Making Your Mark: Fred Goins’ Approach to Consistent Brand-Building

Consistency. Be visible, reliable, and deliver quality every time, whether online or in person. Over time, this builds trust and makes your business the go-to choice.

Fred Goins [00:00:00]:
Operation wise, I have stepped away steadily working in the business, on working on the business, I have people taking calls, I have a latest schedule and I have four technicians and I try to teach them, you know, how to talk to a customer, how to upsell, how to go out and look for specific things to be able to upsell. And that's basically it. And it's an ongoing process.

John Clendenning [00:01:20]:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Carpet Cleaner Success podcast. Your host, John Clendenning. Here today I've got Fred goins from Extreme Clean 95 in Westchester, Ohio. And I've known Fred for probably over just over a year now. And we're just kind of going to do a deep dive into his business, his history in the cleaning industry and just have a, one of our normal good conversations with a, a very competent operator in the, the cleaning space. So welcome aboard. Fred, thanks so much for joining the the podcast.

John Clendenning [00:01:53]:
How are you doing today?

Fred Goins [00:01:54]:
Hi, thanks for having me.

John Clendenning [00:01:56]:
Cool. So tell us a little bit about your company. Like when did you start extreme clean 95 and what was the reason why you got into the cleaning industry?

Fred Goins [00:02:09]:
Well, I started Extreme Clean 95 in 2017 in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm originally from Birmingham, Alabama.

John Clendenning [00:02:21]:
Okay.

Fred Goins [00:02:22]:
I used to clean in Birmingham. I had a cleaning company in Birmingham. I moved to Cincinnati and started a whole new company. I got into the cleaning business. I was fatuated with carpet cleaning videos.

John Clendenning [00:02:39]:
Okay, that's an interesting one. So where are you finding the carpet cleaning videos?

Fred Goins [00:02:44]:
YouTube.

John Clendenning [00:02:45]:
Okay. YouTube.

Fred Goins [00:02:48]:
And I knew a few carpet cleaners in Birmingham so I just deep dived off into it.

John Clendenning [00:02:58]:
Cool. And so, so you started in Birmingham, you moved to Cincinnati and Then started Extreme Clean 95 and just before COVID So you had a couple years under your belt for Covid. What, what did you do to grow the business? If you're in a new marketplace, like, I mean you're, you're, you're kind of new to the Cincinnati area. As you started the business, what was the, what was the growth curve like?

Fred Goins [00:03:21]:
The growth curve was, it was hard, but it was steady. I stayed to the, the main script of marketing. Making myself the face of the business. Yeah, doing good work and just spread my name.

John Clendenning [00:03:38]:
That's good. And did you join things like the chamber of commerce, business, BNI groups and things like that or just kind of.

Fred Goins [00:03:44]:
Y. Chamberlain Cumbers, the Better Business Bureau? Different. Different groups like that. LinkedIn? Yeah, I grew my business like that.

John Clendenning [00:03:55]:
What about outreach, what did you do? Like, I mean I just remember my day like so I way like I'm. We're talking 20 years before that. 1995 when I was 24 year old kid started my business. We didn't have the Internet then, wouldn't have helped in the first year anyways. And I, I ended up having to do a lot of knocking on doors because I just moved to a small town, 30,000 people. I didn't know anybody like other than my sister and my brother in law. I was a shy kid so I didn't want to run into anybody I knew from high school. So that's why I moved.

John Clendenning [00:04:24]:
And then I kind of realized, hey wait a minute, the phone doesn't just ring on its own. And I had to actually pump myself up and go up and down the main street and introduce myself and that's what I did. And I kind of eventually got into a few groups. There was a woman that owned a hotel and her husband had died and she just kind of like I, I kind of wandered in as one of the places I wandered in about, you know, doing a quote, would you like a free demo? All that kind of stuff. And met Eleanor and kind of, she took me kind of under her wing a little bit and introduced me to a lot of people in town which was again multiple connections. It wasn't like the first month that was like probably four or five months in, but it was just showing up every day and doing something to grow the business and eventually you start making those connections and, and that was sort of my little journey of, of getting into the right groups and then getting into a bigger group and then a bigger. And so the marketing that I was doing started to, to sort of sit with the outreach I was doing. So people, oh, I've seen that guy kind of idea and next thing you know, the two kind of work together and I'm doing over $10,000 a month in 1996, less than a year into the business because the shy kid decided to go knock on doors.

