Episode 149: Expert Cleaners vs. No Experience: Which Will Be More Successful?

Episode 149: Expert Cleaners vs. No Experience: Which Will Be More Successful?

Announcer:
Grow your cleaning business. Make more money, have more time. This is the profit Cleaners podcast with your hosts, Brandon Condrey and Brandon Shane.

Brandon Schoen:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the profit Cleaners podcast, the only place where you can learn from the top 1% of cleaning business owners from around the world. Take it to the next level and win. I'm your host, Brandon Shane, and I'm joined by Brandon Condrey over here.

What's going on, Brandon? You know, the usual. Just hanging out, recording stuff, running a cleaning business. I got sailboats on the brain lately. That's all my YouTube feed is. Lately is all sailboats. I love it, man. Might have to get some sailboats together. You still want the jet, right? You're going to still get the jet airplane, but I don't know, man. Erica brought up a good point that, you know, the kids can't participate if the family had a plane.

They just ride along in a cramped space, and then the fun happens wherever we get there. But with a boat, you could teach the kids to do the sailing, and then the fun is getting there, and then you have fun when you get there, too. That's a good point. I like that. Well, this is why we build businesses, guys, so we can do fun stuff, fly planes and boats and live more of your own life on your own terms.

More freedom. So let's get into it, though. I love that, man. Let's talk about a big question we get asked. People are kind of fascinated by this, I think, but it's very interesting. So people ask if you're an expert cleaner or you have no experience and you're starting a cleaning business, or you have a cleaning business, which one is going to have more success? If you're already really good at cleaning, you're already doing the cleaning, or you're kind of like Brandon and I, and you don't even know how to clean, and you don't even know what that looks like, and you're maybe not even good at cleaning, maybe not passionate about cleaning.

That's more where we reside. And I think that's a great question, Brandon. So people are fascinated by that story. We didn't get into the cleaning business, cleaning. Right. We're not really passionate about it that much. We're passionate about business and helping people. But it's an interesting question, so let's dive into it. Yeah, I mean, I think at heart, Brandon and I are just business nerds, really. Both of us had had businesses.

I think Brandon was taking. You were doing real businesses, you were making money from your businesses. You were, like, living off of your businesses. Mine were always side projects, trying to get out of my day job. I just wanted one of them to hit so I could quit. So that's the background that Brandon and I come at. Like, me and my brother had a company where we tried to use these huge touchscreen tvs and architect's office to replace printing out blueprints.

Brandon and his wife had a yoga business podcast thing for a while. You guys, Julie wrote books, and you sold books on Amazon. And so when Brandon and I met at the park, it wasn't like, hey, man, let's start a cleaning business. We both love cleaning so much. We used to play darts in my garage and drink beers and come up with dumb ideas all the time. We had a chalkboard in my garage that was full of all kinds of weird stuff.

We had, like, a tool rental library idea where you bought a really expensive tool, but you only used it once. Well, now we'll airbnb it. Like, we'll rent that tool for a day, like Home Depot does, where you pick it up at someone's house. So we were constantly just bouncing ideas off of each other. And the way that we arrived at cleaning, I think there's an episode telling the story, but I saw a Reddit post from another software company that's in the cleaning space, but they're focused on contracting, and so.

But the post was awesome because it brought up how you should take a traditional business, a service business, and compete with local mom and pop shops that have no idea what they're doing in terms of 21st century marketing. And so if you put Silicon Valley marketing after this local service business, youll take off. And then I coupled that with having used a really good cleaning company before, and I kind of knew what that looked like, and I knew that there was a hole in the market in Santa Fe, I mean, in Albuquerque.

So the business brain revealed to us that there was a hole in the market where we could be doing a lot better. Absolutely. And there was kind of, like, what you were saying, this shiny object syndrome. We were, like, thinking of all these wacky ideas, which were honestly maybe a lot more fun and appealing to talk about because it was different and it sounded really sexy and cool.

