Episode 101: Becoming a Post-Recession Millionaire

Episode 101: Becoming a Post-Recession Millionaire

Brandon Condrey:
If you've got the liquid capital to spend during a recession, you can pick up a entire business for pennies on the dollar that is just trying to get out. You're talking about the building they're in all the assets they own, desks, computers, all that stuff. And then now that's all yours. And you did it for pennies on the dollar. We're not necessarily saying that you, the listener who wants to start a cleaning company has a pile of cash somewhere and you're waiting for the mom and pop cleaning company down the street to fold so you can like swoop in and pick it up. The point is, you don't need a lot of capital to start a cleaning company. It's not capital intensive. If you really wanted to, you started how Corby did you run it out of your garage at your house using your personal vehicle. That's how you start it. The key to a service company like this with low capital investment is that you have to deliver on the service.

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 win and take it to the next level.

All that good stuff guys, I messed up the intro there, but you know what? We're gonna keep going. We Need a new intro anywhere. We need a catchphrase, We we need something more catchy. But you know what guys? That's why we're here. We're constantly innovating. We're constantly making things new and better for you. And thank you guys for being here on the Profit Cleaners today.

Guys, we are going to be taking it to the next level and winning actually, because we're gonna be talking about how you can be winning in a time like this in the craziest time of of our economy that maybe some of us have seen in a long time. We're gonna talk about how more people are gonna become millionaires during this time and we're gonna share some examples with you.

We're gonna share some ideas with you and share with the cleaning business, which is even more exciting. So why the cleaning business fits that model, I think perfectly. And it's just gonna be a really exciting episode today guys, how you can kind of take the doom and gloom in the world as they say, and turn it doom and boom as I like to say,

Doom and boom. You still want it to be doom Though. Well, you know, sometimes you can't always change the doom in the world because that's just what they like to do out there. But we're gonna change it. See, that's the beauty of of being an entrepreneur. That's why I like making my own reality. And a lot of us can use those external factors and just like focus on them.

But what I prefer to do, and I think as entrepreneurs, that's the amazing gift we have is our vision. We can change that and we create our own internal reality and change that for the for the good and really reflect that back into the world. So anyways guys, it should be a positive episode today. I know it's kind of a gloomy type scenario out there,

but we're here to change that for you guys. Let's jump into it Brandon. Sure. All right, so here's our premise. The best time to start a business is during or after recession. And that more millionaires are minted than their time in American history. So why is that? Yeah, Why is that? I mean, doesn't that sound like counterintuitive?

Like when I first first heard that and I still am thinking of it and I'm like how is that even possible that millionaires and huge companies could have been started out of these times? And so I think the best way that I found it explained was not everyone suffered during the Great Depression during a lot of these downturns in recessions over literally like every 10 or 20 years of our life.

There's some type of recession, there's some 2008, 2009 was the last one, right? Brandon. So 2008, 2009 was the last organic recession, if you want to call it that. But realistically, 2020 was an on the books recession. But that was essentially forced because of all the lockdowns. It wasn't because of economic conditions, it was because we turned everything off overnight.

So slightly different. But from an economic standpoint, I believe that means the definition of recession. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean that's like happening all the time. It's like nothing new guys. So get excited because like that's when there's opportunities. And so that's what I was looking, finishing reading here is opportunities that were not present. For example, during the 1920s economic boom times all those opportunities became available that were not available prior to that.

And it's usually a good time to start a business because startup costs are lower right after a recession. There's a boom. There's also a lot of entrepreneurs like us, like what we're talking about right now where you can position yourself and you can edge yourself into a position when the climate approves and improves the economy. You can be in a really good position just by thinking ahead and not slowing down,

but actually preparing yourself for what's to come, which is the opportunity. And so during the depression, there's a lot of really poorly run businesses. Kinda like right now there's a lot of poorly run service businesses and cleaning businesses out there that are going to completely be obliterated. They're gonna be selling for fire sale prices are next to nothing. Real estate always takes a hit during these times.

So there's gonna be tons of opportunities If you've been waiting to buy a property or something like that for your business, there's also car prices are coming down. There's all court sorts of cool stuff. So I mean, just think of the opportunities of how you could be using that to leverage your business right now. That's kind of what I start thinking when I look at that.

