Latest / Cleaning Business Life / CBL #114-Ron Papke-Networking Your Way to $2 Million: A Carpet Cleaner's Success Story

Transcript

CBL #114-Ron Papke-Networking Your Way to $2 Million: A Carpet Cleaner's Success Story · Cleaning Business Life

• 1:03
  Speaker 1: hello how are you?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: gotta figure it out.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Sorry for that no, you're totally fine.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: There's times where it's taken me forever.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, now I got it down to a mad science.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: But you know, I love the background, I love I was trying to tell you.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: I was like you're a gamer, aren't you?
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: No, I like Batman, though, definitely I did.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I did buy a game system last year, but I don't get on there much.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: It was but I did see something in the game system that I would like to implement in my business, and what I saw was they try to sell you video games like automatic upsell in the video games.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Right, they want you to buy certain things automatically and I'm like I got to incorporate that in my business.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: Right, trust me.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's a great idea.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Look at you, yeah, already.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: My eight year old has an Xbox and then we came across at um the swap meet or something, one of the 1992 old gamers.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: He plays that more than the other xbox.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: He loves it like nintendo 1992 1993 cartridges.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: So every time we're out and about and if we see them at a yard sale we pick them up for him.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: He plays them all the time, so that's that antique now.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, people pay high dollars for those.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: It's so old school, there is no like the graphics are old.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: It kind of, you know, stutters across, but he loves it, he absolutely loves it.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So, ron, thank you so much for coming on.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I had reached out to you because you had mentioned you had done some organic marketing, which is very.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I know we're in the same industry but you do something different than what we do and I think that fresh insight on organic marketing because all of the house cleaners that listen to this podcast are going to be like what so I'm hoping that you can share that, and it looks like you have an academy as well, right?
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we do a lot of training for a lot of different business people.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Now is it cleaning specific or business and related.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for right now it's just cleaning, right, but the idea is that this year I'm getting my business right.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: So here's what happened with my business it kind of took off and got way out of control without the proper infrastructure being built Right, and so we went from like three hundred thousand to a million and a half in sales and we're missing some fun fundamental basic stuff on the bottom, and I'm not that guy that that's going to sit there like our SOPs are from 2019.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Right, and so there's guys that are really good at, they can develop a business plan and all this, but they don't have the business sense.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm the guy that I just really enjoy talking to people, networking, and it's not my strong suit, as you could tell, sitting behind a computer.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: It's just not me, my personality, I don't like doing it, and so the good news is we get to hire that out when the time is right.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So this year it's just getting that right and getting that right in my business and get my body right.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: I was an addict for a lot of years.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: I would get addicted to anything, and so the last addiction I had to get rid of was energy drinks and Gatorade.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Here's what I would drink every night was a Gatorade Zero and it was red, and I'm like there's got to be stuff in there that you just can't have right.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: That's not good for your brain and for body optimization.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: So quitting the energy drinks was worse than alcohol or cigarettes or anything Like.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: There was a physical, all that sugar or whatever that's in.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: You know, there was a physiological response that I couldn't.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: It's hard to explain.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: You know, I think you did a good job.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: I I, I see what you're saying.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: What part of the cleaning industry are you in, so?
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: we're like we're like a cleaning restoration, so we do water restoration, mold, air, duct, carpet cleaning, that kind of thing, your specialty cleaning stuff as far as your everyday cleaning.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: As you guys probably have learned by now, women are naturally more detail-oriented than men are, so we could never make it a go in the cleaning industry because it is a detailed, very detailed thing and I know it's harder now.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, people were talking about distractions and bombarded stimuli in the 80s, so imagine that today, where people are addicted to their smartphones and can't ever put it down and they want to tell you I forgot to clean behind the stove and it's like it was in the notes to clean behind the stove specifically Right behind the stove specifically right.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: So what we try to do is the more specific work the less we want to do it right.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: The more detailed work, the less we want to do it.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: You know, we could clean a carpet, not necessarily get all the way detailed in the corner, and guess what?
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: It's not that dirty in the corner either.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: So hey, no one's going to complain about that.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: But if, when it comes to general housekeeping, people are going to check every nook and cranny, and what do you mean?
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: You didn't open the window and clean under ledge?
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Well, if you're not drawing that out specifically with your clients and your employees, then why didn't think to open the window and clean under there?
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: You know so.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Right right.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: We try to stay away from the detailed work.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Right, I would take carpet cleaning.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: I would.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: I would take carpet cleaning over anything.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: So, whenever you talk about more restoration, how did you get into that?
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: How did you?
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: And do you have to be in your state?
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Because I know in my state, california, we have to be licensed for that, we have to go and do all these testings and all that.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: How did how's that look in your state?
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in Indiana you don't need to be licensed for anything.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: In Michigan you do, right?
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: So we have a pesticide license in Michigan for just for Michigan to be able to legally spray some of our antimicrobials.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: But in Indiana it's like they're real tough on marijuana use but they're really lenient towards contractors, and so in my state that's the way it is, and I know other states it's the opposite.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Right, Right, oh, you want to have all your certifications, but just like we would do a mole job in an attic for four grand, there's a guy that'll do it for 400 and give you a piece of paper and that's all you need to to pass the inspection, right?
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: so, um, there, that stuff does happen and unfortunately it's not a regulated industry in indiana wow I had no idea running out of two states yeah, most of our work uh is in indiana and then we're like five minutes from the border of Michigan, so we do some work up there as well.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: Awesome, awesome.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're in a big County here, so so how, uh?
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: When did you start getting in?
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: When'd you get into this business?
