A strong benchmark for average residential job value is $450 to $600, compared with about $180 for a typical operator. Reaching that range depends on package pricing, relevant add-ons, better targeting, stronger positioning, and a sales process that communicates value instead of reducing the service to a basic room count and price.

John Clendenning
[00:00:05 – 00:00:41]

Hey, well, thank you so much for that warm welcome, everybody. Welcome to today’s talk. As we say, John Campbell. We got some exciting things to talk about today. So I’m going to walk you guys through today. This is, this is an interesting talk because the subject matter, do you know if you are truly one of the best or just one of the rest? is critically important in September of 2026 while I’m recording this live in front of all of you guys. Anybody on, thank you, all that kind of stuff. Or if you’re listening to this on replay, we get dozens and hundreds and thousands sometimes of downloads and replays and stuff like that.

John Clendenning
[00:00:41 – 00:01:30]

So I really appreciate all the attention, understanding how to grow these home service businesses, home cleaning businesses, how to think it through. But as we’ve been talking about, it’s 18 months Since I did an emergency session, 2-day virtual summit with Jeff Cross, Clean Facts Magazine. We had John Braun on and Kevin Kluth and Mark Sager and Nate Sisney, strategists and consultants, my good friend Frankie Finn. We had all kinds of cool people joining that call. And as teachers, a training on this call about the coming reckoning called AI. Everyone, ah, John, you’re full of it. Well, I think in the last couple of weeks, regardless of what you believe is happening with AI going to kill us all or not, the words finally got out. It’s recursive self-improving.

John Clendenning
[00:01:30 – 00:02:09]

It gets better and better and better. But for what does that mean for us? Hey, great. I get to do things easier. I get to get rid of staff. So does everybody else. Now you don’t have customers, right? We got it. We got to think the bigger picture here, guys, right? So the idea is, yes, you can use AI to simplify the menial tasks so that you can be more strategic, keep your team members, but have them reach out to clients more, have them reach out to business owners more, do a better job. If you’re one guy in a truck, what can you do to get out of that truck as quickly as possible? Are you a technician? Like my technicians made like, what, $80,000 a year? Like 5, 6— I sold the business 5, 6 years ago.

John Clendenning
[00:02:10 – 00:02:37]

So like 10 years ago, right? So, you you know, if you’re not making that, maybe you’re— you get to go home at the end of the day and not worry about the problems. When you’re a business owner, the goal is to build something, right? So there is the haves and the have-nots. There is the few best I keep talking about. They are legitimately— everything about their business is different than the rest. The few best learned something. They didn’t get— weren’t born with it. They didn’t go to university and get it. I didn’t even graduate high school.

John Clendenning
[00:02:37 – 00:03:17]

I got the job, the right to be Ron Wood in a Rolling Stones cover band in May, and graduation was in June. I didn’t finish the final exam I always planned to go back. I got a chance to be on the road, was on the road for about 5 years, right? So, and then started cleaning companies and grew a million-dollar, multimillion-dollar cleaning company. So I didn’t go back to school. I just had to learn it from everybody else, which is what we do. I don’t think school teaches it to you anyways, right? So you want to be in the right rooms, the right clubs, the right groups, the right people that are growing and understand this, not the ones that know how to get dog pee out with a butler, whatever. version system you have, right? That’s the technician’s job. The business owner’s job is entirely different.

John Clendenning
[00:03:17 – 00:04:19]

So we’re going to get into that today. We’re going to go through what a benchmark report— so I built a benchmark report. I’m going to show you guys this that was based on 30 years of being in the industry, almost 35 now, based on 20 years of consulting in this industry and working with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cleaning companies to grow them to whatever size they want, doubling, tripling, millions, wherever, right? All of that kind of stuff. And other— I’ve talked to thousands and thousands of home cleaning business owners, carpet cleaners, pressure washers, window cleaners, you name it, maid services, all of those things. And ones that are sort of always stuck at $100,000, $120,000, $250,000, $300,000, that’s these normal stuck points. $500,000 is actually— $500,000 to $600,000 is a stuck point. A lot of businesses get there and have no clue how to scale beyond it. I’m going to show you somebody who scaled was running $11 million service business and losing $3 million a year, figured this stuff out and expanded to the point they’re in the $20s, $20, $30 million, something like that, whatever the number is, I’m gonna get back to you.

John Clendenning
[00:04:20 – 00:04:59]

And 1,000 employees and highly profitable by understanding some of this stuff. Again, way outside of the realm of what you’re thinking about, possibly, right? Some people, some of our clients are actually thinking about getting to $10, $15 million and selling to private equity for, you know, $30 million, $40 million, which is what’s happening right now in home service. So, private equity, franchises, all this, know numbers. They deal with numbers. Everything is a numbers game, right? If you know your numbers, you know how to run the business, right? So, there is the best, and I’m going to show you what the best numbers look like, what they know, and I’m going to show you what the rest who don’t think that’s important don’t know yet until they watch this.

John Clendenning
[00:05:43 – 00:06:14]

Amazing graphics again. Thank you, Sarika. My gosh, the best graphics person on planet Earth. If you need her, you can’t have her. I got her. So anyways, but did you know if you’re truly one of the best? Everybody thinks, oh, I’m the best carpet cleaner in town. Is that what the public thinks? Do they know that? Have you— is your brand precede you based on trust, competence, confidence, all of that kind of stuff? If it does, your paid ads work better. Your every door mail works better.

John Clendenning
[00:06:14 – 00:06:33]

Now you can actually do it. I know a lot of guys go, I don’t do that. That’s expensive. It’s only expensive if they don’t know you first. You need to be in people’s brains, your ideal customer profile. And we’re going to talk about that. So the best scales, the rest are failing. And right now we’re talking about in a tight economy, we’re talking about interest rates just went up again.

John Clendenning
[00:06:33 – 00:07:23]

We’re talking about the recessionary feeling and sentiment. We’re talking about people getting their jobs replaced on one side, like anything behind a computer and white collar while they’re trying to onshore in blue collar in pretty much every country right now. Wherever you’re listening to this from, this is all happening. I don’t care if you’re in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the US, England, Europe, we’re all dealing with this. This is a— it’s not about Iran and oil prices and stuff like that. Yeah, Venezuela, great large reserve. That’s amazing. Did you know it’s about 10 to 15 years before they can actually refine that properly, get the sulfur out of it before it actually hits the reserve tanks? Did you know that we’re at a 40-year low in critical energy reserves, oil reserves? Yeah, probably.

John Clendenning
[00:07:23 – 00:07:56]

So all of this is going to come home to roost. All of it means that we got to run better companies. Today’s call is going to show you exactly what the best companies are doing that are growing like crazy right now. They’re even buying smaller companies that are dying. You’re on your way down. You don’t get top penny for your, for your business at all, but they’re buying those guys because they can take the database, they can grow, you know, so bigger carpet cleaning companies are buying out smaller ones just to take over the market. And it’s a great idea right now because most people Most in our industry never get out of the truck. 85% never get out of the truck.

John Clendenning
[00:07:56 – 00:08:41]

86% of solopreneurs never stop being a solopreneur. They can never— they never open an office to run a team. They never learn that skill, right? They never market their business properly to get to that point. So, want to turn off your cell phones, turn off Facebook and social medias and TikToks. And if you’re a cleaning or home service business at all, and you’re serious about getting the best results, as we’ve said for 5 years now on these calls every single month, All on different topics. Give me the next 60 to 75, sometimes 90 minutes if we go on a little bit, um, and you will learn a lot. What we’re going to cover today, the benchmark. Where do you stand and what would you change if you operated like one of the top few in our industry? There’s barely one in every town.

John Clendenning
[00:08:42 – 00:09:06]

If you’re a big enough city, there might be one, rarely two. Right. More leads will not fix a broken system. In fact, more leads can drive you out of business. Sounds weird, but I can prove it to you. The math doesn’t math. You’re missing focusing on the right numbers. And I’m going to tell you not to take my word for it.

John Clendenning
[00:09:06 – 00:09:27]

I’m going to start pointing at other people that you should take the word for instead of me. Stop leaving money on the table. There is a lot of money on the table that People don’t— who don’t know what we’re talking about, who think that they’ll get to that later. I just got to go out and clean today, John. I’ll get to that later. I just got to go out and clean today, John. Later never comes. You have to be working on both sides of the business.

John Clendenning
[00:09:27 – 00:09:43]

You are the business owner and operator. You have to be running the business, working on the business, even if you have to work in it. That just means you have to put in more time. Sorry, that’s it. Your buddies might have an 8-hour day. 10-hour day. I know a lot of trades. That’s not even a thing.

John Clendenning
[00:09:44 – 00:09:52]

I know friends that have worked 12-hour shifts at auto plants and overtimes and all that kind of stuff. So, if they have to do it, why can’t we?

John Clendenning
[00:09:52 – 00:09:52]

Right?

John Clendenning
[00:09:52 – 00:10:13]

So, and it’s not out cleaning. You don’t make most of your money when you’re cleaning. Keep these thoughts in mind. Challenge me on them if you don’t. If that just hit, if any of this stuff hits and goes, what’s he talking about? I don’t know if I believe that. Pause and challenge that for a minute. This is true. I’m not the only one saying it.

John Clendenning
[00:10:13 – 00:10:42]

I’m not the only one who’s been saying it for 40 years, 50 years. You know, you go back 30, 35 years ago to Joe Polish or, or Howard Partridge or Dan Kennedy, you know, or Russell Brunson or Alex Hormozi nowadays. Tommy Mello, Home Service Millionaire, sold his garage door repair company for $2 billion because he figured this out. Right. Customer is worth more than one job. Right. So who am I? Why should you even trust me? Well, I wrote the book on it. That’s helpful.

John Clendenning
[00:10:42 – 00:11:17]

I run the podcast on it. That’s helpful. I’ve been in the industry since— I’ve been a career business owner since 1990 while still in high school. And yeah, I’ve taught this stuff forever. My first presentation, red-faced, nervous, stomach clenching because I never did any of them in high school, was in 2002 in Orlando at a convention on the experience economy, how to deliver a client experience before anybody was talking about booties and red carpets and all of that stuff. I was putting that in place in my business. Didn’t speak in front of audiences at all. How did you play guitar in a band, John, if you’re— because I only saw the good-looking chicks in the front row.

John Clendenning
[00:11:19 – 00:12:04]

Be straight up. Everything else is dark when you’re on the stage. You got lights in your eyes, right? Pretty easy to play guitar. So anyways, so I sold my businesses. Cashed out, invested, and decided to start up Carpet Cleaning Marketing Masters, and now the Blueprint for Success coaching and the Carpet Cleaning Success podcast and stuff like that. Became Industry Leader of the Year in Cleanfax. I’m on Cleanfax all the time, and this benchmark report we’re going to be talking about right now will be public— published on Cleanfax and syndicated throughout the entire industry because it’s the benchmark report from my experience and data from all third-party sources we can find. And I want to show it to you because something I compiled internally and then decided to create a, a, an industry report around to help teach the industry, to help people understand where they fit in.

John Clendenning
[00:12:06 – 00:12:06]

Right.

John Clendenning
[00:12:06 – 00:12:47]

Don’t care about me. Care more about these characters. We want companies to grow, be number one everywhere, increase by 40%, increase by 55% in one month, 40%, because they follow not, not just the marketing. Right? They follow the training. They understand their role, right? That’s why we have people that, you know, in our purview that can build a million-dollar business in 2 years, never owned a carpet cleaning business in their life, right? Or people that have scaled from $1.2 to $2.4 million in the last 18 months by doing this stuff we’re going to be talking about. It’s not a better Google ad. That’s just one of the many poles in the water. And it ain’t one of the most important.

John Clendenning
[00:12:48 – 00:13:26]

Not a better Facebook ad. Terrible pole in the water to land for leads. Great pole in the water for billboard effect and brand awareness that generates better sales conversations and more conversions when they do see your ad, your flyer, your every door mail, stuff like that. So if you want to make— we want to make our clients the top cleaning brand in their local marketplace so they can attract attract the best clients, the ones that still have money today and aren’t worried about the economy. They can— are able to charge top rates. If your average job isn’t north of $500 residentially, you are way behind. You’re not making enough money to run ads. And nor should you be right now.

