Episode 94: We’re the 6th Fastest Growing Company in New Mexico – Here’s How

Episode 94: We’re the 6th Fastest Growing Company in New Mexico – Here’s How

Brandon Schoen:
This goes back to what we talk about all the time with marketing is creating that social proof which is part of your brand. And, and the more social proof, like not just testimonials, like it's great for somebody to talk about your brand like a customer, but also when you win these awards guys, when you go out in the community and you apply for a best of the city in your market or a fastest growing business award in your market or whatever it is in your city or market, the more the better because it just associates you with more success. And the more you're associated with say a brand like a magazine or a news station or whatever it might be locally that people trust that are talking about your brand, that's really, really powerful.

Announcer:
Grow your cleaning business, make more money, have more time. This is the Profit Cleaners podcast with your host Brandon Condrey and Brandon Schoen.

Brandon Schoen:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Profit Cleaners. The only place where you can learn from the top 1% of cleaning business owners from around the world. And you are in the place. Guys, thank you for your time today. I'm your host, Brandon Shane. I'm joined by my amazing co-host, the one and the only Brandon. I'm feeling wicked amazing.

You are amazing man, and you know you are list, you guys are listening to the Profit Cleaners. We're just sharing what we're doing, growing our cleaning business, having a good time here, sharing what works, what doesn't work so you guys can all Profit and win. So guys, we have a really cool episode today we're gonna be sharing with you.

And the truth is, guys, most cleaning companies never grow because they're capped trading time for money and can never get past the tipping point that allows for real unlimited success. So today guys, we're gonna share how we just achieved the fastest growing company in New Mexico Award. We're actually the sixth fastest growing company in the state of Mexico and it's all because of the systems and everything that we've put in place that we're talking about on the podcast guys,

that we're gonna continue to share how we did it, how we're continuing to grow and how you guys can follow on our footsteps. So Brandon, I want you to start out actually just telling you were at the awards last week. I'm out in the outer banks right now traveling, got to be evacuated from some hurricanes here, but share, Share with us.

That is Brandon Shane's commitment. He is in the middle of an evacuation zone, recording a podcast instead of packing up and leafing. You know, that's how I am committed to you guys so committed that I will risk my life. Love it. So, but yeah, I mean we gotta get this content out to you guys. We gotta tell you how did we become the fastest growing company?

Was it just on a whim? Did we actually try hard to do this or how did it all happen? Brandon, let's tell 'em like what the event was like. You were just there last week and let's dive into it man. Alright, so the event is put on by the Albuquerque Business First journal. Now Albuquerque Business first is a local publication,

it's a print publication, it's also online. They put on a lot of events like the 40 most people under 40, like that kind of stuff. So they are part of this parent company called the Business Journals. And so they are in a lot of cities. I don't know like there appears to be one in essentially every state. So if you have one you should look into it.

I'll say that they're kind of not great as a publication. They are, everything's behind a paywall. Like they're really pushing you to pay for a subscription, which is fine, we don't pay for a subscription. But the one thing we've always wanted to do is this list of New Mexico's fastest growing companies. So we have tried to apply the last like three years and there are stipulations that we never could meet.

So the first time we tried to applied you needed to be in business for the whole of 2017. We started in the middle so we bounced back to the next one. Then the year after that we didn't meet the revenue requirement. There's a minimum revenue that you need to have to get in there and then this year we finally did all that. So we are the sixth fastest growing company in New Mexico,

which is kind of a bit of a misnomer. They split it up into categories. So we were in a the small business category, which is businesses under 5 million in revenue. So for businesses under 5 million in revenue, we were the sixth fastest. Our growth rate was 105.76%. Actually if you're watching this on YouTube, that award right there is what we got from the event.

That little blue thing in the background. So it's a little plaque has our rate on it. So essentially the event was pretty cool, you know, like you gotta pay to get in there, they're trying to get people to pay for the event. We did, we bought a table conveniently one of our former customer service reps was helping administer that event so she hooked it up with a coupon code.

So we were able to get that table on the cheap, which was kind of nice. So thank you Jamie. If you're listening to this and that just goes to show that if you treat your people well even during a termination, that they're still in the community. You don't wanna be burning bridges left and right. That's a little sidebar there. Yeah,

Jamie actually still has her clean family's house even though she doesn't work for us anymore. That's amazing. Yeah, She's still a customer. So I did reciprocate. I gave her a discount on cleaning for the next couple Clean as a way to say thank you. So, but yeah, it was nice. It was a tablecloth catered lunch, you know,

looked kinda like a wedding in there. It was very fancy. And then for every company they start at the bottom and go up. There were 31 companies that were honored and the business first people really did their homework. They kind of went out, researched each company so when they were getting ready to call your name, they kind of pulled some choice content from your website to tell everyone in the crowd.