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: So I started in the cleaning business in 2000, 2002, by accident.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: And what happened was I started mowing grass and I started this grass mowing business.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know how far back you want to go, but basically what happened?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: We were involved in a drive by shooting and I went to jail one night and in the jail cell that night I said, god, you know, I'm not this person, I want to change.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not this guy, please help me out.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: And so I got out of the situation with a public intoxication charge and I got out of jail the next day and I met a guy on a basketball court and I don't usually go out there and he doesn't usually go out there and it was this old man and I told him everything that I was involved in and when you live in this type of lifestyle, you don't tell people.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And he's like hey, instead of him judging me or whatever he's like, if you ever need to talk, I live right down the street in that house and I was, and he was just an angel sent to me that day, to me that day, and so I talked to him.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: And then that summer I had to work at Cedar Point, which was four hours away for the summer.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: To get away from this bad situation I was involved in when I came back from working there for the summer.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: 90% of people that was involved in this kind of behavior was all in prison.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: So I literally got away, physically, right.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Prison or death was knocking at your door.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: Right, that's divine providence right there.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: No, definitely.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: I love a good comeback story.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: But it got worse because I was working a regular factory job and then the little greed voice came in and said the devil came and said, ron, you could be the big man on the block and sell all the drugs.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: These guys were all in jail and I was like, okay, and next thing, you know it, whatever you say your mind to your mind will find her.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: And the next day I met this mexican guy that literally drove to texas to get the weed.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: At the time weed you could make a lot of money.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Nowadays I don't know if it's the same gambit, but back then what they were doing is they would drive to Texas and pick up 50 pounds of weed for 200 bucks a piece and drive them to Indiana.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: And he'd come straight to my house and drop off five pounds of weed for me every week.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: And then next thing, you know, I went to go pick up some money from somebody and their wife was in jail and I said, hey, this is it, I got to quit.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: And so I had like twenty five hundred dollars, because when you're making money like that, when you're living that lifestyle, you also be foolish with your money, and I was.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: I was very foolish with money.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: So I only had $2,500 left to my name.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: So I bought a piece of crap truck, a trailer, a couple lawnmowers and I started this mowing business.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: About a month into it a guy calls me and says, ron, can we borrow your truck?
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Our truck broke down and we don't have no way to get to our jobs.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: And I said, listen, I'm not that busy, I'll go with you.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: So he's like, let me call my boss.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And I went to a carpet cleaning appointments for two days and I said, hey, where can I get a machine like this?
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: And the guy knew someone that had.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: One broke down in a garage and the rest is history.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: No, I love it.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have something similar, Not quite like that, but you know we're good comeback stories and I I'm out here slinging sparkle.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Now you know I'm slinging cleans, so that's great.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: And now you've taken people and are mentoring.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: You started a mentoring program.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: How did that evolve?
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: how did that evolve?
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Well, so here's the story.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: When I was involved in sales heavily studying sales I looked up to this guy called Grant Cardone.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Have you guys heard of him?
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, so I went through all his training, read all his books, met him in person, went to events, uh, went through his university, and one thing he always told me was like, you got to become a celebrity in your niche.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: So in 2014, when I was just coming up and in 2014 was the magical year for me I went from making 20 grand a year to 60.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: And I thought I was rich.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: I was like man.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: This I don't have to eat ramen noodles every day now, but I am rich.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: I'm like man.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: I got to help other people.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: And this was back in 2014.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: So, 60 grand, you know you was doing good.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Today, 60 grand, you're not doing that good, right With inflation and everything.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: So I was like man, I just got to help some people and so I started dropping videos in these carpet cleaning groups to help people.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: And then I became involved with the homeless community.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Then I soon realized like they were good.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: And then I became involved with the homeless community.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Then I soon realized like they were good.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: And then I got involved with some drug addicts and soon enough I had the court system paying me.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: The probation department was paying me for group counseling, and how that happened is I was giving these free talks at the library and the judge I asked the judge.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I said judge, can they get community service hours to go into my speeches instead of pushing a broom somewhere?
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: And she's like Ron, what's your curriculum?
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I said I'll be back next week with the curriculum.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: And she was like Ron yeah they can get the community service hours.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: I said, hey, could they get a self-help credit to go to my things at the libraries too?
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: She's like no, ron, you got to be NAA or MRT.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: So I'm like what is this MRT?
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I Googled it it was $600 for one week training.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I said add to cart.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: And I went and got the certificate and I came back to her.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: I said hey, judge, I got the MRT.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: She's like what.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Looked at me and I said she's like you need to have a meeting with the main probation officer.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: And I said, ok, so I go into this meeting.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: This guy says Ron, I can start sending you people next week.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I said cool.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: He's like how much do you charge?
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm ready to do this stuff for free because I just want to help some people.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: And he said how much do you charge?
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Hang on, Hang on.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: I'll be right back with a number.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: So I just asked him.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: I'm curious do you pay?
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: I just said what do you pay.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: He's like we pay thirty dollars a person, and so I had a Michigan city was one town and I'd have that on Tuesday nights, and the neighboring town I'd have on Thursday nights and I'd have 15 people in one group and 10 people next.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: So this is a group counseling model.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: So we're literally making like an extra thousand dollars a week and that's what took our business to the next level Just trying to help some people.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: Just helping and that networking right, this is where the networking.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: You're out there rubbing elbows with people and next thing, you know, are you sitting back.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Seriously.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Are you sitting back like, wow, this is crazy, this is crazy how it just falls into place like that, and to think of where you came from to where you're at now is just congratulations, that's awesome.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: What a great story, huh.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: So I got one.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: One story I'll share with you is this is uh, there was a girl on the drug court system.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: So this drug court, I would show up every week like it was my job.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: And one week she was coming down the stairs and she was sighing real heavily and I said, hey, what's going on?
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: She's like oh, I got to walk home in the rain.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: I said, no, I'll give you a ride.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: She gets in the car.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: She's like they want me to get a job and I don't even have a car.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: I said, hey, I got a car I can give you.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: And it turned out that I bought my mother-in-law a car and she didn't like it and I just had a car just sitting in a driveway.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: So I said I got a car I'll give you.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: She's like cool.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: She took the car, started driving the car.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Then I found out about her living situation.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: She was living in a really bad apartment and no power in the house at all and she ran extension cords downstairs and the downstairs apartment had where's her sister lived when she was on heroin.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, how can this girl possibly get clean in this type of environment?