John Clendenning
[00:13:27 – 00:13:47]

You should be learning what— how to do package pricing, how to do upsells, how to target the right ICP, how to get referral partners. Lots of really cool stuff that has always worked that Mark Sager talks about. Kevin Klooth talks about. Nate Sisney talks about. John Braun talks about. Frankie Finn talks about. All those guys from 18 months ago. All the people that I’ve had on my podcast and training for years.

John Clendenning
[00:13:49 – 00:14:15]

Again, don’t believe me? Go listen to Tommy Mello. He did $2 billion. I didn’t sell for $2 billion. So, let’s listen to him then. How do we do this? 3 simple principles of omnipresent marketing. You are the best-known cleaner if you’re known everywhere to your ideal clientele. And the ideal referral partners for that clientele. They better know you before you show up, knock on the door, or see your ad, or need you.

John Clendenning
[00:14:16 – 00:14:42]

They better already know your name. In today’s day and age of AI, you’re not going to get recommended by AI without omnipresence online, not Google reviews. This ain’t about more Google reviews and a Google ad. Those don’t work very well at all in the world of AI recommendations. It’s entirely different. And that game is not a game. It’s not fake backlinks and fake articles and ChatGPT. That will not rank you at all.

John Clendenning
[00:14:43 – 00:15:26]

In fact, all the major AI LLMs have to now put watermarks hidden within the content so that Europe— it was a European requirement, but so that everybody, Google algorithms, all know if the content was AI generated or not. The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you had AI help you because it can be a thought partner, an assistant. Did the content meaningfully add to the, to the public knowledge and conversation? If it’s just dribble, if it’s the same service page, service area page on everybody’s website, same blog article, just different, change your name for somebody else’s. It literally doesn’t even get indexed anymore. It will not show up anywhere.

John Clendenning
[00:15:26 – 00:15:27]

Right?

John Clendenning
[00:15:27 – 00:16:05]

So you want to be omnipresent before people find you online, offline, referred anywhere. Oh, I’ve heard of those guys. Yeah, let me call them at the dinner party when somebody mentions your name. How are they going to mention your name? There’s a whole bunch of things you need to do for that to happen. But one, you want to maximize your opportunities to generate a qualified inquiry. What qualifies for you? The person that has enough money to clean A couple times a year. We’ve got clients that their average, their average job is $800, $900 residentially in markets where the competitors are $99 because they’ve run an entirely different business. Their duct cleaning jobs are $2,000, $3,000 with 3 furnace systems.

John Clendenning
[00:16:06 – 00:16:34]

And yes, they spend an entire day, sometimes 2 days. And yes, they do zone bags and all of the, all of the things done properly. National Air Duct Cleaning Association done the right way. Well, who’s going to pay for that? Nobody ever wants to because you’re targeting the wrong people with the right script, the right message, the right trust coming before you to the right house, they will pay that in spades. Go listen to some of my podcast interviews. Mark Goodman, good example. Cleaner to the Stars. Lots of podcasts we have.

John Clendenning
[00:16:35 – 00:17:19]

Truth, right? 2, you want to maximize your brand impressions. That’s what we just talked about, right? So, if you are in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, you know Diamond and Diamond Personal Injury Lawyers. They’re everywhere, branded everywhere. Do you need a personal injury lawyer? Hopefully never in your life. The odd moment that you do, does that mean Diamond and Diamond comes to mind and you call them directly and, or you run to the nearest billboard? Nope. You still Google them. You ask your ChatGPT, you ask your neighbor, you ask your friend. Somebody goes, yeah, what about Diamond and Diamond? Or ChatGPT or whatever says, oh, well, based on that, Diamond and Diamond seems to have a lot of Great recommendations, referrals online, people talking about them having won cases.

John Clendenning
[00:17:19 – 00:17:52]

They got a lot of case studies and stories online. Yeah, I’ve heard of those guys. Yeah, let’s call them. The 2 play together. Without it, they don’t work as well. Not even close. 3, you want to maximize your conversions, right? It doesn’t, like, doesn’t make any sense to generate phone calls Local service ad phone calls, pay-per-click, database, referral partners. If you don’t answer the phone, if you don’t follow up, most people don’t book when they call.

John Clendenning
[00:17:52 – 00:18:30]

Like, do you get an 80% booking percentage on cold people that have never heard from you? If you do, your prices are probably too low, straight up, right? Do you get an 80% booking percentage if your average price is 2 to 3 times higher than the competitors? The average competitors, the rest. Not the best. The rest, not the best. Conversion optimization and maximization deals with that. It’s not a tactic. It’s not a, it’s not a, not a trick. It’s a strategy that we all had to learn. The best operators learn this stuff in their spare time and put it in place as a system, lock it in and move on to the next.

John Clendenning
[00:18:31 – 00:19:26]

And they’re a little bit better every single week. every single month than they were the week before. That’s the point. Hopefully that hits home a little bit for some people. But this is the brutal honesty time. This is look in the mirror at yourself time. Do you know if you are truly seen by the marketplace as one of the few best, or are you just seen as one of the rest? If I went into your town and pulled 1,000 homeowners in the best neighborhoods in town, would your name come up most of the time? Or are you invisible? Right? So revenue isn’t the whole story either. Most owners know their revenue.

John Clendenning
[00:19:27 – 00:20:02]

But do you know your call answer rate? How many phone calls get answered? When we start tracking calls on local service ads for our clients, on their phone systems, through our Carpet Cleaner Lead Pro tools and all that kind of stuff, we two-way sync into their Housecall Pros or ServiceMonster or Marketz or Fields and all that kind of stuff. When we start tracking all those call rates, we realize how many calls don’t get answered. And when they do, they get answered as a commodity. Because their booking rate sucks. Because, hey, how much does it cost to clean 3 bedrooms and a hallway? Well, we charge $250. Thank you. Click. You sound like you answered their question.

John Clendenning
[00:20:02 – 00:20:36]

You did the entirely wrong thing. They think carpet cleaning is all the same, and the only thing that matters is price. Your job with your marketing, your brand awareness, and your scripts and your approach The best companies do this, by the way. All of them. I’ve talked to many, many, many of them. They all know exactly what I’m saying. They go, hey man, John, of course we— and not only do we have scripts, we constantly refine them, listen to them, all this good stuff. We’ll talk about what they do, right? This stuff isn’t hard, but it doesn’t happen automatically.

John Clendenning
[00:20:38 – 00:21:44]

What is your booking rate on repeats, on referrals, and on Cold and from source. Best to know it at first, just what is it every single week, every single month, and how does it compare to previous weeks and previous months and previous quarters, right? What is your average job value? Is it going up? Is it going down? Right? If your average job value again is $250, $300, $350, Do you use 3-pack price package systems and upsell scripts and like honorable, ethical upsell scripts? You sell a customer the right stuff, they will love you for it. They will thank you for it and they will come back for more of it. It’s not about bait and switch at all. It’s about providing value to the client and giving them opportunities to buy more from you or better package of services that meet their lives better. And don’t package in pet urine removal in a package. We’ll talk about that someday if you want to give me a call. That is not part of a 3-price package.

John Clendenning
[00:21:44 – 00:22:09]

Not everybody has a pet. Not everybody needs it. You just took them out of your package. All 3 packages should be viable and they should have a pricing strategy and psychology that pushes most people into the middle package. Right? So you don’t give quotes on the phone. You give estimates. You come out. Some people do it where they never give a price on the phone and they only do quote visits first.

John Clendenning
[00:22:09 – 00:22:30]

Have to see, show up if you’re a brand new customer. Not going to give you any information, any pricing. I’ll give you all kinds of information on company, but no pricing until I show up. A lot of companies do that. Those companies do tend to run $500, $600, $700, $800 average residential job against the other competitors. Why? And because they’re doing it stealth behind your back. And those customers never leave them again. So, you never hear about it.

John Clendenning
[00:22:31 – 00:23:27]

They’re locked in for the rest of their lives because they have a repeat customer system proven, managed, and increased, worked on and tweaked over time. Right? They have a referral system that generates a predictable amount of new inquiries because it’s a system. You set the system up once. You monitor it and make tweaks and improvements as needed, but it runs and runs and runs and runs the same way. And what is your average lifetime customer value? Well, you’re not in the transactional business. What is each customer worth in the entire lifecycle with your business? You need to know these numbers because the best operators can tell me these off the top of their head. And I talk to them and I ask them these questions all the time. The numbers behind your revenue tell the much bigger story.

John Clendenning
[00:23:28 – 00:24:07]

Will you survive or will you become one of the casualties as this tsunami of change in our world is hitting all of us at different times, but harder and harder and harder and harder and harder? It’s not going away. Before we look at numbers, I want you to think about your own business. How many of your key numbers do you actually know? Tell you the top operators, they can even just be one guy in a truck. We’re not talking million, multi-million dollar. I’ll do that someday when I get there, John. Nope. They know these numbers when they’re the only guy in the truck. And they’re trying, they do desperately to get out of the truck.

John Clendenning
[00:24:07 – 00:24:42]

That’s why people that know their numbers and know how systems and what I just talked about and what their core role in the company is, Typically don’t stay in the truck longer than 3 months, 6 months at the most. They have built a business even in a brand new town where the competitors are much bigger than them. They figure that they’ve, they’ve learned parts of this and they understand what their real daily job is. And within no time, they’re scaling. $150,000 in the first 90 days of a brand new business. Tony, well done, brother. Right. Doing exactly what we’re talking about here.

John Clendenning
[00:24:42 – 00:25:20]

So where do you stand? Getting and booking the inquiry, right? So these are all from the benchmark report. I’m just going to switch over to that for a second to show you where that is. This is one of the guys I think you should learn from as well. But here’s the benchmark report on our website, carpetcleaningmarketingmasters.com. Just go to learning library, find the benchmark report. It’s getting a little buried now, or you can just go to carpet cleaning benchmark report. Right? carpetcleaningmarketingmasters.com/carpet-cleaning-benchmark-report. Not only do we give the data, you can actually even take this page and ask Claude, ask ChatGPT, ask Perplexity, or copy it here and put it into your Gemini or your favorite AI of choice.

John Clendenning
[00:25:21 – 00:25:58]

These buttons just open up a new window in your tool, and you can have all kinds of questions about and go back and forth about the benchmark report versus your numbers and how to do it. But here’s the benchmark right here, the report. That’s the numbers we’re going to go through today. And then here’s a breakdown of each one of the 20 variables or the 20 stats. We got before the sale, during the sale, and after the sale, and your scoreboard. The way I think of business, you have 3 businesses, 3 hats. Before the sale, lead generation and brand awareness. During the sale, you have from scripting from the moment they call to the moment you go, bye, ma’am, see you next time.

John Clendenning
[00:25:59 – 00:27:02]

That whole thing is the during-the-sale experience. The better you optimize that experience at every single touchpoint, right? One of our clients, Amy, they’re now good, better, best, best, best, best, iterate, iterate. They mail out a kit to every single booked job with the technician, their background report, care guides, prep guides, all that kind of stuff in beautiful glossy binders or folders and stuff like that. Because it sets the customer up for a great experience, locks them in when they start sending their repeat and referral stuff afterwards, and preps the situation and upsells the average job subtly, privately behind the scenes. Why? Because they started with one thing years ago and just got a little bit better over time. Just improved, learned from other people, learned from us, learned from everybody else, and just keep making these improvements, right? So Get and booking the inquiry. What is your live answer rate? The typical operator we listen to is about 50 to 65%. There’s a lot of calls that go missing.

John Clendenning
[00:27:03 – 00:27:35]

Or like, because they’re on your cell phone, you’re trying to answer it while talking to Mrs. Jones. And do I talk to Mrs. Jones? Do I do this? I’m in front of a commercial quote. Do I pick up my phone? Right? Top operators, well north of 95%. They have live and then they’ve got some sort of an AI backup now, no longer answering machines, AI backup that will take a message, not book a job because it’s not a psychological positioning. Live people need to psychologically position scripting done well. That’s a training internally, right? It’s not just please answer my phone.

