Episode 3: How to Stand Out In the Service Industry By Serving Even More

Episode 3: How to Stand Out In the Service Industry By Serving Even More

Brandon Schoen:
Things like this. People want to hear good news. They want to hear the good things you're doing. If you find good ways to do that in your community, there'll be so many opportunities that open up where you can just share what you're doing on news channels, on radios, on magazines, whatever it is to get that exposure out and then that's great branding and again it goes the extra mile just to show people that you're not just transactional, you're not just trying to make a quick buck. You're actually invested in this at a higher level. You really care about the local community and when people have a decision to make to vote with their money, they're going to vote where they feel like it has more impact, where it goes further.

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:
What is up everybody? This is Brandon Schoen, Brandon Condrey.

Brandon Condrey:
Here I am!

Brandon Schoen:
Here we are. Welcome to the profit cleaners. I'm doing another episode. This is episode three, a very exciting episode about how to stand out in the service industry by serving even more.

Brandon Condrey:
That's right.

Brandon Schoen:
So we're going to talk about having a big reason why, why everyone should have not just a personal reason why to drive you forward through all the hard stuff and the challenges that come up being an entrepreneur, starting a business, but also a reason why and a bigger purpose for your actual cleaning business. And we're going to talk about our community based program that we started from the very beginning and how that's been a huge to striver behind our success. And I think a lot of people adopting our services when we were just brand new to the market, nobody knew who we were. So just something like that can give you guys some ideas to think about and ponder and create. If you are going, you already have a reason why, definitely implement this for yourself, for your business, and we'll dive more into it and get into in the podcast. Let's start this puppy out.

Brandon Condrey:
Let's do it.

Brandon Schoen:
So kind of the goal is by the end of this episode, you're going to have a better understanding of your reason why, maybe for your business as well. And you'll also have some resources and new knowledge to help you create a deeper reason why to drive you and your business forward. And the whole point of this is to shift your company beyond being just transactional to truly transform and even transcend a business. So I really believe this is how a lot of businesses are going. I think you do Brandon as well, but even the younger generations in general, they're choosing products based on what they heard.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeh the impacts that that company's going to have down the road. We were talking about that right before we started recording. Like what were some examples in Tom's shoes. If you buy a pair of shoes, they, they donate a pair of shoes. There's a, there's an eyeglass company that does the same thing. So by you being a consumer, you're also supporting other people that maybe don't have that same fortune.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, absolutely. And we'd read a lot of books. We're entrepreneurs. So another book I wanted to bring out, and you guys should definitely pick it up, it's by Yanik silver and it's called Evolved Enterprise. And this is what got me thinking many, many years ago about this whole idea of what is an evolved enterprise and kind of the inspiration that and how you can add that into really any business you have. And you see a lot of people saying they donate money to this or that cause or, but if you can dial that down to a local level and help serve your local community, that's even bigger because then you're actually impacting people right around you that are right here. Yeah. And that really resonates with people a lot more than just saying you give it to some third party organization or something. That's something a lot of people do.

Brandon Condrey:
The donating a certain amount of money. I always seemed pretty lazy.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, exactly. With the cleaning, you can actually donate your services and you can, so many people need the service. So it's just a really great thing to give back. Right. So when we were starting this out, we said, what can we do that would really make people excited? And if they were kind of on the edge about maybe using our services, what would kind of push them over the edge to make them feel like, wow, if I use their cleaning services over all these other franchises and mom and pops out there, this makes me feel really good about the cleaning because I'm not just getting a service, but I'm also feeling more fulfilled at a higher level that I'm helping other people and impacting people just by voting with my money to work with them. Right. You know? So yeah, again, back to like evolved enterprise. Um, a lot of what that book talks about and what we're talking about here is how to shift your company beyond being transactional to truly transform and transcend business and how greater purpose, joy, meaningful impact, all that kind of good stuff creates fierce brand loyalty in the marketplace. And it creates really you as a leader in the market because no one's really doing that or they're not doing it very well. And again, it comes back to profits. And if you have more profits, you have more time, more freedom, more things that you can actually do that you love. That's what this is all about. So, yeah, so the game has changed again. We were saying like a lot of businesses that aren't doing this, I think they're going to die. They're going to fade away because their people are going to vote with their money to give it to the ones that are actually making an impact. So for entrepreneurs to survive, they must think and act bigger than just a transactional business where you're just money for this and we did this. It's actually no, you paid money. And because not only did you get a service, but now you can realize, wow, I did some greater good in my community because other people were helped. Not only they're taking care of their employees, but there's this thing that they're doing over here that I feel really good about, that I can tell people about. And that's word of mouth and that's priceless, you know?