So that was kind of cool. So yeah, so our growth rate 1 0 5 0.76% over, it was a three year period they were looking at, so we were looking at between 2018 and 2021 essentially. And you can learn about the calculation they do for it, but it's the same calculation that like the INC 5,000 does. It's just that the revenue requirements are typically a little bit lower because it's a local setup.

So there's that. But they called everybody one by one. You got a little description of it, I thought we were doing pretty good. Like the lowest one I think only had a 3% growth rate. That's enough to get you on the list if you go through the trouble of applying, this isn't like a state funded agency that's monitoring everybody. You have to go and apply.

So like there's probably businesses that grew faster than us for sure, but they didn't bother going to fill this thing out and you missed that on the phone cause I thought it was kind of fun. So the two top companies though, which were crazy, their growth rates were 1500% and 2300% that was number one and number two in that small business category number two is pretty interesting.

That was a company called Build with Robots and they actually blew up during the pandemic because they made this autonomous robot that drove through spaces and sprayed sanitizer on things. So airports bought these robots, grocery stores bought them. So they would come in and map the space and then at night when everyone leaves you just turn this thing on and it goes down aisle by aisle and just sprays everything with a disinfectant.

So they have a small one coming out. Actually he the chief strategy officer for that company, he and I talked at that meeting so it was a good networking opportunity but he wanted to talk touch base with us about a little one they're having for like house cleaning where you would like set this little thing the size of like a five gallon bucket in a room and it's a potential add-on that you can upsell customers if I think covid by and large is kind of done.

But I do think the pandemic as a whole, I don't know, brought to light a lot of public health issues for some people then maybe they'll not go back. Like I still see people wearing masks every now and then. So if you have those types of people, your customer like boom, here's an add-on for an extra 50 bucks every time you come out,

we'll do the super crazy disinfectant fog in every room and it's different than the electrostatic sprayer that we talked about before and it's different than thermal fogging that they use in ORs. Anyway, it was very interesting and then yeah, I feel like that was like one of our ideas at one point we were like gonna come out with this robot that was gonna clean people's houses and somebody else did it.

I, well it doesn't clean, all it does is it doesn't clean disinfectant. I did talk to him about that robot though. I was like hey man, make me one that just does floors. It'll analyze the floor and then pick it'll vacuum or mop or whatever. And then we talked about why that was a bad idea. So you know he,

he's coming at it from an engineer's perspective, of course it's a bad idea. I'm coming at it from a, if robots are replacing us all, how are you gonna replace people that do complicated motions and stuff? And right now the only answer is Boston Dynamics and those things are crazy and they just packed boxes. So that was the event. But like we got to meet a couple people.

I got to get a feel for like the market in terms of who applies for these things. Like I'll tell you like the super big boy companies that won every category were either cannabis or construction related. That was a pattern across the board. The one that won the small business category, which was the 2300% growth rate, that's a really unique company outta Santa Fe called Parting Stone.

And what you do is you send in cremated remains of a loved one and they have this process, they turn the ash into these like little river rock looking things and you get about 80 of them from like a typical batch of you know, someone's cremated remains and then you can give those little stones to everybody who cared about that person and instead of being like,

I don't know, a cardboard tube shoved in the back of a closet like now you can put it on a shelf next to a picture. So I thought that was pretty cool. That was a very creative business. So good job to putting stone as well. Was there any service companies other than our cleaning business that were in the awards or, I mean I think you could argue that construction is a service company so Oh yeah,

there you go. They're building you a thing but they have to have a lot of labor to go out there and do it. So construction right was definitely a service company. And then there were a lot of consulting based companies. So there was a c p a firm that was up there did like business consulting. So there were a few like that but 31 companies and that's,

that's typically the average every year and I had a good time and I think we have attended in the past to essentially get really close to doubling every year. I think we're kind of, we're kind of tapering off like this year we're looking at like a 50% growth, which is not doubling but I mean some businesses are struggling to get 3% apparently so I'll take 50% all day.