John Clendenning
[00:27:35 – 00:28:04]

So I hope you know what you’re doing. No, there’s a process to all of this. When you do it right, that person, you hire somebody on their phones and train them properly. Their paycheck is made by themselves times 2 or 3 or 4 every single week over you just trying to answer the phone yourself. It’s not like when I can afford it, I’ll hire somebody. You can’t afford not to. You should not be answering the phones and trying to clean and also trying to build the business at all. It’s, it, they don’t work together.

John Clendenning
[00:28:04 – 00:28:43]

You will lose money, right? Call to booking rate. We’ve listened to millions of calls by this point. We have tools and AI that now listens to calls, reads them, and rates the operator. The average person is 25%, 35% at a high watermark is their booking rate. If you actually tracked it, top operators sitting north of 50% booking rate, call-to-booking rate. Speed to lead. Phones answered in 2 rings, text messages answered in 30 seconds or less, emails within 5 minutes. All day, every day.

John Clendenning
[00:28:44 – 00:29:09]

And then you can add AI to do this after hours. Sorry, no, nobody’s available. This is the AI assistant. Off they go again, right? Website leads to book jobs. When you actually get a lead from your website, the average website only converts at 1%. 99% of people that come to the website don’t see what they need to see. Babies lying on carpets, family and dogs lying on couches and generic dribble, they just leave. That’s average.

John Clendenning
[00:29:10 – 00:29:58]

The goal is to try and 5x that or 10x that if you can, with proper psychological positioning on the, on the, on the website. We know how to do that. I know how to do that because I went through tens of thousands of dollars worth of training on psychological positioning as a carpet cleaner just to write better ads for my carpet cleaning business. None of this was to do with what I do now. That was just for me to be one of the top operators. That’s what people learned because I was no longer in the truck after the first 18 months in 1995. So I did everything I needed to do to get out of the truck and grow. I kept doing all of those things, core forever engine, I call it, and then started learning all the stuff I didn’t know, right? Lead sources, poles in the water.

John Clendenning
[00:29:58 – 00:30:24]

The typical operator has 3. The top operators have close to 40. Hole in the water is a way to generate an inquiry, a qualified inquiry that you can turn into a job. You start stacking. You don’t replace, you stack. You want to get about a 3 to 1 ROI, return on investment for paid ad sources. You want to have brand awareness mixed into that as well. You want to build your company brand.

John Clendenning
[00:30:25 – 00:31:05]

That’s not me talking about it. Go listen to Tommy Mello, A1 Door. Go listen to this other guy I’m going to show you in a second. Again, that fellow I showed you in the video, right? You want to invest close to 20% of revenue. I say 20%. I say nail 20% as hard as you can. How do I know that? Because I and most of the other top operators are well within that range. When you put everything in, when you’ve got, you know, if you’re no longer doing the outreach yourself and you’ve got somebody on your team doing the outreach like Howard Partridge and those guys, that their paycheck is part of this as well, right? That is your— Your marketing investment, your marketing investment to the database, your marketing investment to the public, your marketing investment to your referral partners, all of it.

John Clendenning
[00:31:05 – 00:31:30]

Repeat reactivations, all of it. And all that outreach should be about 20% of your revenue. That’s growth mode. 15%, maintenance mode. 10%, you don’t even know what you’re doing. You don’t care. Cost per inbound lead, right? The top operators spend way more. Because it’s an investment, right? The average typical operator thinks that you should be able to get a lead for $20 or less.

John Clendenning
[00:31:31 – 00:32:04]

That’s not a good lead. There is no $20 leads left, right? Again, you’re chasing the wrong thing. The top operators are doing it better, willing to invest more because they get $400, $500 an average job. So if they have to spend $100, right? And their booking percentage is good. They’re still at a 3 to 4 to 1 ROI because they don’t care about that. They don’t care about this at all. All of their money comes from somewhere else, not the first-time customer. You want to blend, blend cost per book jobs, right? The blended cost to book a job.

John Clendenning
[00:32:04 – 00:32:41]

This is just for the calls. That’s not for a book job. The blended cost for a book job sits around about $90. See how that’s higher, but the blended cost for book job is lower? Why? These guys understand assets. SEO, LLM mentions, Google Maps, not just one, but Tommy Mello again, we’ll go back to him because everybody knows his name. Um, 14 Google Business Profiles in Phoenix, Arizona alone, right? Becomes an asset to also— you become best known everywhere and there’s a growth strategy around it. It’s not fake. It’s not, oh, I’m just going to slam Google with— no, no.

John Clendenning
[00:32:42 – 00:33:23]

There’s a way to do it properly. We call it our area expansion plan, and we recommend it to all of our clients at a point. Did you know that your local service ads, now moving into Google’s ad platform and getting a little bit more complicated, ties to your Google Maps listing? You should not be trying to run local service ads outside of your Google Maps radius, which is only about 5 miles, sometimes only 3, sometimes only 10 in major centers, 15 to 20 in rural areas. At best. Beyond that, don’t run local service ads. You won’t show up because Google ties the two together. New Google reviews per month. Again, Google reviews count, but so do every other Google review or every review, right? So before the sale, you need to get all that right.

John Clendenning
[00:33:24 – 00:34:09]

During the sale, average job value, typical operator, about $180 from all of our studies and stats. Top operators, the $450 to $600 range. Same cities, different clientele, different marketing, different target, different knowledge. Protectors and add-ons, about 20%. Top operators have about 60% add-ons and upsells that the client loves and will call them back forever. First-time job acquisition, 2 to 1, you broke even. Top operators aim at 3 to 1, Closer to 5 to 1 if they’re at the top end of this and their booking percentages are really good. They can easily get to the top end of 5 to 1 return on investment at the first-time customer.

John Clendenning
[00:34:10 – 00:34:50]

Know your numbers, fill the gaps, grow stronger. You run a profitable business. After the sale, what’s your customer worth? Repeat rate. By luck, you might be 10 to 15% where you send out text messages every so often. Understand that if you send about 4 or 5 text messages to a customer and that’s all you’ve ever done and it’s just, you know, time to book. Would you like your cleaning again? They will hit stop. And now you don’t have a text message clientele anymore, right? Top operators get about a 60% repeat rate on any given week, month, quarter, year. They are managing how many repeats and referrals is the average daily jobs.

John Clendenning
[00:34:50 – 00:35:19]

It’s about 60% for the guys that are growing and acquiring. They’ve locked that in. That’s marketing. That doesn’t just happen by luck. It happens by a series of events and good marketing and good outreach. Repeat referral share of all jobs, 6 weeks, again, approximately about 60%. Rebook interval. The top operators have their best clients, their average clients, their ideal clients every 9 to 12 months because they’re marketing to them 30, 40 times a year in different ways.

John Clendenning
[00:35:20 – 00:35:36]

Not buy now, buy now, buy now. But hey, here’s some advice. Here’s a tip. Here’s some information. They’re staying top of mind. And providing value and making the appropriate offer every so often. Gary Vaynerchuk wrote a book called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Jab, jab, jab is value, value, value.

John Clendenning
[00:35:37 – 00:36:16]

Now you got the okay to give them, um, some sort of an offer or opportunity. Alex Hormozi talks about the exact same type of stuff in his frameworks, right? Database reactivation campaigns, usually never or shotgun. They don’t even know a campaign like organized and systemized. Top operators, it’s a locked-in system every single month. They know who has gone stale and how to stay in touch with them. Database reactivation is anybody who’s gone 24 to 36 months without a cleaning. Customer lifetime value. The average operator, the lifetime value of their customer is 1 to 2 cleanings, maybe 3, about $1,000, usually less.

John Clendenning
[00:36:18 – 00:36:56]

I’ve seen guys where their average lifetime value is about $400. Top operators sitting around $7,500 to $20,000. They know how to lock a client in and get repeats and referrals from those people forever. So the lifetime return on investment is barely 3 to 1. The best operators, any one new client, customer they bring in the first time, because they’re targeting the ideal people, they know what they’re doing, they’re marketing them properly, they’re nurturing them. Even if they don’t book right now, they’re going to book in a month, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months. They didn’t like the guy that they booked last time with and now they are because they’ve got conversion tools in place. And I get it.

John Clendenning
[00:36:56 – 00:37:36]

I’m talking fast because this is all of this should just be, yep, yep, John. Yep, John. I get that. Those guys, they expect about a 25-to-1 return on cost of acquisition cost, CAC, your CAC, a 25-to-1 against lifetime value. We’re in a transactional business. Other businesses, they install a roof, they might make $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 profit, right? Not revenue, but profit on a $25,000 roof or whatever. They’re not going back to install the roof again next year. Plumbing companies need to come back a bunch of times.

John Clendenning
[00:37:36 – 00:38:06]

They want to make again that $5,000, $4,000, $5,000 lifetime value with a client. Their best clients are installing water heaters and And, and, and, and, you know, replumbing an entire house, whatever they’re doing, right? All that kind of stuff. Think of any, any, any job like that. Our business needs multiple visits. I did carpet cleaning, duct cleaning, maid service, janitorial, all that. You never make your money on the one job. Never. You make your money in our industry.

John Clendenning
[00:38:08 – 00:38:31]

A few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars at a time. Over time, if you’re not building that part of the business, you don’t know your numbers. You’re not one of the top. You are definitely one of the typical operators. And these guys are having trouble right now because we’re back into 2008, ’09 feeling in the public. If you know your numbers, find the gap, grow stronger, more profitable business. The scorecard. Bottom line.

John Clendenning
[00:38:31 – 00:39:09]

What is your revenue per truck? Top operators expect about $250,000 per truck, right? Second truck might be only $220,000, growing $200,000. Third truck might be $180,000, growing its way to $200,000. You know your numbers. You’re— by the time you’ve got your third truck, your second truck should be sitting close to $250,000. One guy in the truck, right? You can run a half a million dollar two-truck business and not be in one of the two trucks when you know what all the other stuff we’re talking about. If you know what the core forever engine is that everybody’s always done properly. If you do it properly. Again, the top operators, not the typical, right? Owner hours per week, 40 hours a week, typical operator.

John Clendenning
[00:39:10 – 00:40:19]

Top operators could take a couple weeks off and the business wouldn’t stop running. I got down to about 5 to 10 hours a week in my business and started consulting in 2007, ’08, started digital marketing, started working for a restoration company that grew and sold through to Belfors and stuff like that. Um, in 2010, started a marketing company in 2013, like doing for the Chamber of Commerce and doing presentations and teaching this stuff, right? Started Carpet Cleaner Market Mastery just after I sold most of my businesses and then finally sold the carpet cleaning one out to do this education and training. Because I was close to zero, I had systems running in my business with people. Right? Know where you stand is the only— is only the first step. Know your numbers, find the gap, fix the bottleneck. The goal today isn’t for you to walk away with 20 more numbers, right? It’s not to walk away with 20 more numbers. The goal is for you to identify which number or which part of your business is holding you back.

John Clendenning
[00:40:20 – 00:41:13]

Most people think I need more leads before the sale. Everything’s before the sale, before the sale. I will tell you right now, if you work on during the sale and after the sale and fix that machine, double your average job, you’ve just doubled your average, your business. Hard to do that with more leads, straight up. Doubled your average client retention where they come back, repeat and refer with good marketing, you’ve doubled your business again. You take a $100,000 business, turn it into a $200,000 business because you just doubled your average job. You went from $200 to $400 average job because you learned how to package, you learned how to upsell, you learned how to create little selling environments in the home, just like anybody else who knows what I’ve just said has already learned, studied, and then teach to their staff if they need to, or have a salesperson out in the field. That’s why the bigger companies, HVAC companies, carpet cleaning companies, they actually have trained business development managers who will go do quotes.

John Clendenning
[00:41:13 – 00:41:53]

And stuff like that because you have to learn it as the owner. If you’re the technician, maybe you don’t. As the owner, that’s one of your core skills. How to communicate better so you get the highest value, right? After the sale, the repeat and retention, you take a $200,000— now you took a $100,000 business to $200,000 and then you double your retention. More repeats, more referrals because you market the crap out of them. Now you took that to a $400,000 business and you haven’t generated one new lead yet. Now you double your lead volume with more poles in the water to the ideal customer target, better brand awareness, all that kind of stuff on the front end. You took that $400,000 business, doubled it.

