Brian Winch started his business in a very simple way. A friend needed his lot to be cleaned, so he reached out to Brian to see if he would like to take the gig. from word to mouth Brian kept on getting clients. Slowly he grew to a big and successful operation. In this interview, he talks about how he grew his business with simple methods like building a present online, collecting reviews and producing content.
Clean Lot's site: https://cleanlots.com/\
This podcast is sponsored by I Think An Idea. An Internet marketing agency working out of Los Angeles - https://www.ithinkanidea.com/
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Today we have Brian winch on I think an idea think tank and excited to speak with Brian today. Just for those of you who are watching, you know, just so you guys know a little bit about Brian Brian started a business called clean lots. If you go to clean lots comm forward slash my success story and I'll share that On the screen.
In fact, I'll I'll just go there right now and just show people
that website as well. So here's here's clean lots and a little bit about clean lots. Basically, Brian's got an amazing story. He's the creator of clean lights. He has been operating a parking lot cleanup business since 1981. And he's had many different articles written on him with home business magazine. He's got a press page, he's got some amazing testimonials. So if you guys go to his website, you guys can actually read about Brian and he's also got some podcasts too. I understand. You're also a writer of the clean lots book too. And, you know, I'm excited to have you on here to talk about your journey. I know when you started. You had very little money or education or so But you had lots of passion, and lots of persistence and patience. And, you know, obviously, that's something that's super important when it comes to being successful, you know, in business. And so maybe tell us a little bit about your journey and, and how you got to where you are with clean lots.
Well, it's great to be here you and you're absolutely right. I think whatever endeavor person gets involved with, whether it's a side hustle or a full time business, the main things you bring to the table are a passion for your idea or what your what you're going to do, and be persistent and patient and you'll be successful and I think those attributes are more important than your, your pedigree. How much money is in the bank or you know how much startup capital you have and, and skills you could, you can always develop those skills, especially these days with the, with the internet, there's so much information out there, where you can pick up skills that, frankly, weren't available to me when I started this business in 1981, well before the internet, so I had to go out and get hard copies of books that were put up by, you know, different levels of government or banks or go to the library and, and, and learn what I needed to. But at the same time, it's important to realize when you need to delegate some work to the professionals, but always find solutions to problems and you always have to be moving forward. But to when I got started, I was working a full time job. And I realized it wasn't something I wanted to do. My my whole life. I've always been an independent soul. And like to get out, I enjoyed working outdoors and I thought, you know what, there's got to be an opportunity for me somewhere. So I started looking at What I could do for, you know, unlimited budget limited experience and skills. And I thought, well, what about a cleaning business? So there's all sorts of people that don't like to clean and all sorts of people that like to pay for it. And I started looking at different possibilities. And then I recall that my dad years earlier, you would moonlight back in those days it was called not, it wasn't called a side hustle or side gig. And he used to go out and clean up litter outside a strip Plaza, or, you know, a small retail property just a few blocks from where we lived. And he taken me along with him a couple times, and I thought, wow, this this is easy work. It's almost as easy as going for a walk and getting paid for it. And so I started looking into that I started doing some market research and started making some cold calls, if you will, to my prospects which are real estate or commercial property management companies and maybe two or three phone calls in I think Got a bite uh you know this guy said wow you know I need somebody I'm having a tough time finding somebody who's going to show up on a reliable basis to clean up the litter outside my my property which would be the sidewalks the parking lot surrounding landscape Would you be interested and that's how it all started I went out there I you know had basically learned from the school of hard knocks you know how to price my service how to walk the property when was the best time to do the service you know how much to charge and it all started from that first customer and he gave me three three properties and you know, I subsequently I got seven and eight nine and it kept building the business to the point where I was quite happy to be just a simple one man operation working full time. But I got I guess pretty successful my I couldn't turn down the the request for work from my my clients, so I had to kind of scale the business. Bring in some other people and grow the business. I didn't want to turn down work and let maybe my competition, you know, take some of that work from me. And we built it to the point where, right now we're billing out over $650,000 or around that amount every year. And we have typically around 150 properties that we service.
Cool. Hey, so as you're talking about, you know, because I, I deal with digital marketing and I, I many times deal with people that are just starting a company. You know, there's a lot of people that come to me and they already are established within business. You know, like, for example, one of my clients is Mercedes, and you know, that that dealership does 100 million a year in revenue, just out of that one dealership, but you know, they're behind a big brand and a big corporation. But for the little guys, I mean, I've I've had doctors, you know, many doctors do you know, 400 to 600,000 a year and they have more of like self employment. type thing and you know, starting businesses since I was young, I had a painting business, you know, when I was 19, I bought a franchise and, you know, you start doing the work, and then you realize you need more people because you can't do everything. And then it's like, understanding like what to look for in somebody that's working for you. But tell me a little bit about maybe your mindset behind taking care of customers, because that, you know, even though we're, I call it like in the future, and we have all this technology and we have social media, I kid these days with clients that I talked to that are successful. And I said, I think the skill of the future is going to be communication and people skills. And you know, we have all this technology, we have email, we have the internet, we have websites, even some of my clients don't want to talk on the phone. And so it's funny because a phone is so simple. And now we have Google Hangouts and Right now we're on zoom, where you and I can have a conversation just like you're right next to me, but talk about the importance of getting a customer value for a service communication. And what do you think? Are some of the aspects that can take one customer and turn it into 100?
