Episode 40: The Zippy Car vs Steam Locomotive and How your Business is Geared for Success

Episode 39: The Zippy Car vs Steam Locomotive and How your Business is Geared for Success

Brandon Condrey:
If you spent $8,000 on a print advertising and it didn't work out. You can't take it back. It's done. If you spent 400 bucks on next door and it didn't pan out for you, then don't spend that $400 next month. Like you can always change that. Or if something comes out of left field, all of a sudden, like Instagram ads are hitting really hard in this one group in my town, like let's pay for an influencer to make a post about it. Like yeah. Think about that. Think about contacting someone directly and just telling them that like, look, I'll clean your house. We had a radio advertiser actually pitch us on this. They wanted us to clean the house of one of the DJs of the morning show. And then they would tell everybody on the radio to like, Oh, I have my house cleaned. It was amazing. Part of the pitch for the ad guy was that it doesn't sound like an ad because people know that it sounds like an ad. So I'm not saying go by radio stuff, but I'm saying there's lots of options when you start looking around. Yeah. So be the zippy car attached to the locomotive.

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:
Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Profit Cleaners, you're in the house to learn from the top 1%, the only place to learn from the top 1% of cleaning business owners. And you're in the right place guys, we're going to show you guys how to win, how to take it to the next level in this market, in the cleaning business. So it's gonna be awesome. So let's get started. I'm Brandon Schoen. I'm joined by my cohost -

Brandon Condrey:
Brandon Condrey, that's me.

Brandon Schoen:
That's right. And today where we've got another exciting episode, when we talking about the Zippy car versus the steam locomotive, right? And how your business is geared for success. Let's start out this episode and tell you guys a little story, a little background story, how this started sharing about the family dinner.

Brandon Condrey:
We started the business. It was going, but I think this was Like eight months in nine months in and we still weren't paying ourselves. That was obviously not the plan. That's not what we pitched to our wives. Hey, we're both going to quit our full-time jobs and this steady paycheck in exchange for nothing. Right. I remember we had that meeting. I was trying to explain that there's a lot of moving parts. We gotta do this and that. And your wife's Julie was like, I get it. We're used to Zippy cars that drive around really fast. And this is like a big train. I'm like, yeah, that's a great point. That's exactly it. Like, it takes a lot of momentum to get it going, but it's really hard to stop once it gets cranked.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. It's a really good analogy. I like metaphors and I'm very visual. So to think of it that way we very first started Brandon and I had both started different businesses over the last five or 10 years before that. And a lot of the ones I had been involved in personally were internet businesses, which you can kind of liken to the fast Zippy sports car.

Brandon Condrey:
You put up a website, you can get it up in a day with a template. Yeah. Getting leads. You paid 500 bucks for ads and you've got your database column.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, exactly. You see it on the online all the time. It's like you push a button and you've got a website and you're making sales overnight. And it sounds really good. It's sometimes it's actually too good to be true. Oftentimes the, but the idea of it is another analogy is the fence. If you can build a fence or a wall in that thing really quick, and one day chances are, it's going to blow over really fast the next day. So if you spend months and months and months building a really solid wall with reinforcement and concrete and retaining wall and all that stuff, it's going to be really hard to knock that thing down. So that's what we're talking about here is the different business models here and how you can actually create a hybrid in your cleaning business, which is more of the old school, traditional route, traditional old school business and how you can make it a hybrid. And what we've done, which is add the, you like to say Silicon Valley.

Brandon Condrey:
It brings some Silicon Valley to the mama pop arena.

Brandon Schoen:
And that's what we've done with our cleaning business. And we're living in such a great time and age like to do this stuff.

Brandon Condrey:
You, as a cleaning business owner are a target market for a number of softwares. There are CRMs and payment platforms and scheduling and this and that. The nice thing about that is that you have a choice of what bits and pieces you want to bolt onto the train to make it better, faster shinier.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And so if you think about a lot of local service businesses, they're just really old school. Even still today. If you go and look in your city, a lot of people, or maybe even yourself might still be using a pen and paper, do your best.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. You ever got an estimate From a plumber or an HVC guy and they come in and right hand squirreled it on a carbon copy on here's your copy. Here's my copy. So I know that you didn't change the numbers. I can verify it. We just did that with you.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And so it's like, people appreciate that. They know that's like the local service or the local business vibe sometimes. But if you can elevate that to the next level, still give them that local service that they love and enjoy. They appreciate local businesses, but give them a better experience. Give them a better, more efficient, happier time working with you guys. And that's what it's all about. So we're not just doing this to be like fancy and add on these, all these extra gizmos and shiny objects. It's actually really important to streamline your business and make sure you get out of your own weight and well, I mean, things that make it more efficient.

