Episode 167: Overcoming Fear to Thrive in a Competitive Market

Episode 167: Overcoming Fear to Thrive in a Competitive Market

Brandon Schoen:
Don't be stuck in this limiting belief of like, oh my gosh, how am I going to stand? How am I going to start a cleaning business? There's already lots of cleaning businesses. Just know, guys, there's so many opportunities, right? Look at all the problems. Try these services, you'll see the problems. There's lots of problems with, with a lot. Most of these companies, they don't do things very well. They don't have systems. So this is an opportunity. Problems are opportunities. As entrepreneurs, you're a professional problem solver and you should see all those issues with other brands as wow. Opportunities that we could do better.

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

Welcome back, everybody. What's going on? You're at the right place to be growing your cleaning business.

The Profit Cleaners Podcast, the only place where you can grow with the top 1% of cleaning business owners from around the world. I'm your host, Brandon Shane. I'm joined by my amazing co host, Brandon Condrey in the house. Welcome back, Brandon. Great to see you today. Here I am and we're going to be talking all about something really fun, which is having an abundance mindset and kind of overcoming some limiting beliefs that we've heard a lot from you guys on strategy calls over the last year or two.

And so basically, let's just dive right into it. A lot of you guys have been asking, hey, should I start a cleaning business? Because there's already a hundred cleaning businesses in my town, you know, do we need another cleaning business? Will I be able to succeed when there's already other people doing it? And another question we get asked all the time on our coaching calls, guys, is, you know, hey, if somebody else in my market is working with you guys in Southern California or Ontario, am I going to be able to be successful if they have the same knowledge as me?

If they have the profit cleaner systems, am I going to be able to succeed if somebody else is already doing it? So those are kind of some limiting beliefs. We hear some questions. We hear from you guys often. So let's get into it, Brandon, and then let's share kind of what we think about that. Brandon, how many strategy calls do you think you've done since we started our Profit Cleaners?

Hundreds at least. Cause we've been doing these for years now and kind of the last couple years, yeah, like some weeks it's 30 calls a week we're doing. So there's Hundreds of you out there that have talked to Brandon, Shane and then eventually me on the pricing side of things. And the reality is what you're dealing with in cleaning is it's called a fragmented market. That's what it is in terms of like an economics term.

And all it really means is that there's a lot of people doing the same thing in the same area. So some examples of that are like coffee shops, restaurants, you know, cleaning companies. So there's multiple people doing the same things. Why does that exist? You can't have one company doing it all. Like they're. We operate in Albuquerque and Santa Fe and Los Alamos. I think the combined population of those three cities is something like 1.3

million people, something like that. A lot of you have this target in mind, which is seven figures. I want to build a seven figure cleaning business. I want to get to a million dollars in revenue. People are shocked when we tell them the math on how to get there. Let's assume you have a customer. Your average invoice is 200 bucks. They're going to get cleaned every two weeks.

That's 26 times a year. That's 5,200 bucks for every customer. Off the top of your head, how many customers is that to get to a million dollars? Like people when you ask them to do that math are like, I don't know, like a thousand. It's 193 people. You need 193 customers out of a market of hundreds of thousands, millions maybe to do it. So I want to open with that.

So you guys take this with you through this podcast that you only need 190 people to get to seven figures. And so if there are 20 cleaning companies in your area. Cool. Let's talk about those other cleaning companies. Some of them have been around for 10, 20, 40 years. Like some of the the franchises that were a big deal in the 70s, the Merry Maids, the Molly Maids, those have been around for so long.

This works in your advantage. They are entrenched, they've been around for a while, which sounds scary, but. But they are operating from way back on tech. They are doing things. We have seen cleaning companies that are doing things on carbon copy papers using a green Windows DOS old CRT monitor to track things. That's who you're competing against. So when Brandon and I started Sandia Green Clean, the thing that really tipped it all off was this Reddit post from a software company talking about how you should be competing with mom and pop businesses using modern day tech.

And that really struck a chord with us. And here we are, you know, running a multi seven figure business later. The idea is if you can bring a little bit of, you know, Silicon Valley into a local service business and really be tech forward, you will eclipse the competition absurdly quickly. I think we passed in terms of reviews, if you're just looking at reviews, how many reviews do you have?

I think we passed the 40 year old companies in like a year, maybe more than that. And that was because we had software in place to gather the reviews. Like we automated. We were coming at it from a millennial mindset. And some of you guys listening to this are like Gen Z, like you're even more forward on tech. There's ways to do these things that your competition is not doing.