Well, for one thing, you have to do more than what you say you will do. Anybody can clean. But if you take it one step further, and do a little bit more, but communicate what you're doing to your customers, let them know that hey, while I was there, I did this little extra thing. You know, I noticed somebody dumped a tire in front of the waste dumpster. And I tossed it in for you, you know, things like that. Communication is so key, it helps cement that business relationship, and they're more likely to want to continue doing business with you. If they get regular communication. And you know, you mentioned about phones. I mean, if you don't like to talk, there's texting. And I'll give you another really good example of how a phone comes in so handy. Now, if a person is Oh, cleaning up, for example, if I'm cleaning one of my properties, and I notice in the parking lot of stops, I've got Run, run over, and it's laying on the ground. And it could be a tripping hazard for maybe somebody that you know, not watching the steps the trip on it, or maybe a vehicle could drive over it and cause damage to it. property managers, property owners don't want any sort of liabilities or lawsuits. But if you take out your your your phone, and you take a picture, and then you text it to your customer, they know exactly what you're talking about, you know, without you having to speak to them. Basically, if that's not what you want to do, and you attach the text is to, you know, here's the stop sign knocked down at this point the property and name of the property and send that to them. They, they love you for that. Because like I said, you know, you're saving them for potential liability issues, but they want to get somebody out there to repair the damage as soon as possible before something happens, or, you know what the worst thing to them is for them to get an angry phone call from one of their tenants, you know, like, Hey, you know what, there's been grading on the wall or in front of my store for three days, why isn't anybody coming up to address it? So, you know, you can have the attitude that you know what, that's not my responsibility. You know, what if you're there, and it's no skin off your back? If, if you notice that and it just takes a couple of seconds just to communicate those those issues.
Yeah, you know, there's one thing because I do digital marketing, and I help companies get on the first page of Google and you know, there were there was something that impressed me when I looked at your site, and I'm going to do a little little screen share here. I don't know if you'll be able to see this on. On a on your side. But can you see this okay. I actually have a I have a scan have clean, lots calm. And and this shows like different work different keywords that you rank for. And a lot of times this isn't 100% accurate, it just gives us some ideas on maybe what's working what's not. If you look at you know, some of these things like parking lot cleaning, there's like 720 searches per month. And, and you guys are in position number five, right, which is pretty good because you're on the first page of Google. And, you know, a lot of times when I talk to businesses, and you rank for about 90 different keywords, and a bunch of them are between, you know, page, page one and the third or fourth page. I was looking at your site, and when I was looking at your site, I noticed you have a lot of content on here. And this is one of the things that I talked about with my clients and especially somebody that's trying to grow into a larger business. I think some of these things are so vital, the thing that you've done well, is you've got podcasts, and you put up players on different podcasts you were featured on. And so I would love for you to talk to me about this. Because in a way, you're what I tell people to do, no matter whether you're just starting out, whether you know you have a small business or a large business, and I'll share a couple stories with you. And maybe you can share some stories with me, Brian, but I was the other day I was I was watching a video off of LinkedIn. And there's somebody I don't know if you've ever heard of Gary Vaynerchuk. Yeah. Yeah. So Gary Vaynerchuk has a book called crush it. And he talks about something you talked about too, is like following your passion. And he he talked about how if you do something enough that you really believe in, then people are going to find you. And he was interviewing someone named Lilly Singh. Lilly Singh actually just got a show on air bc they gave her her own talk show. And for eight years, she's been putting up videos on YouTube and topics are everything under the sun, even, you know her own personal relationships and how she feels about different things. And, you know, she had such a huge following on content that she was given her own show with NBC. And there was another story I always share. There's a girl on HBO, the TV show is called insecure. And there's all these reality shows. I mean, there's shows right now I have a contractor, who does about 50 million a year in revenue. And that contractor was on $1 million listing and he was also on a reality show, where they actually a feature like doing like a home makeover. Mm hmm. So I mean, there's all these great opportunities where people come up with ideas, and even just people like trying to reinvent themselves, you know, because they're trying to end entertain people and go, Hey, if you want to do something, and you're passionate about it, this is what's possible. So as I, as I look at your website, and I and I look at, you know, the fact that you have traffic, if I were to look at all time, and and we were to like, I don't know if we can blow this up a little bit, but here's like your trajectory, like back in January of 2014, to now and you're just going up and up and up. So what I'd like you to do is, talk a little bit about the content that you create and what why do you create it and Aren't you too busy to do a podcast and why would you want to do a podcast tell me some of the miracles that have happened by putting yourself out there on the web?
Well, you know, I can't take credit for a lot of this because my background you know, I don't have didn't have a lot of skills, a lot of formal education, and I'm kind of a technical bi or our Luddite when It comes to technology today. Well, you know, somebody who is living back to the Stone Age, just just right, right? I have to be honest, I like why did
you write a book and why are you doing podcasts?