Brandon Condrey:
So, yeah. So where do you want to start? I mean we can talk about how we set up our program. We can talk about the personal reasons. We can do a bunch of different ways.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. I think let's start out telling everybody about what is our program here at Sandia Green Clean. That's the name of our local cleaning business. By the way, if people want to know here now.

Brandon Condrey:
Sandia Green Clean in Albuquerque, the name of the program that we came up with was cleaning to care and the roots of that. We were hunting for something to do. There's another large charitable organization that we won't mention, but they do cleaning for breast cancer patients. Even though men also get breast cancer, so what they do is they're a nonprofit. The cleaning companies will sign up with them and then the is going to refer you to the patients. The downside is the programs for three months and you get it once a month. Only women only breast cancer and so they ended up getting three services and so it's just so rigid.

Brandon Schoen:
It was almost like a franchise give back. Right, exactly. Yeah.

Brandon Condrey:
You could do so much more with the tools that you have given that you have this team and all these things that you can do with cleaning. Right. So we did like the idea of cancer patients. Both you and I have had family members affected by cancer patients. My dad died, my grandfather died. And so when you're going through cancer treatment, chemo and radiation, you're just wiped out. You're just so tired. And so your focus is not, my house is so dusty, it's like my body hurts so I'm never getting out of bed again.

Brandon Schoen:
And so just focus on surviving basically, right?

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah, exactly. And so we wanted to help cancer patients and so rather than reinvent the wheel and set up a nonprofit, we reached out to the largest cancer center in the state, which is in Albuquerque. We pitched them this idea, they were ecstatic. And what we ended up donating now is about 5% of capacity. And so what that figures out too is that once a quarter we do a drawing with the cancer center. We tell them the amount of patients we can take, we can take, the last time we did it we took 12 so we can take 12 people. And what those 12 people get regardless of gender, regardless of what type of cancer they have, they get cleaning every two weeks for three months. So we do six services. They are overjoyed. People have cried when the cancer center. It's amazing that they, they won, they won the drawing.

Brandon Schoen:
They're winning the publisher's clearing house is what they've told us. It's like this huge celebration.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. And so it just takes so much off of a family that's already stressed out because one of the family members is really seriously ill and it just, it's great. It's a great thing to do.

Brandon Schoen:
And I would just want it to add like a story. I know you've probably done more of these estimates than I have Brandon, but just a few that I've done that where cancer cleans, we don't do these in-person estimates anymore cause the whole pandemic and stuff, we're doing it virtually now. But when we would go out into these people's homes and walk through the house with them, specifically the cancer patients were, like you said, they were just overjoyed and they were just so grateful and it was just so meaningful and impactful to me to feel like this is what we're doing this for. Like for these kinds of people. I mean everyone we serve, it makes a difference. But specifically these people, you could just really tell the difference it made in their life. And I guess it's kind of like when you have, you're in that vulnerable state, you're really sick and you're, someone's taking care of you, like you really don't have much else and you really do need help and you're vulnerable. And so whenever I've done these estimates, it's just an incredible feeling to see the look on their face and to see how joyful they are. I've even had people like invite me to like their family breakfasts afterwards. Like it was like doing an estimate and it was just like, normally people wouldn't even extend that to you, but they feel like you're doing such a service that they want to just give something back to you, whatever they could, I mean I've had people give me books like weird stuff. I'm like, I don't need any bucks. But um, yeah, it's just a really cool feeling to know that people deeply, deeply feel that and are really grateful and you know that you're doing good in the community.

Brandon Condrey:
So yeah, absolutely. So I mean a side effect to that is that, you know, we get thank you cards from patients that we stopped cleaning like years ago and they still are really grateful for it.

Brandon Schoen:
Wow.

