort of how you introduce yourself to the hotels and hit the ground running.

JOHN CLENDENNING
9:32

That first 90, 120 days of just, you know, getting the business off the ground and getting jobs and sort of getting the technicians that you’ve got to buy into the hotel experience because not everybody drinks the Kool Aid and you can’t have those guys around because they’re a detriment to the business. Might be a great technician, but sucks if the hotel hates having them in the, in the building at all.

TONY PARROW
9:57

Exactly. Now for sure. And you know, John, like, on the, on that side of it, I think that’s probably my most important part is I teach my, you know, my technicians to be an extension of the hotel team. Right. When they’re at the hotel, they should be greeting each guest with a smile. When they walk by, they should step back and hold the elevator door open and let the guest on and have a pleasant conversation. Oh, you know, where are you from? And all that kind of stuff. No different than the room attendant or the engineer or the front desk person would do.

TONY PARROW
10:26

Yeah, you know, I want, I want the call and I get this call from the general manager of the hotel. Like, your guys are so nice. Like, they, like. I had a guest come up and compliment me on my carpet cleaning team. And that’s you. And I’m like, no, yeah, we are part of your team. Right. And that’s the whole thing.

TONY PARROW
10:41

You know, I mean, the hospitality industry, just the name, of course, is all about, you know, hospitality. But we, we really try to focus on that in our training. You know, I mean, I, I got nuggets from Marriott or from Hyatt or from Hilton. You know, some of the simple things like the, you know, you know, there’s acronyms that the hotel industry uses like guest. And we, you know, so I teach that to my, to my team. You know, greet each guest with a smile, use each guest name, show sincere interest in each guest experience, and, you know, thank each guest. And we try to use that in our, in our daily training. So it’s not just about getting the carpet clean.

TONY PARROW
11:20

Of course, there’s plenty of companies can get the carpet clean, but it’s understanding that when you walk up to a room that the front des desk told you to clean and there’s a do not disturb sign on the door, they don’t just go railing on the door. Right. And let yourself in with a key. You know, it’s like knowing that is so important and most, most companies down. So, you know, I just try to use all the, the hotel stuff for

JOHN CLENDENNING
11:41

that and that’s having those frameworks. So Alex Harmozi talks up a lot about frameworks. He learned from the Dan Kennedy world, Russell Brunson, all that kind of stuff. And his whole thing is he learned frameworks to build this whole mosey thing that, you know, everybody’s chasing after. But the idea of frameworks is being able to understand. You’ve got to teach employees, hotels do teach employees. Your entire experience from valet all the way up to general manager and beyond, you learned that there is training programs, there are personal development plans, there are personal improvement plans. If they screw up, there’s, there, there’s a way to run a company that if you start with that mindset and you train it into the, the technicians and the right ones show up and the odd one self selects.

JOHN CLENDENNING
12:26

This is beyond me. I don’t want to have to be that accountable. Those kind of things, you’re building, as you said, a better company because anybody can clean carpets. And that’s the commodity of what we provide is, it’s carpet cleaning. The premium of what we provide, whether it’s residentially, you do that in a, you know, a high end residential home and you’re, your technician is the friendliest person they’ve ever had at their $5 million, $10 million home. They’re having you back over and over again multiple times a year. They just happen to have a 27 foot sectional that the kids spill pop on and, and spill popcorn on watching a movie. When everybody else has their seven foot sectional or seven foot couch, they just have a bigger one and it costs fifteen hundred dollars to clean.

JOHN CLENDENNING
13:07

But they’re going to have you back still multiple times a year and you know all. So you got the high end there, you got hotels you have to come across as a high end service provider. Even if your pricing is middle of the road and fitting in, you got to stand out. And then you even mentioned that when you were getting those messages from the general manager saying that your cleaning technicians got the kudos, got the, you know, the testimonial from the, the, the, the guest. Those are great moments because that’s, you know, when you got friendship with them, you say dude, can I have that in a letter? Can you put that on your letterhead and tell me that it’s so much, it’s so great hiring us because even this happens. Because I want to show that letter to 20 other hotels. I don’t want them calling you. I want to have your, your name on the bottom as the general manager or the facility manager saying that you guys are amazing because.

JOHN CLENDENNING
13:56

And you get one of those, then you get five of those, and you get 10 of those. I started doing that with chiropractors and then salons and a bunch of other. I would get very specific testimonial letters from a niche and then I would target that same niche to get more chiropractors. Right? So because you can have a testimonial. My first one was from like this town of St. Mary’s and then it was other whatever. So my first package of testimonials was just random. But as we got bigger year two, year three, year four, I made sure everybody who got a cleaning done, I showed up the next day, gave them a free bottle of spot remover, did a walk around to see how the guys did the night before, especially on the first cleaning, and did a wander around, stuff like that.

JOHN CLENDENNING
14:35

Went and chatted to the person who hired us, who saw me on the quote and then saw me when I came back with the pricing. I didn’t just send a PDF, right? I showed up. I showed up again, high touch. And then we gave them free bottles of spot remover for between spottings that we would leave. And I would come back the day after the first cleaning to give them those and do that walkthrough to see how everything turned out. And I would almost always get a testimonial letter then from them because they had already seen in the sales package other people’s testimonial letters. So I would just say, hey, I happen, you know, I’d love a testimonial letter. I’m not sure if you know what to write, but I wrote a few words down here.

JOHN CLENDENNING
15:09

If you want to just. Just scribble on that, add to them and hand me a piece of blank letterhead, that’s fine. Or if you want to take this and type it up and send it to me by email or whatever. But I would really love your testimonial. Google reviews are great, but that’s only for people that go to Google. Testimonial letters are sales. Like you can add them, you can show them on your website, you can show them in packages that you hand out and, and all that stuff. So.