These are baby boomer owners that are just kind of sitting there. So that's who you're up against. Maybe that makes it seem less scary. Yeah, I love that. And it's really, yeah. Putting things in perspective. Also just another example of that, the quote by Tony Robbins that I love to share, which is if you want success, Tony Robbins says, if you want success in business and life, find somebody that has the results you want to achieve, model the results, copy what they're doing and you'll achieve the same results and you'll save 10 years of the time figuring out on your own and spinning your own wheels and procrastinating and taking forever.

Right. And so a real example of this was, you know, when we started out modeling these systems in the very beginning, the person that we modeled took, you know, 10, 20 years to build the business that we did it in a year or two. Right. So that's a perfect example of compressing time. Right. If you take something that's already working, this is why we have the profit cleaners.

It's already in place, it's already working. We've spent the last eight years of our own time continuing to revamp and optimize these systems. So if you guys hit the ground running with something that's already working and you're modeling that, first of all, it should give you a tremendous amount of confidence and clarity on what to take action on, which is the biggest thing you need to be doing is taking massive action.

But it will also just help you guys identify where you can stand out in your market too. Because that's another part of this is, you know, and we'll get more into this I think later in the podcast here, but find your examples of your competitors weaknesses, right? Those are the ways you can stand out and differentiate yourself. Create a unique proposition in your market that no one else is doing.

Or like we've talked about maybe on past shows, creating your own blue ocean, which means instead of fighting over the scraps where everyone else is doing the same thing, create your own blue ocean. Blue ocean strategy. There's a book you guys can go out, pick up and read. It talks all about this, but it's essentially think outside the box, take what's working, but put your own spin on it.

Create your own blue ocean and then it's new. It's not the same as everybody else. So. And there's other ways to do this, but I think another really good example maybe Brandon, tell them about the gas station example because this is something I learned in business school years ago. But I think this is an interesting approach too. So the real world examples that gas stations are all located on the same corners of the same intersection.

So they're not spreading out. So they're not avoiding the competition, they're embracing the competition by co locating like right across the street. So more businesses in a concentrated area attracts more customers. So if there's four gas stations on a corner and you're pulling up to one and there's a big line of people because that gas station has the cheapest gas, well, maybe you're in a hurry and you're now you don't care about the cheapest gas, you care about the time.

So I don't care that it's this much cheaper than the one across the street. I need to get out of here and to my meeting or whatever. So you go to the one across the street. That only works because there were multiple of them. That's the idea. So just by virtue of there being multiple cleaning businesses already in the place that your market, that you're already there, that means that they have built the market for you.

There are already people talking about house cleaning in advertising, educating potential customers and now you're just going to jump on and try and stand out from the competition. That sounds daunting. I need to stand out from the competition. But I don't think it's that hard when you do what Brandon said earlier, which is trying to research the pitfalls of your competitors and you do that by calling them, talk to them on the phone, see how they are on the phone.

Some of them are annoyed that you made their phone ring. That guy's not your competition. Like some of them will fight with people in the reviews. Go read the reviews. Read the 1 star reviews. Cool. We know that we shouldn't be doing that. Like that's what Brandon and I did. When we started looking, we started looking at competition, reading one star reviews, people fighting with customers and reviews about now we didn't steal that.

You're framing us like just silly, silly things. Yeah, it's actually like Brandon said, much easier than you guys think. A lot of us have these limiting beliefs. Once again, you're just like, oh man, they've been in business for 30 years longer than me. How could I compete? It's a franchise or it's, they've just had way more experience than me. Guys, change that limiting belief, that scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset of there's more than enough for everybody.

There's more than enough to go around for sure. And I'll tell you guys, another quick side note. When we started, we had competition, what we thought was competition when we started doing these things, we got a lot of the customers from our competition because our competition wasn't really competition. They were just making people mad and people wanted a better experience. So they came over to us. And so when you guys understand these things, you create a better container, you know, your customers, a better experience to make them feel great about working with you, wanting to stick with you and get that retention up.

But yeah, like it's really as simple as that. Call your competition, use their services, try it out, see how it is, see if they even get back to you or respond to you and see how they make you feel. And what you'll notice is there really is not much competition, guys, if any. And when you do the things we're talking about, you dominate the market. You don't compete, you dominate.

And there really isn't competition because you guys are doing things so differently. Like you're six months, you're a year ahead of the competition if there is any competition, because they're not doing these things, they're not thinking about these approaches and they're not, they might have an abundance mindset. So they're probably making their customers, their prospects feel horrible. It's probably a bad experience and it's going to be really easy for you to just expose those weaknesses.

Take the things they're not doing. Well, if they don't answer the phone right away, if they don't get back to people, if they show up late, if they use bad products, if they don't have insurance, if they. All these things that you could go through that people don't like, make those your strengths. That's how you add value and stand out is just by doing things better than what everyone else is doing, which is just mediocre.