Brandon Condrey:
Occasionally one of those cancer patients will become a paying customer. Like they love the service so much they'll keep doing it. So there is like the side effect that you might get some capital benefit out of it, but more than that it just translates to everything else. So like we do put it on our brochures that we have this that we want to know about. And you sometimes during the sales pitch you tell him like this is what we do, we do this thing, we do free clinic for cancer patients and occasionally you run into a customer. Like I had one whose brother had died literally the week before of bowel cancer and she started crying and was like so thankful that we were there. Then we were doing that for people cause she had like just lived that experience. She like knows what it was like at the house and yeah, like people just resonate with that. So it's not just that we're a local company versus a franchise. It's not just that we're a small local company. It's that even though we were struggling in the beginning for funds and cash flow, we set up this cancer program before we even had a building. We had set up the meeting with the cancer revenue to get it sorted out. That was one of the first things we did was kind of get the groundwork laid for that. Yeah. And it's worked out really well.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. I think it's amazing man. How well it's worked and like you said, like we reached out to the hospital. I mean this is the kind of thing that you have to be willing to take initiative on and just take the risk or be willing to put yourself out there. If there's a local business or something like a hospital in your town or something that you resonate with that had affected your family or you personally, that you is a reason why for you find that reason why and find that in your community and go approach some money and set up a partnership like that, which is what we did and it was kind of modeled that, like you said, after another program that was similar, but again, we just created just like you could start a cleaning franchise, but you're very limited in all these things. We could have started a community program that was already done that was very limiting that we could have just had to start hitting our lagging tier or whatever. Exactly. But we created something unique. We created something that was hyperlocalized to Albuquerque that really, again, like even one of our local competitors, our direct local competitor in the green cleaning market works with that other cancer program. And again, we just stand out so much more because we're working with the local UNM hospital where it's a much more community feel that is just unique. And so if you can build that in your community and find a reason why to give back, that is huge.

Brandon Condrey:
Exactly. You can be fluid with it. So one of the cancer patients we were cleaning the unfortunately did die during the time that we were doing the free cleaning. And so instead of being with the bigger one, the franchise version of a nonprofit, we were able to just tweak it so they were going to sell that house. The family was going to sell the house. So instead of just keeping on cleaning up, we switched this, do a move out, cleaning the very end to get it ready for them to sell. And they were really grateful. We also sent flowers, like we made sure that they knew that we cared about it. And yeah, they were grateful for a really long time.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, and I wanted to say too, like when we were brand new, we had nothing out there. We were just like getting started. Nobody even knew who we were. And we started doing this program, and I want to say it was like in the first maybe six months or maybe it wasn't even sooner than that. We got in Albuquerque, the magazine, which is a big local publication that a lot of people read that's in our target demographic and they were ecstatic when I reached out to them and they said, Oh my gosh, you guys are doing this. We'd love to feature your story. I mean like, so things like this, people want to hear good news, they want to hear the good things you're doing, and if you find good ways to do that in your community, there'll be so many opportunities that open up where you can just share what you're doing on news channels, on radios, on magazines, whatever it is to get that exposure out. And then that's great branding. And again it goes the extra mile just to show people that you're not just transactional, you're not just trying to make a quick buck, you're actually invested in this at a higher level. You really care about the local community and when people have a decision to make to vote with their money, they're going to vote where they feel like it has more impact, where it goes further and, and that's I think a lot of times you've seen that in the sales estimates.

Brandon Condrey:
Of course it tips people like over the tipping point for sure. When they find out that their patronage paying them, paying us for the service is going to also support people who are going through a really horrible situation. And we did get in the magazine, that was in the beginning, but just last year we also got on the news for that. It was a community reporter that focuses on good news and you do get some press around these things. You don't have to in your business do cancer cleaning, fine, whatever you're into. So maybe you want to support veterans. There's a way to do it through the VA to kind of give back that way. You just have to get creative about it. Maybe you come from a family of firefighters or something. You can do it that way, but the tool that you have at your disposal is not to say we're going to donate 5% of proceeds on this given day to some charity. It's that you're going to actually affect bill who lives down the street cause he's a firefighter and your grandfather was a firefighter. And so that's why we're going to clean your house for free over this period of time. And it really will make an impact for people.