JOHN CLENDENNING
15:30

So yeah, having. Having the technicians that can generate that for you residentially and commercially is, Is awesome. So what would you say, just as a tip for anybody listening that does sort of shy away from approaching hotels, maybe Chartwell retirement homes and the same thing, they want people that are in cleaning that feel like their own staff. Right. And how do you. How would you say a carpet cleaner that gets that message. How would they position themselves when introducing themselves to a hotel manager when they’re just doing a cold call to get the ball rolling?

TONY PARROW
16:06

Sure, yeah. I mean, I think you, you know, in purchase most commercial accounts kind of that same way. But any pre work that you can do ahead of time to kind of know who that decision maker is and get in front of them. I mean, even a simple trick, if I’m completely cold calling and walking into the hotel. Almost every hotel has the general manager’s business card on the front desk.

JOHN CLENDENNING
16:29

Yes.

TONY PARROW
16:29

If you walk right up to the front desk person, be like, hey, is the GM around? And you’re wearing a logo and this. Now you’re a salesperson and they’re going to make something up and they’re going to send you on your way almost every time.

JOHN CLENDENNING
16:38

Yes.

TONY PARROW
16:38

If I walk in and I kind of glance out of the corner of my eye and I see the business card and then I’ll say, and I say something more like, hey, it’s Tony around. You know, they’re more likely, oh, Tony. You know, Tony. Okay, let me. Yes. Hey, this guy out here knows you. Let me go grab him. You know, and it just, it just makes like such a big difference getting past the, the gatekeeper.

TONY PARROW
16:57

And then another thing is identifying a problem that they may have. Right. So right now in Virginia beach, there’s a lot of marijuana odor. It’s just a.

JOHN CLENDENNING
17:10

Okay. Yeah.

TONY PARROW
17:11

Right. So we, I wish I had one here I could show you. But we have this little sample of this odor removal that’s like odor remover. That’s specifically for that. And we have our logo on it. And it’s, it’s kind of funny and it’s got a QR code and it’s a individual like kind of serving thing where they, where they squeeze it and it creates just enough to put in a spray bottle. So it’ll make a bunch of spray bottles. But if you walk in with something in your hand and you say, hey, you know, is Tony around? They’re like, oh yeah, you know, the guy’s out here to hand you something.

TONY PARROW
17:39

Right. Then they’re, they’re definitely going to come out.

JOHN CLENDENNING
17:41

Yeah, yeah. It’s beyond their, beyond their pay grade to not go get, not go get them now.

TONY PARROW
17:45

Right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. So and then at that point, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, you have to market and sell yourself the best you can and, and, but getting in front of them is probably number one. I mean, that’s the thing. And and if you know who you’re trying to get in front of ahead of time, that’s even better. So there’s lots of kind of behind the scenes thing that I’ll, I’ll, I’ll go. If I can go into a courtyard hotel, I want to know how many stories it is. I want to know kind of how long the floors are already because I can kind of back into an estimate before I even get there on how much I’m going to charge for a hallway based on square footage, you know, the guest room. Look online real quick.

TONY PARROW
18:22

Do they have LVP in the guest rooms? Do they have carpet in the guest rooms? And guess what? You know, carpet’s going away more and more and more. And I own a carpet cleaning business, so we got to figure out other stuff. Well, we clean LVP in the hotel rooms. It still needs to be cleaned. And, and so, but we know that ahead of time instead of being like, oh, we clean hotel carpets. Well, we don’t have carpets, you know, and then yeah, kind of conversation just dead end. So you know, just, just doing a little bit of pre work goes, goes a long ways sometimes. Good.

TONY PARROW
18:47

Just drive down the road and hit a bunch of places and all that. Even then from your phone you can look at the hotel website because nobody has better photography than a, than a hotel. Right? You know exactly what it looks like. You know what the guests think it looks like because they post pictures and all that.

JOHN CLENDENNING
19:00

So. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can even take in like nowadays, especially with AI, we do we. One of our coaching programs, we just did a training on how to look at the reviews, especially the negative reviews of, of your competitors and use those as part of your marketing message. So even that, like if there’s any negative, like, hey, I’d see you guys have a really, you know, great reputation. But a couple of the negatives seem to stem around the cleaning. I’d like to help you with that. Right now you’re, now you’re speaking their language and you look them up.

JOHN CLENDENNING
19:30

It’s sort of like, yeah, you’ve done all your, your homework. You, you become like at that 95 percentile, you know, of people that the other guys just walk in, hi, I’m a carpet cleaner. I’d like to, you know, talk to the general. I’d like to leave some information and you’ve walked in with a problem that you can solve and some research and in the name of the person, as you said, and, and all of that kind of stuff and some history that we Also do the building right across the street and the guy down the corner, you might know them and you know, you just, you start creating that, that, that momentum and as you said, also just stop, just stop in like there’s a point at which we’ve, we all the carpet stores, if not if you’re doing residential or even commercial carpet cleaning and not every major carpet store in town knows you just as the guy that wanders in the door. Howard Partridge taught us to bring donuts or coffee or whatever, but just wander in real estate offices as well. If you’re going to get referrals to high end homes and really like, they should just know you. It should be, you know, Tony’s the guy that wander, wanders in with candy or wanders in with donuts once every month or two. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
20:33

You know, and they’re all cheering and hot. It’s just an icebreaker. It’s just that, you know, people buy from who they know like and trust. We all think we can hide behind a logo and you know, a Google Ad and a phone number and an AI tool that books jobs for us. But the truth is we have to put our real face behind a real business. Absolutely. Actually run a real company. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
20:56

So yeah, and I think, I think that’s one of the things that you, you exemplify because it’s been two years and you’ve got to that level that I don’t know if you knew this or not, but only 15% of carpet cleaners ever get out of the truck. Only 2% ever sell their business for more than the price of the truck. And only half a percent of home service businesses in general ever make it to a seven figure like that, 83,000, $85,000 a month run rate and beyond. But the ones that do make it to 5 and 10 million, far more likely than because they’ve, they’ve become the business owner. They’re owning a business and let the, and have operations running. So if something’s slowing down, you’re fixing it, you’re solving. You see it in the numbers ahead of time. You’re not just going, oh crap, I, you know, something’s changed.