John Clendenning [00:05:32]:
So what did you find was the best sort of like just to kind of get the ball rolling and get it started back in, in you know, 2017.

Fred Goins [00:05:40]:
Well, I was going out, meeting a lot of different people. I didn't know a lot of people in Cincinnati. I met with. I met this young lady. She owned a lot of apartments.

John Clendenning [00:05:52]:
Okay.

Fred Goins [00:05:52]:
And just off coincidence, I gave her a business card. I was out meeting people and gave her my business card. She gave me a try. Little did I know she owned probably 200 doors. 200 in Cincinnati. And I took off from there, spreading the word. She spread it. The word.

John Clendenning [00:06:13]:
Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing how many. So I talked to a lot of young cleaners. I'm not sure you do as well. Like, I'm obviously on. On calls with cleaning companies all week, every week. And some of the young, young guys, I recognize the shyness because I used to be shy.

John Clendenning [00:06:29]:
Some of them just seem to think that it isn't, we're not in a business that you need to go out and meet people. But, but all of the most successful cleaners I've ever talked to, including guys like Mark Sager, you know, run Sager Sauce and his cleaning, and, and everybody I've met through Jeff Cross and Cleanfax and all of it for the years, the most successful companies, the owner of the business does the outreach. Right? So, and they, they just understand that business is the. Is the fact of meeting people. Right. So it's not just showing up at the job like, that's a customer and you can pay somebody 25, 30, $35 an hour to go do the cleaning. But as owners, we find that one place, like that lady you Talked about with 200 doors, like, that meeting has been worth tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars. You wouldn't have done that.

John Clendenning [00:07:17]:
That's hard to do when you just show up and do a, you know, a customer's carpet cleaning and then go back home and, you know, watch Netflix and hope that, you know, somebody else calls, you're out promoting the business. And I think that's a missing piece that some, some of the, the newer folks in the business didn't, you know, don't put themselves out there, even if it's uncomfortable, because for whatever reason. But the top real estate agents schmooze and meat people. Top carpet cleaning company, schmooze and meat people, the top, you know, you name it, like any industry. So tell me a little bit about the, like, starting, like, what kind of process did you start with? Like, let's get a little bit into the operations of the company. Like, did you start with portables and, and things like that? Did you start with a specific Method. What was the. What was the entry level that way in the cleaning services itself? Like, how did you.

John Clendenning [00:08:08]:
How did you kind of work through that?

Fred Goins [00:08:10]:
I started with a portable because I'm not used to the snow. I'm used to being nice all year round. I started with portable because I started out in the wintertime. I worked the portable for probably four to five months. And I just used a different cleaning technique. I use CRBs.

John Clendenning [00:08:36]:
Okay.

Fred Goins [00:08:37]:
To do my cleaning. Just followed the normal steps, plus did a little extra to make sure everything was properly done. After I went from portables, I moved to truck mounts. I already own truck mounts in Birmingham.

John Clendenning [00:08:56]:
Okay.

Fred Goins [00:08:57]:
I brought those up when spring came.

John Clendenning [00:09:00]:
Yeah.

Fred Goins [00:09:01]:
And just took off from there. Meeting a lot of people. I'm a people's person anyway, so, you know, it's hard for me to meet a stranger. So just. Just went out talking, holding conversation and was the face. Yeah, I was the face of Extreme Clean nine to five, I think.

John Clendenning [00:09:21]:
Yeah. And I mean, a lot of people get into this sort of equipment, gear heads, kind of equipment head. Like, I need this, I need this, I need. And ultimately the end of the day, you got to start the business and you got to get moving. If it takes you a little bit longer and you have to be finesse a little bit more with a portable before you can move up into, you know, more advanced equipment. Wherever you want to take that. It's not really about the equipment because the average customer doesn't notice the difference. You just have to work a little bit harder if you're using something that doesn't extract as much or is a different process.

John Clendenning [00:09:51]:
But you. At the end of the day, you can, you know, it takes a little bit longer. You can still have a great cleaning and a great customer. It is the fact that you, you, you are the builder of the. Of the cleaning business. I always say you're the marketer of your cleaning services. And marketing means shoe leather to pavement. When you don't have a lot of money.

