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Introduction
Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and in today’s episode, we are shooting straight from Barcelona with my friend Ryan, the head of marketing at ZenMaid. Welcome Ryan. Thank you for the guest that you’re doing right now.
Ryan: Thanks for having me. This is very meta right now, being on a podcast that we just started recording, and it’s hot in Spain. It is hot in Spain, insanely hot. I didn’t think it would be this hot in Europe, but yeah, it’s a lot.
Stephanie: Yeah, it’s been I had no idea that it’d be just as bad here as Savannah when it comes to the humidity, but it’s been really lovely to just take it up in the pool whenever we want to cool down. It’s been nice. I’ve been enjoying it.
Ryan: I don’t know how you’re wearing jeans right now. I packed only shorts, and it feels like Arkansas.
Stephanie: Honestly, I was feeling un-American, and yesterday was the fourth of July, so this is our last day here. And I was feeling let me throw on some jeans and bring me back to my roots. I was wearing too many dresses. I was like, nope, Toby Keith would be proud. So put some blue jeans on.
Table of contents
- Introduction
- Marketing Would You Rather: The First Challenge
- Email Marketing Best Practices
- Text Marketing vs Email Marketing
- Finding the Right Balance: Email vs Text
- The Discount Dilemma
- The 70/30 Marketing Rule
- Overcoming Marketing Perfectionism
- Focus on What’s Already Working
- Red Flags and Green Flags for Marketing Agencies
- The Importance of Accountability with Agencies
- Free Marketing Before Paid Marketing
- Budget vs Time: Another Would You Rather
- Setting Realistic Marketing Expectations
- The Attribution Challenge
- Simple Attribution Tracking
- Another Marketing Would You Rather
- The Challenge of Knowing When to Improve
- The Importance of Having a Website
- Streamlining Your Lead Management Process
- The 10X Test for Scalability
- Another Marketing Challenge
- The Nightmare Review Scenario
- Turning Bad Reviews Into Opportunities
- Managing Expectations to Prevent Complaints
- The Psychology of Hiring Cleaners
- Navigating Family Dynamics in the Home
- Using Your Story in Marketing
- The Power of Personal Stories
- Authenticity in Marketing
- The Competitor Name Mistake
- The Role of Fun in Business Marketing
- Building a Culture of Excellence
- Earning Your Fun
Marketing Would You Rather: The First Challenge
Stephanie: But anyway, I thought it would be really fun to do a little bit of would you rather marketing related content and questions and just kind of go through some funny situations that ChatGPT was able to create for me. So all of that being said, would you rather accidentally send a 20% off email to your entire client list twice in one day, or go viral for a typo that says we’ll clean your crack?
Ryan: This is an easy one for me. I would rather go viral that says we’ll clean your crack. Why? I mean, just all PR is good PR, even if it’s bad, then I feel Amar would be proud.
Stephanie: I think Amar would approve, for sure. And honestly, I don’t know if you’ve haven’t had any where you’ve done an oopsie on that. I’ve seen many markets for that skill. A couple months ago, we were doing our cleaning giveaway for our six year anniversary, and I sent out the email newsletter explaining the rules and the deadline for them to enter for the cleaning giveaway. And it was supposed to be till the end of April, but I had March 30 on it because I had created the email and scheduled out in March anyway, so we’re getting emails back saying, oh, did I already miss the deadline to enter and so I was like, oh my gosh, I need to send out another email, correcting myself. And I sent it out, and I still kept the wrong date on. So I sent it twice with the wrong data. I was so embarrassed, and I just wanted to throw myself off a cliff.
Email Marketing Best Practices
Ryan: The funny thing is it’s always a marketing opportunity. The fact that you sent it again, I think people probably remembered that, and it makes you more human. And I think that’s totally fine, but I’ve never done something to that degree. But I did have a colleague at one company that think about paid media ads. They overspent the budget by $30,000 so if I were to send out an email that says, we’ll clean your crack, that’s nothing compared to that.
Stephanie: Do you have any email marketing tips? Because I feel like, for me, that has been something I’ve done since the beginning. I’ve used MailChimp, I signed up because it was free. It integrates nicely with Zapier and all of that stuff. But honestly, I feel like my email marketing is so basic. We do a newsletter every month, and I just don’t even know necessarily where to go with it, and I’m six years in. So for somebody starting out, what do you have suggestions on?
Ryan: First off, I think people underestimate email and I think just starting sooner rather than later, people try to build an email list when it’s too late, people also try to buy their way into an email list, which is just the wrong way.
Stephanie: What do you mean by that?
Ryan: Buying lists, or trying to penetrate a cold audience, that’s just not the way to do it. And also, people are always afraid to just send too many emails. I think if it’s valuable, if it’s meaningful, if it’s intentional, I mean, you could email me three times, and if it’s valuable content, I’m not gonna care about it. I think it’s don’t overthink it. Email still a very relevant channel. I think from a cold email perspective, it’s kind of saturated. But if you have a good list, if you add your customers, it just builds and compounds over time.
Text Marketing vs Email Marketing
Stephanie: That’s something I haven’t even gotten into text marketing very much, and that, I feel is the next thing to tackle. And especially, we just switched over to OpenPhone. And I know that there’s a bunch of softwares that you can use for text marketing. Do you feel one is better than the other, considering most of our clients are middle aged or older, potentially, that’s at least how I see it.