And we had a drone idea, a wedding drone, you know, picture business, photography business, like, all sorts of crazy ideas. Right? But the problem we kept coming back to was, well, we're not passionate about any of these things either, but we're also just, it's gonna cost an enormous amount of money to start or we just have no clue, like, where to start even, and what that would look like.

So, like Brandon said, we kept coming back to the cleaning business, which is not a sexy business necessarily. However, we made it sexy and we're continuing to make it sexy because we're adding new school thinking and new school strategies to an old school business model. Right. A very traditional business that kind of got stale. But like Brandon said, if you put some new wheels on it, put a new coat on it, put some new look on it, like it's in demand.

It's always in demand. It's what we call an evergreen market in the world of marketing and business. So, that being said, you know, we were definitely probably, like, where some of you guys are thinking, like, well, how am I going to start a cleaning business? I don't know how to clean. I've never cleaned before. I'm not good at cleaning. I'm not passionate about cleaning. Well, first of all, this is where I think a lot of people go wrong in business, is they think they have to start a business doing something they're really passionate about, which is sometimes good advice, but sometimes it's really bad advice.

And I think it doing something you like versus doing something you love. If you're solving a real problem, that's the biggest thing you know, and enjoy doing it, or find things in the business you enjoy doing and then delegate the rest and build your team. That's what we're always talking about. So what would you say, Brandon? Expert cleaners versus guys like us with no experience, who's going to have better success starting a cleaning business or growing business?

Like, the answer is both. Both of these businesses can succeed. All it is is in how you approach the problems. How are you going to approach the problem? So, you know, you know, Brandon and I's backstory business nerds with no cleaning experience who noticed a lack of quality cleaning. So we just applied the business knowledge to that business and it took off. We did really good with it.

And here we are in this podcast talking about it. So, you know, that's a win win. The other option from the cleaner side, like I started a cleaning business where it was just me cleaning. It grew organically. I haven't put any experience into marketing. I don't have employees, and now I'm like tapped out. But I want to keep going because I like it. So now, under the no experience situation, Brandon and I needed to backfill our knowledge on how to clean.

How do you actually do the nuts and bolts? Of executing the service. We had the marketing and the sales and all that stuff. So we went out and we got that knowledge. We hired a consultant. There's books, we read all that stuff. On the flip side, the cleaners, you might be awesome at cleaning. You got that method down. You don't need us to teach you how to clean it all.

What you need help with is business stuff, which is, I mean, I think it's pretty easy once you get it down, but when you're starting, it's really daunting. How do you register an LLC? How do you pay taxes? Do you have to pay this tax versus that tax? How do you set up a payroll company? How do you hire? How do you fire legally? Like, how do you not get yourself in trouble?

Insurance, workers comp cars. What happens when a cleaner steals something? What happens when a cleaner crashes? A cardinal? Like, all of these things are the knowledge that that expert cleaner would need to backfill their personal catalog with. But both of them, if you stay at it, try hard. This is not an easy business. Brandon and I are not selling a get rich quick scheme. This isn't cryptocurrency. This is a hard service business.

But if you put in the effort, both of those versions of companies will come out on top in the end. As you know, we don't love adding new services to our business, but in the case of crazy blue, we're all for it. It's easy to implement, affordable, and your customers will love how you can quickly sanitize every inch of their home in a matter of minutes. It's a great way to stand out from the competition so you can win more customers.

And it's eco friendly, too. To learn more about this incredible new product for your cleaning business, head to profitcleaners.com breezyblue. That's profitcleaners.com breezyblue. Absolutely, man. That's well said. And just for a little backstory and reference, like Brandon said, we started in the beginning doing some of that cleaning. This is how you should do everything in your business. Learn the skillset so that you can delegate it, and, you know, the expectation to train your team, right?