There's so many good examples like just start listing some of those examples Brandon of what are some of these businesses over the last hundred years that have come out of these crazy times that we still use a lot of these businesses and products today? Yeah, most of these are still around. Yeah, so General Motors was founded in 1907. That was during a recession.

Kentucky Fried Chicken was founded in the date when it started here, but by 1937 he'd had 152 seat restaurant by popular demand. So that's a couple examples. Hewlett Packard got started during a recession in 1937. Electrical engineers started a machine business and rented a garage. And obviously HP's not a big deal I think cuz it used to be like there was definitely a time when everyone I knew had a Hewlett Packard computer,

the old like white boxy kind. But they were huge. I used to actually work at Hewlett Packard as one of my first jobs outta college. Some of you didn't know that, but I did corporate sales. They always hammered that story, man. It was really fun to learn about actually the history of that company. But two guys in a garage,

it was like this famous little tiny house in the the garage. They started out of 500 bucks they had. And that just goes to show guys innovation comes out of crazy times, out of garages, I mean out of things that you would never expect. So let that encourage you and open your mind a little bit. There's a bunch in this section we have here that we're all post Korean war recession.

So there was a recession after the Korean War in the 1950s and things that opened up during that time were Burger King, Hyatt Hotel Trader Joe's. And then moving on from that, like MailChimp was opened in the.com busk in 2001, Microsoft being founded during the oil embargo in 1973, which incidentally was in Albuquerque. No one knows that Microsoft actually started in Albuquerque and Bill Gates tried to get the city to give him some tax break on something cuz it was gonna be a big deal.

And they told him no and then he went to Seattle. Man, I know I, we still drive by that little office sometimes in the Albuquerque. It's in this really ghetto part of town and you're like, I can't believe get Bill Gates. There's A plaque on it, right? Isn't there a little plaque on the outside that was like Bill Gates started Microsoft in this building in 1973.

Yeah, so it's totally unassuming, unexpected guys. But that's again where a lot of this stuff comes is when you're not expecting. So the point of the list is that lots of big, very well known companies that were very successful were started during recessions. So the overall message of why you wanna start during recession is that we had a boom, everyone made a bunch of money,

things got inflated and then stuff crashed. There's a market correction. Well when that happens, the companies are very well organized, have some savings for rainy days, have good management under it. Those are the ones that survive. You pivot during those times and you figure it out. We just saw this happen during the pandemic and the ones that are ignoring all that are the ones that fold all of a sudden suddenly you're outta money cuz you can't buy X,

Y, z, whatever. And that's what Brandon was talking about earlier is that if you've got the liquid capital to spend during a recession, you can pick up a entire business for pennies on the dollar that is just trying to get out. So you're talking about the building they're in all the assets they own desk computers, all that stuff, and then that's all yours.

And you did it for pennies on the dollar. We're not necessarily saying that you, the listener who wants to start a cleaning company has a pile of cash somewhere and you're waiting for the mom and pop cleaning company down the street to fold so you can like swoop in and pick it up. The point is, you don't need a lot of capital to start a cleaning company.

So it's not capital intensive. If you really wanted to, you started how Corby did and you run it out of your garage at your house using your personal vehicle. That's how you start it. And the key to a service company like this with low capital investment is that you have to deliver on the service. And so that's what we're trying to impart to you here is that you can survive and thrive and start during a recession if you just think creatively about it.

Most people are not gonna think about that. People hear the word recession, they freak out and they're like, great, I have to work 10 more years at my super crappy corporate job until my 401K comes back up to the level that it used to be before the recession. And I know a lot of people that think that way. I don't think you have to do that.

You don't have to necessarily be tied to something that's a really good time to bail. Absolutely. And man, if I had worked most of my life right at this point and I had a 401K and it was all tied up in something like that, I would be itching to get that out and to start a business right now because that's all just so much riskier.

I swear. Like I don't understand why people put so much faith in the markets and all this stuff that's controlled by another company, another set of people that you never even talked to. Instead take back control. Start something that you do control, start something that you have responsibility and full control of, which is a business and that's what's gonna change the whole game for you guys instead of just relying on your stocks or your index fund or whatever.