John Clendenning
[00:41:53 – 00:42:29]

Now you’re at $800,000. You will not get enough leads to take a $100,000 business to $800,000 or even $400,000 with the other 2 pieces being broken. They literally come first, the cart before the horse. Right? More leads won’t fix a broken system. That’s the point here. So, the Benchmark Report just tears this apart and shows the proof why more leads can never fix a broken system. Getting more opportunities doesn’t matter if your business isn’t built to capture, convert, and retain them. You’re just literally putting them into a leaky bucket and looking for more water.

John Clendenning
[00:42:30 – 00:42:49]

That’s the problem. You don’t have a lead problem. You have an ideal That’s actually ICP, not IDP. I should change that. Ideal customer profile and conversion problem. Right? Lead comes in. Answer it immediately. Have that conversation.

John Clendenning
[00:42:50 – 00:43:09]

Have a script that you know books more people than not having a script. Then, you get better and better and better. You tweak the scripts. You listen to all your last calls. Or if Nancy at the front office, you listen to her calls. Or have AI listen to all calls for a week. At the end of the week, create a report. What she did good, what she did bad, what needs improved.

John Clendenning
[00:43:11 – 00:43:33]

Sit down, you train her a little bit farther. Do it again. Do it again. If Nancy can’t handle it, Nancy’s not right for the job. The right person will understand exactly what we just said and get so good at it, you incentivize them by booked jobs as part of a performance bonus. You’re both on the same page. You never stop monitoring those numbers. You don’t ever assume that they just know their stuff.

John Clendenning
[00:43:36 – 00:44:13]

Peter Drucker, what gets measured improves. What gets measured— what gets measured and reported improves exponentially, right? You want to book, respond properly, follow up, give them good information, have a drip sequence, why you started the business, what, what, you know, what’s unique about you. Again, all the top operators do. They’re indoctrinating the client, the potential client. If it’s the right person, they’re even sending them like right neighborhoods. They know where they market. There would be no reason not to send them a mailing package as well. I really want to be your home cleaning service.

John Clendenning
[00:44:13 – 00:44:35]

Let me tell you why we’re better and different than everybody else. That’s going to the right neighborhoods and the right people because you’re marketing into the right spots with the right message. And when you show up, you match that promise with the experience. You don’t show up in a white van with a magnet on the side, jeans and t-shirt. The whole thing is tied together. You look like this nice gentleman right here. And that’s you coming in to clean, right? It ties the whole experience together. The neighbors are looking out the window.

John Clendenning
[00:44:36 – 00:45:34]

All of that’s good. You show up properly, you sell them the things they need better, and then you put them into your retention machine and you return again and again and again. So where are you? Oops. Let’s go back to that one. Where are you losing them? You got 100 inquiries. Are you answering all 100? Are you responding quickly with scripts and good psychology? Are you booking? Is your booking percentage right? Are you showing up well, delivering an experience? Are you giving them the opportunity to buy more and knowing your percentage of upsells? Your technicians should be incentivized by their ability to enhance the value of an invoice While you still have from the office call the next day or the day after, next day follow-up call, 2 days after is what I like to do. Give them a chance to fill out a survey first, right? And make sure that none of that feels— that’s done well. It’s done ethically.

John Clendenning
[00:45:34 – 00:46:04]

It can be done ethically. Every business that top operators know exactly what I just said. Some of the average operators say, well, I don’t really want to sell my clients anything because I feel like I’m taking advantage of them and taking their money. Nope. The people that pay more, the right people, the right target market, are willing to pay more. And when they pay more, they pay more for value and they won’t leave. They’ll actually want to give you even more of their money. It’s a funny psychology, right? And you come back.

John Clendenning
[00:46:04 – 00:46:28]

Every step creates more potential leaks. You need to know which, where the water’s pouring out of your business and plug the holes. And you actually work from the bottom up. That’s how you plug the holes. The number behind the leaks. These benchmark numbers show where opportunities are won, lost before the sale. Small improvements at each level can create big results. We talked about that.

John Clendenning
[00:46:29 – 00:46:56]

You can double a business just by doubling your average job, by learning the things you need to learn, providing the marketing that you need to market, indoctrinating the customer before you show up. Like I told you, Amy does and we used to do and everybody does and then deliver a better experience. Like, again, the top operators know what I just said. Your live call answer rate, your call-to-booking rate, your speed-to-lead rate, your web lead-to-booked jobs rate, your blended booking cost.

John Clendenning
[00:46:59 – 00:47:00]

Right.

John Clendenning
[00:47:00 – 00:47:55]

Improve these numbers and you’ll see the biggest return on investment you’ve ever had. Not only that, you will survive and thrive and buy out the competitors As recessionary feelings in the marketplace and dynamic changes in our world that I’ve been talking about for 18 months now or more start to compress the actual total available marketplace, your TAM. You should be running TAM reports. Your total addressable marketplace is getting smaller. Because people are getting scared and they do not need cleaning. For the most part, it’s not an emergency. So same lead, same inquiry, different system. It’s not just about getting more leads, more inquiries.

John Clendenning
[00:47:56 – 00:48:49]

It’s about what happens next. Typical operator, more leads, missed calls, slow follow-up, fewer bookings, higher cost of acquisition. Even though they pay, they want to pay less for every, every lead source. It actually ends up costing them a lot more because they don’t have the other things locked in. Top operators, right? Fast response, strong booking process, scripts, not the owner in the truck. More jobs get booked. Their cost per acquisition is blended across paid ads and SEO and organic, like organic rankings and Mentions and, and referral partners and people talking about you and happy customer stories on social media, what we call the local story engine, where you’re getting the billboard effect, the Diamond and Diamond personal injury law firm billboard effect. You’re telling great stories and not asking for anything else.

John Clendenning
[00:48:49 – 00:49:14]

You’re just locking into people’s heads. That’s the best use of social media ads. And also our secret stealth strategy that we, we teach our clients. The opportunity isn’t always to generate more. Sometimes it’s just to waste a lot less. Waste less missed calls, less slow follow-ups, less fewer bookings. Right? Waste less. So, stop leaving money on the table.

John Clendenning
[00:49:16 – 00:49:47]

Most of your opportunities are already at your door and already in your database. What happens during the sale? Again, before the sale, during the sale, after the sale. You have 3 businesses. You wear 3 hats. You should be working on your business in 3s. Every single month. You should have 3 to 4 at the most big rocks that you’re going to solve every single quarter, that at the end of the month or end of the quarter, you have checked those off the list. I have put my 3-price packaging system in place, John, learned all the scripts, and have the average client going to the middle package within 3 months.

John Clendenning
[00:49:48 – 00:50:10]

I don’t know how I’m going to do it right now, but I know there’s training on it. I know I can learn it from somebody somewhere, a coaching program, a mentorship. Sitting in the right rooms. Everybody who learns this stuff doesn’t just wing it. They learn it and they constantly learn. They’re a student of business. They constantly learn stuff. They’re not just trying to guess.

John Clendenning
[00:50:11 – 00:50:51]

Right? Average residential job value. Again, you want to get— make sure during the sale you’ve got ways to get it to that number. Protector add-ons, add-on services. Hey, ma’am, while we’re here, would you like us to clean your husband’s favorite armchair? I noticed it’s looking a little rough. While we’re in your home doing any one service, any second service has an in-home savings because we don’t have to drive out, set up the equipment again, and stuff like that. So, that armchair right there, for example, our typical price is $125, and we can do that for $95 while we’re here. Would you like that added on or any other piece of upholstery? How did I say that so easily? Because that’s our scripts that we taught our clients or our technicians. I haven’t even had technicians for 6 years.

John Clendenning
[00:50:52 – 00:51:45]

I haven’t had to say that script in a very, very long time, but we trained it every Tuesday morning. We trained it for every single technician. That’s part of the upsell. And our average job went way up in the mid-2000s, early 2000s when I learned that, put it in place with our techs. Right? First job return on investment, you’re trying to hit at least 3 to 1 ROI. So same service, different value. $180, under 20% upsell, 2-to-1 first job acquisition. Our top operators on the benchmark report from all the data we have and all the sources, you can see the sources actually, every one of the sources is cited all the way through, right? $450 to $600, 60% Upsell add-ons to higher packages.

John Clendenning
[00:51:45 – 00:52:15]

That’s where protection comes in. We became 100% protection sales. We didn’t even give them an option to clean only because we got so good at it. We got rid of the clean only package by 2001. I only learned packages in 1997, ’98, somewhere in there. By 2001, not even, it was even less than 2000, we got rid of the base package because it was less than 10% of the people took it because we were so good. So good. At targeting the right people and explaining the value of protection, even to people moving out.

John Clendenning
[00:52:15 – 00:53:01]

Rental property. It’s a whole neat script on that one too, right? And then you make a 3-to-1 or more, 4-to-1, 5-to-1 return on your initial investment. You don’t necessarily need twice as many customers to grow. You need to get more value from them, and you’ve just doubled your business. That’s almost 3 times your business. You can take a $100,000 business, turn it into a $300,000 business Just getting, figuring that part out, right? What do you invest to buy a new customer? And customer’s in quotes for a reason. And what is your first job return, which equals your front-end ROI? That’s your front-end ROI, not your true ROI. Most people only think of their front-end ROI, call that their ROI.

John Clendenning
[00:53:02 – 00:53:11]

Cost of customer acquisition. First job, revenue generated is your return on acquisition cost on the front end only, not the lifetime value. You want to know both.

John Clendenning
[00:53:13 – 00:53:13]

Yeah.

John Clendenning
[00:53:13 – 00:53:59]

What did it cost to get them? What did you invest to get people? SEO will be your biggest investment in return at first and massively your cheapest at scale. It just takes a long time, so people stop doing it. I’m not really getting any leads from my website. I shouldn’t do this anymore. Well, the website leads feed your Google Maps because those 2 tie together with if you’ve got good content and articles. So your Google Maps is actually part of your website SEO, your organic rankings, your Google, your AI mentions come from your content on your website that’s structured properly, done well, local, local, locally identified and personalized and all that kind of stuff. Again, not fake, really authentic, all that. So yeah, it’s the biggest asset.

John Clendenning
[00:53:59 – 00:54:31]

It’s just the hardest. Typically in life, if you live life the hard way, do the hard things, life actually becomes easier. If you try and do the easy thing and take the easy button approach out, it becomes harder. So same here. The big picture. What did it cost to get them? What did the first job produce? How much more value could you have captured? What did you get back at the— after paying all the bills? You know those numbers, you know where you’re at. Most people have no clue when we talk to them. All right.

John Clendenning
[00:54:31 – 00:54:47]

Most customers or more customers does not mean more profit at all. In fact, big myth. Oh, I just need more customers. I need more leads. I need more profit. Profit’s the amount you take home. You get the customer, you maximize the first job, build the relationship, add more value. That’s where profits come from.

John Clendenning
[00:54:48 – 00:55:37]

But here’s where it gets really interesting. What if the customer you, you just serviced isn’t worth $180, but is worth $800 or $600? What if that customer’s worth thousands? Your client’s worth is more than one job and a hope that they come back. That’s the 10% average in our industry. The job isn’t over when the technician leaves. In fact, your real job just started. Commercial job, do you show up the next day to see how it turned out? Meet and greet the people. Do you show up every 3 months just to check on things and give it— do a free spotting and stuff like that? One of the things I’ve coached on for years. Why? Because now you locked in your real job.

John Clendenning
[00:55:38 – 00:56:30]

Turn them into a client. Don’t hope. Hope is not a strategy. First job, repeat, referral, rebook, reactivate, lifetime value. So after the sale, what’s a real client? What a real client is really worth. If your repeat rate is 60%, right? Repeat referral share of all jobs. If your rebooking intervals are half what typically are for the people that come back. Half your customers will never come back because they book, they clean for totally different reasons, right? Done well, 50% of your customers, 60, 40% to 50%, depending, right? Just needed a cleaning for a totally different reason, right? You didn’t impress them, whatever.

John Clendenning
[00:56:31 – 00:56:54]

Typically, 80% of your customers never come back in any reasonable amount of time. For the typical operator who doesn’t do any marketing to the database? Well, monthly, every single month, stay in touch with helpful information. Welcome guests, not an annoying pest. Giving them offers and deals is an annoying pest. Learned that from Dan Kennedy. Lock that into my brain. Put it in place. Works like a charm.