John Clendenning [00:10:07]:
That's marketing. You put a, you know, you put your company shirt on, you go out, you drive around, you knock on doors. I knew of one of the fellows he used. He stood out in front of like Home Depot and Target and stores like that in the nicer neighborhoods and just handed out business cards with a free. A free offer on the back to do a quote. And that's how he grew the business. Just like if he. He had no work today, he'd spend eight hours at a couple different places like that, just, just meeting people that are walking in and introducing himself and busy enough that that became his main way of getting work, that he hired a technician to go do the cleaning so that he could continue to do that because it was working so well before he figured out other channels of marketing.

John Clendenning [00:10:46]:
It was, you know, thing. But yeah, once you've. Once you've got marketing figured out or at least started, and you get that ball rolling and you know your ideal client, you can price your job right, so that you, you know, now you get right pricing. You know, good marketing creates an operational problem. Now you got to hire people. Now you got to have guys show up every morning and jump in the trucks and. And do the job and. And not piss off the customer and be polite and all that kind of stuff.

John Clendenning [00:11:12]:
And I know you've moved into a little bit of that. So operationally, what, like, as you've grown through, you know, through the years to. And had employees and stuff like that, what have you noticed is different from the way Fred cleans and the way Fred deals with customers to the way team members and employees are needed to take the business to the next level?

Fred Goins [00:11:38]:
Well, a couple of my technicians, some of them are shy.

John Clendenning [00:11:42]:
Yeah.

Fred Goins [00:11:44]:
I do have one or two that, that's. That don't mind talking. But operation wise, I have stepped away steadily working in the business. I'm working on the business. I have people taking calls. I have a latest schedule and I have four technicians. And I try to teach them, you know, how to talk to a customer, how to upsell, how to go out and look for specific things to. Yeah, to be able to upsell.

Fred Goins [00:12:22]:
And that's basically it. And it's an ongoing process.

John Clendenning [00:12:27]:
It is. We end up becoming a lot like. I see our role once we. Like I was in the truck for about a year and a half, not, not quite two years, and then hired my first technician. Stuart didn't know what I didn't know and screwed that up royally. But, you know, learned and put systems in place and started growing better and better. But at the end of the day, you end up almost like a little league coach or a youth pastor. Like, I mean, these are the things that, like, in the back of your mind, if you're, if you're there every day as they're loading the trucks up and you're having that good conversation with them and you're taking them aside, putting your arm around them when they're having a rough day in life and stuff like that, but you're also imparting, hey, by the way, you know, I Know you, you know, your girlfriend just broke up with you, that's a terrible thing.

John Clendenning [00:13:09]:
But Mrs. Jones, you know, you know, we'll cry later and have the pity party after the fact, but Mrs. Jones is going to need to see the best of you, Calvin kind of idea. You know what I mean?

Fred Goins [00:13:18]:
Right.

John Clendenning [00:13:19]:
And we, we kind of become, you know, that, you know, we're usually a little bit older than the technicians and we're, we're sort of that mentor figure as well, that, hey, I want you to do it this way, but I also got to kind of counsel you and, and keep you on, on pace. And when you screw up, I gotta, I gotta give you a little bit of leeway, but let's not make it two and three times. And so, yeah, it's a, it's a whole new skill set that unless you've come with it, unless you've got that background, it's, it's a whole new learning curve for sure. Because again, if you want to grow a company, which is a good thing, everybody tells nowadays, oh, it's impossible to find employees. I don't know if that's true. I think it's, I think you've got to find the right people, but you've got to be the right person for them to, you know, you got to show up for them the right way as well. And if that means some, some schooling, some learning, some training, some, some YouTube videos or whatever you're going to do to be a better leader, I guess is the right word, but just, you know, just that, that person that can get out of a good person, a good employee, what you want, what, what you want to deliver to your customer at the end of the day. So you know that they're going to give that their best in front of that customer and, and have the right attitude, you can hire for attitude, train for the after as far as growing the business.