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: And so back then you would get a newspaper to find apartments.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: So that's what we do.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: I said meet me at the coffee shop.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: We're going to get this figured out today.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: So she met me at a coffee shop on a Friday.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: On this Friday I wrote a check for seventeen hundred fifty dollars to get her apartment.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: At that time I only had nineteen hundred dollars to my name period, not not had some other money in my drawer or nothing.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: That was it, drawer or nothing.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: That was it.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: The very next day, on a Saturday, I was supposed to go to a Toastmasters club and give a warm-ups presentation and they were having a speech contest.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: After the speech contest was over, they were counting the ballots.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: They said, ron, can you come up here and just talk about something?
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: We love hearing you talk.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: And I said okay.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: So I walked up there real slow and I said what am I going to talk about?
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: What am I going to talk about?
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: I'll just talk about my business.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: So I got up there and I just talked about my business.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: And what do you know it?
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: There was a guy in the back row that owned a big construction company.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: He'd won his air dust cleaned.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: He called him Monday morning with a job for $3,500.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: But the story doesn't stop there.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: The girl started working at a hotel and who do you think she had come in and clean the carpets?
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Oh, they're out there making those connects.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Then the same now.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Now this girl.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: By this time she got custody of her kids back.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: She's living good, she she started stopped using drugs.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Then she starts a cleaning business.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Every home she gets into who's cleaning the carpets and air ducts.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, so I?
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: I figured I had to share you.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: That's that story but, I, got thousands of these stories.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: You know I could go on for days because, uh, you're kind of like a servant's heart is what you have well, yeah, so I was helped with the guy on the basketball court and so it's like hardwired at this point, you know let it just started steamrolling, yeah.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: I love it and just there was a guy just last year, told me a story and he's like Ron, do you know why I stopped what I'm doing to help you whenever you call me?
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: I said, well, first of all I didn't know you did that, but saying it all, yeah, I'd like to know.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: He's like I used to mow your grass over here when you lived in this house and one day I was short on money to repair my mower and you rushed in your pocket and gave me the $500 I needed and just said pay me back when you got it.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: I'll never forget that Ron and I was like dang, I didn't even remember that day, but to him this was a big deal for that guy and there's thousands of those stories that I probably can't remember, but the biggest one that always sticks out to me was I was cleaning a lady's upholstery and she had some really dirty stairs and at first I was in salesman mode and I said, hey, would you like me to clean these stairs while I'm here?
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: And she said, no, I don't have any other money.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I said, listen, I'll do it at no charge.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: I would feel bad if I left here without cleaning them, Cleaned them no charge, Took me 25 minutes.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: She worked at an orthodontist and they have five locations.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Those five locations to this day.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow Right.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how it works.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: That's great, yeah.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: We get out here and we pound the pavement and just networking, networking and being open to collaborations, being just open your mind and things just start opening for you.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: It's, you know, that's great, yeah, yeah.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: So one of the or go ahead, I'm sorry, I was just going to go off on a tangent.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: I know I am.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: I'm enjoying listening.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that we do that really pays dividends is our email list.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: You hear people talk about email lists, but you have to do it through.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: You have to do it through videos.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: And what happens is this.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: So back to the Grant Cardone.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: He told me this he's like Ron people believe what comes out of your mouth to one level.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: They believe a sheet of paper to a whole nother level.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: But they believe videos, no matter what kind of screen it's on, to a whole nother level.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: So we have different email lists that we have different marketing messages that we send to different people.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: So if I was in your line of work one of ours that a heavy referral source for us is realtors.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: When they find mold in the home inspection, they have to get it taken care of before the deal could go through.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Now, for us this is a niche service because nobody wants to move the closing date.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: So they're not shopping around.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: They're like hey, call QCC, he'll get you taken care of.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Boom.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: We go in, we tell them a price and they usually go with us right then and there Right and so.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: On those deals we just make sure, hey, they call in that same day.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: We get them an estimate, boom, and that's you.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Just.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: You just gotta be.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: You know, no estimate can go undone.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: You can't wait 24 hours, two days, for an estimate.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Right, so now your reputation.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: But the E back to the email list, cause I can get off topic real quick too.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: The email list is.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: You got to have a good call to action in there.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: And if you put a video in there with the good email list, it'll track who opened it, it'll track who unsubscribed, so it'll tell you all this stuff that you need to do.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: So if someone unsubscribed from your email list doesn't mean they won't refer you.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: It just means pick up the phone and call them.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Hey, haven't heard from you in a while.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: What's going on?
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: You just communicate them through a whole other way and you keep in front of them at all times, and that's what most people don't have that hustle and drive, and, unfortunately for me, I was homeless for two years of my life.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: I was incarcerated two years of my life.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: So I got this little mechanism in here.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: It says Ron, don't be homeless, don't be homeless, don't be homeless.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: And so when most people say I just want enough money, don't be homeless, ron, you need more money than that Right.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, as long as you can make it through the day.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Exactly, exactly, yeah, no, I.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: I think there's a drive in people like that Either you're going to stay stuck where you're at and keep doing the same things over and over and I decided in my life I'm not going to be that person and same what same thing.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: But so you just started cleaning.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Okay, so you got, you started cleaning carpets, but you said that you're a restoration, right?
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: How did that?
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: It just from networking, like I'm going to add this on, I'm going to add this on.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: Is that just?
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: So here's, here's the steel, and this is mainly for a small town.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: I would give this advice to any small town, but I would give this to.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: It could go for anybody, right?
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: So the more services you could offer, the more profits there will always be, because you're marketing more services to the same people that you already like, you know you and trust you, right?
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: So here's the.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Here's the piece of information that changed my life.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: 76% of Americans don't even have $500 in their bank account.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: When I when I heard that, I was like bingo.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Now, the 24% that do and I broke it down like this out of the 24% that that that do have down like this out of the 24% that do have the money, there's some that'll never hire you because they're brand loyal.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: There's some that'll never hire you because they're hardcore do-it-yourselfers.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: These are the farmer type of people.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: They have the money but they say, hey, we're going to do it ourselves, we'll buy our own $20,000 machine just to do itself.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Then there's the people that you just don't want to work for, and so, when it's all said and done, 5% of your demographic are actually your potential target client.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: So that means your standard of service has to be so great that you have to be rememberable to those 5% of people and you got to stay in front of them and offer those five percent of people the most services possible interesting yeah, that's great, yeah, so with the to answer your question better.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: it was, uh, 2014 and I was working.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: We did a lot of carpet cleaning for a local restoration company and they're like ron, uh, our guy can't go with us to training, could you go with us?
