I think it was two or maybe three at best, years ago when I first heard the name "Mark Kennedy" while trying to keep up with the long list of business mentors who work with our industry..
Unlike Joe, Howard,*The Twins, John Braun, Dave Youkom, Crazy George or any of the rest, Mark has never ( that I can recall) stepped foot onto Bulletin Board soil to "mine the minors" as they say. I find that interesting, was he a quick study and saw that the average bulletin boarder is too busy obsessing over the angle of his jets or the inner diameter of his blower to vacuum tank hose to ever really really need guidance on how to hire his second or third manager or lease his 20 trucks or pay outright? Or was he warned by the well established out laws to stay off their turf?..lol...
I first met Mark at The Cleaners College in Reno last year. I believe it was here that he and Lisa Wagner first made googly eyes at one another. Now they are playing the circuit together, appearing at trade shows, Facebook and on weekly chat rooms for the trade.*Move over old guard, there's a new Cowboy in town!!
From what little I've heard from Mark I think he may have some interesting and fresh things to say about growing a carpet cleaning business so I'm going to try and lasso him off Facebook for a quick QnA here on TWGCCF!
First off Mikey, I have to congratulate you on a great strategy. Appeal to the ego! Get a guy who doesn’t participate on your board, to participate by bringing him on to talk about himself. Who could resist?
-Mark did you too start from the back of a Ford Pinto and grow your business to 80 trucks in lest than a month or do you have a different story about your humble beginnings?
Actually it was a ’76 Ford Maverick and it only took two weeks
People love the rags-to-riches story, but it’s really not part of my schtick. Yes, I did start my own cleaning business, and yes, I did build it up into something. (And yes, I didn’t start with a pile of money, but neither did most of the people in the business)
But we all know that marketers use those stories of their humble beginnings to appeal to the crowd and convince them that they share that history with you, and that they are just like you.
And it works pretty well. And I’m not above using some psychology to sell, but in this case I’d prefer to just appeal to logic.
So I sell my stuff based on this:
1. Cleaners need to build a business, the owner/operator thing can’t go on forever.
2. They have to find some way to pay for it.
3. If they’re aware of their costs at all, they’ll quickly realize they can’t be the cheapest in their market.
4. They’ve got to find a way to get customers to pay them more… in spite of the fact that there are certainly cleaners right down the street that will do it for less.
5. They have to build a large base of customers and make money while they do it.
6. You can’t strong-arm customers and have them ever want you back.
7. Bait and switch is just slimy.
8. You probably aren’t going to be nearly as excited about pushing that wand when you’re over 50 as you are right now.
9. Most cleaning companies are worthless. It’s a bunch of heavily-used equipment, and a list of customers that’s loyal to someone else (the original owner).
My average client is a guy that already has the programs from the other gurus and realizes that there isn’t a magic bullet, but that it is possible to build something out of all this. Most of them have been in the business at least 20 years, and are often very qualified, very experienced, and pretty smart. (Master Cleaner types) I enjoy talking to them and they’re fun to work with.
-Your book*says you have helped 40 plus Large Companies, how did they find you?*
The thing is, they weren’t looking.
So I had to find them.
However, I couldn’t be a beggar at the door, you can’t just call up someone out of the blue and ask them to pay you $100,000 for a program, that wouldn’t have worked… and most of them were the most successful cleaners that they knew, if you know what I mean. So they weren’t always very open about taking advice.
I needed to be positioned correctly. So what I did was I would tell a client, “Okay, here’s the deal. If my system produces for you and does everything I say it will, you agree to pay me two ways: First, you write me a big check… Second, provided you are completely happy with the result, you agree to personally introduce and recommend me to at least two other viable clients for my stuff… people like yourself.”
So after I implemented my stuff and things worked, they would get on the phone with their friends who also owned large companies and they would set up my next gig. That kept me busy for years, and I didn’t have to advertise or market the hell out of myself.
I’m a fairly private person actually, Facebook kind of freaks me out. I’m not really cool with the whole world knowing what movie I’m watching and what theatre I’m at… what I’m having for lunch, or anything else along those lines. I probably should be trying to be larger than life and really out there, but I’m just not that guy, it’s not who I am. I’m not shy, and I can arguably wave my arms on a stage with the best of them, but by it’s very nature, that’s always a bit artificial. We’ve all met the ‘try-hard’ on stage, and no one likes him.
-Over the years I've heard of many angry people who bought into another Guru's program and later get really pissed when they see their competition using all the same marketing tricks in their own town. Have you had this issue?
I don’t think it’s ever been a problem. My opinion is that having more than one cleaner in any area raise their prices and start delivering value to the customers is just going to drive the cheaper cleaners out faster. It raises the bar.
Not everyone wants top-of-the-line service… but an awful lot do, even in this economy, and even in places where you’d think they wouldn’t.