Well, I wrote the book, like way back then, you know, it's, it's, I've revised it several times. And, and I used to market it back in the day, the old fashioned way, mail order channels, like, you know, sending out Elon. And some people might remember like, even 1015 years ago, the proliferation of business opportunity magazine saw on the grocery newsstands. And one of
my well my, why did you create a book because he wanted to do consulting on
the book because I wanted to share this great business idea that I had developed. And I know like I said earlier, it's almost as easy as is going for a walk and making money doing it. And when I started out, you know, I had to create this myself and I thought this would be a great opportunity for Other people in other cities, if they're interested in it, too, you know, I could share my experience, I provide free support, by the way, if you bought my buy my book, but you know, I can make a few extra bucks helping other people in other cities. And that's one of the things you if you're going to be successful in business, you, you have to provide that value you have to share if you if you help other people get what they want, you'll get what you want. And so my major source of income is still from the cleaning, you know, cleaning the parking lots, but I've got this nice little side hustle on the side with the book and, and the clean lots website. So, you know, over the years, I've had help creating the website, but when it comes to content, I was struggling with that. And, you know, there's all sorts of different ways and some people think that they gotta learn everything, there's so much out there, they got to learn everything, to know what they're doing and to be able to market but if you find what works for you, milk it, you know, and I found that two things, if I can Get sponsored posts. And I wouldn't necessarily have to write them if I would approach various bloggers you know, that covered business opportunity or finance, you know, financial questions, you know, financial bloggers and they oftentimes have a page on their on their blog about you know, making money, you know, have side hustles I can approach them, Hey, what are you interested in my story, and they would write the posts for me and they'd put it up on their blog, and that would help drive traffic to my website. And then you know, what, I was looking at other things, you know, I'm not good at this. I'm not good at that. But hey, what about this opportunity about blogging, in the great thing about blogging, that content is evergreen, you know, someone could record a podcast and and release it, and maybe even on their own website, you know, they could have like 200 different episodes, but their followers, you're going to come back and they're going to look at every one of those episodes, you know, For years and years, and say, Hey, I like that opportunity. And, and so I've discovered in the past year, hey, that's another way for me to drive traffic to my website and help me sell my books, and how many podcasts and you've been on? Well, you know, I started doing this about a year, year and a half ago. I'm doing about two a month. So over the course of a year and a half, two years, you know, what, what is that about 4040 to 50 podcasts? Or, you know, maybe not that many. But yeah, I mean, you just need to, again, to be persistent and passionate about your message and share value. You know, I mean, it's not enough to, you know, to say, Hey, this is all about me, and, you know, share my story. You know, because a lot of people you know, they get fired up by that.
What's been what's been a, you know, from doing these podcasts, maybe share one story with me like some kind of call where it was like one of those aha moments where you got a call. And, you know, like for me, when I was 25, I started an event. Planning company and that event planning company. I'll never forget getting a call from Blockbuster Video. And I had never talked to anybody at blockbuster. And they called me up and they said, Hey, we're doing some grand openings of blockbuster stores. This was back in 1996. And here's the funny part of it is blockbuster doesn't exist right now because of the internet. And they were like one of my first big clients, they called me and they said, We need to do some grand openings. It was like five different locations. They said, Listen, we need someone to go and do like some fun events. I had an event planning company. We did you know, these really creative balloons like we actually did a job for NBC for Seinfeld. And friends and, and Frasier, you know, we we came in we created like peacock shaped balloons. And and, you know, for the whole cast of friends, they were playing with these balloons. They did a big fall promo shoot for NBC. But here, I get a call From blockbuster, I'm in my 20s you know, 25 years old, you know, with a business, and they say we want to fly your team to these five different locations. Send us a quote, I sent him a quote, I think for the airfare and, you know, the promotions. It was like 30 grand, but when you're 2530 grand seems like a lot of money. Right? And they're like, okay, so I sent him the invoice they sent me a check that easy. Yeah, and and they found me because I had updated some content on a website. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just updating my site because I wanted it to be better and better. I was. I was obsessed with my passion, of like, being able to provide services to people that would have be fun and entertaining. Right? They would have fun and and then I got I got a call from guest jeans to they actually wanted us to come and scare the living daylights out of their employees for Halloween. And I had all these entertainers and people that dressed up as monsters and you know, we can came in it was so fun, but they want us to shut off the lights hide under the desks and bring in like Frank EULA Frankenstein and Dracula and Jason. You know, it's like wait, we're getting paid to do this right? So we you know we made thousands of dollars doing some really fun stuff that you know like for you You said, your job is like a walk in the park. And and you do it because you want to do it and and you're enthusiastic about it, which is amazing. But you know, many times I have people that contact our agency, I think an idea and we're in Santa Monica, but we work with people everywhere. And it might be someone who's super successful, they have a company, but they don't want to write a blog. They don't want to do a podcast. And they know they want to be on the first page of Google. And the stuff that I tell them to do is very similar to what you're doing and what we do for other people. We had a client we put up we literally took 700 videos and we created 700 podcasts. We He took the audio, we add videos, we put an intro and an outro. We loaded it up to a media hosting platform. We pushed it out to 15 different podcasts. And within eight weeks, they had 5000 downloads. Yeah. And and then we took that and we transcribed it. And we had writers, we had a team of three writers. We wrote 200 articles in literally 90 days of almost 1000 words. And you take 200 times 1000. That's 200,000 words. Yeah. Or maybe more. Maybe that's, maybe that's 2 million, right? And we put that on Google. And then obviously, Google has to crawl that material. But what what you're talking about with bloggers, I mean, many times for the clients that we have, when people have a site, and they want to create content for their users or the visitors that come to the site. I would say one of the biggest challenges is coming up with the content and then on a consistent basis. So sometimes I'll take my writers and I'll reach out to a site and go Hey, can we contribute 1000 word article?