So at the very least, if you don't know how to clean, like, we didn't get the knowledge, if you don't have the knowledge, that's what we're here for. We can share that with you guys, but you need to figure out the systems behind proper cleaning. And even if you're already cleaning, sometimes the systems can be tweaked and optimized even more. Right. Even if you're like, I got this down.

Well, as you start building your teams out, you might realize, how do you duplicate that? Right? How do you take what you're doing? Because this is what we run into a lot of time. People talking on our strategy calls, they're like, I'm afraid to let go of what I'm doing because I'm so good at it, and I don't know if anyone can do how I do it, right.

And so this is kind of like as entrepreneurs, us getting in our own heads as well. But you have to be able to let go of that and even more importantly, have a system that duplicates what you're doing so you can empower your teams, get out of the cleaning. If you're doing all the cleaning yourself, you basically built yourself a job, and now you got to build a real business.

So now you got to get out of the cleaning and duplicate that high quality, consistent, clean consistently. Right? So it's the same thing every time. It's the same products, the same process. So your customers are, no matter who's cleaning their house, if it's not you, it's just as good from your team member. Right. And that's the system. So on the other side of that, if you don't have that experience, just like if you're cleaning and you don't have the experience of sales or marketing, you got to reach out and you got to double down on that knowledge and figure out where you're going to learn that.

So that's what we're doing all the time, guys, is providing that knowledge, which comes from experience, which is a much higher level of belief in what you're doing and clarity of what you're doing, because we know it works. But, yeah, you don't have to know everything. This is why business is so great. You make the rules, but you're also always sharpening your acts, always getting better. And so, yeah, we didn't start out knowing how to clean either, guys.

So if you're thinking, like, what am I going to do? How could I start it? You might have that almost, like, imposter syndrome. Like, how could I start a cleaning business if I'm not cleaning? You don't have to be an excellent cleaner. We're not either. I suck at cleaning. I don't know about you, Brandon, but I'm not very good at it, so. No, I'm terrible at it, man.

Like, I don't. I'm good at some things. I'm good at numbers and finance and spreadsheets. I am not good at customer service. We were talking about that earlier today, too, and I'm not good at, but I'm really good at sales. I can talk to you about how awesome our cleaning is and how we'll take care of it if it doesn't, you know, meet our expectations. So, yeah, the end result here is that you can do it either way.

You just have to be willing to put in the effort. I do think that the expert cleaners struggle more on a mentality side of things. You are really good at doing it this way. Your customers are expecting it this way. You are the owner of the business. You have a vested interest in its success. When you hire someone that you're paying hourly, they are not going to care as much as you.

So a lot of what we're doing is trying to use some psychology tricks here and there to make employees care as much as we do. So, like, there's a lot of effort we put into company culture. There's a bonus system to make incentives so that they need to go fast without getting complaints. And I think the expert cleaner in particular has a really hard time of letting go of the cleaning itself.

So you have to hire some people, train them, and then you got to let your fledgling birds fly, man. You got to let them out of the nest. And I firmly believe in this. The best way for people to learn is to make mistakes. So you got to let them go out there. You guys are on your own today. Clean your stuff, and then we'll figure out how bad it is later.

And so, like, if you get complaints, you got to deal with those. We'll come back and fix it. Like our, our go to is, if a customer called in a complaint, we're going to come back and fix it. So you're going to lose some money in the interim in the short term while you're getting your team up to speed. But the sweet spot is after you get through that transition, which the expert cleaner has hard times with.

Man, it's so much different any other time. This is the difference that you hear a lot of entrepreneurs and influencers talking about, which is you're working on the business instead of in the business. When you have a team out there cleaning your customers that you already had, they're bringing in revenue without your direct intervention doing the cleaning. You were in an office somewhere. That means that you have time to follow up with new leads, respond to complaints, talk to banks, get a loan, talk to friends, get some money coming in.