The truth is, and everyone pretty much knows it, is that if you give 100 people a proven, tried, system… Most of them won’t do anything with it. A few will, but those people are often the more successful ones anyway. I always loved Dan Kennedy’s quote on the subject: “I help winners, to win bigger, and win faster… but I don’t turn chickens into eagles.”
Having said that, some of the systems for sale out there don’t seem to have very much to do with the real world. I’ve had many owners of some friggin huge companies tell me flat-out that they aren’t sure they could do it again if they had to do it now, in this current market. I think it’s very possible for a guru to latch onto a pet idea and run with it… far longer and further than they should.
I think the answer to your question is found in the way you asked it: You refer to ‘marketing tricks’. And that’s what most people are selling… marketing tricks.
That’s why I don’t really focus on strategy as much as I focus on tracking and principles. In the end, I don’t care if you use John’s, Joe’s, Howard’s, Steve’s, Jeff’s, Craig’s, or even mine… what I wanna know is, is it working, and can you prove it on paper?
Because of that, my people aren’t successful because they use a certain letter, or a catch-phrase on their website… They can still be individuals and they can still have their personality behind their business, (Which is how it’s supposed to be, right? I mean isn’t that why we all started our businesses… because we wanted to steer our own ship?) and it can all still work, because it’s based on principles rather than the idea of the ‘magic sales letter’ which is BS anyway. One letter won’t always work in different locations or at different times of the year. There has been way too much focus on ‘magic bullet marketing’ in my opinion.
So anyway, the point is, it’s very possible for several people to be in the same area and yet you wouldn’t necessarily recognize that they were all using my systems. Parts of it might be the same… but a lot of it wouldn’t.
-Would you care to share any great coaching success stories?
Is this where I put testimonials?
Hmmmm, about all I can say is that I’ve had a great time, and I’ve worked with many, many people that have a lot of character, (as well as some people who WERE characters
…) and made a difference. They’ve been able to send their kids to college, and not borrow the money. They’ve paid off their homes, they’ve created jobs for others… stuff like that. That’s happened for owners of large companies… but also many, many, smaller owner/operators and people in between. I’m proud to have had a part in that.
-The Bulletin Board Carpet Cleaner, is their any help for these losers?*
Pass. Next question…
Alright, screw it, you asked, so I’ll answer.
It’s no secret that I don’t participate on any bulletin boards as of this writing. That’s not because their aren’t good people on the boards, because there are. But, there are a lot of bad ones as well.
And there are a lot of discussions about jet sizes, horsepower, torque, suction-line size, pH, and numerous other things… and there are people that are far more qualified than I am to answer those questions.
I decided a long time ago that the last thing the industry needed was another guy telling cleaners how to get cat pee out of carpet.
I’ve also (only half-jokingly) said that if you get 20 cleaners in a room together, it will only take seconds before they start talking about cat pee.
-And what I mean by that is that they will focus on technical stuff almost every time. Technical stuff is important, but it’s a means to an end, not an end itself. You’d be shocked at how many Master Cleaners have real trouble rubbing two dimes together. They are broke! And yet they know so much technical stuff it’s almost ridiculous. And they want more… and more technical is not going to help them. (Interesting fact: Of the over 40 really large companies I’ve worked with to date… NOT ONE owner was a master cleaner.)
So that’s one thing, I don’t relate to most of the conversations going on, on the boards… I’d rather talk business. But the main reason for me is this:
The bulletin boards, in general are hotbeds of negativity and drama, two things which I really work to eliminate from my world. Now it’s not that I’m not occasionally in the middle of some drama, but I never feed the fire. If I’m attacked, you won’t see me defending myself, because that goes nowhere. It’s all just opinions anyway, even mine. If people aren’t sharp enough to see through disparaging comments and realize that the person has an axe to grind, I’m not going to win them over anyway. And if I’m in the middle of a fight, then even my opinions are biased… they have to be. They come from the place where I’m right and the other person is wrong, so how can they be true? Even if they are true.
It’s just a case of something being ‘A’ truth… instead of being ‘THE’ truth.
So I choose not to participate… and I choose not to watch, because that IS participating. I don’t want to see people trashing others any more than I want to see them trashing me. So in answer to your question about is there hope? I think there are an awful lot of benefits out there on the boards. New cleaners can learn so much! Also, they act as support networks so that if someone has a question, they can often get answers quickly, from some of the best minds in the industry. None of this was available when I was cleaning, I wish it had been, I could have really used it. Having said that, there is so much that isn’t helpful at all.
Mikey, you for one… I’m pretty sure you, as a kid, must’ve liked to blow things up and just sit back and watch the explosion. (I think you still do that…)
So I would just caution people to not get so caught up in all the bullshit. Yeah, you may hate the new
IICRC logo… or you could love it. You could be a red rug cleaner… or a blue one. But in the end, YOUR job is to build your business, and really… the logo, the color of your machine, who the incoming or outgoing president of some organization is… doesn’t matter one damn bit as far as that’s concerned.