I mean that's great if you have some extra money laying around, but to really change your life and really change the game, it's, it's gonna be a business. Yeah. Brandon and I are obviously biased here. We have a successful cleaning company. Why we want you to have a successful cleaning company. That's why we have this podcast. We're not financial advisors,

certified financial advisors. I think almost all of them tell you to keep some money in a retirement account with stocks. We're not saying you gotta, you don't have to abandon your retirement plans. Like you can still put money away into a savings set up. I think that's good. I very, I've talked about this before, but I closed my retirement account to start this business.

The money came out of that to help fund our startup costs here. And so if you wanna go for it, go for it. I mean it worked out for us in the end, it can work out for you too. So I think what we're trying to get at here is you don't have to just go with the flow. I mean there are not a lot of successful business owners by definition because most people are not comfortable with that level of risk.

We're trying to get you comfortable with that level of risk if you are the one who's gonna put a lot of intention and effort into making it work, especially during a recession, which is what we're talking about now. There are many, many others that are not gonna do that. They will either not start at all or they'll be the ones that crater during the recession.

They'll curl up and into the fetal position and whine about stuff. That's not what we're advocating for you. We're advocating for you to meet the challenge head on and you gotta roll with the punches to be a good business leader. Otherwise it's gonna turn you into just like this little ball of stress and anxiety and stuff. And that's not the path to success.

You just gotta, yeah man, it's not gonna go smoothly. You're gonna, you're definitely gonna take a hit several times while running a business. You can overcome all that. None of it is a death sentence. You just keep rolling. Once some of our best teachings and live coaching for free, we've got you covered. Join our private Facebook group where you'll learn how to overcome your biggest challenges as a cleaning business owner so that you can become one of the top 1% of cleaning business owners in the world.

Don't miss out on all of the value we're giving away for free in this group. Request access to join for free now by visiting Profit Cleaners dot com slash facebook. That's Profit Cleaners dot com slash facebook. That's what's funny is a lot of people fear like what if something happens or goes wrong? But the truth is guys, most likely you're not gonna lose your life here.

Okay, you're starting a business, it might go a little awry here and there, but you're gonna get better. You're gonna get stronger, you're gonna get more skills that you learn from doing something. You're gonna become a lot more confident and happier with that confidence. And so that's really what I think one of the best things that have started. There's so many good things when you start a business,

but just to get back on our points here, like what are the best businesses to start in a time like this and whatever you want to call it. Some think it's a recession, some don't think it's, and now we're coming out of it. Nobody really knows. It's all over the place. But the point is, inflation's super high right now.

Things are crazy in the economy. So what are the good businesses to start? Is a cleaning business a good one to start at all? And I would say absolutely it is one of the best, like something in the service business for sure. But the cleaning business as we know it, cause we know the details of it, is an amazing business to start right now because of what Brandon said just a second ago.

It has low capital cost to start it and grow it and scale that business. Unlike a lot of businesses that I've even been a part of. I for example, starting an Amazon business right now where you're private labeling and you're shipping thousands of units of inventory and you're sitting on inventory and there's supply chain issues and all this stuff, that would be a horrible business to start right now,

right? Because it takes a lot of money upfront to get it going. You're risking a ton of money just having it out there floating around and not being able to control what's going on with the product. That would be a really bad business to start right now. Anything that is high capital takes a ton of capital to start up. If you were starting a big software company or something right now,

something that takes a ton of resources, those are bad businesses to start right now. But a cleaning business is very low. Capital costs to start in a nutshell. Brandon, how much does it cost? It's not very much and we could spend a lot more time going into those numbers, but just compared to most businesses, it's very, very little.

I think next to like a franchise fee, they all have, it depends on what franchise you're going with. You know, I don't know, we were talking, you know, probably six figures to get like a cleaning franchise and those have been around for a long time. So you either have to go with a new one that's unproven or someone's gotta sell the one that they've already been doing.

If you go with some other business, like Subway notoriously has the lowest franchise fee of any franchise of any kind. It's 10,000 bucks, but that all that gets you is operating a subway. You still have to get a building and employees and equipment and stuff. And then because Subways kinda shady, that franchise fee gets you like there's subways across the street from each other.