You have all that time to do those things which you would have zero time to do if you were out there cleaning or worse. You're doing it after you're done cleaning and you're staying up to like 01:00 in the morning wringing your hands about, how are we going to get this money? You need employees to help you execute that. They have to be well paid. We're not here to exploit workers.

They want to want to work there. They have to want to work there. That's the idea. So this is where I think the biggest difference is between the business nerds. They can just hire some people and they're just running a business. Maybe they've done it before. They tend to be more okay with this level of risk. The expert cleaner has a really hard time during this transition. But once they get to the other side, the light at the end of the tunnel, then, then the magic really happens.

They really see where we're going. Yeah, I love that man. Just like what you just said, there is having some humility, right? If you think you're the best cleaner in the world, there's not anyone that can touch you. Nobody can do what you do. Well, that's your ego, right? That's you talking like, thinking you're the best, but you probably are really good. But you got to expand your thinking because there's probably people out there that not just cleaners, people that marketing, sales, like all the other aspects of your business that can help you, that love doing those things and would actually do it better than you can do it.

And so one of the words I learned back in business school was opportunity cost. What's the opportunity cost of you continuing to clean if you're an expert cleaner and you're the best and you're the only one running the whole show? Well, once again, that's side hustle or a job that's not a business. But if you want to take it to that next level, like what Brandon said, there is huge.

If you're now empowering your teams with either the system in your head that you were able to map out and train them on, or maybe you're working with us and you're training off of those systems, but either way, that system empowers them. The opportunity cost of you not cleaning and now being able to have your time freed up so you can get back to customers, book more people on the schedule, heck, even drop in on your teams.

Maybe you're not cleaning, but maybe you're just talking to the customer and maybe you're just making an experience for them and making them say, wow. So that customer turns into five more customers, right? And now you have referrals and word of mouth because people are like, this is awesome. I love this company. So that's the opportunity cost of, you know, you continuing to do it and thinking you're the best cleaner in the world versus actually building a true business, empowering a team with the system.

And you can learn from your own mistakes, but it's always better to learn from other people's mistakes. That's why we do this podcast, that's why we have mentors. We're always doing that too, right? So, yeah, I think it's, it really comes down to kind of getting back to like, expert cleaners versus the business nerds with no experience starting and growing a cleaning business, you're just gonna have to focus on different things.

If you're an expert cleaner, you got to focus on getting out of your own head and realizing you can duplicate what you're doing. You can't hire a team and you probably need to learn all those skill sets of business, but get excited about that. Those are new skills you're gonna learn. You're gonna be growing, right? And then if you don't have the cleaning experience, same thing. You're just gonna be focused on.

Well, you, you don't have the cleaning systems, you don't know how to clean. So you need to adopt those skill sets and figure out what those systems are because maybe you already have a lot of the other business systems figured out. So the focus is just going to be different, but ultimately it's all about just getting out of your own way, right? So there's a quote I learned recently.

If you want to go fast, to go alone, if you want to go far, go together. I don't know who said that. We can look it up real quick, but great quote. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. I forgot who said it, but I learned it in one of my business masterminds this week, and I've heard it before.

It's awesome because it's very true. A lot of us are trying to get to where we want to go, but we're doing everything ourselves, right? I want to get there fast, so I go alone. But if you really want to go far, guys, start thinking about getting out of your own way. Build your team, get your people on the boat with you so you can go far and you can hit those big goals.

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 your 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 your sales is incredibly knowledgeable and, 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 tidyoursales, go to profitcleaners.com tidyyoursales. That's profitcleaners.com tidyoursales. Right now, I don't know if you look that up, Brandon, we can see who that quote is, but I'm actually reading a blog about it right now and it's pretty in depth. It's been attributed to a bunch of people. Like, the most recent attribution is to Cory Booker. He's a senator from New Jersey, I think.