it on, right like, like we have a client will write the content, we'll submit it out to the client. We'll get them a backlink on something like one of our clients, we got a, we got an article on this archetype, Iser calm. And for someone to put a listing on there, like a display ad cost $7,000. Right for, for one ad, right, like on one month is seven grand. And we said, What if we gave you like these really amazing high resolution images and this client worked with Quentin Tarantino and they worked with, you know, Massage Envy and all these big corporate clients and we just pitched them. We sent them serials, they wrote an editorial. It was a beautiful spread, but it boosts the clients rankings. And the client was so busy, you know, doing what they do. Like they would have never Come up with that idea. Yeah. But the reason why I bring this up is because what you're excited about and the podcast that you're doing and, and and the blogs hats off to you, because most people are so short sighted. They only see the dollar they're going to get today. And they never make time to plant. what I call the magical seeds of farming. Yeah, is like, have somebody talk about you or get interviewed, or put content out there? Because you never know. And Gary Vaynerchuk says this. It doesn't matter if he's doing a webinar with 1000 people or two people. Maybe one of the two people is the right person to get that content across to because I think too many people prejudge, they go well, I don't want to take time out of my schedule and get on a podcast and you know, just so two people can see it. And I just got off the phone call with a client who has a merchant. They do merchant processing. And they said Listen, I don't care. Like, if I had to spend more money to get to the right person, it would be totally be worth it. Then to spend a little bit of money and get to all the wrong people. Yeah. Yeah. And, and he's like, I don't care what it costs. If I could get this one client, you know, that's gonna charge, you know, $60 million a year. I'll pay premium rates all day long to get that person. Mm hmm. So I think I think where people get short sighted when it comes to content is like, you could just be busy out there cleaning parking lots, right? And you could just be stuck in your own Brian world. You know, we're just about Brian and what you can do. But at some point, you probably said to yourself, I can't do this all by myself. I need to find people that not only I can provide an opportunity for them, but I could give them opportunity to where they could help me grow my business. And I could I could have more flow of the money and I could give money to other people that could help me build my company. So talk a little bit about that. Because I think that's probably the hardest thing for like a small business owner, you know, when, you know, they think they're making a bunch of money, they're making 60 or $100,000 a year and they think they're making a living. What is that mindset that takes somebody from maybe just doing it all by yourself to saying, you know what, I'm going to jump, I'm going to take a risk. And I'm going to hire some other people to help me grow my company.
Well, you first have to say you're hired.
So But no, it's important that you need to get the message out and you need to be at to have people find you some way or the other and it doesn't have to be that difficult either. Back in the day, when I started there was the Yellow Pages and every buddy had to be in the yellow pages to be found and and that's how you would find your prospects to there. They are listed in the Yellow Pages. Just like my prospects or clients or real estate management companies or property management companies, but nowadays, you know, if you were to start this business, I tell people well, you know, websites great. But before you develop a website, claim you're the low hanging fruit the the free search engine listings, like yeah, good, good example of that is the Google My Business listing doesn't, you know, all you do is just claim your listing, you get a profile. So if a prospect is looking for somebody to clean their parking lot here, they're not happy with whatever they have in place now, and they do a Google search, you're going to show up and then you're going to get a phone call from them, Hey, you know, from this guy, you say, Hey, I just found you, you know, your profile on Google and, you know, can you help me out here, here's my address for my site and you know, contact him for information, get back to me with a price. You have to do that. If you're in any type of business to allow people to To be able to find you, it's not enough just to go out there and you think, okay, I've, I'm gonna do all this cold calling, and I have to find these people. You have to make people and make it easy for people to find you as well. And you can start, you know, with the simple things like the Google, my business listing, you know, it's funny you say that because
a lot of times when I get a client, like we do SEO, we write content, we build links, we optimize their website, but I'll look and see if they have a Google My Business and sometimes, a lot of times, I have an e commerce site. They're doing 3040 100 k a month in revenue. And they totally ignored their Google My Business and and what I tell them is this, people like doing business with local people. And so like when I run a targeted ad for a client, I will target an area where they have an address first, because I know like if you're in Santa Monica, California, and I'm in Santa Monica, California, and I have a conversation with you, there's a higher ratio that I'm going to convert you into One of my clients because you're right here with me, then if you're in Ohio, and I can't tell you how many times and yeah, it is an excuse for people to come up with this, but I've had people tell me, hey, I'd like to do business with I'm in, you know, I'm in Washington, DC, and I have a guy right down the street. And I've decided to go with him. Now, he might not be as good as me. But the fact that he's right down the street, and they can talk to them, and they can have them come into the office. A lot of times people are very, you know, they're very favored towards that. But if we look at that, like, for example, I had a guy he was, he was selling like CBD and herbs online. Yeah. And he was doing, you know, 2030 grand a month in revenue. And I said, Well, do you have a an office address, like on Google? And he said, but I don't, I don't sell out of my office. I sell, you know, on my website, but I said, you know, Santa Monica, how many people are looking for CBD? And like, if you were local, and you actually had a local address, even if you got 10 more orders a month, you know, it would pay for itself. But it's not just one month they're going to reorder month after month after month. That's right. And so a lot of times I've looked for the low hanging fruit even with people that are that are paying me to do SEO, I'm like, have you optimized? Like, why isn't your Google My Business up to date? Do you know you can build citations and you can put like specials on there, and blog posts on your Google My Business, you know that you can put stuff up like content that would actually have an ad for mobile phones. I don't know if you realize this, but every one of my clients these days, 70% of the searches now are on mobile phones or smart devices. I went to a plastic surgeon the other day he is in. He's in Beverly Hills on a drive that's very expensive. And desktop wise, he was coming up on the first page of Google but when I went Some mobile phone. He was on the second and third page. And I don't even have to tell him he said to me, Listen, I spend 15 $20,000 a month on pay per click. I know that 70% of the people that come to my website are coming from mobile because it says that, in my ad words, it says mobile devices. Hmm. So he knew he was missing out on 70% of the business, for the fact that his website wasn't optimized for mobile phones. That's right. And so when you look at Google My Business, the reason why I bring up mobile phones, is you see the Google My Business stuff first. Like if I'm looking for a Mexican restaurant, or I'm looking for somebody that repairs BMWs. When I go and search that on my mobile phone, the Google My Business, the maps, they come up first, because people go to that first because they're local or they're close, you know, I mean, if you want to go for a restaurant with your family, you're not going to go drive, you know? 78 miles away. You're like, Hey, what's close this, right? So we have this mentality, the psychology that like, Hey, why don't I do business with someone down the street? Because it's easier for me to go and see them. It's convenient, especially nowadays, like in LA with traffic. And, you know, a lot of times people don't want to take an hour to go, you know, to someplace to visit a store, they want to go right down the street. So there's a convenience there that people are still accustomed to. Even though we have technology, and with Google My Business what a lot of people don't realize too, is like all the little things on Google My Business make a difference, right? Like the reviews. If you have 20 reviews, and I have none. Guess who they're gonna call you? They're gonna call you, right? If you had pictures and I have no pictures, subconsciously what they say in their head is, well, this guy Brian looks like he is more passionate about his business. He's got pictures, he's got reviews. This guy he has nothing is he going to be lazy with Me too as a customer, because he doesn't put up pictures and doesn't have reviews, maybe that's not the guy that I should go to. And people don't think it makes a difference Do you think it makes a difference? Huge difference and you know what it's Yes, you get reviews just ask your customers a test that do you like my work?