But anyway, I think it's something that we would apply for in the future as well just cuz it's cool and it gets your name out there from a geeky s e o marketing standpoint, our company's name is on a big publications website so when you Google us that stuff will show up. It gets put out in a bunch of press releases. I haven't looked at all of them,

it probably made it into like the local newspaper, maybe even on the news. I don't know there was a camera there, I don't know for which thing but I don't know. Overall it was just fun. And I suppose just like best of the city, it's like kick ass bragging rates. CEOs think differently as a small business owner you have to stop thinking like one.

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totally. I mean this is, this goes back to what we talk about all the time with marketing is creating that social proof which is part of your brand and and the more social proof, like not just testimonials, like it's great for somebody to talk about your brand like a customer, but also when you win these awards guys, when you go out in the community and you apply for a best of the city in your market or a fastest growing business award in your market or whatever it is in your city or market,

the more the better because it just associates you with more success. And the more you're associated with say a brand like a magazine or a news station or whatever it might be locally that people trust that are talking about your brand, that's really, really powerful. So that's why we talk about doing this guys, even if like doesn't even really matter, like you buy some swag and you put it,

but it does matter in the long scheme of things where in the psychological factor where people are with home cleaning, they have to trust your brand. So the more people can trust your company and also you're like this is a great way to attract and recruit more, you know, better employees because people want to be associated with success. So if they see wow,

this is the fastest growing company, they're gonna wanna work with the fastest cause they must be the best, right? If they're the fastest growing, again it's just another way to to leverage that and attract better customers, better employees. It's goes both ways. So The other part of it too, which was really hard to quantify is like the snowball effect that happens with organic search.

Like over time. So like in previous episodes we've talked about our struggles with staffing just like many of you have had. So we've got staffing problems like everyone knows that. But as part of the, we've got staffing problems, we were booking new customers a month out, so we decided to kind of dial back the ad spend for new customers and shift that money towards recruiting,

which is working by the way. But we tried to dial back the customer ads cuz we just didn't want to tell people that we can't get to you for five weeks. It's not a good look. But it turns out a lot of our customers aren't coming from ads. So like we've had 30 estimates I think this week and those aren't from ads by and large.

Like we got one out into Harris, which is a part of town in the East Mountains, which we are not advertising for, we're out there. So like Claudia had asked him like, Hey how did you find us? Did you see a car? He is like, no, I just Googled you. I really liked your reviews. And so that stuff like if you google house cleaning,

you find our company because of our reviews, then you Google our name, well shoot man. Now it turns out that they won this award and they've won best of the city this many times and that is the social proof. It's not social proof in this sense that it's coming from social media or someone they know it's coming from the community at large. Like these guys have been on the news,

they've been in the paper, they won Best of the city four years running, they got fastest growing city in there. I had people congratulate me like on the street. We went out to an airplane event the next day and one of the guys was like, Hey man, good job. I'm winning that award yesterday. And there's a friend of mine who owns a plane.

But I don't know, it's cool man. It's just cool to like be out there and be like a business leader in the community. I like it. Yeah, And this goes back to like how I think really like when we talked about in the very early podcast, if you guys go back and listen to some of our strategy and our plans and like how we executed a lot of this stuff,

we were really aggressive in the beginning with a lot of stuff, especially the marketing and just getting out there. But that's kind of the benefit of it's like this slow burn. Like it's like think of it like you light a match at the end of this wick and then it's just slowly burning, burning, burning, burning and eventually it just goes boom.

But it takes a long time or like we've, we've talked about it like a locomotive, it takes a long time to get that steam but then once it's going it's just chugging and it's really hard to stop. So to me that's what it goes back. I think about that in the beginning and like a lot of that work we put in up front,

like you just said, we were able to dial back some of the ad spend, which in the beginning we had everything full throttle. But like now we can do that a little bit with the paid ad spend because we have so much more organic growth. Like just so many more things like this, like where people are linking to us or talking about us on social media or we're on a news story or whatever it is.

And that stuff all builds over time. And this is going back to like becoming the authority and like totally dominating your market. Like you said Brandon, when you type in Sandia, Green, Clean, there's like website after news story after video, after like the search results are just packed with really good content where people are like in reviews and things that make people trust us even more because it's not just us talking about it's other people and other brands that are basically letting people know that hey,

this is the best company to work with and that's the social proof that we want you guys to be working on because it really does work. And I mean really if you just focused on one thing, like focus on your Google reviews, focus on building that main profile and then just start finding these things in your local community that you can tap into and and network into and find a way to win an award.