Brandon Condrey:
We want to give you the ability to scale. I mean, yes, you could scale the paper. I could go get more fancy carbon copy prints and you take some and I'll take some and we can cover half the ground. If it's all digitized, there's a paper trail. You can assign it to people and task managers. You can verify that it got this, that or the other thing. And then you can automate stuff. We use a lot of Zapier in Sandia Green Clean. And the idea is if customer accepted the estimate, it'll automatically do X, Y, Z, and assign it to so-and-so within Monday, which is the task manager we use. There's lots and lots of ways to do it. The other thing too, is that when you start behaving that way, when you show up to customers, You give off the air that you're not messing around. Like you are taking this seriously. Look, I have a tablet. I took photos of the things that you asked me to take photos of. You said, don't touch this painting. I took a photo of it. I put it in the estimate so that when the cleaning team comes out, they got the same set of pictures that says, don't touch this or make sure we do that better or whatever it may be.

Brandon Schoen:
And it also brings this whole other mindset. And this whole other vibe that when you're working with tools and things that elevate your brand, elevate your systems, it just brings this whole overall feel that when you're walking in someone's house to do the estimate or talking with them, they feel that they feel like you're a business. They feel like you've got better systems than the other guy. And they'd rather work with someone that has it.

Brandon Condrey:
Plus we're In 2021. So you don't want to be doing things the way that it was done in the 1960s. So you will excel at getting customers that are in the modern age. If you are being a modern business, our target market is families with young kids. You are not going to find a family that has young kids that don't have smartphones and tablets. And they're already used to interacting with Gmail and FaceTime and all these different apps. So like, look, I'm going to come in and do it with an app they're in the system. They know how to use that stuff. If you show up with the paper and the pen, and you're like, okay, make sure that you leave us a check on the table before you leave. They're going to look at you. Like what we're at the age right now, where, where you were kind of a split where I did have a checkbook. I used the checkbook. I learned how to balance a checkbook in high school, but there are people that are getting very high paying full-time jobs right now at various places that have never used the checkbook. It has all been digital payments with Venmo or Cash app or debit cards. And they may not even have checks. So it's just that type of thing, but get rid of the paper, getting screen, be more technologically proficient.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely, so this is really more a shift in mindset too, to like the big picture long-term thinking, because when I started got into starting businesses and Brandon, you might feel the same way, but a lot of times you just want to make some money, right? A lot of times you're chasing that short term profit. And a lot of times that gets you in trouble because with the internet businesses, for example, you just have a lot of things that are out of your control. Yeah. It sounds sexy to build an app or a website or an e-commerce brand or something. However, overnight Google or Amazon could take out your algorithms and you could take your rankings out. It's out of your control, right? You might be doing really good. You might even be making six figures a month with one of those businesses, but you could wake up tomorrow. And there's so many variables out of your control. Everything from a manufacturer in China can no longer ship your thing to the Amazon warehouse to literally like Amazon or Google has done this to my business before where the rankings just are not there overnight. And now you're screwed because that's where all your sales are coming from.

---

Brandon Schoen:
Hey everyone, are you part of the tribe? If you're not, then you're going to want it because it is literally one of the most awesome masterminds in the cleaning industry. And there's tons of people on there. We're talking about stuff to grow your cleaning business. It's free one of the best parts about it. It's free and you're going to want to be part of it. So let's tell them how to, how to do that.

Brandon Condrey:
So to join and head over to Profitcleaners.com/FacebookTRIBE.

Brandon Schoen:
See you guys on the inside.

---

Brandon Condrey:
I think the Amazon does too, is like, let's say that you did have a product that it was great. And it was selling really, really well on Amazon. Yeah. Amazon has a program called Amazon basics where they will just copy it. There'll be like, well, that one's really great. It's uses high quality stuff and yada, yada, yada, we're going to knock it off using really, really cheap stuff. And then that'll be the Amazon recommended one. So if you've got all your eggs in one basket, whether that baskets, Google ads, Facebook marketplace, Amazon fulfillment, you don't control that system. Someone can yank the rug out from underneath you.

Brandon Schoen:
And there's a very low barrier to entry. Anybody can go start an online business tomorrow, but to start a cleaning business, it's going to take a little more time. It's going to take hiring local people. It's going to take setting up systems and softwares and things that actually requires some real work. But the idea is that long-term thinking that big picture mindset it's going to take longer to get going, but it's gonna be really hard to knock down and it's gonna be, that's hard to slow down.