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: And I said, yes, I was at the grocery store shopping.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: I put everything back out of my car and said I'm leaving town for a week and I went and got free water restoration training, just like that.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: And then we never, that's great yeah.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And then most people would say well, let me talk to my wife, I don't know.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: But I was like no, I'm going, let's roll Right.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: And so then we started buying equipment a little bit at a time, and then we never got heavy into it until 2023.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: And I thought we'd have to work at night and weekends a lot, but that's not the case.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: So in 2023, when we learned that wasn't the case, we started pursuing that avenue a little bit more, and so just this year already, we've already hit $80,000 in sales for doing water restoration work.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: So that's big for us Not big if we were a big restoration company, but that's a little extra chunk of money.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: That's good for us being small in the restoration business.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: Right, there's one here.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: There's one big one here in my small demographic and something I've always wanted to get into.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: I think it's great.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're in so many people's homes anyways, we live on the coast.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: I mean we're in so many people's homes anyways, we live on the coast, so there's a lot of mold.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, I can't tell you, every house that we go into, whether it's the million dollar house up on the hill or we're polishing a turd, there's mold, there's mold, some form of mold, in any of these houses.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: And I just thought, always thought, man, that's a great, that would be a great niche to get into.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Well, and especially if you're already cleaning them because you're already exposed to them.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: And this is just so.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Y'all know I'm a real nerd when it comes to like wanting to know the most about everything.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: So with y'all it might be all right, but, as a man, being in moldy environments increases your estrogen levels, and so I just had my levels checked about a month ago, and a normal level for someone my age should be about 14 and mine was at 53.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: So, and they say that being around moldy environments increases your estrogen levels, and again, this is something normal people don't know, but for me, I like to nerd out on all information.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: I geek out on business owners.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: I geek out on this stuff.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: I just have research, yeah, yeah, I'm all about it Interesting.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Very interesting.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: So what kind of other marketing, organic marketing things could you suggest for someone who is just stepping into the cleaning realm?
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be house cleaning specific, but I'm curious as to what you can do.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: The number one thing that I tell people when they ask me for help is I tell them to join Toastmasters, and this works in two ways.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Number one, it works on your communication skills.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: But number two, you're involved with people that usually have a management role in their company, so it's like a networking group, but it's not a networking group.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, so it's like you're getting paid to go there and network with people, or not?
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: You're getting paid, but you're getting into doors for people you wouldn't normally be able to get into the doors with.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: And so it does two things for you.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: Right, what was it called again?
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: It's called Toastmasters.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: Like if you were given a toast at a wedding and people get nervous.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: so you just want to master the toast right, and so most people's fear is of public speaking.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: But if you can get that down, pack for me.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: I never had a fear of that because I have a superpower.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: My parents really treated me bad, you know, so bad to the point where, like I, was hardwired what's the worst a stranger could do you know.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: So I have a superpower Most people don't have, because most of the time their parents didn't treat them that poorly, right.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Right, right, interesting no.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Toastmasters, it is, I'm writing.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: What other things would you suggest?
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: So that's where I would start, because you have to be good at presenting yourself and your confidence level has to be there.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: If your confidence level is low, you're not going to close the deal, and when your confidence level is high you could close the deal for more money, right?
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: You make that customer feel really good.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Another thing I would do like if I was starting any business.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: You're going where, you're going into a home or business.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: You're bidding against other people.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: You need to send them a video.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: For example, let's say, air duct cleaning is a higher ticket item.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: It's between $500 to $1,500 an average home and so that sale most people are sticker shocked because they're used to seeing lower prices.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: So we put a video together and that person gets a video texted to them right after the phone call, whether they booked the service or not, and usually within five to 10 minutes after book, after calling in, they'll book the service because the other guy didn't send them a video.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Now that I sent you a video of my process and I talked to you through a video, you know and like me and trust me better.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: It's that social proof we all need and desire to do business with somebody.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: So if you're not, if you don't, I would say, get your confidence level up, make the videos and send them to whoever you possibly can.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: This is a personalized video right, Not just.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: No, that one is a generic one.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: That's a generic one, and so I don't know who's going to listen to this, but I'm going to give you guys a top secret, something I do.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: This is top secret.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: If you're a friend of mine on Facebook, you will get what looks like a video message sent to you.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: But I send the same message to everybody, but it's me singing happy birthday to you, and so they think I took the time out and I renewed this every year and they think I took the time out of my day to sing specifically to them and then they feel so good about it, right, and they're going to remember you're.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: The key is business.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: You just get people to remember you more.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Hey, man, I like that.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Ron guy man, I love that Ron guy.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: You want everybody like you everybody know you're not no-transcript.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: In 2010,.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: I just started adding people on Facebook.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: I'm like one day these people are going to be my customers.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you did yes.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: And then, uh, if you get on my facebook, a thousand of them, a thousand of my people, are realtors and now, because I'm friends with so many realtors, I, I show up as people you may know, and then those people start following me, right, awesome, and so you name of a service for the Facebook happy birthday thing.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: The name of what.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Didn't you say you used a service to send people the happy birthday message?
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Well, my assistant does that, it's straight through Facebook.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: You make the video and send it.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: I was just sure there was an actual service provider that did it for you.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Oh no, got it it's one of the first things my assistant is supposed to do every morning is send everybody on the happy birthday list.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: That video, the same video now, that makes sense yeah we
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: always get them every day.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: Right, we get them every day.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: I'm the same way.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: I I um a lot of my local friends.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: Local friends are nothing but realtors and we walk through the process from start to finish.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, when we're done here, I have some phone calls that I got to make and do those connections, because they call and we work hand in hand with the realtor, the photographer, the buyer or the seller.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: Because, you know, whenever you sell a home, a lot of people don't know this.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: But in your closing, you know how do you sometimes ask to you pay the closing cost.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: Seller pays the closing cost.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: You can actually ask for your home to be professionally cleaned, or carpets professionally cleaned, duct work to be done.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: Before you can have all that, you can ask for that.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: Not that they'll give it to you, not that they'll give it to you, but that is something that you can negotiate with to you, but that is something that you can negotiate with.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, those realtors are great.