Like there's just so many of them Cause they don't give you exclusive territory. So, and the point of the franchise model is that they control stuff and you don't. And so that's kind of a, you don't have full control over the business. So anytime someone tells me they're a business owner, like especially when it's an MLM and you want to be a little,

maybe a little confrontational about it, I always ask him like, oh cool, what's the name? And you're like, whatever. I sell these essential oils. Like cool, can you change the name of the business? No, you don't own the business really if you can't change the name. Like it's a really simple thing. So, but yeah,

for cost wise for cleaning companies, man, I don't know if you're using a car that you already have and you're gonna put some magnets on it with a car topper and some stuff, call it 5,000 bucks to get like the website up and your first batch of equipment. Yeah, I mean it's, we're talking, you could probably reduce to the ridiculous and get it down to hundreds of dollars if you guys wanted to get ridiculous.

But I mean like for a few thousand bucks you can get everything you need to start a cleaning business, getting your first customers be in business and quickly growing from there. And that's the, that's the key is quickly being able to scale that without a lot more resources, which is once you've got enough customers, you buy some more microfibers and some more simple gear and you hire some more people and those people are paying for themselves because they're delivering the product and service.

They're not a huge added upfront cost, it's, it's kind of folded into the product. So it really is a low cost business to start and scale during a time like this, which is exactly where we're talking about. It fits that model. And more importantly, I would say the businesses that are gonna thrive, that always thrive are the ones that just like we always talk about on the podcast guys,

they solve a problem. They fill a hole and a fill a need for people that they're needing solved. Usually it's something that they hate doing. And usually it's something that saves people time, which this business does all of those things for people. And so there's a lot of service businesses that could do that for people. I, I think of landscaping and the bug guy and the plumbing guy and like,

you know, there's all these things that people pay for around their house that they just absolutely hate doing that they don't have time to do. But cleaning is absolutely one of those things. And I know we spend it as a luxury service sometimes Brandon, but let's face it right now during these times when people are just like stressed out and inundated with bad news all the time and negative stuff happening in the world,

like what a cool gift that you're giving people by helping them enjoy their home even more. Oh, there you go. That's that's, that's the marketing pitch that Shane just gave you right there. So if you're having trouble trying to pitch this to someone during a recession, how do you do it? That's the commercial in all this time of financial tribulation.

Wouldn't it be nice just to come home and enjoy this? Like people have to spend their money on something. So especially when they're very anxious about things, people tend to not save as much. It's kind of a little backwards thing. It's part of behavioral economics. So when they're freaked out, they're gonna spend more money. What you're trying to do during a recession is trying to talk them into spending that money with you.

And so the way that you do that is by adding value. All of our marketing so far outside of the pandemic has been, you know, save time, spend more time with your family. If we really did pivot to like recession marketing, yeah, everyone's like anxious, like you have enough to worry about, let us take care of your clean house.

Like there's ways to pivot these things. And so I think that's your mindset compared to peoples that are not where you turtle during a recession and you're like, ah, I don't wanna, this is scary, I don't wanna do it. So if you just think about what your customer's feeling during that time, all right, how can we pick it up?

Because your competitors are definitely gonna be feeling the same thing that your customer's gonna do. And if they don't react to it, then they stagnate, they get smaller, they lay people off. Yeah. And really guys, it's just like Brandon said, we started this, this has always been our marketing end goal is giving people their time back, but even more importantly than ever,

it's like how cool is it that you're able to help create that environment in that stable area of people's lives where they're making memories and they're having kids and they're having their families and really you're making their reality better just by providing the service. And it's honestly something that they don't wanna do. They don't have time to do. So don't feel bad about selling a service like this,

especially in a, in a harder time because people need it more than ever. They need this kind of a service that they're willing to pay for it and not, yeah, no, it's not for everyone. But that's the beauty of business is not everyone is your customer. Focus on the ones that are your customers and those are the ones that are gonna pay the money to create this kind of an environment in their house and they want their house cleaned and they don't wanna do it.

So you're solving a problem and you can do it in such a way that it doesn't cost a lot of money. It's low startup cost, low capital cost. And I truly believe this is one of those businesses that many, many millionaires are gonna be coming out of this time starting cleaning businesses. So if you want to be one of those people, don't go pay a hundred thousand or 200,000 for a franchise because that's gonna eliminate the control that you have over growing your life and your legacy.