Just ask and as a I'd be glad to and you give me positive reviews and you're, you're 100% right, people will find your profile and they'll see the pictures and they're like, Oh, he's down the street but but I want to see those reviews particularly if you're in the restaurant business, they people want to you know, they're not going to go there unless they they're content with the with the reading of all this food is grades in the order this is etc. So it's really important to have those reviews and to ask for them.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's it's so simple. I mean, and and people that I know like I work with some people do construction and solar and they will actually go out and get addresses because they want to come up in those local Cities and and it means so much to them that they're willing to pay a monthly, you know, fee for a virtual address. And then they might have five of them that they're paying like 60 $80 a month for, you know, that's $400 a month. Well, why would somebody spend that kind of money? if Google My Business, you know, didn't work. And we're not even talking about ads, because you can run ads on Google My Business to know better at the fraction of the cost. If you're to run like Google Search Ads. Yeah. And I think they're, it's the best, best bang for the buck. You know, like, and it will not be shocked how many people don't have a Google My Business.
I know I see it all the time. I want more business. I deal with large property management companies. They might have offices throughout North America. But nobody has claimed their free Google My Business listing or I you know, some of my other clients, they've done that and they might have one review and it's a negative one. It's they're trashed, but nobody within the company is bought To check to see what kind of reviews are getting, or at the end, if you get a negative review review, you have to reply to it, you have to answer to it, as opposed to just ignoring it. But you know, a lot of companies at their peril, just ignore what's happening on social media, and have no idea but Oh, it can actually be a big negative, you know, if they don't reply to the bad comments, right?
Here's a picture here just in case the people that we're talking to, you know, don't fully understand when when you type in a search term. Whether that be on your mobile phone or your desktop, up here, you have the ads and these are the people that paid the money. But down here, you have basically the Google My Business. And so this Google My Business is super key. You know, especially if you can come up for like here, we're, you know, we're in Santa Monica. We're actually number one, and we have positive reviews, but there's a map up here and then You can see like, what's close to you, you know, and that that's all that we're talking about is, you know, get getting your business on here, all you need is an address. And, and then when you go to the listing for that, for that listing here, then what you can do is you can add some, you know, really nifty pictures, this is pictures of the office where we are, and you can add reviews there. And it's pretty simple. And then you get little stars next to your name, too. I know there's a lot of people that don't have any stars. But that that just means that you have reviews. And like Brian said, it's super simple. All you got to do is ask, just just ask people. I mean, we're doing all this stuff anyway. I mean, I was telling a client the other day, I said, it's not like you're not doing it. You're just you're not doing it where it's being recorded. Right. Like you. You have great customers that send you emails. And I said, Do you have any tests do videos Well, we're not really doing it, but we could do it. And he's got great customers. And and then he's like, Why are 200 videos? A QA I was like, well, we could put that on your website. And then we could, we could load it onto your YouTube channel too. And then we could transcribe it in words, and we can put that as a tool, like instead of your receptionist, trying to explain something. The receptionist I had this mentor A long time ago. He said, The key is to point and redirect people to the right place. It's really and so if you have this stuff on your website, you can just redirect people to a link that already answers the question. And if you record it, it'll say the same thing every time you never have to get it wrong.
Well, I have that on the homepage of my website as well as it's a it's a brief explainer video if you will. And it shows me doing my work. So it's not enough just read copy and people other people are gonna say, Well, I just can't see picture my mind what he's talking About how does, how does he do his work? And so, you know, on my homepage is, is that video and all you have to do is sit back listen and watch and you'll know exactly what I'm doing and how easy the work is. And the same thing goes with your with the Google My Business listings, you can add all sorts of things other than images, you can add a video to that as well. Right? It's important to update it you know, every so many weeks you'll get a message to from Google, that your content is about to expire. The your latest post is about to expire. Do you want to add something fresh or new and it's pretty simple to do? Yeah. There's all sorts of other directories to the other search engines all have something similar trade association, sometimes there's a directory and you can get a free listing and their services directory for example, you have to make it easy for your prospects to find you. Yeah.