John Clendenning
[00:56:55 – 00:57:18]

Database reactivation campaigns are never done. We talked about that. Are monthly, right? The first job Creates the customer. What happens afterwards creates the lifetime value client. What happens after the first job is where your business grows. The client equals multiple opportunities. One customer, $450 to $600. There’s our best operators.

John Clendenning
[00:57:19 – 00:57:49]

Then they add on stuff, extra services, packaging, stuff like that. They get a repeat out of that person normally within the first 30 to 60 days. Did you know? Here’s a little story. A restaurant. If you walk into a restaurant one time, you have less than 20% chance of ever going back to that restaurant again. That’s just typical restaurant stats. 80% chance you will go somewhere else next time. If you go to the same restaurant twice, something you like, something about it, something caught you the right way.

John Clendenning
[00:57:50 – 00:58:24]

The experience was good, all that stuff, because it was predictable and repeatable and you went back a second time. And everything was still good. Everything impressed you, even the bathrooms. You have a 50% chance of repeating at that restaurant. You get— go back to a restaurant the third time, and now you have an 80% chance of being a repeat patron of that restaurant. The best know that, and there ain’t a lot of them. The rest of them have no clue what I just said. They run a typical business and struggle and go out of business.

John Clendenning
[00:58:24 – 00:58:37]

And restaurants close like crazy. The best ones don’t. They expand. They have multiple locations. They may eventually franchise. Like, holy crap. The best just understood what I know exactly what I said. In carpet cleaning, very, very similar.

John Clendenning
[00:58:38 – 00:59:10]

If you go to a customer’s home, if you can get into a customer’s— like, so restaurants 4 times, by the 4th time you’re locked in. In carpet cleaning, it’s typically about 3. So what we always did was have What else can we sell you? Right on a survey at the end of the job. We didn’t word it that way. It was worded psychologically so much differently than that, but that was really what the intent was. And we’d call them up, thank them for the work, and offer to sell them that other thing at the in-home savings, even though we’re not in their home right now. As long as you get it done within 30 days, we want to be back in the same house. Let a brand new customer test the water once and be back in the house.

John Clendenning
[00:59:10 – 00:59:53]

They loved us so much. We delivered such a great experience. Everything around it, the, the before and after the sale was done so well, they came back within 30 days for that second service. We have other systems on top of that where they have their cleaning where they get a touch-up visit in 6 months if they chose the right package. And they have an offer to upsell into that package at 6 months because we wanted to be in the house the third time in 6 months. Residentally. Because once we knew, I knew my numbers, that anybody we did that to stayed with us for 20 years. Brilliant.

John Clendenning
[00:59:53 – 01:00:15]

They’re in a club. They get grandfathered every, every annual appointment. They’re platinum pre-booked into our calendar again with all kinds of benefits, not discounts, extra stuff for the same price. VIP rewards, grandfathered pricings. All kinds of cool stuff. Why? Because that’s marketing. We’re in the marketing business. You know what I just said there? You run a much better business.

John Clendenning
[01:00:17 – 01:00:30]

You’re rebooking. Your referral rate. You have a referral program. They love you so much. Of course, they’re telling their friends about you. Not because you’re the best carpet cleaner they ever had. But because you’re the best service provider that’s ever been in their house. Because you orchestrated it.

John Clendenning
[01:00:30 – 01:00:50]

And not you. Tommy the technician can also do it that well. Because you made it easier for him to do it right than do it wrong. You learned what that means and you trained it into them. And then you do database reactivation. That’s how you get $7,500 to $20,000 or more lifetime value for your client. We’ve got clients. Hey, George.

John Clendenning
[01:00:50 – 01:01:29]

Hey, Mia. We’ve got clients where they’ve got residential customers whose lifetime value is $200,000. They’ve paid the— we’re not talking a 50-year-old business. We’re talking like clients that 15 years or less repeat. $200,000 in home cleaning services in markets where they got competitors for 3 rooms and a hall for $99. So what happens to your customers after the job? Right? Typical operator, complete the job, invoice is paid, customer disappears. They wait for them to call again. That is typically what I hear every single day when I talk to carpet cleaners, strategy, do strategy sessions, see where you’re at, how we can help.

John Clendenning
[01:01:30 – 01:01:54]

What I can help consult you on, anything like that. The top operators, when I talk to them, yeah, we follow up with thank-yous and check-ins. We rebook them. We do database nurturing campaigns that go out every single month, sometimes every single week, depending on the guys who I’m talking to. We have referral request programs and campaigns and VIP clubs. We have future services offerings and seasonal mailings, stuff like that. Not just one-step, but multi-step mailings 3 times a year, all automated. So we don’t even have to really worry about them.

John Clendenning
[01:01:54 – 01:02:23]

They just, they just go out like clockwork. I did that in my office with Heather. We have a paper cutter and a photocopy machine so that we could do all of this. This isn’t, you didn’t have to be a 20-truck operation. You just have to learn it, put it in place, automate it. Sure, you can job it out. I could. I also had Keeley, um, and my, my kids, Caitlin and Brianna, when they’re 13, 14 years old in the office after school, making some money, doing this stuff, helping out as well.

John Clendenning
[01:02:24 – 01:03:00]

Keely was a high school student, came in and helped out for a while. Cheryl, my very first employee, was a college student on co-op. Right? Customer stays connected. They love you for it. Do you have a plan for the customer after the sale? If you don’t have a plan, you’re not— if you’re failing to plan, you’re actually planning to fail. That’s the wording I was trying to look for there. What happens after the job determines whether you get one payment or a lifetime of opportunities with that customer and their neighbors. Your database isn’t a list.

John Clendenning
[01:03:00 – 01:03:12]

It is your core business asset. When you sell a business, you most— only 2% of carpet cleaners sell their business for more than the price of a truck on Kijiji, Craigslist, whatever. Right?

John Clendenning
[01:03:12 – 01:03:14]

That’s stats.

John Clendenning
[01:03:16 – 01:04:03]

Why is that the case? Because they don’t even know what they’re selling. You can buy those guys for this. Do they have a decent database and a good, you know, a good customer base that you can work up? There’s easy, easy ways to figure that out. You can take their entire database and run it through some data enhancers and figure out where in town and the average income level and stuff like that and find out if it’s a good business to buy or not. Because you’re buying it for the price of the truck, maybe $5,000, $10,000, $15,000. I paid $100,000 and some, $200,000 and some for businesses I bought. I know guys that have bought that are in the millions now that have bought 10, 12 businesses. I bought 7, right? At all different prices because of the value that they, they had and whether they knew it or not.

John Clendenning
[01:04:05 – 01:05:03]

The past ideal customers are one of the business’s most valuable and critical growth Resources? Are you actively nurturing them every single month, re-engaging with them in a meaningful way, and turning them into future revenue and referrals? You stay in touch, you reactivate, you rebook, you get referrals. That builds your business. If this is a someday I’ll get to this, John, this is that other way to double your business after the sale. During the sale and after the sale are the best ways to grow your business. Then you add more acquisition sources from the ideal person at the front. The numbers that changes everything. Lifetime value. If you don’t even know it, you don’t know how to calculate it, you haven’t figured it out, right? Your business is running as a commodity and everybody sounds like a price shopper.

John Clendenning
[01:05:04 – 01:05:34]

The question is, how much did your customer spend today? How much could this customer be worth over time? That’s the question every technician that you have driving away should be able to tell you. Is this an A, B, or C client? An A, B, C neighborhood? Do they have children? Do they have pets? That adjusts your marketing. We used to have that printed on the back of our invoices. 3 copies, white, yellow, pink. Pink always came back with us. White always stayed with the customer. Yellow followed the money. If they paid, they got the yellow.

John Clendenning
[01:05:34 – 01:05:51]

If they haven’t paid, or sorry, if they paid, the yellow came with the payment. Sorry. If they didn’t pay, they got the yellow. That’s the one they send in. We take the pink. That’s our record, right? That was the way we did it before the days of digital. On the back of that, originally it was just a little thing we stapled on to every single work order. Eventually we got it printed.

John Clendenning
[01:05:51 – 01:06:30]

The next time we got printed, ask those questions, put them in our database, marketed differently. Wasn’t hard. Said teach technicians to check a checkbox. Customer lifetime value determines the growth of your business. The companies that are growing and scaling even in these difficult times have this locked in and know it cold. And they know the referral partners that have these ideal people, their ideal customer profile in front of them, and they go talk to them every single day and incentivize them too. Stop buying the same customer again and again. A lot of businesses acquire customers, serve the customer, right? You want to retain them.

John Clendenning
[01:06:31 – 01:06:47]

Customer reactivation, referral, and repeat. You want to do this. A lot of businesses, what they do is they market, market, market, market, whatever. Paid ads, paid ads, paid ads, get the customer. The next time the customer needs somebody, they can’t remember who it was. They go back. All of a sudden they clicked on a pay-per-click again. They did something else.

John Clendenning
[01:06:47 – 01:07:26]

If they found you again and got lucky, You just paid for the same customer again and again and again. If you do this right, retain, reactivate, referrals, repeat, you buy them once, most expensive. After that, if you send them a mailing every single month, that’s $12 a year. Cost you over $100 to land them, $12 to keep them in the mailbox. Well, I’ll send emails, John. Yeah. What’s the open rate? 30%? Did you know that even on the open rate, the number of people that— if you put, put something down on the bottom, the scroll, I will give you a brand new Lamborghini, just click on this right here. I don’t suggest you do that, but you could.

John Clendenning
[01:07:27 – 01:08:04]

When they do these tests, the number of people that make it down the page beyond what just shows up before they hit delete is very, very, very few. So your email is meant for, for somebody to read the subject line. Before they dismiss it, possibly read into it a little bit more, the headline, to see if it’s valuable. You should stay in front of them with it. Doesn’t mean it has no value. It has a value in a system. It’s part of the pieces that connect with the right people. Voicemails, ringless voicemails, mail in the mailing mailbox at least gets open all the time if you do it right.

John Clendenning
[01:08:05 – 01:08:40]

Like, I’ve got examples here of people that mail me that know what they’re doing. It didn’t come from a company. It came from a person handwriting on the, on the COVID I obviously opened it and then it has a really good, strong emotional draw. Thank you, Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert, John Carlton, all the people that taught us carpet cleaners how to do that and home service businesses and all that. Best marketers always win. AI plus authenticity. The new advantage is only for the best, right? The best have available The AI plus authenticity. There is no game.

John Clendenning
[01:08:40 – 01:08:54]

The new gold rush right now is everybody’s going, oh, you’re out. You’re not ranking. You’re not showing up in ChatGPT. You’re not getting recommended. Let me fix your business. That’s like, oh, your Google Business Profile isn’t verified or isn’t optimized. Like, that’s the same phone calls again. It was never Google calling you back then.

John Clendenning
[01:08:54 – 01:09:18]

It’s not Google calling you now. And it’s not true. To actually get AI plus authenticity, it’s— you got to put an effort into it. It isn’t a tactic. It isn’t more ChatGPT articles. That’s not what AI looks for. In fact, I know people that are writing really high-quality press releases every single week because AI likes recency and newsworthiness. That’s one of their examples.

John Clendenning
[01:09:18 – 01:10:10]

$450 a week on the newswire plus the cost to write the article. Big companies, not terribly big, but big enough that they were easily put in a you know, somewhere in that $2,000, $3,000 a month. And that’s just one of the many things they will do, right? So we don’t have a lot of competitors doing that stuff in your marketplace, but you do want to be authentic. Happy customer stories, sharing them into the marketplace, um, answering every single review, creating content on your website that teaches the public but also teaches AI, all that kind of stuff. So AI plus authenticity actually connects the dots. And when AI doesn’t mention you, Your brand awareness does to the people that go, ah, no, I don’t want any of those people. I want this guy, right? Or when AI does mention 2 or 3 people and they go, I know that guy, call him. The diamond-in-diamond effect, right? The new advantage is only the best have available to them.

John Clendenning
[01:10:12 – 01:10:32]

So let’s recap. The benchmark. Where do you stand? Go to the site. CarpetCleanerMarketingMasters.com. It’s in the learning library. The benchmark report has this picture with it. Right. But you can also just go to Carpet Cleaning Benchmark Report, dashes between each.