Right. So the gas station example is awesome. I always say that too. Like if there's other cleaning businesses in the market, that is the demand. That's proof there's demand. And if you just get in front of that demand, people are already looking for it. So they're going to. They're already spending the money. Just get in front of them and have that mindset, you know. Not only do you not know the best tactics for your market, but it's also all too easy to waste money and get zero results.

Once we started working with Tidy youy Sales, all of this changed. We saved time on following up with customers so we can close more leads. We now have total control of our marketing system so we know 100% what's working for our market. And best of all, the team at Tidy youy Sales is incredibly knowledgeable and they'll work with you one to one to show you what works so you get results fast.

To learn more about working with the incredible team at Tidy your sales, go to profitcleaners.com tidy your sales that's profitcleaners.com tidyour sales right now. Another question we get often is like, what if there's already someone who bought the Profit Cleaners coaching and course already in my market? I'm going to point you back to the numbers from before your market. If someone's already there and bought it, that means that it's probably a good size city.

So from the beginning, if you recall, how many customers do you need to get the seven figures? 193 people. So a small city has what, 50,000 people, do you think you could capture 190 of them's attention, you know, to build your business? Yep. And if it was in a city of over 500,000, 10 times that size, can you get 190? For sure. In those bigger cities it's actually interesting because you might be able to focus on just like a neighborhood, like the guy who bought the course or is across the other side.

They're focusing on the northern suburbs. Well, you're not in there, you're on the south. You can do it over here. Like there is more than enough room to go around. And then ideally you guys just, you're going to know each other anyway if you're in the Profit Cleaner system because we have this Facebook group where people talk on the back end but you can refer business back and forth to each other.

Maybe you're maxed out one week, call this guy. He does something very similar. You know, maybe you could use him instead. And I think it's a good idea to kind of keep a open sort of line of communication with your competition in general. Yeah. If anything, you guys, again, just going back to the abundance mindset is there's more than enough. And if you do have someone in your market that has similar knowledge, go mastermind with them, go collaborate with them.

Go say, like, you're in my market. Let's find, like, that's actually what a lot of the top owners of companies do in the same market. They meet up and they play golf and they, they go get lunch together and they hang out. And not every industry does that. But I'm saying a lot of the players that are at the top, that's what they do because they don't have that mindset, that limiting mindset.

They're like, abundance, how can we help each other? I'm doing this. What can I do to help you? And you can do this to help me. Everybody helps each other grow. And so ultimately, yeah, we don't need a lot of customers to achieve massive goals. There's more than enough for everybody. And if there is someone in your market that has those, the same knowledge, like iron sharpens iron, you probably learned something from each other and be able to expand the market together and grow together.

So I think all those things are great opportunities for you, really. One other thing I want to talk about is the 8020 principle. That's the title of a book called the 8020 Principle, but it's also called the Pareto principle. But essentially you can analyze any data set. 80% of results come from 20% of inputs, or 80% of problems come from 20% of your customers that complain all the time.

So if you view your fragmented market from an 8020 position. So 80% of customers are probably being serviced by 20% of the cleaning businesses that are in that market. Focus on those as the competition. Those are the ones that people are actually using and they're liking. Read the reviews. What do they like? We're going to duplicate what they like. What don't they like? We're going to stand out from that.

What can we do to differentiate it? Focus, Offer something they don't do. Like Sandia Green Clean is a fantastic company. I love what we built. But we specifically avoid doing certain things because it doesn't fit into our business model. We specifically avoid folding laundry, doing dishes, washing windows. If you guys want to offer that in your market, to stand out, then figure out how to make it fit into the systematized cleaning approach.

How can you fold laundry without it being a huge delay? What's the upsell to doing that? Can you offer washing dishes without it being a pain? Maybe like, we're staying in our lane. But that doesn't mean that you guys have to follow exactly what we're doing. There are ways to stand out inside of your market. So we want to get you into the 20% that's servicing 80% of the customers.

And you can even drill that down, like we talked about before, into a neighborhood. Like there's five companies that come out to this neighborhood and they're all terrible. Well, shoot, man, if you start with a good customer service mindset and a way to deal with these objections out of the gate, boom, you're at the 20% right away. Because people do not want to deal with the old school person that will only talk to you on the phone.

One of the things that we do is we're going to talk to you however you talk to us. If you reached out to us on a social direct message, we're going to do the sales process through social. We'll text you, we'll email you, we'll phone call you, we'll do whatever. But there are a lot of companies that are not going to do that. You can't text a phone line to a cleaning franchise that's been in the same place since 1975.

They cannot receive texts on that line. So they may be missing out on business all the time that they don't even know they're missing out on because people are trying to text them. Because the Gen Z, the millennials of us, assume you can text any phone number on earth and you will get a reply. But in some cases they don't know. They don't know that they're missing out.