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: Um, they're out there with us, so there's that's a great connection to have.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: So, for the audience, you know, yeah, and you're gonna run into.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: You will always run into some bad ones, right, the ones you don't want to work with but, you can't allow that to stop you.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: You can't.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: So one of the top 10 thinking errors that we have as humans is we overgeneralize, so we get a bad.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: We get a bad experience with a realtor.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: We're like nope all realtors are bad.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: We can't do that in business, right?
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Because well, that plumber did me bad, so I don't work with plumbers no more.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: And then it's like dude, stop overgeneralizing.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: That was one bad realtor, you don't work with him no more.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: That was one bad plumber, you don't work with them no more.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Move on, right.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we got to take things and move on.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: One of my golden rules is don't be petty.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: If you focus on the petty stuff, your business and your personality will never grow, and too many people focus on the petty stuff a little too much.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: And, yeah, right, and you, you have to have that open mind, you have to have that.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: That yeah, being petty will just stop you, stop your tracks.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: You won't grow anymore and I'm always open to growing.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: I just I don't want to be the smartest person in the room.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I go to at least one conference a year.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: This year it was a Howard Partridge conference, and last year I went to a home inspection course, and that was out of paranoia.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: I thought you know what it's an election year.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: If they shut us down like COVID again, I will pull this home inspector license out of my back pocket and I'll still make some money, right?
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: And so I never wound up telling anybody that I had a home inspection license, because the home inspector is the most hated person in the world, right.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: And so but if I had to do it for a certain period to make some money, that was the one thing.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: But anyways, the inspector that taught us that day he had a remote control car he built.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: So I did learn something from it and I did build a remote control car just like his.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: So I did learn something from it and I did build a remote control car, just like his.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so sometimes I'll take that car with me if I know I got to get into a crawl space and I can send the car down there instead of crawling through it.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: You say, ok, yeah, yeah, kind of like the remote control car.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Really, is that how we do it nowadays?
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the remote control car really.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Is that how we do it nowadays?
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know I thought maybe I don't know, don't they have those things that like with the camera at the end of it, kind of like a snake?
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: You know a snake.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: I'll stick to my niche.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Or you can shove in a selfie stick.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: You always want to have a selfie stick on your person if you're getting into attics and crawl spaces, cause oftentimes when I go out and do any type of inspection work to find out about the mold and stuff, if I'm going out personally, I'll just stick my selfie stick up in the attic.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: I'm not typically crawling around in the attic unless I have to.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: That's you know, no, I mean, I'm not.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: I mean I've seen it all, I've been through it all, my hands probably touched some things that I'm just like.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I just, I, I don't know, sometimes the I mean some of my employees are, they're like can you please, can you please come to kill the spider for me?
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: And I'm like really, I mean, we live in humble county, there's spiders everywhere like I just, you know, um, yeah, it's something.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: I just I don't mind getting my hands dirty, that's for sure, that's for sure.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Well, the dirtier they get, the more money you can make.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: I remember one time we got a call from a local police station and they're like Ron, somebody came in here and pooped everywhere and I'm like, all right, so I'm expecting the worst, right, I go over there.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: It was a couple of swipes of poop here and there and I was like I don't even know how much they're charging for this, but I'm like you know what?
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: I'll charge them 150.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: I was there 10 minutes.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Then I started thinking like man, I'll do this every day.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: I can make a lot of money cleaning up poop.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Like, if people are this freaked out about a little bit of poop, right no shame in our game, none, none.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: Just it is what it is and and that's whenever you kind of look like there's a market for this, there is for this.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: Because people don't want to do it, I'll take on whatever people don't want to take on I.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: I love a good challenge yeah, and we even hire a pooper scooper company.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: I think we're in the middle of firing them, but we hired a pooper scooper company from our yard.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: Why would you want to go out there and shovel poop out of your own yard?
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a million ways to make some money.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: There's no excuses nowadays.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: None Again.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: It comes to having that open mind.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: You gotta, you gotta watch for that next, that next thing that falls into your lap and then grab it by the coattails and catch that wave, you know, and yeah and so the the biggest thing I would tell anybody if they were trying to grow their business is they really have to focus on the google reviews.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: So that's the social proof everybody wants when your google reviews are at an extreme number.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Now, first of all, here's what it does.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Number one they look at your reviews, the review read your reviews, so last month, we had over 800 reviews, and then Google took it down about 130 of them, so I don't know.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: We're above 700, though, and so our biggest competitor has like 40, right, our biggest competitor has 40.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: So when they see our reviews versus theirs, they're like hey man, why would I wanna go with that other guy right.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: So now they're not calling.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: If they see that they're not calling and saying, hey, how much they're like when can you do it Right?
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: It's a little bit better from the front end and more skin in the game.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the other thing is this If, if I post a review from my physical location and I said, hey, qcc did an amazing job on my duct work.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: And I said, hey, qcc did an amazing job on my duct work.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: Now if my neighbor searches up duct work cleaning that review that his neighbor wrote, is going to pop up my Google listing Love it.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Do you have anybody managing your website, your Google, your SEO, all that?
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Do you have somebody?
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: No, uh, we have a website person that he does some SEO stuff and it's so cheap that I don't question it or play with it.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: But, um, for the most part, you don't need a lot of that If you go out here's.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Here's one thing.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: Here's what took need a lot of that.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: If you go out, here's one thing.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: Here's what took us to a million dollars.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: If you're ready for the real deal, right.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: So we went from $500,000, 500 to our first million.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: One thing yard signs.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: How many yard signs did it take?
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: How many yard signs did it take?
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: How many yard signs did it?
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: take.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: All I can tell you is we pull it out of every job, every single job, to get a yard sign.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: We go through about 100 a month.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: Same, so I don't go through 100 a month.