John Clendenning
[01:10:32 – 01:11:00]

So CarpetCleanerMarketingMasters.com/CarpetCleaningBenchmarkReport. Probably should have put a QR code on the website, but, or on the, on the, on the presentation here, but you can find it. Carpet Cleaner Marketing Masters, Carpet Cleaner Marketing Masters, Marketing Masters. Not hard. You won’t, you know, more leads won’t fix a broken system. I hope we proved that today. You’re probably leaving money on the table. Again, unless you’re one of the best and this was just a really, really good refresher.

John Clendenning
[01:11:00 – 01:11:21]

Hey, I’m on the right track. I went from good to better to best. And now, I’m iterating best all the time. When you’re in business, that never stops, right? That’s the E-Myth. Michael Gerber, E-Myth Revisited. Read those. Not once. Study that concept, what, every 3 months? Come back to it.

John Clendenning
[01:11:21 – 01:11:39]

Come back to it. Come back to it. It’s a program. It tells the story of a woman with a bookstore. It’s really kind of cool to listen to and stuff like that. But it’s a system that you can learn and adapt and implement. Customer is worth more than one job. You have to be focusing on that.

John Clendenning
[01:11:40 – 01:12:08]

During the sale and after the sale is your biggest focus right now. Before the sale doesn’t need it anywhere near as much attention right now. More leads will not save a broken business. So what are your takeaways? These are all great ideas. We know that we come to these calls, we listen to great ideas. You listen to other people, Tommy Mello, you listen to great ideas, all that kind of stuff. Um, and then they just kind of sit on the shelf. The hardest part is actually implementing this stuff.

John Clendenning
[01:12:08 – 01:12:23]

Why? Because you need some accountability. You need to show up. You go to the gym, yeah, you can work out. And maybe you’ve been going to the gym for decades. So you go, you know what, dude, I know exactly what I’m doing at the gym. That’s great. A lot of times you still have a workout buddy. Why? Because it keeps you motivated.

John Clendenning
[01:12:23 – 01:12:44]

Accountability. Right? But more often than not, you hire a coach for a while if you’re really serious. About getting the gains, the benefits, the health. You hire a health coach. You hire a wellness coach. You hire a diet coach. You hire a business coach. Every great business I know, every great business I know had business coaches.

John Clendenning
[01:12:45 – 01:13:19]

Hey, Brian McFadden had business coaches, right? That was mine for years. I’ve had other ones. They’ve joined coaching programs, group coaching. They’ve learned all of this stuff from somewhere. And then, they’ve had accountability to continuously Put it in place and grow because of it, right? So you want to come away with a couple of ideas and put them in place. That’s what you want to do. Because remember, AI is the great equalizer. I mentioned this 18 months ago at the virtual intensive for Cleanfax Magazine that Jeff Cross and I co-hosted and put on.

John Clendenning
[01:13:19 – 01:14:00]

It was my idea. Jeff will tell you that. I said, dude, we got to help these guys. There is a tsunami coming and they’re all walking towards the shore going, why is the water going out and why are the fish flopping? when they should have been running the other way and building a boat. Well, now it’s here. AI commoditizes businesses that fail to differentiate. They all look the same, right? If you don’t stand for something different and compelling to your ideal customer, AI will blur you with the competition and you’ll look like everybody else and you’ll be losing jobs. You’ll be losing customers to somebody else who thinks it’s you anyways or doesn’t care.

John Clendenning
[01:14:00 – 01:14:31]

Commodity. The winner and the winners, the few, will be authentic, trusted businesses nurturing real human relationships. The best-known cleaner wins over having discounts and deals. If you feel that you need to drop your prices to get more customers, everything I just told you for the last hour and a bit is the difference. You can raise your prices. When you know that stuff and you have it locked in cold. When you don’t, you’re always just struggling. Don’t take my word for it.

John Clendenning
[01:14:32 – 01:15:03]

Let’s go listen to— oops, promised you this. Let’s go listen to this guy, right? So Ken Goodrich. The story of Ken is really interesting. He got up to $11 million a year for his plumbing company and was losing $3 million. $11 million a year in revenue. Was losing $3 million. Now, he’s at $250 million across 11 locations and 1,000 employees and profitable. What was the— it’s a good hour of your time to listen to.

John Clendenning
[01:15:03 – 01:15:31]

He’s talking about ads need brand awareness. He’s talking about fixing the system, knowing your numbers. Everything I just talked about here, I just found out 2 days ago. The Benchmark Report’s been out for a month. I just found him 2 days ago. Somebody recommended I listen to his interview because it’s really, really good. It doesn’t matter if he’s in a different industry than you. It’s home service, right? So, the strong offer helps convert leads, but an omnipresent brand gets the first call.

John Clendenning
[01:15:32 – 01:16:11]

Discounts don’t get the first call from your ideal customers. If no one knows who you are, a great offer actually doesn’t even matter. Customers don’t buy based on price alone. And it’s usually about 5th or 6th down the list when you poll the best customers why they hired from one company versus another. Trust, having done due diligence on you and knowing that you can solve their needs. All kinds of cool stuff, right? They buy from brands they know, trust, and respect. Price shoppers are feeling the pinch and want you to be cheaper. Loyal customers are willing to pay more right now today.

John Clendenning
[01:16:13 – 01:16:51]

The best companies are buying more of these customers because they know how to target them properly. They know who’s already sitting in front of them and they’re making great friends with those people too. Which one does your marketing attract now? You’re in the marketing business. You’re the marketer of cleaning services to get somebody on the phone or to get somebody back. into their house. You are the marketer of cleaning services. Can you do that with a book for yourself on your Google Business Profile? Because it clicks to Housecall Pros and Housecall Pros allows that to connect. And now you can, you know, somebody can self-book from their Google Business Profile.

John Clendenning
[01:16:51 – 01:17:17]

Well, I had somebody book, John. That’s great. How many other people looked at that, saw your pricing and went, no, I don’t. Why would I pay that much? Because you haven’t, you haven’t marketed properly for that. I’d rather they pick up the phone and call or start a conversation. The ones that just want to shyly self-book typically aren’t your ideal customers. The ideal customer wants to find that person, that company that they don’t ever have to find again. They’re not shopping around every time.

John Clendenning
[01:17:18 – 01:17:45]

These guys are, these guys aren’t. There’s an actual full-blown blueprint of how to build your foundation, Your marketing foundation, why you’re different than everybody else, your brand. And don’t take my word for it. Go listen to Ken. Go listen to Tommy Mello. Listen to these guys, right? You build your before-the-sale business, your during-the-sale business, and your after-the-sale business. These are all the things you need to do. I did.

John Clendenning
[01:17:45 – 01:18:02]

I learned these one by one by one by one by one. Badly put them in place at first. Got better at them. To build all my companies. Then it became easy. Then I wasn’t needed. You could just turn the machine on to any other business. So that is an automated cash-generating machine.

John Clendenning
[01:18:02 – 01:18:23]

If you work on this, you work on your business, not in it. You can do both. You can definitely do both. Everybody has to start somewhere. You’re not sitting with gobs of money and, you know, Daddy Warbucks or whatever it’s called as your, as your, you know, father or father-in-law that’s going to just fund you for the next 5 years until you get this figured out. No, we all have to go out and feed, feed the family and do the work. Yes. And we all had to.

John Clendenning
[01:18:24 – 01:18:59]

I still got out of the truck in 3 months, 6 months, 18 months. Right. So 2006, the way people buy, work, and experience life has changed forever. We have AI agents. We have Replacing jobs and doing services. And, and, and we’ve got all kinds of stuff going on. We’ve got wars and inflation and pressures all over the place, all over the place. We’ve got massive debts.

John Clendenning
[01:18:59 – 01:19:57]

We’ve got like all of it, right? All of it’s come together. It’s all changed. Might be time. By invite only, might be time to consider jumping on a coaching program with other cleaners that are growing, that are learning all of this stuff module by module, being accountable to each other every single week, learning AI and how to automate some of these things, things that used to take me months to put in place. We’re creating AI coaches That you end one of the sessions, run the coach, 20 minutes later, 30 minutes later, you’ve built the next piece. You’ve moved the ball forward, you put it in place, you’ve tested it, and you come back. We’ve got— I’ll show you actually, because I think Sarika added these in, right? So this is what the backend of the coaching program looks like. We’ve got winter database activation kits and seasonal activation kits.

John Clendenning
[01:19:57 – 01:20:35]

We’ve got how to go out and build referral partners, how to do your core forever engine, how to create package pricing, how to deliver a client experience. We just talk about one of these at a time every single week. It doesn’t matter where you start. You just jump in, do that thing, learn the rest, build your business one module at a time. blueprintforsuccesscoaching.com. Go take a look. Request the guide there. There’s a guide you can request to download how the average forum flexer, as we call them, doesn’t It is part of the mass typical operator.

John Clendenning
[01:20:36 – 01:21:03]

The best operators aren’t on the forums. They’re not worried about their Butler truck mount or whatever and stuff like that. Like their teams have those. That’s great. They’re doing all of the things that grow a business, even if it’s just they have 2 technicians on the road and they’re only needed 10 hours a week off a scale and they can do something else with their time. They still exist. So what happens when you close those gaps, right? These are people right in the coaching program. I’ve got 100% strike rate.

John Clendenning
[01:21:04 – 01:21:47]

That’s PJ’s way of saying success rate at getting past the gatekeeper because of one of our programs and our approaches, right? The pickup artist style. Amy, there’s lots of things on this call today that are just so easy to implement. Multimillion-dollar cleaning business owner. Jumped in and went, holy crap, right? Tony built his, his business to $1 million in 2 years, 24 months out of, from zero, right? We’ve got Peter just wrapped up the entire Blueprint for Success Power Pricing module and it is genuinely awesome. Version 1 of the full offer and sales path sheet is completed. Thank you. That was in 1 week. That was just a message in the backend saying, hey, just finished it.

John Clendenning
[01:21:47 – 01:22:15]

Got it done. Did my homework. Didn’t take him very long at all. That would have taken us weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of training calls back in the Piranha Marketing days and Howard Partridge days. Now it’s just an AI coach we build, right, for each module. John and his strategies have been my secret weapon for becoming the market leader in our area. More calls, more bookings, repeat referrals on autopilot at the highest prices in town. And we’ve taken every Friday and weekend off for years now while the business runs And the money rolls in.

John Clendenning
[01:22:16 – 01:22:37]

These aren’t big. This isn’t a million-dollar company. This is a couple trucks on the road. They’ve just built it into a lifestyle because of what we just talked about and joining the accountability. I ended up with between $5,000 and $6,000 in sales in the last week in referrals just from the database training in the program. Thanks, Diane. Thanks, Paul. All right.

John Clendenning
[01:22:37 – 01:23:18]

Did you add $5,000 to $6,000 of newfound money last week? Because of a database training program you learned. Anyways, if you’re interested, Blueprint for Success Coaching— Blueprint for Success Coaching with the number 4— blueprintforsuccesscoaching.com. If you’d like to hop on a call, learn about all of this stuff, go through your numbers— we actually do an entire— actually show you what it looks like. I built an entire app around this. We’ll actually go through all your numbers It looks daunting. It’s not. Figure out where you stand, where your hard cap really is right now. What some quick levers to earn a whole bunch of money right away.

John Clendenning
[01:23:20 – 01:24:02]

Again, how to get more often and then more customers before ever worrying about, um, more money— or sorry, more money per job more often before worrying about more customers. Right? You can generate $26,000 extra to this business, this client I was working with, right? More money, more jobs, more, more often before we add that on. If all we did was add that on, they’d add about $1,300 a month in growth. That’s where their budget caps out. You learn this, you learn this, don’t even worry about that. $26,000 in more revenue per month before even chasing more customers. So now you know where the buried treasure lies. This is just an interview.

John Clendenning
[01:24:03 – 01:24:33]

I literally, we just interview, we chat some behind the scenes stuff, ask you questions. I just fill this out and we go through things that will move your business. The 47 poles in the water that grow, which ones an agency like us can do, what coaching can help with, and what you should be doing. Right? It’s not done for you. It’s done together marketing. That’s what we do. Right? So, if that interests you at all, carpetcleanermarketingmasters.com/schedule. Let’s have that conversation.