John Clendenning [00:14:33]:
So we talked about, you know, reaching out and, and making those connections. You also then, you know, a couple of years into the business ran smack dab. Three years in, you ran smack dab into Covid as well and had to deal with that slowdown before it sort of became people's mindset on cleaning and stuff like that. What, what has worked well you know, the first few years, you know, out meeting people. That's an ongoing thing. You never stop, stop that. What else has worked well to sort of, you know, get customers, new customers, customers coming back, you know, other people referring you and things like that. What, what are sort of some of those things that are working now in 2025, maybe 2024, that, that maybe you didn't even have in place back in 2017.

John Clendenning [00:15:17]:
Like how have things changed throughout that. That, that period of time?

Fred Goins [00:15:21]:
It has changed a lot. When Covid came, a lot of things had to be done digitally or as Facebook, Google for. As my marketing.

John Clendenning [00:15:33]:
Yeah.

Fred Goins [00:15:34]:
And it has took off tremendously since then.

John Clendenning [00:15:39]:
Yeah.

Fred Goins [00:15:40]:
And it's an ongoing thing. You have to stay make sure the key components is. Is all there. All there.

John Clendenning [00:15:50]:
Yep.

Fred Goins [00:15:51]:
But mainly is digital marketing and the way we treat our customers.

John Clendenning [00:15:56]:
Yeah, yeah, it is. It's sort of that. That digital side of it, which can't be everything. You can't hide behind it. And then the human side of it, like you said, you've got girls that book appointments and stuff like that. We can all use AI bots if we wanted to these days. But it's impersonal. There isn't.

John Clendenning [00:16:11]:
There might be the odd customer that likes it, but a real person calling up, you know, hey, Mrs. Smith, how was the cleaning yesterday? Did you. Did the technicians do a great job? Are you happy with the service? That follow up done by a robot is going to come across pretty. Pretty like bland and, and not personal. But that, that phone call or that follow up and that nice message. The more we go digital, I think the more we need to continue to remember and reinforce that. That personal side of it as well. As far as your database goes, what do you do to stay in touch with past customers to make sure they come back? Like, what are, what are some of the things that, that keep people remembering? Oh, yeah, I used Fred last time in his company.

Fred Goins [00:16:51]:
Well, a lot of my customers I keep in touch with, I check on them and I have digital reminders. But I personally call once the cleaning is done to check and see how the cleaning was. If they need me anytime in the future, give me a call. I run through reminders through my CRM market.

John Clendenning [00:17:16]:
Yep.

Fred Goins [00:17:17]:
And just give discounts. I run specials. Not typically specials, but for my.

John Clendenning [00:17:23]:
Yeah, like an offer, a VIP offer.

Fred Goins [00:17:27]:
For my regular customers. I do give them great, great deals.

John Clendenning [00:17:33]:
Yeah.

Fred Goins [00:17:33]:
And it works good, but it gets. It can get better.

John Clendenning [00:17:38]:
Yep. Yeah. We're in a world right now too that a lot of people like, you know, you may be included. Like 2008, 9, 10. We hit a recession. Right. We had the housing collapse, we had job losses, we had all of that kind of stuff and inflation and all of those things before they started quantitative easing and sort of printing money to get us out of it. We have now run into a slowdown and like a transition in the world economy in the United States, but also globally as well.

John Clendenning [00:18:08]:
And there's business owners that have never seen a slowdown. They didn't realize that people in large chunks might sit back and go, oh, wait a minute, I don't know what in two months, three months from now, if I'll even have a job or what my paycheck will be like and what my bills will be like. Maybe I should hold off on my carpet cleaning and upholstery cleaning and things like that. Which makes us as business owners have to be market even heavier. Right. We have to market harder when the market is soft because there's less jobs to go around. And the best known carpet cleaner in the marketplace gets most of the work. Right.

John Clendenning [00:18:43]:
So we've got to kind of, we've got to kind of step up when the market goes soft and target our ideal people and stuff like that. Have you noticed that in your area in Westchester, is it, has it, has the market softened a bit or is it. Are you like so well known that it's sort of like, yeah, maybe a bit for the other guys, But I'm not, I haven't really been worried about it yet. Like again, the news on the, about the economy and the slowdowns and stuff, it has slow.