Invest in yourself, invest in your own skills, invest in your own business in something you do control and use that to change people's lives as well as your own life. And you're gonna have to do the hard work. You know, you might not have someone tell you exactly what to do, but if you invest in knowledge and mentors like what we're doing,

we'll help you. You know, like we're, that's what we're here for guys. So like you're not all alone doing this. Like there's a lot of opportunities to grow. And speaking of which, I think that kind of segues nicely into something that we can tell people Brandon that we're working on. Sure. So we're working on the updated course, there's gonna be new videos for the cleaning side of things after a lot of feedback from you guys,

but it's gonna have everything that you need to start, grow and scale a thriving seven figure cleaning business. So part of that is that we're gonna be starting a brand new business. We're gonna start a new cleaning business in a new city from scratch and we're gonna go record it step by step along the way. The good stuff, the bad stuff, all of that is gonna be in this and we want to get you excited to do it.

So if you're looking to start, you can do it along with us. But if you already have one, you can also just see what we do and maybe there's some things that you could do a little bit differently in there as well. Yeah, I think of it like this guys, if you've already got a cleaning business business, awesome. But let's just be totally transparent here.

Like even when we started our business, like there was things that we didn't build perfectly, we didn't maybe have time to do it the right way or we had to go back and fix something because we kind of built it fast and it was a little sloppy at first. Well that's just business guys. And so don't be mad at yourself, don't beat yourself up over that.

But if you've already got a business and you want to go back and make sure you've got some of the foundational pieces really built right and you wanna make sure that you're really set so you can crank some amazing numbers out in 2023 and the future to come, like that's what this is all about. So like Brandon said, we're gonna be practicing what we preach here.

We're gonna be starting another cleaning business because we believe in this business so much that we know it's how much it works. We know how much it's gonna solve a problem and we wanna show you guys like here's how we're gonna do it from the ground up. We wanna do it alongside you. We want show you guys everything we're doing all the challenges we have.

Our C F O said yesterday, he said this is gonna be like a business masterclass for people and we're gonna get kicked in the face like and you guys are gonna see it and there's gonna be a few things that happen that aren't gonna go perfectly, but that's okay. Like we want you guys to see that and see the reality of business, but also see the reality of how we overcome those challenges and get to the other side.

And that's the really exciting part. So yeah, if you guys are interested, we're working on that. We're putting it together. It's probably gonna be fully launching that business in the spring here. But if you are interested and that sounds like something at all you're interested in, like go ahead and reach out to us now. Send us an email hello at Profit Cleaners dot com and just let us know I want in or interested or anything like that.

Send us an email titled like that and we'll get you going. We'll start bringing you in on what we're doing here. There's also a page up that talks about it more in depth. It's Profit Cleaners dot com slash launch. But really guys, we're really excited because this is a huge time to be growing, to be thinking big, not thinking small and expanding instead of contracting with your mindset and just your business and everything that we're we got going forward.

So I'm really excited. Brandon, are you excited? I'm excited. You know, I get nervous. It's like going like, like Before The first day of school you get all nervous, you're gonna meet new people and whatever. Like I, you know, we did. I would like to think that what we've done here with Albuquerque and Sandia, Green Clean isn't like a fluke or a one-off.

And so we're really gonna try and prove it to you and to ourselves that we're gonna do this in another city and you guys get to see how and what happens along the way and what challenges we meet. Maybe our advertising doesn't work as well in this other place. We're gonna tweak that. You get to see all those things happen as they happen. It's gonna be super fun.

Yeah, and like we said, guys, you guys can do it alongside with us. This is really what we're doing is just compiling everything into one program because so many people were asking like, because we had different courses out there that helped people do different things, but we just wanted to put everything into one as well as everything we're doing to launch this new business.

We just wanna make it really easy for people to have everything they need is essentially what it is. So that's what this will be. This will be everything you need to launch a business, grow it, scale it. We'll still be doing the monthly coaching in these as well. But yeah, if that's something you're interested, reach out guys. Hello at Profit Cleaners dot com.

Let us know if you want in if you're interested. And get excited for the opportunity. Guys, the doom and boom that's coming out here in 2020. Doom and boom, the Doom and boom, we're getting bumper stickers made. You guys can have Some. Yeah, we're gonna boom together guys. So let's do it guys. Let's like use all these lessons in history to pivot and leverage that into something great and I'm really excited.

So we'll see you guys on the inside, reach out and until next time, 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.