Ryan: I see a lot of people using OpenPhone. Here’s a great software. I think it’s the same, SMS and text messaging is just as saturated, there’s so much spam. I know all the carriers are sort of working on fighting that. And so I think both channels are saturated. I think we kind of over index on one or the other. But I think I email more than I text, I’m obviously maybe the ICP of someone in the cleaning industry, because we’re busy. We have three kids, married, busy. And so I would say email for me is probably better. I’m if an email comes through and it’s from somebody that I know, I’m more likely to respond. And then, just all of us, we’re always on our phones, and things get busy. Sometimes I just forget to respond, or especially in my role, I’m always on my phone, because that’s how I work. We have slack, we have email, we have social media channels, we have YouTube, we have the podcast. So I just get burnt out with my phone. So somebody emails me, I’m more likely to respond.
Finding the Right Balance: Email vs Text
Stephanie: And honestly, I think that’s where it is, of not overthinking it, because honestly, it’s time or place if it’s going to be email that I respond to versus a marketing text that I respond to, it just depends when it comes in and that’s totally random. For me, if you text me an offer, I am very likely to click on it and look at the link or whatever. Whereas email marketing, if it’s more informational or educational, or more longer form, I am going to potentially read that on my computer and things. So it really just depends. And I think it’s more try out a bunch of stuff and experiment.
Ryan: I think that’s true also, people underestimate offers. People love a discount. People love to get a deal.
The Discount Dilemma
Stephanie: That’s a really good segue, because I have been pretty adamant about I don’t do discounts and things because I didn’t want to cheapen my brand. And now we have started experimenting with doing that. And what would you say to me as somebody who’s really concerned about cheapening my brand?
Ryan: I would say, reframe the way that you think about it. Instead of cheapening your brand, think about it in terms of rewarding your customers with something that will save them some money. And also, I think if you have a healthy business, and you know, maybe you’re in a position where you’ve grown a really good business, it’s not a bad thing to attract new customers and just kind of try different things. So I think in terms of really, all of marketing is the way that you go about it, just like what we’re talking about with email, SMS offers, if you’re being really intentional with it, doing it tastefully and not just spamming people with this is our Memorial Day savings. This is our fourth of July savings. Those can kind of get saturated, but if you’re just like, hey, Stephanie from Serene Clean here. Thank you guys so much for being customers. Or if you haven’t been a customer yet, would love to reward you with 20% off. Imagine that type of message, rather than the Fourth of July extravaganza. Everybody tones those out. So I think it’s all about intentionality.
Stephanie: So you think just being more authentic to a personality and the branding of it all.
Ryan: And if it doesn’t work, don’t do it again. But it doesn’t hurt to test and iterate. So that’s my take.
The 70/30 Marketing Rule
Stephanie: How much do you in your role work on things that you know works, versus experimenting with new things. Obviously, this podcast is all new, but now it’s not, we’re six months in, but it’s still fairly new. So when you thinking say, 100% of your marketing efforts can be used. How much of that is experimenting with new things, or is it not a brand new thing, but tweaking and trying something new in something that you’re already doing?
Ryan: That’s a great question. So I think somebody shared this framework. I think it was on LinkedIn. I’m a big LinkedIn guy, and I’m trying to get Stephanie on LinkedIn. It’s been three days of people convincing me to get on LinkedIn. I’m not another social media.
Stephanie: It’s still giving me the I don’t know, I don’t exactly.
Ryan: But there’s this guy named Chris Walker. I don’t know if he’s the one that coined this concept, but it was keep 70% of the things, of your budget towards the things that work, and then that 30% is just enough where you can kind of get some good results with testing, but you’re not completely botching all the other things that you’re doing. So I often think of the 70/30 you could even think of the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule. I think that’s another one.
Stephanie: 80/20 Yep.
Ryan: And you know, if you just take 20% of your budget or 20% of your time, or whatever it is, have your team focus on 20% of something that’s new. It doesn’t. It’s not that big of a swing where it’s taking away 50% of their time or budget, or whatever, or resources. So 80/20, 70/30, I think I kind of over index on the testing part of it. This podcast is a great example that we didn’t, I didn’t approach him. I was like, hey, I need more budget. I worked with the budget that we had for this podcast. Obviously, we have good props and a good setup. I didn’t need more budget to get full floaties. But anyway, this is just the part of the testing. So we didn’t really ask for more budget. And now we’re 50/60, at the time that we’re recording this. I think we’ve published 52. And really it’s just been testing and iterating on what’s working.
Overcoming Marketing Perfectionism
Stephanie: And I think just being open minded to knowing that the first iteration of anything is not going to be the best, and not having this perfection mindset, I think it’s I know for me, I’m definitely more on the action, try and adjust, but I know a lot of our listeners, just from talking to them, they don’t want to mess up, and they don’t want to look stupid, they don’t want to be embarrassed, because a lot of them are newer owners, and they already have this kind of imposter syndrome. I’m not anything, and I’m trying to appear in a way. So when it comes to marketing related things, or branding, etc. What would you say to somebody who is getting a little paralyzed and not acting on anything?