Okay, you guys can look it up if you want. We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah. Here's the reality, though. The good news for you guys is whether you're the expert cleaner or the business nerd, we have a ton of free resources in the form of this podcast. We've talked about lots of struggles and lessons learned along the way. So you can go back and listen to the catalog of the profit Cleaners podcast, learn all kinds of weird stuff.

We even tried to expand to Texas and that didn't work out. So you can follow along as we fail in real time and you can watch the lessons learned from that. But the other thing we've done for you guys is we've put together a really good resource in the form of this online community and a course so you can learn about that@profitcleaners.com. masterclass. And there's a free class in there, but we'll teach you some stuff.

But then at the end, we're going to give you some other resources, which is this course that we teach which has resources for the business nerd in the form of training. And one of the things that we are just sort of about to roll out soon, depending on when you're listening to it, is we just reshot all of our training videos using 360 cameras mounted on the chests of cleaners.

And so you can see everything. And so we're doing some really high level editing of all that right now. And those are going to be, you know, the best cleaning training videos produced ever, maybe. I don't know. I don't think anyone's ever put this much effort into making those kinds of videos. And then for the expert cleaner, we have everything else you need. How to run a business, how to process payroll, how to set up a bonus program, what to do when one cleaner slaps another in the face.

Like all these other weird HR things. We have all dialed in for you, and so there's something in there for everybody. And one of the benefits of that setup is that there's also a private Facebook group. So once you're a member of that course, there's like a hive mind behind it. You know, if we have weekly coaching calls that Brandon and I are on, and then if you can't make those, there's replays of those.

And if you can't make that, there's a Facebook group with hundreds of other cleaning company owners that are going through exactly what you're going through. So you ask a question, I don't want to do it how it says in the course, can I do it this way? Ten other people be like, yeah, I totally did it that way. Here's why it works, or here's why it doesn't. So that's what we've set up for you.

So whether you're the experience cleaner or the business nerd with no experience cleaning, there's resources for you. And hopefully that's why you're listening to this podcast in the first place. Absolutely, guys. So what is going to help you take those next steps? If you're feeling, like, stagnant in your business, if you're like, maybe you've been doing it for a while, maybe you're just getting started, you're not getting the momentum and the progress you want.

Start thinking about, you know, what are those next steps? And if you're not sure, if you're confused, we all know a confused mind says no, and it does not equal action. So we have to eliminate the confusion, right? Suspend the disbelief and just help you guys get some clarity, which is what we're doing on the podcast all the time, which is what we're doing on our coaching calls.

We just had one earlier today, and the ahas. And these coaching calls are amazing guys, because people are like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even think about this. Like, the smallest things, the smallest little details, tweaks and nuances in your business can change the trajectory of where you're going, right? So that's why we put this resource together. We learn just as much as you guys learn, because we're all learning from each other.

A rising tide raises all ships. So that's the benefit. Whether you're already an expert cleaner or you're very savvy at business or you're brand new just getting started, you don't have any clue at all. The resources are there. We're always making it better and this is how we learned, guys, we had mentors. We continue to invest in coaching mentorships to this day and we are always getting better.

That's the name of the game, guys. So have some humility and welcome that feedback. Learn from other people's mistakes. And I guess to recap this, guys, if you're an expert cleaner, I have no experience either way. You can have massive success with a cleaning business and it's just going to depend on which skill sets you need to start working on next. And we'll help you guys with those next steps.

So like Brandon said, check out the Masterclass. Profitcleaners.com masterclass. You can talk with Brandon and I. Someone on our team will help you strategize, go through kind of like where you want to go, where you're at now, where you want to go. Those calls are super beneficial. Even if you're just getting some new ideas, even if it's just helping you think and get inspired. That's amazing. That's what those calls are there for.

So hop on a call. Let's talk about growing your cleaning business, guys and I, wherever you're at, expert or beginner or crazy serial entrepreneur like us, like, we'll help you get there. So, anything else, Brandon? There you go. No. Keep it clean. Keep it clean, guys. 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.