Brandon Condrey:
That's the steam locomotive. So that part of the beginning, when you're getting your skin in the game, I needed to buy a car. I rented a building, we got the website up, we got phones to operate on. We bought all the cleaning stuff. All that stuff is spinning up the boiler on a steam locomotive to get it going. And then once it's going, it's huge. It weighs a ton. It takes a mile to stop a train with the full brakes on that's the idea is you're going to build up the business momentum by being in it like being really serious about it. And then you just keep going and people are going to recognize that if you showed up, when you're like, Hey, I am a side gig. I hired my sister to clean the house. Do you want it? I need like, I needed some reliability to make sure that you're going to be here after week and do what I need you to do. Yeah. But if you show up with a uniform, It's got your logo on it. You got this tablet, we're really professional and you are, they're going to ask questions, like, how are you going to clean this? I know exactly how to clean that, that type of mindset, that type of proficiency will come across so that they will know that you're the real deal. And that will come across even against like the super small neighborhood house cleaner. Those people may have been cleaning for 15 years and they are amazing. But because they showed up in a jenky car with some hodgepodge bits and pieces of equipment, it just doesn't look the same as a company that is really knowing what they're doing. When you show up like that, the customer knows that you're training people in the back end. You've got the right tools. You're testing tools to make sure that you're up to date on that stuff. All those things will come across loading.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. So really guys, what we're talking about is creating the local old school business model. But adding these like Zippy car features to it kind of making a hybrid of it. Right.

Brandon Condrey:
So Is that trained from back to the future three? That flies!

Brandon Schoen:
There you go. That's what I was trying to, there you go. Boom done. Yeah. So really guys, it's all about being all in on your business. A lot of these online businesses are things that you can set up really quickly. That's even like an MLM or something. You can just join and post a party and sell a bunch of things. Like it sounds, sounds a dicing maybe. Yeah. But it's short term thinking it's short-term mindset. It's those quick profits. And that's never going to leave you in a good place. So start thinking longterm, start thinking big picture, thinking, go all in. We always say, burn the ships, right? Don't leave yourself options and things. You can go back to burn the ships. If you've got a job, quit your job, go all in on your business and make it steam locomotive and add some Zippy car features to it. So I can go faster.

Brandon Condrey:
So if you already have a cleaning business and you found us cause you're just looking to improve. Do it. What can you do right away? What software can you add? Can you figure out a way to text customers? Can you figure it out in a way to send online payments? Yeah. Lots of different ways that you can tweak the already existing one. Like we've set up before. So many times, like the idea between starting a cleaning business is that if you take the unsexy business, we're not going to get venture capital for starting a cleaning business. Right. But if you take the Silicon Valley into the unsexy business, that's how you end up with the train that flies.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And if you think about the old school way that traditional businesses like local businesses, still market and used to only market was yellow pages and direct mail, direct mail and just word of mouth, right? Even our mentor up in Denver, it took them like 20 years to get almost where we're at now because he doesn't do much marketing. But if you can add some new age marketing, some new media strategies, some Facebooks and Google ads. Some nextdoor ads find out where people are hanging out online. That's where people are at more than ever. You just got to show up in front of those eyeballs. And a lot of people aren't engaging a lot of the franchise, a lot of the big companies, I don't know if they're lazy or they just, I don't even know what it is, but they're not using all these tools to their highest advantage. Like you guys can use, you can be quick and nimble and move faster than a lot of these big guys that are just not utilizing them to their full potential.