John Clendenning
[01:24:34 – 01:25:09]

Are you, are you, do you need accountability and coaching? Do you want to take the next, in the next 3 months, get out of the truck? Next 6 months, get out of the truck. It’s doable. But you need coaching. You need help. Do you want to learn how to market better? Do you want to have some help where we do some of it? Paid ads, better websites, better conversions, Carpet Cleaner Lead Pro, lead nurture automations. All of those kinds of stuff, add some AI into your business, all that, jump on a call for the schedule, join the schedule, like jump on, let’s have a consultation. I charge hourly for my consultations, obviously, but you can get into my calendar for free. I’ll give you an hour, chat this out.

John Clendenning
[01:25:09 – 01:25:29]

If you’re serious about growing the business, this is where you’re at. So anyways, with all that said, I’m going to switch back to the screen so you can see me. Hopefully there’s something there. The benchmark report is a real big eye-opener. The typical operator is struggling right now. In every business. Even Ken mentioned it. Even Ken mentions it on that interview that I mentioned on YouTube.

John Clendenning
[01:25:29 – 01:26:09]

He talks about how challenging the times are right now. A dude at $250 million a year who was losing $3 million a year when he was at 11, scaled, scaled, but didn’t know his numbers, didn’t know this stuff. Go listen to it, right? That’s the same thing that happens to a $100,000 carpet cleaner. When they figure it out, very few do. Next thing you know, they’re at $300,000, $400,000, $500,000, $600,000, but they’re not in the truck. They can scale to a million if they want. If that’s the goal, they can go golfing and work 5, 10 hours a week on the business and other people working in it. That’s all doable as well with the right systems, targeting the right customers with the right messaging.

John Clendenning
[01:26:09 – 01:26:15]

So know your numbers, see where you fit in, and hopefully found this valuable. Till next time, guys. Take care.

Workflow & Prompt Strategy

Workflow & Prompt Strategy

CastMagic Production -> SEO/AEO Finalization

Overview & Strategic Purpose

This workflow uses CastMagic for content production first, then uses the correct CCMM SEO/AEO strategist prompt as a final positioning, optimization, and QA sweep. CastMagic creates the working article, descriptions, timestamps, social copy, email copy, and other syndication assets from the source recording. The strategist prompt then independently determines the strongest search intent and root keyword, audits CastMagic’s titles and descriptions against that decision, and makes only the high-leverage edits needed before the content is finalized and syndicated.

Podcast Interviews (Discovery + Guest Authority): Optimize for topical discovery, click appeal, and guest notoriety/authority at the same time. The topic, problem, strategy, outcome, or interview hook must remain clear, while the guest’s full name and verified company/role are used deliberately to strengthen the association between the guest and the expertise discussed.

Training Webinars / Masterclasses (Searchable Tactical Education): Optimize for the searched problem, desired outcome, method, framework, or how-to intent. These sessions are normally taught by John Clendenning, so presenter identity is NOT the SEO hook and should not be forced into titles. The topic must explain the value on its own.

Production Workflow for Team Members

Identify whether the recording is a Podcast Interview or a Training Webinar/Masterclass.
Put the finished recording/source into CastMagic and let CastMagic create the transcript plus the normal production assets: website/blog copy, YouTube copy, podcast/audio copy when applicable, timestamps, social copy, email copy, clips, and supporting content. Paste the CastMagic-generated transcript into the Transcript tab, then populate Tab 1 of the event document with the production outputs. Treat CastMagic’s proposed keyword, titles, and descriptions as a production draft, not the final SEO decision.
Run the corresponding strategist prompt below against the completed event document. When ChatGPT is connected directly to the Google Doc, have it read the Transcript tab FIRST and make its independent search-intent, Root Keyword/Topic Cluster, and AEO-question decision before auditing Tab 1. If the transcript and production draft are supplied together in another way, the prompt must still treat all existing CastMagic keyword/title fields as potentially wrong and independently validate them from the source before reusing their wording.
Review the prompt’s KEEP / MODIFY / REPLACE decisions and apply the SEO/AEO Finalization Sweep only where it materially improves search alignment, clarity, click appeal, entity/authority signals, or consistency. Focus on the root keyword, website title/meta/slug/opening, YouTube title/description opening, podcast/audio packaging when applicable, major headings/FAQs, and obvious old-keyword remnants. Preserve strong CastMagic copy rather than rewriting everything.
Either copy/paste the approved replacements or connect ChatGPT to the Google Doc and have it apply the approved sweep directly while preserving formatting, links, timestamps, embeds, and standard promotional boilerplate. Final QA: platform titles/descriptions should be distinct but remain inside the same primary topic cluster; LinkedIn/email/social copy should be checked for message consistency, not keyword stuffing.

Prompt Library

Prompt A: Podcast Interview – CastMagic SEO/AEO Finalization + Guest Authority Sweep

You are a senior SEO/AEO content strategist and finalization editor specializing in search intent, topical authority, entity clarity, YouTube discovery, podcast packaging, and content syndication for cleaning-industry business content.

DEFAULT WORKING MODE: You are reviewing a completed CastMagic production draft together with the full transcript/source material. Treat CastMagic as the production engine, NOT as the strategic SEO authority. Independently determine the strongest positioning, compare that decision against the draft, and make a targeted final sweep rather than rewriting everything. If only a transcript/source is provided and no CastMagic draft exists, operate in POSITIONING-ONLY MODE and skip the draft audit. ANCHORING RULE: treat every existing CastMagic Main Keyword, title, meta description, keyword list, and prior SEO field as potentially wrong and adversarial during Phase 1. Determine the strongest search intent, Root Keyword/Topic Cluster, and AEO question from the transcript/source FIRST. Do not reuse wording from existing SEO fields in your candidate set merely because it is already present; reuse it only when independently supported by the source. Only after locking your independent recommendation may you compare it to the draft and label it KEEP, MODIFY, or REPLACE.

IMPORTANT PODCAST OBJECTIVE: Optimize every interview for THREE simultaneous outcomes: (1) search/discovery and semantic relevance, (2) click appeal and strong interview packaging, and (3) guest notoriety, expertise association, and brand/entity authority. The guest’s name is NOT automatically the primary keyword and must never replace or obscure the searchable TOPIC, PROBLEM, OUTCOME, STRATEGY, or compelling interview hook. For most lesser-known industry/client guests, use a topic-first structure and normally retain the guest’s full name in the YouTube and Podcast Directory titles, commonly as “Topic/Hook | Guest Name” or another natural interview headline. Website/blog titles should generally include the guest name when it fits naturally without weakening the search-intent phrase; meta titles may omit it when topical clarity or SERP space is stronger. If the guest already has meaningful name recognition/search demand, their name may lead. Use the guest’s full name, company, verified role, and verified credentials naturally in descriptions and body content so the guest becomes consistently associated with the expertise discussed. Never invent or inflate credentials.

SOURCE-INTEGRITY + SEARCH-DATA RULES:

– Use only topics, claims, names, credentials, quotes, examples, outcomes, and proof supported by the transcript/source. If CastMagic copy conflicts with the transcript, the transcript/source wins.

– Do not invent keyword search volume, ranking difficulty, trends, statistics, credentials, or performance claims. If actual keyword data from Search Console, Keyword Planner, Search Atlas, Ahrefs, Semrush, or another supplied source is provided, use it; otherwise treat the recommendation as the strongest search-intent/content-fit hypothesis, not proven volume.

– If the interview covers several topics, choose ONE primary search intent and place the others in a supporting semantic cluster.

– Prefer natural search language a cleaning-business owner would realistically use. Treat the Primary Root Keyword / Topic Cluster as the concise semantic phrase that defines the content’s core subject. Separately identify the Primary Search Query / AEO Question as the strongest natural-language question the content directly answers. Do NOT force either phrase verbatim into every platform title, heading, or paragraph.

PHASE 1 — INDEPENDENT SEO/AEO POSITIONING

1. Identify the primary audience and the single dominant search intent of the episode.

2. Generate 4–6 candidate Root Keyword Phrases. Each candidate must:

– accurately match the conversation,

– reflect a real problem/question/outcome,

– be specific enough to rank for a clear topic,

– be broad enough to support useful syndication,

– use natural search language.

3. Score each candidate from 1–5 for:

– Search Intent Fit

– Transcript/Content Fit

– Specificity & Clarity

– Business Relevance to Cleaning Companies

– AEO / Direct-Answer Potential

4. Select ONE Primary Root Keyword / Topic Cluster and explain the choice in 2–3 sentences. Keep it concise and topic-led; it does not need to be phrased as a question.

5. Identify ONE Primary Search Query / AEO Question that expresses the strongest natural-language question this episode directly answers.

6. Identify 5–10 supporting secondary phrases, related entities, synonyms, and additional natural-language questions the episode answers. Only now compare your recommendation to the existing CastMagic Main Keyword and label it KEEP, MODIFY, or REPLACE with a brief reason.

PHASE 2 — PLATFORM TITLE + DESCRIPTION FINALIZATION

Create or audit the platform fields below. They must stay inside the SAME keyword/topic cluster but should not be identical copies. Judge podcast packaging against three objectives: SEARCH/DISCOVERY, CLICK APPEAL, and GUEST AUTHORITY/NOTORIETY. Do not maximize one by sacrificing the other two.

A. Website / Blog SEO Title

– Strongest direct search-intent match.

– Put the primary topic/root phrase as close to the beginning as natural.

– Normally retain the guest’s full name at the end of the interview title when it fits naturally and does not weaken or truncate the core search intent. A topic/outcome-first title followed by the guest name is preferred for lesser-known guests.

B. SEO Meta Title

– A concise SERP-focused variation of the website title.

– Preserve the primary search intent. Include the guest name only when it fits naturally without crowding out the query; the meta title may omit the guest when topical clarity or SERP space is stronger. Also provide a short, descriptive, lower-case, hyphenated URL slug aligned with the primary topic and free of unnecessary names, dates, filler words, or keyword stuffing.

C. YouTube Title

– Balance query relevance with click appeal.

– Make the topic and benefit obvious before truncation.

– Normally include the guest’s full name after the topic/hook so the title builds both discovery and guest authority. For lesser-known guests, prefer “Topic/Hook | Guest Name” or a similarly natural structure; do not lead with an unknown guest name. A recognized guest may lead when their name itself creates meaningful click/search demand.

D. Podcast Directory Title

– Combine topic clarity with guest authority.

– Include the guest’s full name in the Podcast Directory title unless there is an unusual reason not to. The episode must still be understandable and searchable from the topic/hook, with the guest name reinforcing identity and authority rather than replacing the subject.

TITLE QUALITY CHECK:

Before finalizing, reject any title that is generic enough to fit dozens of unrelated episodes, hides the topic behind a lesser-known guest name, omits the guest everywhere when their authority-building is one of the goals of the interview, overuses the same keyword, or relies on hype instead of accurately describing the value of the conversation. The finished title set should make both the SUBJECT and the GUEST increasingly recognizable.

PHASE 3 — DESCRIPTION + OPENING FINALIZATION

Create or audit the high-leverage descriptions/openings below. Make the first sentences useful even if nothing else is read.

1. Meta Description — concise, page-specific, human-readable, and focused on the problem/outcome. Use the root keyword or a close natural variant when appropriate.

2. Website Article Opening — audit or rewrite only the first 100–150 words. Lead with the searched topic/problem and practical value, then identify the guest, verified authority, and strongest supporting insights. Do not rewrite the full article if the remaining body copy is strong.

3. YouTube Search Description Opening — 100–175 words for the FIRST portion of the YouTube description. Put the main topic/value in the first 1–2 sentences, then naturally identify the guest and the most important supporting topics/questions.

4. Podcast Directory Description — 125–225 words. Lead with the topic/value, identify the guest and verified authority, then summarize the key insights and questions answered.

DESCRIPTION QUALITY CHECK:

– No generic openings such as “In this exciting episode…” or “Join us as we dive into…”

– No keyword stuffing or unnatural repetition.

– Make the first sentences useful even if nothing else is read.