Fred Goins [00:19:10]:
Well, it slowed down for a minute, but I managed to maintain. I'm the known carpet cleaner in Westchester. Mason. Yeah, Sharonville area. So, you know, never stopped me. It just slowed down for a minute, but it never stopped me.

John Clendenning [00:19:31]:
Yeah. And that's. That is part of that. If you position yourself ahead of time, which you've done well, then when any of these market calamities, it could be just a local area. It could be like a factory closes or a big, a big employer. It could be something national like this could be interest rates and mortgages and the price of eggs, as they say, and all that stuff. And if you're the, the one known, it is the other guys that, you know, didn't have a name recognition that were just relying on Google's ads, local service ads to generate all their calls or Facebook. Well, when that whole crowd dries up and they don't have a database that comes back to them and tells their friends about them, they don't have a van that's known in the neighborhood so that you're parking in Mrs.

John Clendenning [00:20:12]:
Jones driveway. But everyone. Oh, there's those guys. Right. I forgot about, you know, I meant to call them and because they understand the brand, that brand Building has become really, really important. And in our world, AI now AI has taken over search. So I talk about that a lot. Where it used to be keywords, now it's like, now it's brand.

John Clendenning [00:20:31]:
It's like AI is going to go, okay, well there's been conversations over here on Facebook, over here on Nextdoor, over here on Google. There's been interactions going on. There's people talking about the company and, and it is taking a sentiment. So when somebody goes, hey, I'm wondering if what the best carpet cleaning method is. I'm thinking between steam cleaning and shampooing, what do you think? And they AI is going to go, well, clean 95 or extreme clean 95. They, they recommend steam cleaning for these reasons and that seems, you know, AI is going out and finding information based on sentiment in the marketplace as opposed to keywords and stuff like that. So being the best known brand just helps us move through all of these things like crazy as well. So what I always like to ask as well is, you know, as far as wins, both business and personal, if you had to say, if somebody said what was the biggest business win that you've ever had? Like, like something that just kind of stood out as like that that took us over a hump or that was a really big moment.

John Clendenning [00:21:32]:
Getting out of the truck and hiring employees or having office people or moving into a facility or, or just like anything, like anything that makes sense. Was there a, was there a large business win that sort of kind of, you know, still makes you smile to this day that something that happened?

Fred Goins [00:21:48]:
Yes. A contract with Proctor and Gamble.

John Clendenning [00:21:52]:
Oh, wow. Tell me about that.

Fred Goins [00:21:53]:
That was a big win. I won the contract to clean five of their buildings.

John Clendenning [00:22:00]:
Okay.

Fred Goins [00:22:02]:
And I'm still doing it to this day. So I sit back and smile.

John Clendenning [00:22:06]:
Yeah.

Fred Goins [00:22:06]:
Every time I think about it, that was a big win for me. Being in a new city that I didn't know anyway.

John Clendenning [00:22:12]:
And how'd you land that one? What was the what what got them on your radar and you on theirs.

Fred Goins [00:22:18]:
Talking mean different people and end up cleaning one of the head machos at Proctor and Gallon and he likes my cleaning so he called me out.

John Clendenning [00:22:32]:
Yeah.

Fred Goins [00:22:32]:
Went from cleaning his home to cleaning Proctor and Gamble buildings.

John Clendenning [00:22:37]:
That's awesome. Yeah. And it's it. We do realize how much it becomes a who you know as much as what you know. Right. It's sort of like you got to get the marketing out there. But then once they meet you, if everything matches what you they've seen online, it matches what they've seen on the truck or on the door hangers and you know that or what they've been told by the real estate agent who referred them or whatever. Or in that case, you clean their house and then you go with the first cleaning that you did commercially and you knocked it out of the ballpark, did whatever, you know, followed up with them after, hey, you happy with what we did? You know, didn't just kind of shyly walk away, but one of the things we always did was every three to four months for any client that wasn't on a contract or a repeat schedule, it's always hard commercially to get like a chiropractor or a, you know, convention center to be regular.