Brandon Condrey:
There's an example there. So we Have a local magazine. I'm sure you have one it's called Albuquerque The magazine you'll have one in your city. And they do a best of the city competition every year. And we win our category all the time. But in that magazine, one of the big franchises, one of the maids companies, they pay for this double page spread. So when you open the magazine, you get this double page spread front and center every month, that is $8,000 a month for this one little hat. And so it's great that people are probably reading that magazine and they're going to do it. I don't buy the magazine and I'm in the magazine from time to time. Like I buy the copy that when we get it, we look at it. But for $8,000, if you had put that towards, that's a year's worth of super solid digital media buy. If you got it dialed in, right? If you put eight grand into a digital media strategy with a consultant to help you do it, man, you'd be flying. But yeah, just try to think outside the box, like do something differently. If you've done direct advertising, we always spend 1500 bucks a month on direct mail. Change it up, man. Like try something different.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And we actually have some cool videos and stuff that show you guys how to switch this up and actually get free advertising. You can actually trade. We actually trade with our direct mail guy here in town. We clean his house and we get free marketing for that. So think outside the box, think of ways you can trade your marketing. Cleaning is a great way to barter because people need cleaning all the time. Everyone you talk to needs it. Right? So think of ways to be creative and then start thinking of ways that are outside the box. I mean, if you look at your competitors, maybe they are using billboards and radio and all this old school, traditional media, it kind of still works, but it doesn't work as good as the new school stuff. And in the new school stuff is cheaper. It's more effective. So like Google ads or best performing ads, Facebook right behind it. Next door is coming up behind that. When we very first started, got online and started using a lot of these, we got online with like HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack just to get quick leads and stuff. And we had to always be on it. But guys, that's the beauty of being a local business. You can be quick and nimble. The playing field has been leveled with new technologies. So use those to your advantage and leverage them to grow your business. Because the big guys they're all fat and the slug. What does that saying? The hogs get slaughtered, whatever it's because literally I don't know what the thing is either, but I get what you're saying. Yeah. It's like people get fat and lazy and they stopped taking action and they're like, Oh, I'm comfortable. I don't need, but you might be hungry. Right, right. You're going to be hungry. You got to be willing to do the extra work, to go the extra mile to use that stuff for your advantage.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. The quick and nimble thing. That's the Zippy car. You're a local business. You can do what you want. You're not beholden to a franchise. If you spent $8,000 on a print advertising and it didn't work out you can't take it back. Like it's done. If you Spent 400 bucks on next door and it didn't pan out for you, then don't spend that $400 next month. Like you can always change that. Or if something comes out of left field, all of a sudden like Instagram ads are hitting really hard in this one group in my town, like let's pay for an influencer to make a post about it. Like yeah. Yeah. Think about that. Think about contacting someone directly and just telling them that like, look, I'll clean your house. We had a radio advertiser actually pitch us on this. They wanted us to clean the house of one of the DJs of the morning show. And then they would tell everybody on the radio, they're like, Oh, I had my house clean. It was amazing. Part of the pitch for the ad guy was that it doesn't sound like an ad because people know that it sounds like an ad. So I'm not saying go buy radio stuff. But I'm saying there's lots of options when you start looking around. Yeah. So be the zippy car attached to the locomotor.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely. And the beauty of a lot of the strategies that are online that are a little bit more Zippy strategies you can add as you don't have to go all in and be like, Oh, like with the radio ad or something else, you might have to spend 5,000 or a thousand dollars or everything all upfront. Right. Just to get going with these online strategies, which we teach a lot, check out our other videos, check out our 10X course. If you guys really want to dive deep into that.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah the course will dial it in for you on how to actually plan the campaigns. But yeah, what you're saying is like, If you do the digital ads, you can tweak it.

Brandon Schoen:
So you can start with a hundred bucks and you can see if it works.

Brandon Condrey:
And just adjust the bid rates. And if you got one that hits like, okay, we know that the bid rate of this and it hits at this time, we'll, we'll spend more money on that. That's the whole point. If you do like a 20, 80 analysis, a Pareto principle that you can get 80% of the performance of your traditional ads by investing 20% to something that you've never done before. But you got to throw some spaghetti at the wall and see what's going to work here and we'll help you do it through the course. If you want to check that out, otherwise just keep listening to the podcast. Okay. And we got you there too.

Brandon Schoen:
That's right. So hopefully I helped you guys out this analysis of the Zippy car, the steam locomotive, make a hybrid guys and think long-term that steam locomotive. It might take a little longer to get going, but it's so worth it because it's hard to stop.

Brandon Condrey:
It's hard to stop.

Brandon Schoen:
And you're really building that legacy. You're not only affecting your local community, have an impact, but it's long-term guys, these, these businesses don't go away. I mean, you see them in your city, in town, they've been there for 20, 30, 50 years. Some of these local businesses service businesses, especially. So for the long haul, develop that long-term mindset start thinking big picture. And hopefully this helped you guys to win. Take it to the next level.

Brandon Condrey:
So, all right. So subscribe like comment below. Let us know if we need to cover something. Do you know of some new Zippy car software that we should've talked about that we didn't hit us up on the comments and maybe we'll talk about it. On the next episode, you can find us at ProfitCleaners.com. You can find links to all of our social accounts there. We're big on Facebook these days, we've got a private Facebook group in there that you can come join us around.

Brandon Schoen:
We're on YouTube now, obviously we're shooting videos.

Brandon Condrey:
So in meantime videos, keep it clean.

Brandon Schoen:
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.