JOHN CLENDENNING
21:42

I don’t know what it is. You’ve been watching it for three months, six months on the P Ls and stuff like that. Right. So absolutely.

TONY PARROW
21:48

We talk about that 83, 333 a lot.

JOHN CLENDENNING
21:52

Yeah.

TONY PARROW
21:53

You know, just kind of throw it in there and I don’t mind sharing. We’re, we’re at a trailing twelve number of 9, 941. So we’re almost to that.

JOHN CLENDENNING
22:02

Almost there. Yeah.

TONY PARROW
22:03

A couple more $83,000 months replacing ones that are less than that and we’ll be that seven digit number. And that’s.

JOHN CLENDENNING
22:09

Yeah. And that, that, that is testament of running it as a business, understanding it as a business, training the technicians because that becomes that near business. Everybody wearing uniform because that’s a business. You know, everyone’s, well, you know, chem Dry and Zerorez and all those, they wear uniforms. I’m, I’m just going to put a T shirt on. It’s like, well, no, the better you stand out and stand up, the more you get that brand recognition, your social media, we’ll talk about that in a second too. But adding a little bit of fun and whimsy to your social media to get, just get into people’s heads. I call it Chinese water torture.

JOHN CLENDENNING
22:40

But just drip on them to the point when they’re ready. Oh, I’ve seen you forever, right? Pay per click ads should just be a drip. Like retargeting should be a bit of a drip. Happy customer stories should be a drip. All of it is just sort of like, let me get on your radar, let me get on your radar when you’re ready. Whether I recommended us because it’s, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re getting mentioned by the LLMs because of good SEO and good stuff like that, or the neighbor mentioned you or they saw the van in the neighborhood. All of it is like, oh, I’ve seen those guys. Right? Yeah, everybody tries to get their pay per click to work or their every door mail.

JOHN CLENDENNING
23:15

Oh, I did an every door mail drop in, in the rich neighborhood and I got, you know, 5,000 dropped. It cost me $2,000 and I got zero calls. I’m going, you know, I always say, oh yeah, you did the first drop. Tell me after you’ve done the 10th where you’re at because you, you went into a cold audience. It’s like you walking into a, you know, a hotel cold. It’s an entirely different experience. You’re just trying to get, get a little bit of attention, name brand attention, warm them up. It’s the next visits that are going to do anything.

JOHN CLENDENNING
23:42

Like there’s, you could offer a free hallway of cleaning to see why you’re different or to get a stain out or, or whatever. Or yeah, try my, my cannabis odor reducer and stuff like that. You know, give us a call if that works and we’ll, we’ll chat some more and we’ll Come in and do some cleaning or whatever. Our friend PJ that I put you in touch with, who built a million dollar a month business in his back in before he moved to New Zealand and in cleaning was all about giving them a free room. And that’s what he’s doing now down in, in Auckland.

TONY PARROW
24:09

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
24:10

So same idea, like just out every day, talk to somebody, have. Generate a real conversation, solve a real problem, do a little bit of homework ahead of time if you can and give them a chance to try you out to see why you’re different and bring them testimonials and like, you know, it’s just, it sounds so old school. It sounds like how grandpa ran a business. Right. The only difference with Internet is if you add all of those to the Internet, right, then AI can pick you up right now or stuff like that. So tell us, talk a little bit about your social media because I know you guys have been having some fun with that as well.

TONY PARROW
24:42

Yes, we just moved it in house, which is kind of exciting. But we had an external person kind of doing fun. I’m, I’m terrible with it. Like I, I have to have like a script behind them and this and that and like I’m trying to read something and be funny at the same time. But they do a great job editing and kind of making it goofy and silly and some of them are like important and we’re solving a problem and some of them are dad jokes and, and everything in between. And you know, the fun part about it is Virginia beach is a small city, but it’s the largest city in Virginia, population wise. And you know, we’ll go around, we’ll be at lunch or this or that and be like, oh, hey, I saw your, your videos. And I’m always like, yeah, those are so dumb.

TONY PARROW
25:22

But you know, but that’s good. Oh yeah, Wait, by the way, you want to get your carpet cleaned or whatever. But yeah, you know, we’ll get random people. I was at a, a football game last year for Norfolk State, which is where Mike Vick ended up being the coach.

JOHN CLENDENNING
25:36

Okay.

TONY PARROW
25:37

So I went to his first game and, and, and they’re in line for a beer and some guy came. He’s like, I love your videos. And I’m like, I’m glad you do.

JOHN CLENDENNING
25:45

Yeah. So, yeah, and that’s omnipresence. That’s like you become known. Best known. Right? So as we talked before we started, right in your backyard is Rob Allen. We all love Rob and Truck Mount forums and stuff like that. But you started a Business in the backyard of a pioneer in the industry. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
26:00

And carved out your own niche and did all that. And yeah, again, we’re all terrible at everything until we’re. Until we don’t give a shit anymore. And we’re not terrible at it, you know, kind of idea. And it’s like, it was like I used Big View. It’s a app you can download and it teleprompts. So as you’re looking at your phone, it’s actually the words are scrolling, so a lot of time, but it’s so that. So and it listens to your voice and only scrolls when, when it gets to the next section and stuff like that.

JOHN CLENDENNING
26:25

So you can be staring at the camera, look like you’re doing a selfie video and you’re literally reading what’s on the screen and things like that as well. So. But yeah, the more we can do real authentic stuff, get known, become the best known, be ahead of when they need us. Right. So when you do run a pay per click ad and they’ve already seen and they’ve laughed at your stuff, they’ve got educated by your stuff and then they see a pay per click ad or AI gives a recommendation and they go, oh, I’ve heard of Inlet. Yeah, call those, let’s book with them. Right, Absolutely. Because all the rest of it.