Let me I'm going to do another screen share because I saw something else with your, with your website, too. I went on your website, you know, one of the things that I that I always tell people, and I don't know if you can see this, but over here to the right is Brian's social media. Yeah. And so, you know, one of the things that I tell people just like Google, my business is do you have a business Facebook page? Because, you know, Facebook operates like a search engine. And what people don't realize is when you go up here, if you were to put, you know, clean I mean, this is like another Google. Yeah. And so, when you put this up here, what happens is these videos come up, and I'm just doing this to illustrate, you know, that that Facebook is also a search engine. Mm hmm. And so you gotta have a Facebook business page. One of the things that I that I tell clients to do is make sure you fill this out, like thoroughly. And the reason why is because Google crawls through Facebook to Facebook is a website. And you have your story. You have a description. I've seen people's Facebook page, where literally they have nothing there. Right? And and people buy stories more than they buy facts, right? So, here you have, you know, clean locks is operations manual. It's details on how to start an operate a parking lot litter cleaning business. It's got some information about Brian, Brian shows how he contracts with property management companies. I mean, this is all and then it's got your website, it's got your email, it's got your phone number. This is a business card on Facebook. And I mean, I can't even begin to tell you Brian, how many people that I talked to that, you know, they want to, they want to flow with money coming in, right? And they're passionate about stuff. They don't have a Facebook page. They don't have Have a website. Some people have the weirdest responses I've ever heard. If I have a website, then I have to maintain something. In my opinion, if you don't have a website, you're not in business and you're telling people on a subconscious level, that you're don't take pride in your own business enough to have a website, right? And a website, you know, the funny thing, or this isn't the funny thing, this is the magic of the Internet. The funny thing with the internet and Google is that it never sleeps. We asleep as people, right? We go to bed at night. I know some of us stay up all night, you know, we're excited. But we go to bed at night. And when we wake up in the morning, you know, we start the day again. But what's really cool about Google is it's there 24 seven, so people can find you 24 seven, but if you don't have a website, you don't have a yet at the minimum, have a Facebook page, right with with your information, where people can find you, you know, and they can see what's going on with you and you know, it We have different images, you know that you put up on clean lots. You know, your your YouTube is in there as well. You have some videos on there. Today video is so important. I mean, you have people that don't like to read. Right?
Exactly. And sure is worth 1000 words.
I there's a book, wonder if I can maybe I can find it. But uh, I'll see if I can find the diagram. But what I was going to talk about was there's a, there's a bunch of different stages that people learn at, I think it's called the five stages of learning. And what I tell people is have content not only written but also you know, have have audios, right, like you do podcasts, right? have videos because some people are more visual, right? And so
And lots of images too.
You need to break the content up and provide it in the various forms that people will will gravitate towards. Right, exactly. What do you know, you made a good point, like, you know, Facebook, if you're in business, you need to have a Facebook page. If you're in the business to business community, it's imperative that you have a profile on LinkedIn. You can develop a lot of customers, a lot of prospects can find you from you having a profile on LinkedIn, for example. So it all goes back to what I mentioned in the beginning, that business used to be done with the yellow pages. Well, today nowadays, social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, that is the new Yellow Pages, you have to have a profile.
Absolutely. Here I'm gonna I don't know people will be able to see this on the screen, but we're gonna get really scientific here. This is the This is the learning pyramid, right? And studies show that varying your study methods and materials will improve your retention and recall the information. I was taught a long time ago, because I was in direct sales, that there's different people that different they listen in different ways, right? And this one here, they have auditory visual, kinesthetic, and kinesthetic is more feeling based. Visual is, you know, if you were to look at an image, or you were to look at a video, auditory would be like podcasts. And and a lot of times you'll hear this includes from people that say, Well, I don't hear what you're saying, or I don't see what you're telling me. And so you have to listen on a different level to understand and and the reason why I'm putting this out there is whether you have a website or you have Facebook or you have social media, you know, some people are more into stories, you know, there's, here's the active listening and the passive listening, and it has discussions That would where that's like where forums and blogs would come in audio visual would be like podcasts and videos reading would be content on blogs, lectures. And then, you know, I think within kinesthetic and feeling is like, what are we teaching others that that's where like, the testimonials would come in or maybe like documentation on your business, like, how does it work? And, you know, I, I met with this plastic surgeon the other day, you know, his average client is $15,000. When someone's spending that kind of money, they want to know, like, how does this whole thing work? You know, and am I making the right decision? You know, if I'm going to spend that kind of money, what's the procedure? Right? Like, how do how do you guys do this? You know, and so those are important things. When it comes to marketing that and i'm i'm probably going into this on maybe maybe too many different levels for people, but some people are very like, you know, when people start businesses is some people are very technical. And they operate their business from 100% technical standpoint, but then they lose the people that aren't technical, like me. I like I'm probably more visual, more more feeling. But if you were to send me the blogs, I probably wouldn't read them and, and be as receptive as if I saw a video. Mm hmm. So now I might jump to another site where there's a video, and I'll do business with them. Because they have what appeals to me receiving the information. That's right. And so these are things that we don't think about when we create a website. Do you have stuff that's audio? Do you have videos? Do you have written stuff? Do you have documents and maybe like a how to or maybe a guide on top 10 things to do when you're when you're going to start a cleaning business? Mm hmm. And and one of the things you said, reminded me of a book that I read it's called the science of Getting Rich with a you know, I think it's Wallace wattles is it What a funny name right? And the concept behind that is eyes get people more or than what they pay for. And I think we've lost that philosophy in business these days. I think it's like, oh, you pay me $5 I give you $5 worth and I'm out. Yeah. Right. And, and even within my own agency, there's many times where I'll spend five hours and I've had people hire me for $300 an hour for consulting. Mm hmm. And I'll spend three hours that's $900. And I didn't charge the person. And that value that I give them. Typically, if I spend time with the client, if I feel they're receptive, and they they want to do business and they're kind of qualified, will typically start working with me because I understand that people have to get value out of like, what you give them and I've hired coaches that I that I paid money to And at the end of an hour, I'm like, Am I getting value out of this? Or is this just about you making money? Yeah. And that's what separates like a really good cause driven business. And, and a business that really cares versus just a business that's out to make money. Mm hmm. And and I think people look at that, you know, when they buy products when they do business with different companies online. They want to know that somebody cares. Before they know how much somebody knows. Yeah.