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: Again, we're very small town.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: We're very small town, but, um, yard signs, the the yard sign that we use I think I need to switch it up a little bit is, um, this home is being serviced by, above all, cleaning services.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: So, um, I think I'm going to switch it up.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: But you know, along these highways and stuff, I see people's and you know what are some of these.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: I see a lot for the gutters, I see a lot for these iPhone fixers and I'm like man, my sign would look great out on this highway Because a lot of people that are up in the hills don't know that they can have people like us come and service that area.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: So if they don't know about you, how are they going to get a hold of you?
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: You know, so that's great.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: I always say like this the yard signs in people's homes do 100 times better than a random yard sign on a highway.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: And what?
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: What it is is, if you put a yard sign in a customer's yard and they were happy with your service and their neighbors see their sign, you're signing their yard forever.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: They're like man, they did such a great job.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: I gotta go.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: I can't go with anybody else, I just can't right so do you tell the client hey, we're part of the gig, is you you're gonna let us put a sign up in your yard?
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: And we don't talk about a sign, we just throw it out there.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: First thing they do when it gets a job put it in the ground.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: If the customer has a problem with it, we'll take it out.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: If not, it stays there for as long as.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: Because what you got to think about is person that hires you, wants you to stay in business, right?
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: They want you to stay in business, right, yeah, they want you to stay in business to use you again.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Well, we stay in business because you help us advertise and we're going to put our sign out there, right.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: And so I think a lot of us, we battle our own thoughts.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: You'll never outgrow your business, will never outgrow your thought process.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: So if you're very neurotic and you have this very unconfident position in your mind, your business, no matter how much you market or do whatever, you always have this mindset that limits you.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: If you realize, like, money is only numbers on a screen and that I can attract infinite amount of numbers, you know, there was a time when we first started doing mold.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: I'm like nobody would want to pay me more than $1,000 for a mold job.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: So every single mold job for that year was nine something, eight something.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: And then I realized like, hey, let me try fourteen hundred.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, they're going for that.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Ok, let me try three grand oh, they're going for that.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: I was my worst enemy.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I could have been charging the same amount of money.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Back then you know, back then you know.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: And so we're again, we're our worst enemies when it comes to well, what do I?
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Got to give the customer?
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: What do I have to give the customer to put a yard sign in their mouth?
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Nothing.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: They want you to stay in business.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: They want you to grow and prosper.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: They want to see you back next week.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Put the sign out, I'm glad you mentioned that because if I was thinking of us as house cleaners, we would have been really timid and said, hey, would you mind us putting a yard sign in your yard?
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: But I love the concept of just plop it down.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: If they have an issue, pull it out.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Because I was like, well, how does he go about asking?
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Does he like say, hey, can we put it in your yard?
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Is it in your paperwork?
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Sign this contract?
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, is it in your contract?
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: Did they sign off on that?
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: I love, yeah, just another thing.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Another thing that cleaners typically struggle with is the deposit.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: So we collect a 50 deposit from every regular cleaning job we do, and the people that get turned off by it were the same people that are keep calling until they get a cheaper rate.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: And here's what happens.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Just so people understand the last minute cancellation.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: You got to understand the last minute cancellation really hurts our profit line, right?
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: The reason that happens is you'll book the appointment.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: They'll keep calling around Once they get a cheaper price.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: They want to call and cancel you, but they don't want that awkwardness, so they wait till the last minute.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: They just push it off because nobody wants that awkward confrontation, right?
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: And so if you collect that $50 deposit now, it's done, it's over within their mind.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: There is no.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Or here's another scenario your girlfriend's in town.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: You got your carpet scheduled to be cleaned and your girlfriend's in town.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: You're like, hey, I'm only in town for one day.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Let's go shopping.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, I can't because of my carpet clean.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Carpet clean is more important than hanging out with me.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's well.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: No, not really.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: No, let's go, let me cancel my appointment right now.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: But if there's $50 is just enough skin in the game where they'll find somebody else that could be there for that Right.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: And so a lot of people struggle with, like I wouldn't pay $50 for a deposit.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Well, that's you, stop buying out of your own pocketbook Because I'm telling you right now, $50 deposit actually makes you look more professional, because the other guys are doing it.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: So it sets you up as excellence from the very beginning, and then, if your systems are all in place from there, that's how you grow your reputation.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you look so professional.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we collect on any first-time cleans or anything.
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: We do a 50% deposit and I always spin it.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: That's to hold your spot on our schedule.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: Boom, done in the conversation.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: Either they go for it or they don't.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: So, um, dollar quote, uh, we get, we get.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: Uh, with our processes.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: Processes, um we get, we.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: It goes from start to finish, from setting up the assessment.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: Sometimes we'll do an in-home assessment and sometimes we can do it over the phone.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: That's something I'm still trying to practice on is over the phone bidding.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: You know that takes a lot of practice.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: And then we'd set up a request turns over to a quote, turns over to a job, turns over to scheduling our cleaning techs to go to that job, and yeah, we get the deposit.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: All on one platform.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: So, and it just the way it comes out, it just looks so professional.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: You know you look like, oh, this person has been doing this for a while, it's not just some.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: You know they can tell that you have put some money into your business and that you are, you're, you're a little more serious than, say, the other guy.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: The number one thing people want to do is you always have to be marketing.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: So as soon as you enter your customer's information into your CRM, they should get a message immediately that says, hey, uh, your, your job is scheduled.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: By the way, right now is the best time to like our Facebook page or whatever social media platform you want them to engage in Good, and so you send them the link right then and there, and most of the time they do it.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: So you have to build that following.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: That's free following, and I know a lot of cleaners that don't take advantage of these opportunities because their fear of being too aggressive, and that's where the confidence level comes into play.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: You know you got to build your confidence up so you won't.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: You got to get over that fear of being too aggressive.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: For example, if every single customer that calls in, that's that's a prospect, every prospect that calls in.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: What we do is we capture all their information.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Nobody from my company is allowed to give out a price until we know your name, address, email or phone number, because we're going to follow up with you right away.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: We're going to send you a video of whatever service we're talking about.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Then, by the next day you're going to follow a phone call, but in the meantime and this is where the real gold is, and I don't know how you go spend this in your line of work, but in our line of work.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: But in our line of work we do a scheduling close and the scheduling close works like this.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: First, you got to ask them one question Are you a firefighter, first responder, a teacher, a veteran?