Ryan: I want to start about to what you just said, because you said that some people are afraid of messing up. I think the only way that you can mess up with testing and experimenting is by trying new things. Whenever there’s so much deeper you can go with the things that are working. So imagine there’s something that you did to get to the way that you are. Maybe there’s something that you did to get your first 10 customers.
Focus on What’s Already Working
Ryan: Imagine that you just take half of that timer, and then you start testing you already know what’s working. And so too many people, especially with marketing, is they it’s shiny object syndrome. They see somebody doing this all the time. I see it all the time. And it’s people think that they need to be doing newspaper ads, press releases and billboards, throwing every noodle at the wall, and it’s not even seeing what sticks. It’s jumping from thing to thing, because I honestly, I think it has a lot to do with anxiety. If I don’t try new methods of marketing, everything’s gonna die. Where, what you just referenced is, how did you get your first 10 clients? We were talking about that earlier. Well, do that more.
Stephanie: Exactly, exactly you already know what’s working, and just try to stay focused on that. And then whenever you’ve dug that well, as deep as you possibly can, then test new things. I think that’s the hardest thing to do in marketing, because there’s, it’s very visual, it’s very creative, it’s fun, honestly. And so it’s easy to just want to do new things. Whenever there’s more room to dig.
Red Flags and Green Flags for Marketing Agencies
Stephanie: And obviously, we’re trying to, oftentimes, as small business owners, we are being sold to so much, especially just from our searching online and things, we’re getting targeted by all of these different types of marketing or forms of marketing. And it’s hard, that shiny object syndrome is real because, one, they are marketing to us. And so it’s very difficult to resist, or know what’s a good value. And obviously I’m not doing any Would You Rather because now we’re just having a regular podcast, but this is good, so I’m going to keep talking, and that’s something that I would love to hear your thoughts on when it comes to how do we as inexperienced business owners know whether something is a good idea to invest in? Specifically, potentially, we could take this a couple different ways. But I know a lot of folks have asked me about marketing agencies or individuals to use for marketing purposes, and honestly, I don’t know how to tell them if it’s good or not, because I don’t have that eye and I don’t use those things right? What kind of red flags or things that we should be looking for? Green flags? What are red flags? And green flags from hiring a marketing agency if we want to outsource this.
Ryan: This is a very loaded topic, because for those of you that don’t know, before I got here at ZenMaid, and before I got into software marketing, I had worked at three different marketing agencies. I started my career right out of college, doing sales for marketing agencies, selling websites and paid media packages and search engine optimization, a bunch of other things. And then I did sales for a year, and then realized that I wanted to understand it more, and so I went into the back end fulfillment, is what we would call it, actually launching the campaigns, planning them on the Google ad side. My first agency, I managed 100 Google Ads accounts at once.
Stephanie: Whoa.
Ryan: And then every day was sheer volume. That’s a great way to learn. So anybody that’s worked in an agency setting, that’s the good thing about agencies, is they can handle volume and scale, but the depth is sometimes what lacks. Because imagine it’s kind of you have 100 cleaning clients, you’re obviously not going to go as deep on those as one or two, you’re not going to spend as much time. And that’s just the reality of it. I’ve seen all of it. I’ve also worked as a consultant. I’ve worked with consultants and freelancers, and I’ve been on both sides. And actually, whenever I started here at ZenMaid, we had an agency that we were partnering with. So I’ve definitely seen all sides of the coin. I would say that again, going back to Wells, you need to dig those wells first. And if you have something that’s working, even if it’s just calling or emailing people, go there first, and whenever you hit a dead end, figure out what your next step is. And sometimes it’s talking to a consultant or doing some research or just getting advice from somebody else in the industry. Again, the mastermind is great for that. When you finally decide what type of service you need, that’s the key. You don’t want to just contact an agency and not know what, because they’ll sell you on anything.
The Importance of Accountability with Agencies
Stephanie: They’re a business. Well, I’ve heard some of my when I’ve done consulting calls, or just you guys emailing me, and they’re, you’re like, I’m spending $1,000 a month, and I’m like, okay, what are they doing for you? And you don’t know.
Ryan: Most people don’t know. And that’s so sad, and it pains me, that’s another reason why the marketing agency, unfortunately, has a bad reputation. Because of that.
Stephanie: They definitely give me the ick, and that’s unfounded for a lot of there’s plenty of good agencies, I’m sure, but I’m just I would never hire an agency.
Ryan: A lot of its fear based. It’s a service based industry, and it’s very cutthroat, but the way that I like to think about it is like an employee. If you’re a business owner, and you’re a good business owner, you’re gonna hold your employees accountable. And when there are things that need correction, you’re going to have a conversation with them, or it’s all about holding them accountable, because every dollar counts as a business owner. Same with marketing agencies or freelancers, you have to hold them accountable. I feel so many people, especially small business owners, that are busy and have other things going on, they sort of over index on just trusting them. They’re busy, and they’re hiring an agency because they don’t have the mandate for that reoccurring bill just to happen and you don’t ever look at it again because, you’re busy. And also, I think a lot of times it’s well, I don’t know they’re the expert, so I’m going to defer to that.