JOHN CLENDENNING
26:57

And everyone says, well, your ads are running so much. What’s the secrets with your ad strategy? Well, good ads are good, but the secret is you have omnipresence ahead of them.

TONY PARROW
27:07

Yeah. And I think, you know, the other piece of all that too is we really live by our brand pillars of trust, care and excellence. And I think building that trust, you know, there’s a lot of, especially on the restoration side, there’s a lot of distrust there. And so, you know, I’m not here to make a quick buck, you know. You know, I’ll have other companies that may be mad because I’m, you know, certain, like, you know, big customers of mine, you know, I’ll cap the number of days that their equipment rental is going to be and all that because it’s worth it to get the, you know, 10th job, not just that first job, and then never see again, you know, and it’s. Or sometimes things happen, you know, nobody’s perfect. We may make mistake, you know, if we make mistake, you know, you’re not going to pay for it. Like, we’re not.

TONY PARROW
27:51

I’m not gonna. We’re gonna make it. Right, But I’m not gonna charge you. Right. I mean, it Just doesn’t make sense to get that quick buck.

JOHN CLENDENNING
27:58

Yeah.

TONY PARROW
27:58

You know, it’s all about the long, the long term.

JOHN CLENDENNING
28:00

That’s our industry. That’s. That’s a missing piece that a lot of people don’t get as well is that there’s a lot of. I need more leads. I need more leads. Groupon doesn’t work anymore. Facebook ads, you know, to generate $99, three rooms in a hall, carpet cleaning don’t work. And commercially, like, I dropped my price to the lowest to try and get the job.

JOHN CLENDENNING
28:17

I need more leads. I need more leads. And they don’t understand that that’s. Chasing leads is actually the least important thing they should do. If you build a great service delivery and great follow up and retention, we called it recipe for recovery. If anybody complained at all. Yes, we’re back. Recleaning.

JOHN CLENDENNING
28:37

It’s free. Take that off the bill. And what gift can we bring them? Right? And I’m sitting stereo when we have a diff. We brought these little dip chillers with a puppy dog face tag on it and I’m so sorry. And it had like crackers. The technicians would arrive with a gift at a customer’s home or even commercially and say, I’m really sorry we had to come back. This is for you as my apology. Show me the areas.

JOHN CLENDENNING
28:56

Right. Just any little thing. A little, little extra thing.

TONY PARROW
28:58

Right. Yeah. And that, and that does the trust and the care. Right. You know, and that’s the biggest thing, you know, we have just back to the hotel conversation earlier and running, you know, running it like a, like a hotel. Yeah. Customer service wise is we do a daily huddle, like hotels do a daily huddle. Every time they have a sheet, they do a training piece, they talk about stats, they talk about VIP customers and all that.

TONY PARROW
29:20

We do that every day. And we talk about again, our brand pillars. We do a training, like a customer service training and a technical training and really, you know, just, just talk about, you know, what the, the why and that’s just such a thing, you know, it’s not, you’re not just here to collect a check and go home, you know.

JOHN CLENDENNING
29:36

Yeah. And I think, I think having that, having like everybody talks about your, your vision and your mission and it’s sort of this bunch of corporate words on a wall. But when you, when you understand what it really is and you own it and you live it and then you teach the team and you see them leaning into it and getting it as a dogma of how they’re going to interact, it just becomes it’s almost like the self help industry. It’s almost like affirmations and you know, gratitude journal and all that kind of stuff. Science proves that works. Like if you just focus on this instead of focusing on that, our brain is a mess. And if you’ve got a technician there out during the day worried about, you know, the buddies the night before and the girlfriend and the ex girlfriend and all that kind of stuff, he’s still got a life to do. And if that’s his focus during the day, you’re not getting the, the best of that person.

JOHN CLENDENNING
30:27

But if they understand that, hey, at this company, we’re going to keep reinforcing this and you’re going to think about that and you’re going to put all that other stuff away until the end of the day. You’re actually going to be on stage. Like again, Walt Disney talked about, you’re on stage. It’s central casting, not hr, that hires people. Right. You are cast in the role of the broom sweeper, the, you know, the soda girl or whatever and stuff like that. But that’s just the role because you’re really there to deliver an amazing, remarkable customer service experience. The hotel thing is the same thing.

JOHN CLENDENNING
30:58

Like you might have the role of cleaning rooms and, you know, or whatever the maintenance guy that’s fixing the elevator and all that kind of stuff. But that’s until a guest is any within facetime of you and your real role is to make that guest feel amazing.

TONY PARROW
31:11

Exactly. Yeah. No, I mean, you know, you’ve kind of touched on this a little bit already. We, we don’t, we don’t sell carpet cleaning. We, we sell an experience. You know, we sell that, you know, somebody coming to Virginia beach and getting a nice oceanfront room at 4 or 500 bucks a night and their babies laying on the carpet, crawling around. Right. That’s what we’re selling, you know.

TONY PARROW
31:31

Yeah, that’s, it’s so important and that, you know, nobody wants to go to a place where their, you know, baby’s calling around a dirty carpet, you know, and spend four or five hundred bucks a night.

JOHN CLENDENNING
31:39

So, and everybody’s watched enough of the 60 minutes to, to know that, you know, there’s the odd person that does walk in with the UV kit and the, the sheet to go over the, the blankets and all that stuff because they have seen what, you know, at least in Vegas would be in a hotel room kind of idea. Right. So.