You know, it's like there's that quote like half of success in life is just showing up. Like just show up, just just like apply. Like how many businesses don't even apply to this stuff. Yeah, I mean when I saw the that's not the one on the bottom was 3%, come on man, you've got 3%, you listener, you've got 20,

you would totally win. You don't have to have some insane growth rate to think that you're not gonna win. Like get out there man, get this plaque. You pay 75 bucks for a ticket, you come out, you get your photo taken by the fancy photographer, they'll use your cell phone to it, you get to brag on Facebook, people give you the thumbs up and then I don't know,

when people come into your office you have this like shelf where we put the plaques and cool, like that's, I mean that's, I'm not in it for the accolades like I am. We're in it for the entrepreneur success thing, at least I'm in it for the entrepreneur success thing. This is like icing on a cake to me. Like this is the benefit that you get for,

I don't know, struggling those first like four years, which were really hard. You struggle because it was a startup and then we had extra bonus struggle because of the pandemic and now it's like, hey man, congratulations over the course of the pandemic, you were one of the fastest growing companies in the entire state score. I will tell people that all day.

Yeah and a lot of that again goes back to just toughing it out like when everyone else around is giving up and slowing down, like that's when you push harder, that's when you go faster and like yeah, a lot of surprisingly like the last few years a lot of people slowed down a lot and we actually grew a lot and it's just, I think it's your mindset and your mentality.

Like if you just are in the right mindset, you win the game. It's just a game. Like business is a game and winning these accolades and these awards just helps build your confidence if that's all it does is build your confidence so you can sell your product better so you can speak more confidently to your customers and be happier when you talk about your business so people believe in you more.

Like that's what it's all about, you know? Absolutely man. Put it on your business card, put the little logo on your business card, put it on your brochure, put it on the cars, like whatever. It came with a little medallion just like our best of the city does. And so yeah, I might go ahead and put it on the cars like,

I don't know, it sounds fun. So yeah, We'll put it on our Website. It's fun. Like this stuff makes it worth the struggle, worth the hassle. Like I'd rather it be getting this stuff at the end of the day rather than being like, man, I worked another 12 hour day. Like I'm not working 12 hour days. You guys like,

I hope you're not either, but you should get to that point. You know, Brandon's like recording this podcast on a beach in North Carolina. Granted it's about to be hit by a hurricane, but it's still pretty cool that he is recording using starlink in a fancy travel trailer. Like this is, I don't know, part lifestyle, design part, whatever.

But like these are the things that that get you there. It's fun. It's, this is like, this is a good episode. This isn't like, you gotta think about all these problems and how to overcome them. This is interesting. And I think, yeah, it goes back to this is like part of the overall system we've been building, right?

And like the social proof and the marketing is just one aspect that we've, we've integrated into it but it's, it's like everything, you know, stacked on top of each other is I think what's helped get us to this point. But it's true, like once you build that system, you know a Corby says it never changes. Our mentor in Denver,

like we, we evolve and innovate stuff as we go, but that system, I was actually just talking to another entrepreneur yesterday, she was like, that's the magic word she said systems. And if you guys build these systems then it becomes a lot easier to win these awards because you're efficient and you're delivering a great product and it's a great experience for people and it just compounds and it just grows so much faster.

It's, it's like, and these awards become a lot easier to win. Your brand becomes more known in the community and it just becomes like easier guys. It's actually harder in the beginning I feel like, to get everything. And then once a few of these awards are won, once you get out in your community enough people know who you are, people are gonna associate you with success and they wanna work with you and it,

you almost don't have to, like Brandon said, we've turned down our ad spend like, but we're still getting tons of customers because we've built that presence and we've dominated the market and so we're gonna continue doing that. But I think it just goes to show like that's why it's so hard to put in the hard work up front and to keep going and to not give up and be consistent because we could have given up like 20 times or more over the last few years.

Right. You know? But no Man, I Mean you just keep going. No, of course those awards, I mean some of those things you said, I think definitely like the locomotive metaphor that's still there. Like it definitely gets easier as it goes on and the systems thing is clutch. Like that's the courses that we sell at Profit Cleaners dot com are trying to like teach you our systems or at least give you some inspiration to systematize it how you want to do it.

But you know, we've said in past episodes, like we're looking at a couple places for expansion and we've been kind of hush hush on that, but we'll have more info on that soon. But there's a couple cities that we're looking at and one of the big to-do lists before we open a second location is to really get the systems honed in on our end.