Ryan: That’s dangerous blind trust. And I don’t know, maybe it’s sort of someone cleaning your house sometimes you’re trusting that they’re the expert. You probably still need to go make sure they did a good job and hold them accountable. And so I knew somebody that was paying an agency $1,000 per month for Google business profile optimization.
Stephanie: Oh my gosh.
Ryan: There’s not enough that you could do on Google Business Profile unless you’re a multi franchise, multi location.
Stephanie: Even then, it’s just so simple. Same with setting up Google My Business, guys, do not pay somebody to set up your Google My Business.
Ryan: You can set it up for free. Don’t pay somebody again if you’re a multi location business and you need to help optimizing it, but it’s still not an ongoing service. It does not make sense, and unfortunately, that’s just part of the industry. People don’t understand it as much. They don’t understand digital marketing or marketing, and so they just blindly trust people. So again, accountability, if something fills off, it probably is, and it starts also on the vetting process. If you’re just not asking questions and you’re just trusting people if there’s if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. And I think a lot of people in the industry, they set bad expectations. Okay, I’m gonna get you 100 phone calls a month it’s just, it’s so vague and just lacks transparency. So ask questions, be informed, hold them accountable, and if it doesn’t feel right, make sure that you’re doing your diligence.
Free Marketing Before Paid Marketing
Stephanie: That’s really good advice. And I hope you guys take heed that. There are good agencies out there. I guess my personal thought on it, and it could be wrong, or there’s lots of ways to skin this cat. Is expend all free avenues first that you can with your resources before going to paid but it also could just be depends on your goals and who you are too. So that might not be a black and white thing. What do you think?
Ryan: I so I’m a paid media guy. I love it, but I think paid media is often a multiplier. It’s putting fuel on the fire. I often, and I would have thought about this differently earlier in my career, but the more as I’m butcher it is a marketing leader. There are so many free things that you can do to market your business, and they’re not free, because you’re probably doing it yourself for your time, where you’re paying somebody, SEO, getting reviews, testimonials, word of mouth, getting referrals. Try to expel those things first, and then paid media is a great way to expedite the thing. I think ZenMaid is probably a great example. We didn’t do paid media for the longest time. We still don’t have a huge paid media budget because there’s just so many things the podcast, video content mastermind, email marketing mastermind, social media those things are better at building trust with your audience. Paid media allows us to ignite the fire.
Stephanie: And even doing so for me, getting a video review, completely free, right? But then using that in a boosted Facebook post or Google ads, whatever, because it’s I know that that is the most needle moving thing I can have because, it’s so inherently, it just, it convinces people more than anything, is a video testimonial of our cleaning services, and then I get the most bang out of my buck for paying for that to be boosted. So it a lot of times, it’s the content too. It’s not just oh, spend $500 on paid ads, but it’s what are those ads?
Ryan: It’s a multiplier. It’s a force multiplier. If something’s working, then you want more people to see it. It’s a great way to.
Budget vs Time: Another Would You Rather
Stephanie: That makes sense. I’m curious. I don’t know why this made me think of a Would You Rather, it’s not funny, oh, but would you rather have a huge marketing budget and one month to hit your goal, or a quarter of that budget and six months to hit the goal?
Ryan: I would rather so this is twofold. For me. I love marketing for the underdog, so much more fun. When you have unlimited resources, you still have to be a marketer and be creative on all those things. I have always in my career, been in those positions where I’m working with pennies, and it’s so much more fun for his creativity. You probably have such fun, it’s way more fun. You have to stretch your boundaries. You have to learn quicker. You have to iterate faster. Every dollar counts. It’s a great way to reduce waste. If somebody has a million dollar marketing budget, there’s probably a ton of waste in there as well. And so I just it’s kind of the underdog story, when you’re watching a football team, you don’t expect, exactly. And I think that’s the mentality that that the marketing team has whenever they know that they’re kind of up against the wall. That’s the first one. And then also, I think marketing takes time. I don’t think you it’s not a short term thing. Obviously, if you’re calling people, I would consider that more sales. But if you’re emailing people, calling people, you’re gonna get some quick iterations. If you’re doing paid media, you’re gonna get clicks on your website or form fills or whatever. But good marketing, it’s marketing to really understand, what’s working and what’s not takes so much more time than one month. And again, that’s where agencies, again, just, there’s a lot of agencies that will promise you, yes, they’ll get you a ton of leads in 30 days. And that’s just.
Setting Realistic Marketing Expectations
Stephanie: So Well, that brings on, talk to our friends about expectations when it comes to marketing, of what should or how do they have appropriate expectations on results versus time? Because I know, again, I’ve talked to people where they’re like, well, you know, they haven’t, I haven’t seen the results, and, you know, I’ve been paying them for a month and there’s nothing yet. And it’s is that that’s probably unreasonable expectations. But how? How do we create reasonable expectations when most of us have never, ever been in this world before.
Ryan: I think the way that you can think about is if something again, if it’s too good to be true, or if it is true, everybody would be doing it, and it would be just an oversaturated market and so and also knowing that there’s so many variables, geography, your business is in Wisconsin, smaller town, you’re gonna have to do different things than somebody in Atlanta, Georgia. So there’s just so many variables with marketing. Every you know, everything down to your pricing or the way that you go about your business, your brand, your colors. So I think expectation starts with acknowledging that it’s very complex. Second, it’s not you put in $1 get get one out again, because of those variables. And so it’s just it just takes time to iterate. Takes time to learn. You need the feedback loop with marketing. It’s not as cut and dry as other services.