TONY PARROW
31:54

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
31:54

You know, there is, and Covet taught us to be a more sanitary about our thought process. Right. So if. If we can state anywhere that the room has been, you know, made clean and healthy and all of that kind of stuff, even more so, right? So, you know, you know, maybe. Maybe there’s a certification program in your, you know, this certified clean and healthy by Inlet Services, you know, little tent card that goes in every room or something like that, just to take it up the next level and make it. Make it, you know, are you Inlet certified service certified or no, right. At your hotel and make it a thing. Like, there’s ways you can play this game now because, you know, you’re really elevating the.

JOHN CLENDENNING
32:34

The thing and you end up. You end up being able to charge prices. You get. You get more freedom. If you, if you screw up, you get a little bit more grace because it’s like, hey, we will fix it. And everything else about us is great. You’ve got that little. You got more grace from.

JOHN CLENDENNING
32:47

From the, the buyer, the vendor or the customer. When it’s a residential as well, is when you do all of those little things, you just stand out so well that the odd little hiccup isn’t. Isn’t taken as a catastrophe.

TONY PARROW
33:00

No, exactly. Exactly. So.

JOHN CLENDENNING
33:02

So what would you recommend? So two things. One, we did talk a while ago about the sort of. The targeting of hotels specifically farther than Virginia Beach. I wanted to know where that. Where your business model is going on that one, because I thought that was a really neat next pivot and. Or expansion. And then any, any sort of advice for anybody watching this who is sort of taking. Doesn’t want to be the owner operator hat, but is actually wanting to be the business owner hat.

JOHN CLENDENNING
33:29

So both of those sort of the pivot to expand and then. And then sort of like famous last words on. On advice for somebody who wants to be like Tony and get to seven figures or at the nipping at the door of seven figures in like 24 months.

TONY PARROW
33:43

Yeah, sure. So I mean, I think, you know, as far as expanding outside of Virginia beach area, the, you know, starting. Starting with customers that have hotels in other areas. Right. So, you know, for example, one company that we do business with here has hotels in Columbia, South Carolina.

JOHN CLENDENNING
34:04

Okay.

TONY PARROW
34:05

So we do a good job for them here. They want those clean. They’re like, hey, can you clean those? Well, sure we can. And the best part about cleaning a hotel is you don’t have to pay for a hotel. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
34:13

So they got rooms to put your dress up in.

TONY PARROW
34:16

You know, the Hilton in Columbia. And yeah, they just stay in the Hilton and they love it and they get A little pretty gym. And aside that it’s a little change from their, you know, their day to

JOHN CLENDENNING
34:24

day routine, they might get the room right beside the elevator, but so what?

TONY PARROW
34:28

Yeah, yeah, exactly. The one that, you know, doesn’t have air conditioning or whatever. But no, we, but yeah, I mean that, that part makes it so easy because then we can travel, you know, four, five, six, seven hours. No big deal. I mean, the only thing that, the only additional expense for us is the gas and the time to get there. But if a job is big enough and you know, obviously that’s worth it. You know, when you go to a hotel and you know hotels are 100 to 200 rooms, you’re, you know, you’re charging for the gas, the guest room carpet, the tile, the hallways, the lobby, the restaurant. You know, there’s just so many areas that they need done.

JOHN CLENDENNING
35:04

Tens of thousands of dollars. Tens of thousands.

TONY PARROW
35:06

Exactly. Yeah. And you know, you talk about the lifetime value of a customer. I mean, it’s unreal on, on a single hotel, you know, so, so, so that’s kind of our plan to expand out of the Virginia area. It’s really kind of starting there. Another thing is, you know, leveraging relationships. Yeah. We went to a hotel conference, my business partner and I.

TONY PARROW
35:30

In Alabama. No.

JOHN CLENDENNING
35:32

Yep.

TONY PARROW
35:33

Yeah. In Alabama. This is a hotel company that has 100 hotels and they have zero in the state of Virginia. So. So we’re marketing to them, you know.

JOHN CLENDENNING
35:41

Yeah.

TONY PARROW
35:42

And trying to, you know, and we’ve, we’ve successfully gotten a couple hotels from them and gone to them and cleaned them. But they have clusters of hotels. We could literally spend a month in, I don’t know, Jacksonville or something. And.

JOHN CLENDENNING
35:52

Yeah.

TONY PARROW
35:52

Do you know, do four hotels or whatever. And you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s just great business for us to go that route. The other, the other thing with hotels that people, people shy away from hotels. From what, from what I see because of, you know, they’re, they’re net 30. Right. So you got.

JOHN CLENDENNING
36:09

Yeah.

TONY PARROW
36:09

You know. Yeah, your guys today. But you’re getting paid in a month minimum, right?

JOHN CLENDENNING
36:14

Yeah.

TONY PARROW
36:15

So that’s a big part of it. You, there’s a lot of, you know, oh, they’re cheap or this or that. But you know, it’s what you make of it. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
36:21

So yeah, it’s the dollar per hour per technician. Run your dollar per hour. It’s not about how it’s like if you, if the volume is there and you’re doing, you know, 20,000 square feet a day, 30,000 square feet in a day with a couple of crews on the. The volume there makes up the like. If you’re getting a good dollar per hour for your technicians, time to pay them, you know, pay them well, make the profit margins, all that kind of stuff out of the volume, then you do have the right.

TONY PARROW
36:49

Cheap. Yeah.

JOHN CLENDENNING
36:50

To drop the price.

TONY PARROW
36:51

Exactly, exactly. So. So that side of it. But the, the one of the great positives, and I’ll use Marriott as an example. You have 32 brands now, probably I can, you know, I used to be able to name all of them when I, you know, did a lot of work with Marriott. But now, you know, I’ve named half of them or whatever. But they know our industry, right? They’re not like, oh, you know, they know it so well that if you actually read the brand standards, it talks about hot water extraction and encapsulation cleaning in vlm. I mean, it gets that specific in their brand standards.