And they are, they're working, it's good, but I'm talking about I need to have someone in a different state look at this procedure and know how to do it after watching two videos without asking questions. Like that's the type of stuff that we're trying to dial in. Same thing with our customer experience software. And that's been a beast. Like we're,

that's still ongoing all the time. But yeah man, keep packing away it and this is part of it. So yeah man, I'll take number six all day, I'm coming for like number three or number two next year. Like that's our mentality. I'm coming back for it. I don't know if we're gonna have 2300% growth next year, but maybe those guys won't apply and it'll be someone else.

Yeah man, that's a huge part of it. Just keep showing up when other people don't and you know, just don't give in, don't give up. Like when you're in the arena doing this, like putting in your all in working hard and even if you fall on your face, I mean like at least you're in the game, you know, like,

and get, just get back up and keep going like nobody cares. Like just keep going. It's a game. If you look at it that way, it gets a lot more fun. And then winning these kind of awards, like you said, Brandon, this is the fun part. It's slicing on the cake and it's just like, it's like getting that medal after you went to the Olympics or like you worked for years and years and years and you finally did it and you,

you gotta keep that success, you gotta put that up on your wall and it's, it is bragging rights but it's also, it's a chance to bring in more money because so many more people wanna work with successful businesses. So, so anyways guys, that's, I think that's the point of the show is just find some really cool ways to get involved in your community where you can build this social proof,

where you can get recognized in whatever way possible. Start small, get in a magazine, get on the news somehow, like create a story, create value in your community and just start building. This is a great way to think of it. Facts tell and story sell. So start thinking of a really good story that you can create in your community that will get you in the community.

It'll get you out a story, get you if you have a best of the city in your town. If you have a fastest growing company award in your town, go out there and apply for it. And if you don't get it this year, like what Brandon said, we applied for years and we didn't get it until yeah, just recently, you know,

so we just kept trying, just kept showing up. So that's what it's all about guys. So, but yeah, just hopefully this encourages you guys to keep doing that. So Yeah, I mean I think that's it. So I mean keep at it. You win an award at the end, but we've talked about it in the past too. I mean,

news outlets need stories. So if there is no fastest growing company thing in your, yeah, neck of the woods, there's Always a way just Hit up a news station, hit up a newspaper that's locally and say, Hey, I'm this company, I've done this. I think it's pretty cool. Should we do it? And then see what they tell you.

Just go do something in your community of that's helping somebody. Just go clean a bunch of people in your community that need help. Go clean their houses in the community. Like just go do an impactful things and people will want to tell that story and your brand will be associated with that story that changes people's lives and really stirs their emotions and makes 'em say,

wow, like I want that company to come clean my house. You know? Yeah. So start thinking of it that way. Yeah, there's been one on Reddit that's been blowing up lately. It's just an individual, but this person on Reddit had struggled with depression and like one of the side effects of, you know, severe depression is that I don't,

your house just goes by the wayside. It gets all cluttered and hoardy and so they bounced out of it and as a service they are cleaning other people's houses that suffer from the same thing for free. And they put these posts up on Reddit of before and afters. There's no company, they're not advertising anything, it's just them trying to say like, I'm doing this for the rest of the year as a way to help other people that were in my situation.

Cuz you know, like maybe you get out of it one day mentally and you're like, oh man, now I have this like mountain of a mess to clean up and that puts you right back in it. So yeah man, do something like that. It's good stuff, man. This is a, any publicity is good publicity sort of scenario I think.

And yeah, go for it. Absolutely. So, all right guys, I think that's pretty much it. We're really excited about the growth we're having. We're, we're hoping you guys get inspired to continue the growth in your businesses. And if you're getting any value outta the show, if we've inspired you in any way, if we've given you new ideas,

new thoughts, new inspiration, made you laugh, made you smile, whatever it is, please share the show. Let other people know, leave us a review, we need some new reviews, so please help us out guys, get the word out. That's how we grow the show organically without running a bunch of annoying ads. Which if you guys don't start helping us,

we're gonna have to start running these annoying ads for it. Just kidding. Nah, they won't be annoying. They'll be super awesome ads. Yeah, That'll be awesome. But yeah, guys, like Brandon said, if you guys need systems, check out our courses. If you guys need to help, reach out. Hello at Profit Cleaners dot com.

Ask a question, let us know. A show or an episode you want to hear. I think that's pretty much it, Brandon. Okay. Keep it clean. Keep it clean. Thanks for joining us today. To get more info, including show notes, updates, trainings, and super cool free stuff, head over to Profit Cleaners dot com and remember,

keep it clean.