The Attribution Challenge
Stephanie: That just makes me think one of the biggest challenges I’m sure we’ll all face, too, is understanding is, is the marketing working wet, for and this is what I mean. So somebody will come to us, they’ll request a quote, and I’ll ask where they first heard about us, right? And they may say, it’s so hard to know, what’s my ROI Right? What is the cost of lead procurement? And I still have really no idea how to figure that out. How do I figure this out?
Ryan: I think, okay, so we would call that attribution marketing. I think it’s so overrated. If you’re a fortune 500 company you need and you’re probably gonna have good systems that track that and everything. But it is. It’s so overrated. If you think about your own purchasing behaviors. Let’s just say you’re looking for some new goggles.
Stephanie: Potentially, they’re pretty good.
Ryan: So okay, let’s not use goggles. Let’s use a new car. So if you’re shopping for a new car, you’re not gonna click on one ad and then enter all your information and then that same day, check out and buy the car. Maybe you will, but there might be some scenarios where you’re doing research on what are the best, you know, bucket seat SUVs. You’re gonna do some extensive research. You may use Google. You may use chat GPT. You may ask your friends via text, what card you have? Do you like it? You may watch some YouTube videos. You may click on some ads. The buyer journey is very complex. It is physically impossible to track every interaction that happens. And I would refer to that as the dark funnel. Dark Social is another way that people think about it. Think about our ZenMaid, prime example. We were talking about open phone earlier, but people are asking people are asking do you prefer RingCentral versus open phone? That is in a mastermind, there is not a UTM link attached to that. That is somebody that posted it on one of those default Facebook graphics. There is no way for open phone to track that, unless somebody has a referral link or whatever. So it just kind of dies. There. Here is open so what is that person going to do? They’re going to go do a Google search. Who’s going to get the credit for that? The Google search, the Facebook community, the ZenMaid mastermind, is not going to get credit for that. So that’s where I think attribution is very overrated. The second part of that, I would say, is that people over index on that where they think they have to understand where every dollar is going, and sometimes they get tunnel vision. And because of that attribution myth that I just talked about, they may see that Google has the lowest, what we would call cost per acquisition, or customer acquisition cost tech, whatever you want to call it, and they may put more money towards Google. Well, what about the social media communities that are really driving that? And then so I think that I’ve seen that really silo people also. Again, this is a very complex topic.
Simple Attribution Tracking
Stephanie: This is great, because we think that that the reason that this is excellent keep going.
Ryan: If your business is growing and making money, and you’re you’re spending less than marketing expenses, if your business growth is outpacing that exponentially, why would you care as much? You should care, but people, they get fixated on. That’s what I think. It’s. I feel this is important to know where my leads are coming from, but it’s absolutely self reporting, whatever reporting.
Ryan: If you, if you had additional budget and you want to know which tactic to double down on, then you would look at attribution. Or if, let’s say, Amar came to me and said, hey, Ryan, what channels are working the best I would, I would want to tell them. And so, you do need to be responsible and track that, I think, for you, and some other cleaning business owners, is just start simple. Start with a spreadsheet. Do some estimates. How much did you put into Facebook ads? What was the cost? Put it in a cell. How many leads did you get that maybe ZenMaid or your CRM or whatever came from that? Simple math that’s your cost per acquisition or customer acquisition cost, and then other channels you’re gonna have to estimate, referrals, word of mouth or whatever. Maybe it’s the salaries that you pay people to do those things. Maybe it’s administrative. Just do simple, basic math. And even if it’s off, you’ll have a good understanding of where it’s coming from. And so I would say, don’t ever complicate it. Take it seriously. But also, don’t put all of your eggs in the attribution basket.
Another Marketing Would You Rather
Stephanie: That’s really reassuring to hear that, I don’t have to care so much, or really, deep dive, or go down the this, this hole of fixation on this, of okay, the business is growing. We’re getting tons of leads. I’ve been experimenting a lot more with paid ads, for the first time in six years, where I’m just let’s see what happens. And it’s been actually really fun, and with very low budget, just take customer testimonials, you know, making Facebook ads out of it, and using ChatGPT in plentiful amounts of your odds are, mosey, what would you do?
Ryan: He would say, run 1000 ads. Not many leads. Any cleaners. I get that request from more every day. More ads.
Stephanie: Would you rather spend 10 hours crafting the perfect ad that flops, or throw together a trashy Canva ad that pulls 40 leads overnight?
Ryan: Trashy Canva add. Again, it goes back to I don’t really care if they can’t where they came from, and as long as they’re quality, if they’re qualified, leads, I don’t really care where they came from. Again, it goes back to progress over perfection. I think so many people try to craft the perfect marketing ad. Sure that works. If you’re Google or Apple or whatever, and you want to end up on a viral ad, but your ICP and your market is only so big in a geographic area. You know it’s only gonna impact your business so much, so I say trashy Canva ad. Don’t ever complicate it, but don’t just try to create trashy canvas. I try to create good ones. But for the sake of this.