It’s a distraction.
It doesn’t matter. It will keep you occupied doing something else instead of facing your fear and building something that’s probably a little daunting to you.
That’s my take. Use the boards to help you… but don’t let people into your head that won’t make it a better place.
-Is your cleaning company still in operation today?
No, I broke it up into pieces and sold parts of it in 2000. Haven’t been a cleaner since. I did that for 15 years, and honestly I was getting tired of it. I wasn’t doing much of the work at that point, but I wanted a bigger challenge and consulting was a way to leverage my systems etc. with some guys that had really massive companies.
Among other things, my program increases the average job size by anywhere between $50 and $100. So for a guy that’s doing 3 jobs a day, that’s an extra $150 to $300 per day that wasn’t there before… $750 to $1,500 a week.
That’s a big difference, but for a guy that’s got 10 vans doing 3 jobs a day… that’s an extra $1,500 to $3,000 a day. Run that for a full year and it can make a difference amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
-I read that Fire Walking is a hobby of yours, is Tony Walker a part of your life?
I think you probably mean Tony Robbins. Tony is excellent at what he does, and I have done fire-walks with him, but I’m not one of those guys that follows everything he does. I was trained as a fire-walking instructor by the guy that taught Tony how to do it.
Fire-walking for me is about facing fear and learning that you are capable of more than you think. Some people get all spiritual with it… I don’t. The truth is, everyone can fire-walk right now… they just don’t realize it. Having said that, DON’T GO TRY IT ON YOUR OWN, you’ll almost certainly burn yourself.
I always wanted to do a big fire-walk for the cleaning industry. I was all set to do it at Connections in Clearwater Beach several years ago, but there was a drought at the time, and at the last minute, Governor Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency two days before we were set to go and all outdoor fires were banned. That sucked.
-Is there ever a day that you and Lisa DON'T talk about the cleaning industry?
I think I’m just going to take the fifth on this one…
-In your experience, what is the magic number truck wise?*
For me, it never made any sense to stay small as a cleaner. There are too many bad things that can happen. If you get in a car wreck and break your leg, or hurt your back, you’re out of business. I get calls for help from people like that all the time, and it’s sad… Yes, employees are a pain-in-the-ass, but if you structure things right, you can have them and not have it ruin your life.
If you can get your business to a place where you can afford to hire someone else to run it for you and just hold onto it as an investment, you can make some decent money off of it and not have it chase you around the room everyday. But that can’t really happen until the gross receipts get somewhere around the million-dollar mark. At that point, you can hire a manager and still be able to pull a decent amount out of the business for yourself… somewhere around $150,000 a year. So with nice high prices, and an average job size in the $300 area, you can probably do that with about 4 to 5 vans… Or 3-4 vans and a small rug shop… Or 2-3 vans and a mid-size smaller rug shop. Or…
In addition, as I said before, most cleaning businesses that are for sale consist of a bunch of heavily-used equipment and a group of customers that are loyal to someone else, meaning they are loyal to the original owner… That’s not very appealing if someone comes along and wants to buy a business. If the business is structured so that the owner is already gone, and it’s being managed by someone else, it can be sold and the customers might not even know about it. That kind of business is worth something, because it no longer depends on the owner being around to make it work. An investor actually might spend a pretty good chunk of money on a business like that, because they aren’t looking to be a carpet cleaner… they are looking to buy a business that acts as an investment and pays them for being an owner.
one last question, what is*your*great motivator?
(Ahhhh, this is where I get to claim some altruistic reason for everything I do.)
Partly true I guess, I’d like my legacy to be that I’ve made a difference. And I love it when I get the calls from people telling me that their lives are better because of what I’ve brought them. But I think that has to be kept in perspective.
Someone else can show you the way, they can keep you from making some big mistakes… but YOU still have to do all the work. Not one person has succeeded because of me. They succeeded with my help maybe… but every one of them did the work, and that’s never easy… Not really because it’s necessarily all that hard to do, but because it’s scary.
They had to come to terms with charging what they’re worth, with becoming more organized, and acting more like a businessperson. Fundamentally they had to answer the question, “Who are you?” in a different way than they were answering it before, and that takes real courage.
Most people want to do that… to change who they are, but when it comes right down to it, fear stops them. In my experience, fear is the great enemy, which is why I did the whole fire-walking thing. It can be a useful tool for some. There’s a lot of personal growth there, and personal growth is a mother. But it’s great when it happens! I DO love that party on the other side. A friend of mine once said, “The good stuff is always on the other side of the coals.” and that’s pretty true. So I do love helping people take that journey and helping them get better.
Also, money is good.
Thanks Mark!!
or AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Where have I seen this before?
Thanks For Having Me Here Mike!