Brandon Schoen:
And it makes an impact not only on those people in the community but the employees as well because they're now empowered with a higher purpose and they understand that they're doing this at a higher level to serve. And so that means that they're going to put more detail, more attention and care into their work because not only because we have a great bonus system, which we'll talk about and other ways that we take care of our employees. But when you know that your work is impacting people in a bigger way with a more purposeful, you know, result, then you're going to go the extra mile. Yeah. Our employees definitely are invested in it and we have like hardly any turnover, you know, because there's just all these things built in to create that positive culture and the work that they're doing is giving. It's fulfilling them even. And even to the point where our employees approached us, our trainer just approached us a few months ago when we were doing all this and she said, Hey, what if we donated some of our additional services and tools that we have on the weekends? And I could see if some of the other girls would want to help out and we could go help clean orphanages. And just, this is the kind of thing that it spurs on is more and more ideas of ways you can serve. And so that's just another idea right there. If you can find some local orphanages and use, utilize your employees time or if they want to donate that time. There's just so many cool ways to go about it that you can get creative.

Brandon Condrey:
And so we did too. I mean it expanded beyond cancer. So there's a form on our website for cleaning to care and people can just nominate someone. It doesn't have to be a cancer patient. Like my friend just had twins and they're like super overwhelmed. Can we nominate them for the cleaning? Right. And we will sometimes draw those people too and just go clean anyone who someone else thought was deserving of that service.

Brandon Schoen:
Right. And if you just go back to the very beginning, like our, even our tagline claim your weekend and getting people their time back, which is the most valuable thing we all have is our time. It's priceless. So when people can offer that and nominate someone else or even people in need, which needed even more cause they have less time. I mean that's just, again, going back to how valuable our time is and that's just such a valuable thing that people can give to others and experienced themselves. And then when it's got that deeper impact and purpose behind it, I mean that's like gold right there, you know?

Brandon Condrey:
So this is definitely a trend that's a great trend among companies now is that there's, it's not just the percentage that we're doing it in XYZ, it's the duplicate products that the shoes and the glasses are doing. But people are paying attention to when those companies behave that way. And you want to be able to support not just a capitalist company that's making money and growing profits and getting more employees, but that you can be responsible capitalism along the way and make some changes around those that are in your community around you.

Brandon Schoen:
And I think right now it might be a good time to just shift into like what's our reason why? Like like we have a purpose for our business, but I think everyone listening to this too should also have a deeper purpose and reason why that they're doing this. Maybe it's your family, maybe it's some, maybe it's just money, but maybe there's definitely something else that you want to have in your life. Some results, some, you know, relationship improvement, whatever it is. That is your reason why.

Brandon Condrey:
So what's your reason why Brandon? I mean the way that that kind of started for me was that the job that I had before starting this that was working with some of my old employers that you could see that they had huge success as entrepreneurs and so they kind of had this freedom that I wanted. Like how do you get to that point where my life is like that? So you kind of see someone else doing it, like how do I get there? And then really what I honed it down to was my personal definition of success would be like you can do whatever you want whenever you want. Right. And the big goal that my wife and I are chasing now is to be able to do summers abroad or in a different state. We're going to rent a house for the summer and we're going to move to New Zealand and take the kids down there and they're going to get exposed to different cultures. Or we're going to go to Canada or we're going to go check out some places we've never seen. So that's kind of what I'm after. Is that level of freedom. Just total freedom I guess.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah man, you said it for me too. It's freedom is like one of my favorite words and I think it encompasses a huge part of my reason why, which again is like you said, just being able to do whatever you want whenever you want with whomever you want. And if you could just at the drop of a hat and be like, Hey, you want to go fly to New Zealand today and take the kids and just like hang out for a month. Like that to me is success because that's complete freedom to do whatever you want. No limitations, nobody telling you what to do, nobody telling you how much you're going to make. You're in control.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. You built, you built a team up in the background, they're going to run it for you, and then you know that it's going to be good because you got good people in there. That level of freedom I think is yeah. To achieve.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And besides that, I mean I want to leave a legacy for my kids and my wife and our family. But to me relationships are the most important thing. My family is the most important thing. And so if I can free up my time because we've built a business that's built on systems and things that are automated and things that I don't have to constantly be doing to control and make the business work, that's a true business and true freedom to me so that we can go and you know, like you said, go travel. I mean that's one of my favorite things to do too, is travel, be with my kids, my family, and just be hanging out, making memories, experiences. And to me that's the most valuable part of all of this. And that's why, I mean I started looking into being an entrepreneur when I was like 14 you know? And my first business was landscaping and I've tried many, many businesses since then. But every single time I started one, the thing that motivated me and drove me, my reason why was I saw the guys that had those lifestyles that were doing something different. And it inspired me because I was like, they're just like me. They're not that much smarter or different than me. Like I can do that too. It's just I have to decide it for myself and I have to like really dig deep inside myself to figure out what is going to drive me. Cause it's hard, you know, like there's certain days you don't want to work. There are certain days you don't want to pick up the phone, you don't want to get through the challenging times, you don't want to do another estimate, you don't want to clean another house, whatever it is, whatever business you're in. But this specific business definitely has it's day to day challenges. So you gotta find out what excites you and what's going to pull you through those hard times when stuff gets tough, you know?