The Challenge of Knowing When to Improve
Stephanie: I struggle with that of if it’s broke, don’t fix it. But I know it could be better for example, I want to redo our our website and kind of elevate our branding and things. And it’s well, it is working, but it’s but it could probably work way better, and I don’t know how much to invest into that. When I’m hypothesizing that, it’s kind of tough to make those decisions.
Ryan: Sometimes I think just shipping things faster. And then.
Stephanie: What does that word mean? We’re not talking for a software company. What does shipping mean?
Ryan: What does shipping mean? So just putting yourself out there, when you started your business, you had a beautiful website, because you you put so much time and effort into but at some point you were just I have to get this live. Imagine if you would have waited six more months to start your business. It’s easy to wait marketing and want everything to be perfect, but it’s never going to be perfect. And so that’s when I go back to the trashy ad. At some point you have to ship it, and then you’re gonna get some feedback whether nobody likes it, nobody clicks on it, but then you’ll learn from that, and then you can ship another one.
The Importance of Having a Website
Stephanie: And that’s such a good point. And you know, I know I say on this podcast all the time, the importance of having a website, and some of you, you’ve gotten so far without a website that you may question if that’s true or not. I think it’s more ease of the future for you, because however you’re getting leads now takes more effort than if you had at least. This is my opinion. I think that without a website, you’re having to do a lot of manual labor, and it’s you’re probably getting a lot of your business from Facebook groups or referrals. And those are wonderful, but having a Google My Business and a website is going to take you further, if that’s what your goal is. If you want to grow or scale your business and really you need to have a website, you need to have a website. And so there’s a lot of simple things that we can do to make that better, and I’ve made recent podcast episodes on that topic of how we make the website better. But I do think in our industry, a website is pretty critical. I mean, do you have opinions on that at all?
Ryan: So again, sometimes we over complicate marketing. I feel, and it’s not to dumb it down and we have to be diligent. But sometimes think about your own buying behaviors. Again, you might not be your ICP ideal customer profile. You might not be the person that you would sell to, but whenever you look up a business, or you want to call a plumber or a roofer, you’re probably going to want to try to find reviews and more information on them. If they don’t have a website, I guarantee you you’re, are they a legitimate business? Do they even exist? Is this a scam? Our minds go there in 2025, and so I think, I mean, you can start a website for for for pennies compared to what it used to be. And so my advice is, just have one, have one and not need it, rather than need one and not have it.
Streamlining Your Lead Management Process
Stephanie: Well, and I suppose you considering, at least in Serene Clean, we’re so, for us, it’s very important that our leads all funnel to one place to manage them, right from from a, you know, CRM perspective. So for us using the booking form of we want every single lead to fill out our ZenMaid booking form, because it makes it easier for us, because if they’re messaging us on Facebook, if they’re calling, if they’re texting, if they’re walking in all of these different ways that we could be communicating with leads and giving them pricing it’s just so much easier if we just put them through the website. So even if they come to us on Facebook, we’re still pushing them to fill out the booking form. You know, just from a management perspective.
Ryan: I always think about things that are scalable. You there are things that you want to do that aren’t scalable, like sending flowers or sending gifts. Those things are perfect. But you don’t want to do things that are not scalable, like messaging, 10 people on Facebook Messenger, that is just no one wants to do that. That is time that you could be spending on your business, with your clients, on retention, those types of things. So when it comes to those types of things, I definitely like automation processes. I’m a big process guy. So, yeah, I definitely default to that as well.
The 10X Test for Scalability
Stephanie: I agree. Of automating what you can and then having the personal touch where, where it counts. Personal touch on messaging, pricing on Facebook, that does not count. It’s not going to move the needle. It’s actually probably moving you backwards, where, writing a heartfelt note on their anniversary or whatever, or, sending them flowers, when, when they have a baby. Those are the things that make a huge impact on your customers. For sure.
Ryan: I always think of I do this scenario in my head where I’m if we had 10 times the amount of this, what would it be like? And so if you had, let’s just say you had five conversations going on in Facebook Messenger, and then it imagine your business, 10x. And you had 50. That’s that. Imagine you had five people going to your website. You had a system and a process, and you could do it they could do that while you sleep. Imagine if 50 people come to your website, did that no more work for you, other than exactly. So it’s often, it’s good to think about things that are scalable. Prime example. We kind of did this with the podcast, but we were thinking about, how do we make this successful with a small team? Because ZenMaid, we have a super small, small team and the marketing department, very small team. And again, these are our resources. That’s what we could afford tomorrow. I’m gonna need some nicer parties for the next one. I don’t know something about having a small, a small team.
Ryan: Yes, okay, so for the podcast, when we thought about this, we were We’re gonna try to put out, you know, two episodes per week. How do we make sure that that is feasible? And so we built a system we use, we use ClickUp, just I know you do in your business. And we made sure that if we wanted to 5x that number, we would do that to you. You could have those conversations. But if we did with the system break, and it would, it would not break. And so that’s really important. That’s really great to put out of the only thing that would break is me, and that’s a good thing, because it means that everything else is working properly. We could handle that influx or that quantity of content.