So jump on those kinds of opportunities and once you start digging into it and looking around, those little nooks and crannies are all over the place. Guys, just off the top of my head, there's probably so many more than this, but just some immediate ways that you guys can stand out, differentiate yourself, be vastly more compelling in your market, would be, number one, don't just think about the cleaning.

What is the experience? Right when you think about how you make people feel from the time they hit your website, to how you answer the phone, to how you follow up with them, to how you interact and communicate, send reminders, show up to the clean with professional looking uniforms and equipment, and Follow ups and nurturing on the back end and whatever else you're doing, right? How do you make people feel if you can get people to say, wow, the cleaning was great, but like, there was something about that company that was just awesome.

Like, and we all know, we've been in companies and businesses where you feel like this. You're just like, man, this place has happened and there's some culture here. People love being here. That's what you're trying to create. So that's the biggest way to differentiate yourself is customer experience. Service is senior to sales. It's how you make people feel. Right? But also something that nobody else can compete with you on is your story.

You have a unique story. You have a unique. Nobody can be you, right? As much as there might be other people in the world that are doing what you're doing, nobody can be you. Nobody has your exact story. Your family, your experiences, your memories, all the things that have made you you. So tell that story. Another great quote from my coach, Ed Milet. He says facts tell and stories sell.

So tell not just the facts about, oh, we're going to clean your house and do, you know, telling people just the features, tell them the benefits, tell them, you know, ultimately why they're going to be doing this. Tell the story of why you're doing the cleaning business. Here's. By working with us, you're also helping the community because we have this community initiative. We have this story, we have this bigger impact, this bigger thing we're doing.

When people see that story, they resonate with your story. They're going to be like, I like this story. I like this a lot more than everyone else out there. That's just mediocre. No story, just cleaning feels very generic versus when you have that story and that experience. People are like, wow, this is amazing. I want to be part of something great. And that's how you do it, guys.

That's how you differentiate on those, those areas. So, yeah, there you go. I mean, I think, like, don't shy away from it just because someone else is doing it. Lean into it. If someone else is doing it, that means someone. There's an audience for it. Someone is paying for that service. So you just want to get a chunk of the pie. And then over time, you learn that market.

You stand out and you become one of the top players. That's exactly what we did. The cleaning companies we're competing against in Albuquerque have been in business for decades in some cases, and we surpassed all of them. You know, there's no magic formula to it. We just came out and did the work, we did the reps, we adjusted along the way. This isn't a set it and forget it system.

You try something, it didn't work. Cool. We're not going to offer that anymore. Like, no one bought the folding laundry service. Let's switch to something else. You know what I mean? Like, that's what you got to do. Yeah. And at the same note, guys, like, the reason we don't do certain things is because you want to streamline your business. And if you start offering everything to everyone, it dilutes the experience, right?

Because you don't have great systems, you don't have great execution of what you're doing. So focus, right? Have laser focus. You guys will do much better. If you're not trying to do please everyone and trying to do everything for everyone, that makes you less effective, right? So focus on something you can do really, really well, don't it? Better than everyone else. Provide a superior experience and tell your story and connect with people, right?

And. But ultimately, don't be, you know, stuck in this limiting belief of like, oh, my gosh, how am I going to stand? How am I going to start a cleaning business? There's already lots of cleaning businesses. Just know, guys, there's so many opportunities, right? Look at all the problems. Try these services. You'll see the problems. There's lots of problems with. With a lot of most of these companies, they don't do things very well.

They don't have systems. So this is an opportunity. Problems are opportunities. As entrepreneurs, you're a professional problem solver, and you should see all those issues with other brands as, wow, opportunities that we could do better, opportunities that we could create a better experience. And when you guys start thinking that way, all of those limiting beliefs kind of just melt away. And you're like, all you see is opportunity.

Especially for whatever reason in these markets. Brandon. The service markets, I feel like, are just so untapped for bringing in this new technology, bringing in these new experience that we're talking about. That's just like an old. That's a bunch of old business owners out there that are not doing these things that you guys can really step in and kick it up a notch like Emeril would, you know?

So, yeah, so there you go. Hopefully you got some value out of that. If you are getting value out of it, please share the show. Share it with someone that you think will learn some things. You can always leave us a review on whatever podcasting app you're listening to. And then, of course, you can work with us. You can work with us by going to profitcleaners.commasterclass and fill out that form.

And then you can jump on a strategy call and we can see how we can help you put some of these things we talked about today into action. Love it. Love it. So, yeah, guys, get out there, take massive action, remove the fear and the limiting beliefs because it's so much opportunity out there. So we'll see you guys on the next episode. 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 profitcleaners. Com and remember, keep it clean.