Brandon Condrey:
And so I think that's gotta be, you gotta have your own reason why. It can't just be that I want more money. That's like a really vague way to phrase it. You know what I mean? Obviously to get to the freedom and spending summers in New Zealand, you're going to have to have a certain level of disposable income to pull that off, right? The goal is not get X amount of dollars.

Brandon Schoen:
No.

Brandon Condrey:
The goal is this experience that not many people get to have where right. For the entire time our kids were in school and middle school, they spent summers in some cool place every year.

Brandon Schoen:
Right. And money is just a vehicle to get to that outcome and that result. It's just energy really. So you could use it however you want. You know? And I think a lot of people that just focus on the money get completely sidetracked because it doesn't motivate you at the end of the day. It's like, you know, there's been days where we've made great strides and a lot of money, but I think the things that get us most excited again, are going back to the possibility of us doing these travels with our family and having more time and have more fun. You know? That's what it's all about.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. So now you guys have to figure out what your company's why is going to be your, find the thing that you're going to participate with in the community. And then maybe you already have a really honed in personal reason why you're putting yourself through this and growing and growing a business and those challenges along the way. But now's a good time to revisit it. Maybe just sort of, yeah, go back to what your drive is.

Brandon Schoen:
And I would say write it down. Both Brandon and I do a lot of journaling and we read a lot of books and all that good stuff, but write it down and commit to yourself because nobody else cares. But if you commit to yourself and you hold yourself accountable to that and write it down that much more possible and able to come true and you're going to just stick behind that goal to get there and push through those hard times because they're going to come. There's going to be challenges. I mean, even the last however many weeks, man, this is crazy. This is like has been a thing because you keep it. This threw us for a loop man. So yeah, but again, the challenges we got through them because we have these reasons why we have this purpose and we're doing good stuff, man.

Brandon Condrey:
So going back to that, writing it down, when Brandon said that, I reached around and pulled this note off my wall behind my desk, it says, a dream written down with a date becomes a goal, a goal broken down into steps, becomes a plan, a plan backed by action becomes reality.

Brandon Schoen:
There you go.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah, the goal is whatever you want it to be, put it out so you can see it every day. You get reminded that that's why we'll just keep working towards that. And then do some cool stuff along the way. Get on the news, get on some radio stations, clean some cancer patients houses, you'll be remembered for that.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, absolutely. And that's the true work that we're doing here. The true results that we're achieving is impacting people's lives, impacting the community, serving people at a higher level. And that's true leadership, you know, like actually serving people and doing it in a bigger way than just transactional. It's actually transcending business and uh, it's a much bigger level of thinking. But everyone listening to this needs to be thinking that way because that's the future of business. That's where this is going. And if you want to be truly successful and stand out with the cleaning business in your market, this is the way to do it. It's a big part of it.

Brandon Condrey:
That's right. And get out there and figure it out. Thanks for tuning in to another episode.

Brandon Schoen:
Thank you guys for tuning in. And one more just quick drop on the masterclass. If you guys haven't checked it out yet, go to profitcleaners.com/masterclass we're going to be giving away a ton of cool free training and tips and just ask us any questions you want to know and do live calls, videos. But hop on there. We can do like eight weeks or so of that.

Brandon Condrey:
I think so. Yeah.

Brandon Schoen:
And uh, yeah, free value for you guys. So take advantage of it.

Brandon Condrey:
Don't forget to subscribe.

Brandon Schoen:
Subscribe to the podcast, hit that subscribe button will help us out and share this podcast with a friend. If you know someone that's thinking about starting a cleaning business or wants to start a business in general or has already has one, please share this with them and let them know this is some good content. We're here to help you guys out and share the value shared the love. So let's do this.

Brandon Condrey:
That's right. We'll catch you on the next one.

Brandon Schoen:
Catch you on the next one guys. Keep it clean.

Brandon Condrey:
Keep it clean.

Announcer:
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.