Stephanie: And so that’s and so that’s a good point too. We don’t want to break. So that’s kind of where we kind of draw the line. But I often think in terms of, if our business 10x overnight, would we be okay? Where would we be freaking out, panicking, you know? So, well, and I think that’s where it’s just a lot of times, you know, people are I want to grow. I want to grow. It’s Wait, everything would break if you if you grew with the current systems that you have. And that’s a hard pill for us at all to swallow. But luckily, it’s very unlikely to happen. Of serene, clean grew very, very quickly. Compared to a lot of cleaning businesses, but it also, the mistakes that were made along the way. I think, why, why it grew so successfully is that I very, I I’m very quick at learning and applying and tweaking. Of, oh, that didn’t work, tweak, tweak, and so, as it was, as it was breaking and we were growing.
Another Marketing Challenge
Ryan: No, these, these goggles are pulling my forehead, I got something in my eye. You know, it’s my mom would be so proud right now. My mother would be so proud. My mom hasn’t watched the podcast.
Stephanie: This would be a perfect episode. Hi, Ryan’s mom. Hey, he’s a good guy. He’s good at his job.
Ryan: We’re talking about here in Barcelona, about it, Southern culture and accents and stuff, my mom was one of those people that says, bless your heart.
Stephanie: Oh, Aaron from Arkansas. We have any Arkansas folks watching.
Ryan: We have some people from Missouri. We do people in Arkansas, Dallas, very close. I totally forgot what we were talking about. No, it doesn’t matter.
The Nightmare Review Scenario
Stephanie: Okay. Would you rather deal with one nightmare client review that ranks number one on Google or spend $1,000 a month on ads just to compete with your own name?
Ryan: I don’t know what that means. What does that mean? ChatGPT.
Stephanie: Would you rather deal with one nightmare client review that ranks number one on Google. I would rather. I would rather deal with that. I’m a big reputation guy, and so if you’re, if you’re putting in a lot of hard work, it just takes one person to just kind of, stifle that growth. And so I would rather make it right with them. I’m just a big fan of addressing, you know, the elephant in the room. I think that that would be one of those conversations, and it would be, just be so satisfying when you when you got that either removed or just addressed. But I know that people that are just working very hard, reputation is everything, you know.
Turning Bad Reviews Into Opportunities
Stephanie: It’s interesting. So I was walking with Maria through the streets of Barcelona the other day, and we were talking about she had had a really bad review early on in her cleaning business, and, a year later, she sent an email to that person and said, you know, we made a lot of changes. We learned so much. These are all the things I think she sent her flowers or something, you know. Said, you know, thank you so much for being honest and your feedback. And the lady turned into an absolute raving fan. And was like, I was having this really hard time when, when the cleaning went south, and, turning that into such, you can absolutely turn a negative experience into an absolute raving fan. That’s a superpower, take that opportunity to learn and not just get indignant and proud. You know.
Ryan: I think some people just want someone to blame. Sometimes I don’t even think it’s about the service. They need to be heard. They want to be heard exactly, or some, sometimes they’re just maybe projecting. Maybe they’re having a bad day and, you just caught them at a bad time. Of course, maybe sometimes it was, a bad service. But sometimes there’s an underlying reason why they had to, take it public or go find out.
Managing Expectations to Prevent Complaints
Stephanie: For me, this is my theory, and how I explain it to my team, is that every single complaint is from expectations not being met, and so our job is to make sure we explicitly manage expert expectations preemptively. So that means they must review and acknowledge the client guidelines and our cleaning checklist to understand scope of work, because I’ve given the example before of you know, a husband hired us for cleaning and effort to surprise his wife, and we did it exactly as we always did. We nailed it to our cleaning specs, right? She got home and she immediately lost it, because her husband said, I surprised you with the deep clean. For her, a deep clean was everything’s taken out of the cabinets. Practically the gutters are cleaned out. So it’s, what the expectations were mismatched. And we learned so much from that experience. And once we explained to her, it was No, this is our cleaning checklist, and we followed it to a T, and then she was like, oh, well, you did perfectly according to those expectations, right?
The Psychology of Hiring Cleaners
Ryan: This is such a deeper topic, but what you what I just heard there, it would be the same if I that’s, that’s probably one that I would be curious to get your take on. Because if, if somebody my wife hired someone to mow our lawn, would I be am I not doing a good enough job? And so I wonder if that’s ever happened or, if you know anything about that, in the industry, if, if somebody, gives somebody a cleaning, do some people take that the wrong way?
Stephanie: Oh, definitely. That can happen. Oftentimes, though it’s much more, people will hide, that they hide from their spouse, that they have a cleaner. We’ve, I’ve heard of folks who have said to their company, don’t do too good of a job, because I don’t want my husband to know that I am using a cleaning service. So it’s really interesting the psychology of what our service is. It goes very deep, very deep, because there’s so much energy around demand. Sick labor in the home, and the dynamics between partners and different, you know, gender dynamics. There’s so much related to that. And I think that it could absolutely be taken, as you said, of an insult. And that’s with my boyfriend, you know, we’re very, very busy. And, I was, you know, suggested having a lot, and he’s no, I mow the lawn, and but you’re so busy, why don’t we just do that? And I’m taking it that way, even though it’s not my intention, and I know exactly what you mean. Of you don’t clean good enough. I need to hire somebody.