Well, in my case, you know, I've been around so long. My brand is myself. If you're going to buy my book, you're getting my 38 years experience and my free support. Right now anybody can write a book and sell it, but are you going to be there for the support? Right? You know, and the same thing with my cleaning business, you're getting my, you know, 38 years experience and my customer service and the extra value I provide my clients Understand that, and that's why they keep coming back to us, you know, time and time again. And, and but it's all about building those relationships and making sure people are happy. Sometimes it's just an occasional phone call you reach out to them. Is there anything more we can do for you? Is there anything that you're not quite satisfied? You know, let us know. And we'll make sure we fix things for you. You know, it's good to communicate those things before you get a complaint. You know, what I you know, I'm not happy with your service or whatever. So it's really important to just keep those two new communication channels open.
Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's
I look at I look at businesses these days, like an extension of myself, and it may sound kind of weird. But I know that if I help you get what you want, and I can give so much value whether I have a five minute conversation with you or a 20 minute conversation, and and I know I've had friends they go, you know, you're going giving away all your best stuff. And and I said, Listen, I have so much to give away to people. I have better stuff than even that. Yeah, but but most people can't execute and do all this stuff. So that's why you need like, I think mentors and coaches these days are something that's so critical. I mean, I've met kids that have gotten out a score. They're going they're going to go to college right and they're going to become, I never forget this one girl. I met her at a I think it was, I don't know if it was like the was like a race, Indy 500 or something here in California. And I met this girl and she was doing promotions. She was selling strawberries. I remember this like yesterday. And she said, Wow, I'm going to become a psychologist. And I'm going to go to this school and I'm going to spend, you know, I don't know 120 150,000 in education, and I said, Well, have you ever have you ever spent time with a psychologist like Saturday? in her office, and she said, No, but I, but I hear it's a good career to have. And I said, Well, let me ask you a question before you spend eight years of your life and $150,000 and go into debt. Don't you think you should go and like, just put yourself into the future, and hang out with a psychologist and interview two or three of them, and see if it's the lifestyle that you want, before you go down this path, and then you realize that what you wanted isn't actually what you thought it was. Exactly. And she looked at me like she had saw, like a ghost or something. And she's like, Oh, my God, that's, that's ingenious, right? And I'm like, it's common sense to me. But how many people these days have a mentor have a coach you know, when they have a business like you do consulting, you help people start up a cleaning business. I do digital marketing. And many times what people don't realize is even though I do digital marketing, I've had many of my own friends. As some that are still running today, some businesses that were sold for millions of dollars. And I do this because I love creating magic for people when it comes to business. And so what people don't realize is even know my name is Hugh and I work for I think, an idea. I've looked at the back end of a Mercedes dealership. I've looked at the back end of an e commerce business that sells CBD or sells sports equipment or ping pong equipment, or one of the brands we worked with was power block adjustable weights. I've done consulting for hailstone restaurants who has like 75 different locations and does almost a billion dollars a year in revenue, right? I've looked at the back end. And I've seen like the dashboard of like, where are they putting their money? Where are they spending money on content, you know, all these different things. So what's been really valuable and fun for me is I get that insight even I don't know hailstone restaurants, where I own I don't own a business consulting firm that does a billion a year in revenue, but I've an understanding of how they operate. Mm hmm. And and what they've done and what works and what doesn't work. You know. So sometimes people come to me with the business and they're like, Yeah, but I, I know CBD better than everyone. I've been working at this for five years. And I said, Well, that's great. I know marketing. You want to build your revenue. And you want to market it the right way. You don't have a Google My Business. You don't have Google shopping feeds. You don't have Google, you know, AdWords, you don't have Google Analytics. You know, you don't know what your traffic is. You don't know where your sales came from. Yeah. So you might know everything in the world about CBD. But I know everything in the world about how to scale up and increase revenue. Whether you have CBD a cleaning business because it's funny. I had a client that was one of the largest cleaning supply people you Based in Texas, we did a website for him had 78,000 products in a shopping cart. And people did commercial cleaning, they would reach out to him. So, you know, we we gained, like so many insights from all these companies. And probably you too, even though you're in the cleaning business, you work with all different types of companies that hire you. You know, some days, you get an aha moment where you learn like one new thing. And you go, wow, this is brilliant. I never thought of this. Yeah.
So yeah, well, you know, and it's important that people understand, they might know everything about their product, but like you pointed out, you have to market it properly. And a lot of people have the wrong attitude will say, well, that's going to cost me how much is that going to cost me? It's not going to cost you anything. It's an investment in your business. It helps grow your business. And so you have to recognize you can't do everything yourself. Yeah, there are certain people that you need to reach out to you whether they'd be mentors or digital marketing companies to, to help build your business, I mean, you just have that attitude that you're a part of my team, as opposed to you're gonna cost me How much?
Yeah, I mean,
I mean, I care a lot about, you know, the clients and even the people that don't become clients with me. I mean, there's people that I get on the phone, and I give them five ideas that just spins their head, and they're like, I never thought of it like that. I mean, I, I didn't know this conversation was gonna go so well. You know, and it's, it's just, it's just really about showing people that you care. And I mean, it's so funny. We have people that do these Google ads, right? Anybody can go online, and they can put money on Google and spend money and drive traffic to a website. But Google doesn't understand anything about your business. They just have an algorithm that makes them money and I've been on the phone, many times, with People that work at Google. And the people that run the ads, they're just going through a manual and they're just like trial and error. The only difference is it's your credit card that's on there, not theirs. Right? So it's, you know, you have to start somewhere. And I mean, hats off to you for the fact that you followed the path and went down, you know, followed your passion. There's, there's a good book that kind of reminds me of, there's a good book called The surrender experiment. I don't know if you ever read it, but it was this guy that just said he was gonna say yes to everything and just kind of went along the path. And then it just opened up more and more things for him. And sometimes, many times that can happen with any kind of company that you have. If you really are just, you have joy in it and you have passion in it. Next thing you know, you get these amazing calls where you're like, wow, okay, I said yes. And then like you said, next thing you know, you got 15 more clients or you got? Who knows? Now you're on a TV show. You never hear the best of what you do. But exactly, you put yourself out there, you never know who's gonna find you and find you like love your story or your message and want to share it with your audience. Right? Um, what are some of the things that you're working on right now? Maybe, maybe tell people have you had any magical calls off your podcasts? You ever get a call? You're like, Wow, this is amazing.