– Introduce the guest’s full name and verified company/role early enough to establish authority and strengthen the association between the guest and the topic, without using identity as a substitute for topical relevance.

PHASE 4 — CASTMAGIC SEO/AEO FINALIZATION SWEEP

Audit the completed CastMagic document and mark important fields KEEP, MODIFY, or REPLACE. Do NOT rewrite strong copy merely to make it different. Focus the sweep on:

– Main / Root Keyword

– Website Blog Title / H1

– Meta Title, Meta Description, and URL Slug

– First 100–150 words of the website article

– Citation Block (top of the article): confirm the H2 question, the direct answer, and the Key facts bullets answer the Primary Search Query / AEO Question you selected in Phase 1. If they don’t, MODIFY the block – never change the question to fit the block. Every Key facts bullet must carry a transcript-sourced specific (number, range, price, timeframe, named method or tool).

– Podcast title/description plus guest naming and entity/authority consistency

– “You Will Learn” bullets and obvious old-keyword remnants

– YouTube title and first 100–175 words of the YouTube description

– Major H2/H3 headings and FAQ/question headings only where topical alignment is weak

– Keyword/entity/topic list; remove obvious duplication or stuffing

– LinkedIn/email/social message consistency and guest naming; do NOT keyword-stuff conversion copy

– Preserve strong body copy, timestamps, links, embeds, CTA boilerplate, formatting, and section structure

– For each material field, return a KEEP / MODIFY / REPLACE decision

– For each changed field, provide exact replacement copy and one short reason. For LinkedIn, email, and social copy, check message consistency and accuracy but do NOT keyword-stuff conversion copy.

FINAL OUTPUT ORDER:

1. Executive SEO/AEO Verdict — Primary Search Intent + Final Root Keyword/Topic Cluster + Primary AEO Search Query + Existing Root Keyword KEEP/MODIFY/REPLACE

2. Exact Implementation Changes — paste-ready replacements for every MODIFY/REPLACE field, grouped by platform

3. KEEP Items — fields that need no action

4. Final Website Package: Blog Title/H1 + Meta Title + Meta Description + URL Slug

5. Final YouTube Package: Title + Search Description Opening (+ Thumbnail Hook/Concept only if thumbnails are part of the workflow)

6. Final Podcast/Audio Package: Title + Description (if applicable)

7. Final Website Article Opening — only if modification is needed

8. Platform-Specific Description Finalization — only fields needing change

9. CastMagic Finalization Sweep — remaining material changes only

10. Final Implementation Checklist

11. Candidate Keyword Scorecard

12. Supporting Keyword / Entity / Question Cluster + brief strategic rationale

Ask no more than TWO concise questions, and only if missing information would materially change the recommendation. If the transcript/source and completed draft provide enough information, proceed without questions. Do not rewrite the entire finished document unless explicitly asked. The purpose of this prompt is to independently validate the keyword strategy, finalize the platform titles/descriptions, and perform a light, high-leverage SEO/AEO sweep on CastMagic’s completed work.

Prompt B: Webinar / Masterclass – CastMagic SEO/AEO Finalization + Content Sweep

You are a senior SEO/AEO content strategist and finalization editor specializing in search intent, topical authority, entity clarity, YouTube discovery, and content syndication for cleaning-industry business education.

DEFAULT WORKING MODE: You are reviewing a completed CastMagic production draft together with the full transcript/source material. Treat CastMagic as the production engine, NOT as the strategic SEO authority. Independently determine the strongest positioning, compare that decision against the draft, and make a targeted final sweep rather than rewriting everything. If only a transcript/source is provided and no CastMagic draft exists, operate in POSITIONING-ONLY MODE and skip the draft audit. ANCHORING RULE: treat every existing CastMagic Main Keyword, title, meta description, keyword list, and prior SEO field as potentially wrong and adversarial during Phase 1. Determine the strongest search intent, Root Keyword/Topic Cluster, and AEO question from the transcript/source FIRST. Do not reuse wording from existing SEO fields in your candidate set merely because it is already present; reuse it only when independently supported by the source. Only after locking your independent recommendation may you compare it to the draft and label it KEEP, MODIFY, or REPLACE.

IMPORTANT WEBINAR RULE: This is a CCMM training webinar/masterclass, normally taught by John Clendenning. The searchable TOPIC, PROBLEM, OUTCOME, METHOD, or FRAMEWORK must lead. Do NOT force the presenter/instructor name, job title, or credentials into SEO titles. Presenter identity may appear naturally in descriptions/bylines when useful, but it is not a keyword target and should not be required to make the title understandable. Treat AI, tools, tactics, or fashionable modifiers as supporting terms unless they truly represent the dominant intent of the training.

SOURCE-INTEGRITY + SEARCH-DATA RULES:

– Use only topics, claims, frameworks, tools, examples, outcomes, and proof supported by the transcript/source. If CastMagic copy conflicts with the transcript, the transcript/source wins.

– Do not invent keyword search volume, ranking difficulty, trends, statistics, credentials, or performance claims. If actual keyword data from Search Console, Keyword Planner, Search Atlas, Ahrefs, Semrush, or another supplied source is provided, use it; otherwise treat the recommendation as the strongest search-intent/content-fit hypothesis, not proven volume.

– If the training covers several topics, choose ONE primary search intent and place the others in a supporting semantic cluster.

– Prefer natural search language a cleaning-business owner would realistically use. Treat the Primary Root Keyword / Topic Cluster as the concise semantic phrase that defines the content’s core subject. Separately identify the Primary Search Query / AEO Question as the strongest natural-language question the content directly answers. Do NOT force either phrase verbatim into every platform title, heading, or paragraph.

PHASE 1 — INDEPENDENT SEO/AEO POSITIONING

1. Identify the primary audience and the single dominant search intent of the training.

2. Generate 4–6 candidate Root Keyword Phrases. Each candidate must:

– accurately match the transcript,

– reflect a real problem/question/outcome,

– be specific enough to rank for a clear topic,

– be broad enough to support useful syndication,

– use natural search language.

3. Score each candidate from 1–5 for:

– Search Intent Fit

– Transcript/Content Fit

– Specificity & Clarity

– Business Relevance to Cleaning Companies

– AEO / Direct-Answer Potential

4. Select ONE Primary Root Keyword / Topic Cluster and explain the choice in 2–3 sentences. Keep it concise and topic-led; it does not need to be phrased as a question.

5. Identify ONE Primary Search Query / AEO Question that expresses the strongest natural-language question this training directly answers.

6. Identify 5–10 supporting secondary phrases, related entities, synonyms, and additional natural-language questions the content answers. Only now compare your recommendation to the existing CastMagic Main Keyword and label it KEEP, MODIFY, or REPLACE with a brief reason.

PHASE 2 — PLATFORM TITLE + DESCRIPTION FINALIZATION

Create or audit the platform fields below. Keep them inside the SAME topic cluster but do not make them identical copies. The Root Keyword sets the semantic direction; hooks, methods, outcomes, and supporting modifiers may vary by platform when they improve clarity or click appeal.

A. Website / Blog SEO Title

– Strongest direct search-intent match.

– Put the primary topic/root phrase as close to the beginning as natural.

– Descriptive and concise; no vague hype or keyword stuffing.

B. SEO Meta Title

– A concise SERP-focused variation of the website title.

– Preserve the primary search intent; do not sacrifice clarity just to hit an arbitrary character count. Also provide a short, descriptive, lower-case, hyphenated URL slug aligned with the primary topic and free of unnecessary names, dates, filler words, or keyword stuffing.

C. YouTube Title

– Balance query relevance with click appeal.

– Make the topic and benefit obvious before truncation.

– Accurate, specific, and compelling without clickbait. Use hooks, methods, outcomes, or supporting modifiers when they improve the title while staying inside the same topic cluster; do not force the presenter name.

D. Podcast / Audio Title — ONLY if this webinar is also being syndicated as audio

– Use a natural podcast-style variation of the same topic.

– Do not insert the presenter name unless there is a deliberate branding reason.

TITLE QUALITY CHECK:

Before finalizing, reject any title that is generic enough to fit dozens of unrelated webinars, starts with branding instead of the searched topic, overuses the same keyword, depends on the presenter name to explain the content, or over-weights a supporting modifier such as “AI” when the training is actually about a broader business problem.

PHASE 3 — DESCRIPTION + OPENING FINALIZATION

Create or audit the high-leverage descriptions/openings below. Make the first sentences useful even if nothing else is read.

1. Meta Description — concise, page-specific, human-readable, and focused on the problem/outcome. Use the root keyword or a close natural variant when appropriate.

2. Website Article Opening — audit or rewrite only the first 100–150 words. Lead with the searched topic/problem, who the resource helps, and the practical result. Use clear entities, concepts, frameworks, and terminology from the transcript. Presenter attribution may appear naturally after the value is clear. Do not rewrite the full article if the remaining body copy is strong.

3. YouTube Search Description Opening — 100–175 words for the FIRST portion of the YouTube description. Put the main topic/value in the first 1–2 sentences and naturally include important secondary terms/questions.

4. Podcast/Audio Description — ONLY if audio syndication is being used. Keep the topic first; presenter attribution can appear naturally in the copy.

DESCRIPTION QUALITY CHECK:

– No generic openings such as “In this exciting masterclass…” or “Join us as we dive into…”

– No keyword stuffing or unnatural repetition.

– Make the first sentences useful even if nothing else is read.

– Explicitly state the questions/problems the session answers and the practical result the viewer can expect.

PHASE 4 — CASTMAGIC SEO/AEO FINALIZATION SWEEP

Audit the completed CastMagic document and mark important fields KEEP, MODIFY, or REPLACE. Do NOT rewrite strong copy merely to make it different. Focus the sweep on:

– Main / Root Keyword

– Website Blog Title / H1

– Meta Title, Meta Description, and URL Slug

– First 100–150 words of the website article

– Citation Block (top of the article): confirm the H2 question, the direct answer, and the Key facts bullets answer the Primary Search Query / AEO Question you selected in Phase 1. If they don’t, MODIFY the block – never change the question to fit the block. Every Key facts bullet must carry a transcript-sourced specific (number, range, price, timeframe, named method or tool).

– Podcast/audio title and opening description when applicable

– “You Will Learn” bullets and obvious old-keyword remnants

– YouTube title and first 100–175 words of the YouTube description

– Keyword/entity/topic list; remove obvious duplication or stuffing

– Major H2/H3 headings and FAQ/question headings only where topical alignment is weak

– LinkedIn/email/social message consistency; do NOT keyword-stuff conversion copy

– YouTube housekeeping: prioritize title, thumbnail concept/hook, description opening, topic alignment, and useful chapters/timestamps; treat large tag lists as secondary

– For each material field return KEEP / MODIFY / REPLACE; for each changed field provide exact replacement copy and one short reason. Preserve strong body copy, timestamps, links, embeds, CTA boilerplate, formatting, and section structure.

FINAL OUTPUT ORDER:

1. Executive SEO/AEO Verdict — Primary Search Intent + Final Root Keyword/Topic Cluster + Primary AEO Search Query + Existing Root Keyword KEEP/MODIFY/REPLACE

2. Exact Implementation Changes — paste-ready replacements for every MODIFY/REPLACE field, grouped by platform

3. KEEP Items — fields that need no action

4. Final Website Package: Blog Title/H1 + Meta Title + Meta Description + URL Slug

5. Final YouTube Package: Title + Search Description Opening (+ Thumbnail Hook/Concept only if thumbnails are part of the workflow)

6. Final Podcast/Audio Package: Title + Description (if applicable)

7. Final Website Article Opening — only if modification is needed

8. Platform-Specific Description Finalization — only fields needing change

9. CastMagic Finalization Sweep — remaining material changes only

10. Final Implementation Checklist

11. Candidate Keyword Scorecard

12. Supporting Keyword / Entity / Question Cluster + brief strategic rationale

Ask no more than TWO concise questions, and only if missing information would materially change the recommendation. If the transcript/source and completed draft provide enough information, proceed without questions. Do not rewrite the entire finished document unless explicitly asked. The purpose of this prompt is to independently validate the keyword strategy, finalize the platform titles/descriptions, and perform a light, high-leverage SEO/AEO sweep on CastMagic’s completed work.