John Clendenning [00:23:24]:
They'll do, they'll clean because of event happened or events coming up. But all that. So what we always did as I did because I was out of the truck and my job was working on the business, not in it is I would make sure I stopped around. I have a list from the girl that ran my office, Heather, and it'd be like, just give me a list of anybody that's hit already three months that I haven't stopped by and seen yet. And as I'm around doing quotes, picking up area rugs, doing any sort of, you know, business meetings and anything like that, I would also make a point of stopping in and just doing a walk through and a free spotting with a spotter kit with me and popping my head into the office of the guy that hired me, like the maintenance manager or the owner, whoever it was, and just, you know, hey, I'm just here. I just pop in and take a few free spots and stains out. One of the benefits you get, you know, with us being your cleaner. I'll pop back in when I'm done.

John Clendenning [00:24:11]:
My little walkthrough just if there's anything that you've noticed as well. And it allowed me to say, hey, everything's looking good. That back entrance way is getting a little rough. Maybe probably a month or two. We should probably schedule something in to touch up the high traffic lanes at least. And it gives you that consultive moment that if you just try and send an email, you just try and send a text message or you just send a letter, it's not the same as putting your face in front of them and just, you know, even if you're shy like me and your face goes red. Oh well, you walk in there, you have a little bit of what you're going to say, the first 10 times are going to suck. After that, it's just going to be what you do.

John Clendenning [00:24:43]:
Right. You just, you get used to it. You do it so right. So you, you've got that in spades. Like I'm the one that got embarrassed and shy about it. You're like, you, you like walking in and meeting with people. So.

Fred Goins [00:24:52]:
Yeah.

John Clendenning [00:24:53]:
Easier for you. So, yeah. And it's, how's your personal journey been with this as well? Like owning the business and growing and, and all that kind of stuff. What, what's happened, you know, personally to you, the family, the life, as far as, you know, as the owner of a cleaning business, like, that's what a lot of people that listen to these podcasts one like how, how's, how is life around, around the, you know, by being the owner of the business and stuff like that.

Fred Goins [00:25:18]:
It's, it's nice if I get more time, I spend more time with my family, we could take more vacations without me worrying about, happen to come back and do the cleaning.

John Clendenning [00:25:31]:
Yeah.

Fred Goins [00:25:32]:
And family is everything to me. So, you know, as long as I spend extra time with my family, I'm, I'm good to go.

John Clendenning [00:25:40]:
And I think that's the benefit of owning your own business if you do it the right way. Some people own a business and they're basically just a glorified employee. They didn't realize they bought themselves a job. They're so busy doing the cleaning, they never work on the business, so they'll never get, they just hope, hope and pray that the next year is a bit better and eventually they can step out of the truck. But if, you know, if they don't put that as an intention and, and while I'm in the truck, ah, damn, I have to go clean today because I can't do my ownership working on the business moment. Once you do get over that hurdle, then you're not making that decision. Well, I want to go to the child's dance recital, but I also should clean this job because it's going to make me 400 bucks. You know, you're not making that because you got guys, they're going to go out and do that and you've got that, that ability to have money being earned while you can still have that work life balance as well.

John Clendenning [00:26:30]:
Doesn't mean you work less. I mean, we work more. We get in the middle of night, we're doing like, you know, 10 o' clock at night. We're doing finances, going, oh my God, okay, we got loan payments, we got this, we got that. We got to get to buy a new truck. What the heck's going on? That's business owner stuff. But it didn't mean you missed the 2 o' clock in the afternoon soccer, you know, match or whatever or the, you know, again dance recital and stuff like that. We've got those things or, or if we've, you know, got a family member that needs our attention for a while.

John Clendenning [00:26:57]:
I remember I was really appreciative to be out of the truck and stuff like that when, when my mother got sick because I needed to help out at one point and it was like okay, well you guys are running it, I'll check in. But I'm going to be gone for you know, off and on for you know, a couple of weeks, a month, whatever it takes kind of idea. I am needed as a son more than I am as a business owner. Perfectly right. A business. And you have, you give yourself that luxury if you have to come back and work twice as hard to catch up. So what. But it didn't mean that while you're way the job stopped because you, you'd built, you'd preempted that by building that system in place.