Um, well, you know, I mean, you know, on a much smaller scale. I've had some people reach out to me, you know, other bloggers to say, Hey, I, you know, I run this financial blog, I love your story. And I'd love to share it with my audience or some podcasters have reached out to me and said, You know what, I, I found your website and I noticed you've been on some other podcasts. I'd love to have you on my show as well. You know, things like that, you know, when things just build and, you know, you when you first started out, you're doing more of that, you know, research and trying to get Those guest appearances but after a while, once you have a few shows and, and blog posts under your belt, and that makes it easier for other people to find you and then ask, you know, Hey, would you like to, you know, be a guest on my show our, our, our blog, and you know, so, you know, that's what you have to do.
I think and what do you any anything you're working on lately. I know people can go to your website, they can
get books, I've got the book and I think if someone's interested in getting into the parking lot cleaning business, that's the way to go to get started. As I mentioned, it comes with my free support, but I'm developing some related products as well. I've got the business template kit. I've got the explainer video or the business marketing video because as we discussed previously, a lot of people need to see those images or a video as to what the service is all about. So it helps people with their marketing efforts. You know, they can put that on their website, they can put it on their Google My business listing in their own city, you know, if they get into the parking lot cleaning business and working on, you know, a website template right now as well that maybe we'll have that available in a couple of months or, or whatever, but just to make it easier for people to get started and be successful in the parking lot cleaning business. Cool.
Yeah, I mean, you have you have a pretty clean website and lots of great content, which I'm always a big fan of. And, man, I mean, I just I'm shocked sometimes. I mean, there's so many people out there that do business that just kind of MC miss a lot of the basics, you know, I mean, someone told me like the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And so you know, even like when I'm when I'm talking to these people that spend a lot of money on online, on whether it be a plastic surgeon or someone that does home remodeling, I think what people need to realize is you have to become what you want. attract. And if you have a good platform, a good a good looking website, it's totally worth it. Because you're going to attract better people. But if you go to your website and as kind of looks like a Halloween, like dark and kind of creepy, you're not going to attract good clients. No, I've worked with so many like celebrities and successful people. And I can't tell you how much they pay attention to detail. And that's why they go with people because of the details. Because people look at the details and they care about the details. And then people that are at that level that spend that kind of money. They want to work with the best people, not not cheap people are okay people. And it's not so much about the money. They want to know that if they hire somebody that they're going to get what they need to the best of their ability. That is not going to be a halfway job or halfway product or and if you don't, if you have a website that's half way or social media that's halfway it might be If you're just telling people I want the halfway people, I don't want the all the way people, you know,
and you can start small and you know, do one thing at a time, you know, you don't have to jump in and try to do you know, you have all sorts of profiles to work on one first get that right, and then move on to the next one.
Yeah, absolutely. But, uh, you know, Brian, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time and, you know, hopefully, hopefully, someone sees the video and they reach out to you. And if not, maybe we've shed some enlightenment on on some people out there, and maybe how they can, they can look at things a little bit differently. It's so funny, I do digital marketing. And the other day, I was talking to somebody about college, because you have a similar story, probably, you know, you started with what you had and I was in the Marines. You know, I worked on helicopters, and I joined the Marines at the time because I got accepted to university Arizona and temple, and a bunch of really good schools for architecture. And a funny thing happened. I went and I took a mechanical drawing class in my high school. I took the class and I hated it. I was like, I was like, What am I gonna do? Like? I thought I thought architecture sounds like very artistic. Right? Yeah. And I got accepted. And then, at the time, I don't know, I think I just wanted to go and study something and, you know, go to one of these great schools. And I was like, you know, I think I'm going to join the Marines and I got in the Marines and I was in the food business for a while and I started I just started my own company. And since I was like, I had my first one when I was 19. Another one when I was 25. I didn't have a college degree. I just had common sense. Yeah, I was good with math. I figured, well, if you can take two and add three on top, that's five. You got three left over, right. It's not that complex. But I really, I really like the magic of business. You know, like what's possible. If you're really, if you really like you, if you have good intentions and you put your heart into it, and you're and you're big on helping other people, like get what they want. The internet for me has been really fun, because there's a lot of different verticals that I work with. So I'm not just working with one vertical. And there's some people that work with 111 vertical, but I feel like I feel like the content can get stale. I know, there's companies out there. They work with just attorneys or just contractors. And what they don't realize is a lot of times they'll just copy what they did before. And then you don't have anything unique. Yeah. So I think you have to come from having unique engaging content. And and make sure that you know, you're you have a fresh approach. And I think not knowing sometimes is a better approach than knowing Because if you don't know, usually try new things and by trying new things you get to new people. Right. And, and I think, I think your story is amazing, you know, so I think it's, I think it's a an example of how maybe sometimes we make things harder than really what they are.
Exactly, exactly. I mean, I've become successful from such a simple little business. And, you know, it doesn't have to be complicated, just do whatever you do better than other people with passion, persistence and patience and you can become successful.
Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's simple, you know, just care about people and and follow what you're passionate about. So yeah, cool. Well, thanks so much Brian for coming on board and I put your website in the bottom bottom of this video and, and you can share it with you know, the people you have on your social media. And we can we can help each other spread the word and and get The word out there.
Awesome. Thanks you It was great.
Oh yeah. Thank you very much. Have a great day. You too. All right, by the way.
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