TONY PARROW
37:20

So you got this general manager of a hotel that’s got a, you know, 400 page booklet. All they see is they got to clean the carpets three times a year. But it’s very specific, talking about how, you know, they should do one, hot water extraction and two, vlm. And it’s right in their brand standard. So it’s so easy to bring that back to them and say, hey, look, you know, this is the standard now. They are allowed to do it in house. And so competing with them also, you know, they’ve got a big maintenance staff and all that. But.

TONY PARROW
37:44

Yeah, but, but as you and I

JOHN CLENDENNING
37:46

both know, the guy that, like, around here was the Malay sales rep that got the machines into every single hotel when I was running. And it’s like, you know, and you kind of just give them About a year, 18 months, you wander back in, like you find out they got their own machine. So the guy that was trained on that, is he still around? Does anybody know how to run it or is it sitting in the janitors?

TONY PARROW
38:09

I bought those machines.

JOHN CLENDENNING
38:11

Yep, exactly. It’s like it’s all a great plan and it’s a great sales pitch. Do you realize nobody gets trained? Nobody wants to do it. They make a mess, they slop the floors, they leave lines, and they don’t know what it all means. And when you go in, it just solves the problems. Like, it’s just. They don’t have to worry about that. Right? So somebody spills baby formula or milk in a hotel room.

JOHN CLENDENNING
38:29

And have you ever smelled that? To get that out, you got to identify it. You got to sanitize, deodorize it, sanitize it, all that kind of stuff, extract it. They don’t know how to do any of that. They just know how to run a machine over the traffic lanes, up and down a hallway, like a vacuum cleaner. So. Yeah, and that becomes a good conversation as well, because if they do go down that road, churches have done that for us as well, where they’ve bought the machine or the big, big church and eventually it’s like, would you like to just get your carpet cleans for free at the church? How do I do that? Just promote us. And 10% of any of the members of the church that clean because of our Referral will put 10% towards the next cleaning, tithe it into the next cleaning. You’ve got a big church, 600 people here, whatever.

JOHN CLENDENNING
39:12

A lot of affluent people. Pretty sure you’re gonna end up with free cleanings at the church. Right. That’s how we targeted churches. Like they, they all tried to do with their maintenance department this. And I said, well, how may we just charge you, you know, a lower than average price right now for the first cleaning? We’ll do a free demo area, but we’ll do lower than our average price as the first cleaning and then put the tithing program in place, take you back up to our regular prices, but let’s try and get you free.

TONY PARROW
39:35

Yeah, no, that’s great.

JOHN CLENDENNING
39:36

And that’s, I did that with property managers as well for high end condos, the ones that overlook the bay with you know, the, the baby grand piano at the front window and you know, the, the semi retired, retired couple with the area rugs, like the, you know, big 8 by 10 wool or Indian area rugs that we took back to our shop and we cleaned for like 1800 bucks, 1200 bucks, things like that. So like now you start adding layers to your business because you, you target, you targeting the hotels. You could, you know, if you guys in your area targeted the people with their second homes and, and big stuff as well. Now it’s the ultra affluent who just need it cleaned regularly and as well. And it, you know, the high end, high service touch is the same crowd, right?

TONY PARROW
40:18

Exactly. Yep.

JOHN CLENDENNING
40:19

Right. The average middle class, maybe they would prefer a Stanley Steamer. This, you know, one time over the other, you know, but as they move up the affluence level, the more they want the high touch hotel experience anyways.

TONY PARROW
40:30

Yeah, no, exactly. So. And that’s where our biggest growth opportunity locally is actually is in the residential side. You know, most people kind of Come in. And I did it a little backwards, you know, so.

JOHN CLENDENNING
40:41

Yeah, no, and I think that’s amazing that you did because we tell everybody. So we call, I call it the Core Forever engine. I actually built an app around it. We’re just releasing in the coaching program. But every carpet cleaner who’s ever been successful does three very important things on a very regular basis. One, they honor their database of customers and leads as the most important asset in their business. Right? They stay in touch with the people they’ve that have already bought from them, them so that, you know, you get that. Repeat the retention if you’re about 50, 60% retention residentially, commercially, obviously even higher than, that’s way better.

JOHN CLENDENNING
41:14

Your business is growing because you’re not losing the, on the back end what you just gained on the front end. You’re not just kind of funneling through, you’re like building it up, right? So that’s your database. What are you doing every single day, every single week that focuses on database, right. When I figure that out. But every commercial client we ever did one off chiropractors, whatever, they saw me the day after they saw me at three months, I’d come in and do a free spotting every three months, walk around, top up their free bottle of spotter, have a good chat with somebody. But that was just to put FaceTime in front of them, offer free spotting and say, hey, that back area is starting to look a little rough. I’ll be back in another three months, we’ll take a look at it. Maybe it needs a touch up.

JOHN CLENDENNING
41:52

Maybe it needs a, you know, an end cap cleaning between the full regular cleaning boardroom, totally fine. Don’t worry about that for, you know, you guys use it what, once a month? So don’t worry about that. But let’s worry about this, this. And you’re able to have those conversations because you’re not too shy to show up, right? The middle one is your, your grassroots outreach. That’s your commercial. That’s what you started with. That’s. I call it grassroots, where you just target and go and you just show up like whether it’s five a week or five a day, like what is your pace? What is your cadence? And can you check it off a calendar? And 20 years later, somebody should still be doing that, right? There should be because that was the growth thing.

JOHN CLENDENNING
42:25

So you don’t have to sit back. You can always have somebody out in the marketplace just, just being your business development manager eventually, as the company grows, just out chatting to people. So I, I started that as the five around commercially, I’d go visit one commercial place and talk to the five businesses around it. And that’s how I originally started was just like I’ll go talk to the neighbor when I’m in this guy’s place, right? And then the third one’s your, your strategic partners. So your carpet stores, your interior designers, your property manager. Like you know anybody like that who can be help you get one to many. So that became our chiropractors because they’re in wellness, we’re safe, healthy cleaning. Do you want to.