John Clendenning [00:27:31]:
So I know a lot of people don't like employees to this point at this day and age where they say everybody, the younger generation, they don't have a work ethic. No, I'm just going to be the guy in the truck. Which I mean is a scary moment for me because it's like what do you do if you get sick, if somebody else gets sick, if you need to be taken away from that? Who's like how does the money still come in? How do you pay the bills when you've got at least, you know, even just one really good technician, but two or three and you've built, you've decided build the company up to that level. You get like you, you have to learn the skills to do that but you give yourself the freedom to have, have a work life balance. So no, that's really good. What. As far as the next gen, the next chapter of extreme clean 95. What, what do you see? So we're, we're kind of just over the first quarter of, of of this year.

John Clendenning [00:28:21]:
It's, it's a bit of a muddled mess with you know, politics and, and, and, and life and stuff like that. But where do you see the company moving any new services you guys are adding, any price changes, any, any, anything that's happening over the, the rest of 2025 and into 26, 27 is right. What kind of plans you've got for the next evolution of the company.

Fred Goins [00:28:44]:
Well, the next evolution of the company will be expanding a little bit more.

John Clendenning [00:28:49]:
Okay.

Fred Goins [00:28:50]:
I'm looking toward Columbus, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky.

John Clendenning [00:28:56]:
Okay. Wow. Yeah.

Fred Goins [00:28:58]:
Expanded to those areas within the next two years. Before this year is out, I'm looking to be well grounded in Columbus, Ohio. Gotcha. Now I service Dayton and Cincinnati, so I'm moving on to Columbus.

John Clendenning [00:29:17]:
Yeah. And once you've got a plan of life, that's brilliant because once you've got a plan in place, it's sort of like, I know who I got to meet. I know what I need to do. Like back, back in the mid-2000s, when the Internet wasn't a thing, as I expanded into new areas, we. I started in a town of 30,000 people and then expanded around every time I took over a new market. That was the days of door hangers and flyers more so than anything else. Right. So I would find the neighborhoods, the nice neighborhoods in a new town.

John Clendenning [00:29:42]:
You know, say that town was a hundred thousand people, 200,000 people. Was. Was one of them as well. One was 30,000 people. Another town. And I would find the really nice residential neighborhoods which I cared about the most. I would start the, here's my family. Here's me, wife, kids, dog, cat, whatever.

John Clendenning [00:29:59]:
From my family to yours. Why I want to be your carpet cleaner. Why I've built a different business. I would teach, you know, why we're different, like, why you would choose us over somebody else. And I would know that those flyers would do absolutely nothing but build awareness. For the first few months, I would drop them every two weeks to a month in the same neighborhood. But while that was happening, I went and met every carpet store and brought donuts and like Howard Partridge 101 brought donuts, brought coffees, all that stuff. I went and met every real estate agent.

John Clendenning [00:30:23]:
I joined the local BNI groups and chamber for that area. I had a plan in place because that's what I did when I was a kid and didn't know any better. I started that. So I go, well, this is my plan. I'm going to start becoming known by flyers. I'm going to invest from. From my current area into the new area in today's day and age. That's getting a Google Maps listing set up.

John Clendenning [00:30:42]:
That's getting some, you know, organic rankings going. That's getting some social going in that area. But then Fred still needs to go out and meet the people that are going to go, yeah, like, so the brand becomes. You got to start from nothing. And how Fast. Can you build that brand awareness in the new marketplace so that the other guys that are there that think they're. They're kind of. I've been here forever.

John Clendenning [00:31:01]:
Yeah, but you're not really working the business, right? So the new guy on the block is going to be Fred gets to come in and stand out because he's willing to work the business and meet the people and make the relationships and have one real estate agent introduce you to like a mortgage broker and into a home inspector and a. Like all, you know, all of a sudden you become in that circle of friends because you made the one connection. But it wasn't the first real estate agent you met. It might have been the 20th. But he becomes the. I think was it. I think it's hard, Partridge, but a couple other guys call it the maven. The person that just shares who you are.

John Clendenning [00:31:32]:
You find that one customer that all of a sudden you realize that she's in the condo and she knows everybody. That and Gladys talked to everybody. And next thing you know, Gladys got you 20 new customers, right? Well, you don't know which one's going to be Gladys yet, but you talk to everybody and eventually the Gladys of the world in this example percolate up. Or the best real estate agents or the, you know, the flooring stores that realize that nobody else has stopped by and their buddy might own a carpet cleaning company, but they don't show up every month with coffees and, and give free bottles of spotter to the, you know, the floor installing techs to have in their truck. So, hey, by the way, every time I'm here, I'll give you another free bottle and stuff like that, right? They don't, they don't keep that brand awareness and just build that rapport as well. So taking over a new area is. Just becomes a process. So yeah, I always say it's either go wide, right? So do what you do and then maybe buy like what I did, bought the maid service out and then the janitorial, and you go wide in a small town or you go deep, stay with your what you know, right? And you go deep in more cities.