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: I want to be able to give you any discount I possibly can Now, because there's always this contractor versus homeowner.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: You want to get them on your side of the fence.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: We're not enemies here, we're allies, right?
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: So that takes down their first line of defense.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: And so, even if they're none of those things, they're appreciating the fact that you're going to offer a discount for it, right?
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: The second thing you want to say, hey, is there any time the next two weeks?
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: That doesn't work for you.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: And they're like what are you talking about?
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Like well, I'm just calling to get a price.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: I said, listen, I want to give you the best price.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: And your tonality has to change, like it's a big secret, right?
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: So if you lower your tonality and say, hey, I want to give you the best price possible.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: That implies that, like, if my boss found out, I'm going to get in trouble, right, but you didn't say that, you just said than that I'm available Now you already know whoever's answering that phone whatever admin's answering the phone already knows the next available appointment.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: You want to book and you're like listen, I got an opening on Wednesday.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: If you took this open on Wednesday, instead of doing it for 550, I'll do it for Now.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: They get their mind off from the $500 sale and get their mind on hey, they're saving $50.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and book right now.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: So us, as cleaning contractors, we have to learn how to be a professional salesman and how to control the narrative from the beginning, and most people's timidness gets in the way of that.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: And most people's timidness gets in the way of that.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah I, it's really hard to do this.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: I mean not to say that if you're an introvert you can't, because I do see some of that.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: But yeah, you really got to push through.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: And again I, yeah, you got to give it a little oomph.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, In the house cleaning industry I could see giving a small discount because you could pad it into the initial cost of a top to bottom deluxe cleaning.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: But you couldn't do that with regular maintenance cleaning because it would shave off what margins you are packing into there.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: But I love the strategy of.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: This is step one, this is step two, this is step three and this is step four and it could be applicable to many other opportunities and it has my mind thinking about, you know, the one-time cleaning and how you could really like overcome those obstacles.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: It's a great, great suggestion, ron.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it works wonders.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: It's a.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: It's a great, great suggestion, ron.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it works wonders, it works wonders.
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: Or you already have that, that $500 in place, right, you want it now, that $500, but you're going to tell them five, 50 and just make them think, as, as you know, that they're getting this great deal.
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: You got to dress it up.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: You got to dress it up, right, yeah, make them think, as, as you know that they're getting this great deal, you got to dress it up.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: You got to dress it up, right?
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: You want to go on a date without putting on your best clothes, right?
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: That's what you're doing.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: You're putting on your best shows showman skills, you know to lure them in.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: You got to close a deal right.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: You got to put on a good show.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: And if we and here's what happens, right, no-transcript.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: I want to make you a better cleaner.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: I don't want you to say you're the best, I want to help you actually know your craft.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: Because what will happen is you'll go into these homes and this could happen on any cleaning or any service base.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: You go into the homes and the customer complains about the last cleaning lady and next thing that happens you're like 10 people in a row complained about the last, but not me.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: I'm perfect.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: And then they're complaining about you, not to your face, because they want remember, they want to avoid the confrontation.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: So they don't tell you their quarrels about you, but they're talking.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: They might not be happy.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: You left the streak on the counter that nobody noticed, but in the right light it was there and they were so upset about it.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: They're telling all their neighbors about it, not you.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: So you're still walking around with this big ego saying I'm the best cleaner and we got to knock that stuff off if we truly want to elevate to the next level.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: You know, yes, that's why, whenever you want real feedback from a client, text message them.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: They're more likely to give you actual, honest feedback through a text message than a phone call.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: Nobody wants a confrontation.
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, most normal people we also send out, you know feedback, send out, um, you know feedback, and I tell I, I, I tell them the potential client, that the only way to make this work is to you communication, whether it's uh, and they can do through you know my crm, they can, they can give us feedback that don't go anywhere just for my eyes to see and that's how we got to make this work is is tell us, you know, don't be scared to tell us that.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: You know this was missed.
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: I'm not really happy with that, otherwise it's not going to work.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: And then you're going to go on to the next cleaner and we're just exactly, exactly.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: You're thinking that you're just great and then just oh right right, you know yeah and employees can be the same way too.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: For example, we did have a client that we did a mold job in an airdrop cleaning for, and the guy, instead of going to his trailer to get the ladder, he got up on a shelf and broke the board on top of the shelf and didn't tell nobody.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: And so my wife literally had to pry this information out of the woman.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: She's like, hey, how did that job go?
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: She's like, well, you know, everything went good.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: And my wife's like, well, what are you not telling me?
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: And she's like, no, I don't want to get anybody in trouble, mom.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: I was like, hey, you know, it's okay.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: What's going on?
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: Well, we think somebody broke a shelf.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: And so when I confronted the employees that were on that job, the one guy said I think I put on the notes.
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: I thought I put on the notes, and the good news is I fired him within two weeks.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Because you can't.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: You can't change bad integrity and bad character in people you can motivate and inspirate and do a lot of things, but you can't fix that in people and I've learned only hundreds and thousands of employees later because I used to give people all these chances and they never changed Right.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: So you can't fix integrity or character issues and as soon as you find out they have one of those they got to get out of your team.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: So it was actually this week I had to go out cleaning a couple of carpets because I had fired that guy and we were a little understaffed.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: So as soon as I get off this podcast, I'm supposed to be going to the hardware stores to try to look for a replacement.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: I'm going to recruit somebody at a hardware store today.
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: That's my mission.
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: You are.
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: Look, yes, you are, You're going to, You're going to.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: That is great, I love that.
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: So again out there networking.
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: Do you already have somebody in mind?
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: It's like I have my eye on this person.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: You're probably there enough to know.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to go to a few hardware stores and the first kid that really looks nice and that with a good smile, I'm going to be like, hey, man, you want to make some more money?
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: I got a better job for you.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: So can you tell the audience where we can connect with you and to learn more about your work and where they can check you out at?