JOHN CLENDENNING
43:00

Do you want to give your customers a offer from us? Not a discount or savings, but added services for free? An offer from us. And anybody who takes you up on that scans the QR code, does whatever gets a savings, you get a kickback again, just like that church program, you get a kickback towards your next cleaning. I’ll give it to you in gift certificates. You can use it for your office, your house, to make your wife happy or give it to a customer or give it out his customer, whatever. You get free money from our company in hundred dollar gift checks based on the people that scan the QR code in the waiting room or you know, you mentioned in the newsletter, hey, by the way, we use the guys, they’re a safe, healthy cleaning if you want to. They’ve got this package for us that’s unique. Well, we did that with one Dr. Dave chiropractor.

JOHN CLENDENNING
43:47

Eventually I got Dr. Dave to send a letter to like I wrote the letter he put on his letterhead. We sent it to all the other chiropractors and ended up with. With five or six chiropractors that were on the program and about another 15 we cleaned for. Yeah, that’s great, right? And then I did it with vets, then I did it with car lots. I actually got a Mercedes dealership and then did the same thing with all. He knew all the. You knew the guy at the Porsche dealership.

JOHN CLENDENNING
44:07

He knew the guy at the bm. So we just did the exact same thing. Got in, did the cleaning, all that kind of stuff and then said, hey, for one, I wanted to clean for your house for free to the general manager. Right, Glenn. I said, glenn, I want to clean your. For what? Because I want your wife to love us as much as you love me.

TONY PARROW
44:22

Me?

JOHN CLENDENNING
44:22

Why do you want my wife to love you, John? Well, because I want you to refer us to all your clients. Yeah. Oh, well that’s. And I said I’ll even pay for your next mailing to your database. About your spring bonanza, whatever. Put a cover letter in there from the general manager. You just mentioning whatever you want to mention. And oh, by the way, P.S.

JOHN CLENDENNING
44:38

if you’re looking for a great cleaning company, I’ve used these guys for, you know, by that point, it was six months in the dealership and love them to death. I’ve, you know, even a slight hiccup. They came back and solved it right away and all that kind of stuff. And then they came and cleaned my house for my wife, and she thought it was the best service experience, not cleaning experience, service provider they’ve ever had in their house. They booties they put on the red carpet, they. All that kind of stuff. And that was his testimonial. And I mean, why most of our clients drove Mercedes or BMWs.

JOHN CLENDENNING
45:05

Like, our best clients were in the nicest areas of town, right? So why not market to them that way? And yeah, we got a whole bunch of clients out of his database. And then we ended up with, with the BMW dealership across the street and down past the railroad tracks. And then it just snowballed. And then it’s just up to us, you and I, to maintain that relationship. Right? You invite them to the charity golf tournament. You like, you do the right things, you show up, you come with a coffee and a chat just on your way past. Just build real relationships with real people, too. And they feel guilty if they have to let you go.

TONY PARROW
45:40

Absolutely, absolutely. And like everybody, you gotta, you gotta not let business get in the way too. Right? That’s, that’s, that’s what happens. Because those relationships are way more important than they are than your email. Right. So, yes, just, just, just focusing on that. I mean, I’ve had, I’ve had to add. It’s been probably about a year now.

TONY PARROW
45:58

I added a business development person just because I can’t get out there in front of all of our customers. You know, we’re.

JOHN CLENDENNING
46:04

Well, even again. Howard Partridge, he’s the guy that taught us referral marketing decades ago. I sat in his rooms. I’ve got, I’m staring at his courses here and stuff like that. And like, I was just a student of the industry. I was in the truck for a year and a half as a punk kid that came off the road in a band, started a carpet cleaning company, said, okay, cool, I just don’t want to be the guy in the truck. Right. 30 years ago now.

JOHN CLENDENNING
46:21

And within a year and a half, I was out and buying competitors. Right. So. And not somebody who went through university or anything like that. Just didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I learned from the people that could teach me. Howard was one of them. And Howard runs his business in Houston, Texas.

JOHN CLENDENNING
46:36

And he’s got two gals on the road full time. Like, Howard was the guy that taught. He used to have the brown suit hanging behind the driver’s seat. And he’d go in the back of the truck, change into the brown suit to go in and introduce himself to the carpet store or come back into the, you know, the, the real estate office or whatever and just, just maintain those relationships. He would change into his. And then back into his carpet cleaning clothes to go clean the next job. Right. And then obviously out of the truck and then grew massive four or five million dollars a year business.

JOHN CLENDENNING
47:04

And. But he’s, he’s got full time gals that go out and do the BDR stuff. Right. It’s necessary for, to keep the thing rolling, so.

TONY PARROW
47:11

Exactly. And having somebody like, like him or anybody as a, you know, as a, as a mentor and look, you know, learning as much as you can and reaching out. Like we have a, a business coach who’s fantastic. His, you know, his specialty is scaling. And that’s what I want to do. Scale. Right. And so he’s amazing.

TONY PARROW
47:27

We meet with him every week. We pay for it. It’s money well spent.

JOHN CLENDENNING
47:31

Yeah.

TONY PARROW
47:31

And I think if you, you know, if you can, you can do that. It’s just, you know, it. The return on investment’s huge. Right. So, yes, you know, everybody’s smarter than me. I’m. Because everybody knows stuff I don’t know and I want to learn all of it and, you know, the better I can do. And one of the things, you know, he’s kind of taught me from the very beginning is, you know, if you’re on the truck, you’re losing money.

TONY PARROW
47:52

Right. Like, because that’s.

JOHN CLENDENNING
47:53

Yeah, exactly. Oh, my gosh. I say that every day.

TONY PARROW
47:56

So I mean, I, I can’t say I never do. Right. But you know, things happen.