John Clendenning [00:32:36]:
And like you take your carpet upholstery cleaning and you spread it around like it's one or the other. But the goal is how do you keep growing? If you're not growing, you're shrinking. So how do you keep growing is like you either go wide in more services and buy competitors out and things like that, or you go deep with what you know and just keep doing that. In more and more places. Right. So. And expand your, your footprint. So.

John Clendenning [00:32:58]:
So with that in mind, though, I mean, that was a really good, a really good insight. I think for a lot of the, the people watching and especially the younger crowd that really unders needs to understand how to navigate these weird times and how they're going to grow and, and just get their mindset in the right place. What would you have as any sort of advice, parting advice or like, you know, not really famous last words, but like, how would you say to a new, a new business owner, a struggling business owner? What would your advice to, you know, to yourself if you were just showing up and, you know, you're a year or two into the business right now and maybe having a bit of a tough time or not sharing what to do next or whatever or what. What kind of advice would you give to somebody just starting out?

Fred Goins [00:33:42]:
Stay consistent.

John Clendenning [00:33:43]:
Okay?

Fred Goins [00:33:45]:
Being consistent and building your brand does a lot. You know, you have to build your brand and if you slack on it, you lose. You know, that's just the name of the game. So as long as you consistent and adamant about what you're doing, you will, you will get ahead.

John Clendenning [00:34:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think we've got to. Some people have the work ethic. Maybe in school they had like, I was, I was one of those tough love kind of dads. I mean, my children weren't allowed to stay home from school unless they were deathly ill. On the third day, the first day, it's like, you got the sniffles, you're going to school, you know, if you puke in class, call me, I'll pick you up, you know, kind of idea, right? But it was like, so as adults now, they're not the ones playing hooky from jobs and stuff like that, but there's other people that, you know, they, they stub their toe and it's like, oh, I gotta call my clients today and, or my customers and take the day off. And I think part of your stay consistent as well is like good brand awareness, good marketing, but make sure the customer gets served and doesn't feel like, you know, like put out because of you.

John Clendenning [00:34:53]:
Like, do everything you can to bend over backwards because that gets more and more noticed in today's day and age when customer service is you, you know, the one girl at the coffee shop that is actually really nice and pleasant because nobody else is. Like every other interaction you go to anywhere else, it's hard to even find a waiter or a waitress at a, at a restaurant that seems to really care the one that does stands out like a sore thumb and we've got to be those people and have our employees be those people as well because it just, in today's day and age, it stands out like crazy. So if you're going to own a business, just show up even when you don't want to. Like, there you go. Right? Yeah. So cool. Any, any parting words or final advice, anything that we didn't cover that you think is important to add to the, the conversation that's about it.

Fred Goins [00:35:43]:
I, I thank you for having me on. I enjoyed.

John Clendenning [00:35:47]:
Yeah, no, I appreciate having you and yeah, and again, this is one of the things we do. If anybody else who wants to jump on on one of the podcasts by interviewing, you know, very successful cleaning business owners, stuff like that, the other thing we're going to do is actually let people in Fred's neighborhood and marketplace know that he was interviewed as a, you know, on the Carpet Cleaner Success podcast as well, which is just another moment of that brand awareness. It's putting it out on social media. It's great to share those stories and, and get that out as well. So I appreciate having you on on the call today, Fred. And yeah, we, we look forward to the comments that people have. We, wherever you found this on, on, whether on spot or on our website or YouTube or anywhere like that, make some comments, let Fred know and we'll pass those along to Fred as well. You know, any high fives and thanks and all that kind of stuff because we appreciate having everybody on.

John Clendenning [00:36:38]:
So thanks so much. And with that, I will bid you all a fond adieu and thanks so much for listening to the Carpet Cleaner Success podcast.