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so just typically on my regular Facebook page, ron Papke, I put out a lot of good information there and then if they want to get into some top secret information, they can subscribe to our private group from there and where I give, I put a lot more content in there than I do the regular Facebook, because not everybody wants to learn how to grow a business and such.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: So for right now I just use Facebook and I know I should get better using all the other platforms and such.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: Use Facebook and I know I should get better using all the other platforms and such, but I I'm not there yet.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: You know I'm still.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: The main thing is the main thing.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: Let me grow my, my business first, right, I mean, um, I got to get everything right there first, but in an ideal world we would focus on YouTube more and things like that.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: But um, that's down the road You're speaking into existence.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: But that's down the road You're speaking into existence, you know.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so today I'm just like the manager of the company and there's nothing wrong with that.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: But this year we're looking at paying off our vehicle debt and our next vehicle is going to be paid for cash unless they come out with some crazy financing things in the future, right, but as of right now, I think some of our vehicle loans are at like 7%.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: So that's that's.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: I'd rather be earning that 7% of that interest money myself versus a bank, right, we need to.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: One thing I learned about rich people is like they are the bank.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: You got to get to a certain level where your investments start making money and not just yourself, right?
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: Right, so okay, I just sent you a friend request.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, so awesome.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: Do you have any other questions?
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: Do you have any questions for us?
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: So you guys just heard about me through the Cleaners Connect group.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: Is that what happened, or, or where was it at?
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: um, I think you and I um we're in cleaners connect together, and it was tomas who um almost died in december oh, yes, yes it asked me.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: You know how I knew him.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: Like he's in my town, we need to get.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, I I'm going to the celebration Life which is on the 22nd of this month, but that's, and then I just I'm more of a troll inside that group.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: I'm not, I'm not a carpet cleaner.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: I've never dabbled in it, but I've always felt that it was nice to be in a lot of different groups because you can get a lot of information from people.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Business wise, I think.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: I've chatted a couple other times on different posts and then when I saw the how you had all this organic marketing and you were doing 2 million, I'm like, oh my gosh, house cleaners were notorious for DIY and everything we just like.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: So I was like well, this will be great because he can tell us some organic ways of marketing.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: And marketing is like a college degree there.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: It's such a vast topic and there's so many segments to it and it's really hard to make everything applicable to your business.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it's demographic, sometimes it's regional, it just depends, but that's how I know you.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know you through Shannon and I'm in cleaners connect too, and you know Courtney Lee is the admin there, so he's a friend and yeah, so yeah.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know you guys have to be, you guys have to be frugal because there's not a lot, there's not a huge profit margin in regular cleaning, right, I mean it's just, yeah, it's very small.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: So you have to be as frugal as you can be.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: But the thing is your residual income.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: You're cleaning the same house as you should be, right, over and over and over and over.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: But what I would do if I was in your guys' shape, I would advertise other services.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: And in your guys's shape, I would advertise other services and just contract it out.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: Get the referral fee hey, I would advertise window cleaning, even if I didn't do it, and I'd give the.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: I'd get the 10% commission on the sale every single time.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: That's what I would do.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: You know, that's how I would do it.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: You know, or eat, like you said about the restoration, if you gave away a big referral for a motor restoration and that they would pay out 10 percent for that lead.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of money you're leaving on the table by not being hooked up with a mold guy in a restoration company.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: So your network, they say, is your net worth and our biggest contracts come from other restoration companies.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: We'll come in and clean the air ducts right so we get to charge.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: There's a nice collaboration between all the restoration companies.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some stuff that happens behind closed doors your average person has no idea about.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: Right, there it is Right.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, I get a phone call from one guy named Dave, and Dave, every time my phone rings and it's him.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: He calls me directly.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: It's going to be $10,000 worth of work or above, and you got to establish those relationships.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: And the key to it is every time I meet Dave, I deer hunt.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: Every time I give him some homemade beef jerky or deer jerky.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: Every single time he knows that's coming and that's just a little icing on the cake, right, but you have to treat your referral sources that great.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: There was a time when I was giving him some bottles of vodka.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: We've spent a lot of money on bottles of liquor over the years to our top referral agents, realtors, project managers, property managers.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: Thing about liquor is this every time they touch that bottle, they think of you, think about that, and so liquors.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: We give away a lot of liquor I, I have a bottle of liquor.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know, maybe I gave it away because I'm not a drinker but one of the realtors at my networking events.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: I, you know, you get all these, you get all sorts of guard or in merch and um.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: One was a liquor bottle and instead of wild turkey on it he put he had um tom, whatever his real benchmark realty on the as the label.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: So with a bunch of yeah, yeah, he didn't told me about uh, you know how to cook a good steak with that whiskey.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, I it's.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great idea.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: That's a great idea.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: Got my mind, got my uh mind tuning and every holiday you want to take a opportunity for cheap candy.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: So valentine's day, easter, whatever it is you could give away like a lot of candy, and for us it would be plumbers and insurance agents.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: But whoever's going to give you the big dollar jobs that are going to come in?
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: You just give them candy and it's just an excuse to show up to their office with something Right, and you never want to pass out on that.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: Some of our biggest contracts came from boxes of candy, for example.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know if daycares outsource their regular cleaning that much.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: I would assume they probably do.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: But when we were cleaning floors a lot for different daycares, I would walk in there with a giant box of chocolates and say, hey, who would I need to talk to to clean the floors here?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: And they say she's not available right now.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: I said, listen, when you see her, could you give her this box of chocolates for me Before I left the parking lot with a mouthful of chocolate.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: Yo, can you come back?
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll be right back.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: I'll be right back.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: Turn around yeah, don't ever miss those golden opportunities.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I love it so great perfect.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for coming on a really good conversation.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: Um, you definitely have the gift of job, which is fantastic, so um definitely need to have you on again when you're ready.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah no, all right, I sure appreciate it.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, go get that employee today, huh.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, ma'am when this gets ready for launch.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: I'll shoot you over a message and then I'll send you the link.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: All right, I sure appreciate it.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, we'll be talking Bye.