JOHN CLENDENNING
48:00

But you know, when you’re there, that’s not a business. That, that is a one off. That is a $35 an hour technician job that you are taking at $35 an hour and your value is worth way more than that.

TONY PARROW
48:11

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
48:11

Out building the business, even just talking to. Yeah. Again, like a walking in and, and starting a conversation that could turn into 20, 30, 40 grand a year is way more valuable than a $35 an hour job. You have to do it to maintain the client relationship. If the technician’s sick and somebody has to jump in the truck. But the doing is damn, I can’t build the business right now. I’m doing the job right.

TONY PARROW
48:32

So yeah, no, if I get that call at 4:30 in the morning from a customer that, you know, pipe burst and this and that, yeah, I’ll be the first one there. I mean I’m gonna get people behind me, but I’m gonna get up, get dressed, get a truck, be there sucking water before the next technician shows up. You know, I’m gonna pass it off and I’m gonna make sure the customer’s happy and all that. But being, you know, showing that, that, that care is, is such a big thing too. So. But like you say, you know, every day being on the truck, I, I would lose money. I couldn’t do what I do. Like there’s no way we, we, we’d be at you know, 90, 94, 000 instead of 90 940, 000.

TONY PARROW
49:04

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
49:04

Yeah, I agree. And I think that’s it. And the guys that are trying to get out of the truck, that whole, it is, it is a straddle as I call it. Like you’re one foot in the truck. Cool. But then, then hire Tommy the tech to sit beside you so you can do that extra job or two a day within a couple weeks. Give him, drop him off at a big job on a Tuesday morning or give him the truck on a Tuesday morning and you go out and do your BDR stuff Tuesday morning, Thursday afternoon, whatever, and eventually get him full time in the truck. You’re the backup second truck.

JOHN CLENDENNING
49:30

Start training next guy because you can get your foot out. It’s not like you need to make so much money every day. And then once I get around to it, I’ll build the business, but I’m too busy right now doing the cleaning that is picking up the pennies and watching the dollars flow to your back pocket. It really is. So it is the mindset we try and even, you know, on these podcasts and stuff like that try and get that message out as well as most guys and gals tend to aim at the wrong thing because they just see everybody else and on the forums and just around they just think that’s what it is. And that rare few like yourself, you’re in the, you’re at the top 0.5% but even the top 15% that ever get out of the truck, they’ve literally done everything differently. They focus the other way. Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
50:12

They focus on growing the business and making those relationships and all of that kind of stuff. And then again, you add in the marketing, the offline and online marketing, where it creates the omnipresence and stuff like that, but it’s just all part of a bigger pop. The whole thing is everything is rowing in the same direction.

JOHN CLENDENNING
50:26

And having consultants, I’ve. I’ve had my share of consultants and sat in the right rooms. If you’re not in a mastermind or something, a coaching program or something like that, you’re missing the boat. If you’re not listening to reading books or like, again, probably the last book I read was maybe the year after high school. Wasn’t a big reader, but I’ll listen to books all day long, right. And if you’re out doing any, Going for a walk or doing whatever, and you’re listening to Tommy Mello’s service billionaire service business millionaire, you’re like, they’re all just nuggets. Like, that’s garage door opening. It’s a.

JOHN CLENDENNING
50:54

But there’s nuggets you can land from

TONY PARROW
50:56

that go, oh, it doesn’t matter. The business. Yeah, no, not at all. You know, we’re taking care of people and solving, Solving a problem. And, you know, my reputation matters to me more than anything. And I feel like, I don’t know, we could be doing this with anything. I just happen to be the carpet cleaning, so.

JOHN CLENDENNING
51:11

Yeah, the business owner that just happens to be in the cleaning industry.

TONY PARROW
51:14

Exactly.

JOHN CLENDENNING
51:14

Yeah. Well, I think that’s a great place to, to, to put a pin in this because I think that, like, again, your story is to be straight up. I mention it a lot because I’ll mention, like, if you actually aim in the right direction, this can be. And with the right momentum and learning the right things, this can be a business that you don’t have to be the guy in the truck five years from now, two years from now. Like, you really can. If you think you need to do that full time, you will still be there in five years. At some point, you’ve got to go, okay, now I’ve got to do it the other way. The E.

JOHN CLENDENNING
51:48

Myth Michael Gerber Read something, listen to something, figure it out, get started. Understand that you need that direction. You need to be part of a peer group that is on that path as well. You got to kind of be thinking differently than the mass market. Because the average service business owner, I don’t care if you’re a landscaper or a plumber or whatever, the average service business is the same guy in the truck 20 years from now.

TONY PARROW
52:11

Right.

JOHN CLENDENNING
52:11

It’s it’s the smaller percentages that say, no, I’m going to run this as a business. And that that’s a different every moment of the day I’m thinking about it differently.

TONY PARROW
52:19

So yeah, absolutely.

JOHN CLENDENNING
52:20

So if anybody needs to reach out to you for Inlet for anything, where do they get a hold of you? What’s the best way to.

TONY PARROW
52:27

Sure. Yeah. I mean our website is inletcarpetcare.com and anybody can email me anytime@tony inlet services.com.

JOHN CLENDENNING
52:39

cool. Well, I hope hope some hotels hit you up as well in this and as well and anybody else who’s interest that I will share the comments with you. We have this posted out on. It’ll be out on YouTube and Spotify and all your favorite podcast and video channels. So any comments that come in, we definitely love to share them back with our guests as well. And yeah, from there, I just can’t wait to see what the next 12 and 24 months look like for Inlet. It’s an exciting journey and a great industry to be targeting right now with hospitality and stuff too.

TONY PARROW
53:11

Awesome. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate being on today.

JOHN CLENDENNING
53:13

Hey, thanks, Tony.

JOHN CLENDENNING
53:20

Of.