Ryan: It almost needs to be their decision. And it’s the same with my wife. My wife isn’t, is incredible, but she just doesn’t, she doesn’t want to clean her and maybe, someone will come along and change her mind, but she takes pride, it’s never gonna happen for them. I definitely outsource our lawn care because, you know, we’re busy, but it was my decision. And I, you know, I made a point to tell her that when our boys are older, I like mowing the grass, I like doing weed eating and stuff, but, this stage of life, you know, but it was my decision. It wasn’t she didn’t come to me and say, hey, she did a couple times. And then I was okay, let’s just take care of it.
Navigating Family Dynamics in the Home
Stephanie: But just in general, I find that it is, it is a very complex thing to navigate coming into a marriage or a partnership as the cleaner. There is just so much unknown dynamics us as the as the the cleaners of the cleaning company are walking into blind and it takes a lot of knack. And I’m sure, you know, you guys listening, have had experiences where it’s just Yes, it’s very odd sometimes and and it’s we are doing something in people’s homes, and we are seeing their private life and not the facade that they put on out to the external world. And I don’t mean facade in a bad way. We put out a public persona, right? Every one of us does. And so letting somebody into your into your kingdom, and into your your sanctuary, if you will, and them seeing the real you are, seeing how the family actually is, it’s very vulnerable, very, very vulnerable. And so navigating that is challenging, and that’s where I find my marketing, language, is oftentimes related to how women are feeling, because they’re the ones who the domestic labor typically falls on, which is messed up, and, you know, there’s a lot of room to change that dynamic. But that’s why my messaging has to do with Okay, you are, you know, you are oftentimes feeling shame or feeling judged on your home, and that’s because our value as women is placed on that. And so you think it’s all on your shoulders, but you also very often, the the expectations of the women is now is you need to have a full time job, you need to be a full time mother, and need to full time manage the household, and, something’s got to give. And why don’t you outsource the cleaning to us, right? And we’re going to honor you and honor your home in a way that you can now be there for everything else you want to be. So that’s kind of how I’ve attacked the whole dynamics of it is, really, I know how you’re feeling, and it makes them feel seen and heard, for sure.
Using Your Story in Marketing
Ryan: And that’s, oh gosh, that’s such a good message. And again, it goes back to what we were talking about, the very talking about the very beginning, intentionality. So many people check a box with marketing, especially their website, their logo, their messaging, but that’s your opportunity to really set the tone, not just for stand out, not just for how you go to market and, you know, portray yourself, but also the culture and the tone you set internally. If you were to share that, and I imagine you do with your team, that’s a totally different way that they take pride in their work and service they give.
Stephanie: I mean, it’s influence that is my philosophy. It’s been that way since day one of Why did I open? Serene clean, and one of our core values is family first. And so that messaging truly infiltrates the entirety of the business. And being that, you know, my cleaners are also my ICP most likely, right? They are parents, they’re moms, right? Most of my staff are women, and so it just so holistically connects the internal to the external, and they all believe the mission, because it’s coming from the horse’s mouth. And I’m using this type of messaging, for sure.
Ryan: I love that you’re using ICP, by the way. Oh, geez, software type.
Stephanie: Ideal client profile, or your client avatar, or your ideal customer, that’s your persona. It’s all different types. Who’s, who you want to sell to, or, who you want to be your client. Perfect World when I just love that we’re, you know, bringing it back to the branding of it all. And, you know, that was one of my, you know, my, I think my third ZenMaid Talk for the maid summit was standing out in a sea of options. And we have an opportunity to stand out, not just talking about the competition, but just as a business of every single one of you guys. I know I say this all the time, but it’s you have a perspective and you have a story that’s unique to you. Why the heck are you not using it that every time I hop on a call with any of you guys, and I’m Well, you know what? Why’d you open your business? Tell me. Tell me why this is important to you, and you give me this heart wrenching, tear jerking story of you overcoming everything to do this and why it’s so important to you. And I’m just why isn’t that on your website?
The Power of Personal Stories
Ryan: Exactly. Oh my gosh. Even me I can think of, if I were to ever start something I had a, I had a, I had I had a single mom for a big part of my childhood in many facets, literally and metaphorically and so, it just makes me emotional thinking about it, but, but also, those are the stories that we relate to the most, and people want to buy from people, unless you’re again, Apple, Google, whatever it might be. We’re local, small businesses. People would rather work with somebody that has a slightly lesser service. Not saying that’s the case with anybody. They would rather work with someone they trust and know and that they can relate to, versus somebody that’s just gonna they’re just gonna be another number. So your story is a perfect way to relate to people. It’s the same way. When you sit down to have a deep conversation with somebody, it’s a different relationship. It’s not surface level. And so if you don’t know what’s put on your website or your messaging or your logo, start with your story. That is a great place to start. And Zyla, the person that you interviewed, I guess, a couple months ago, I mean, her story resonated with me. That was one of my favorite episodes.
Stephanie: I know as a lot of people’s favorite episodes, because not only just her inner strength, but her background and where she came from, and I didn’t even know, everything until we sat down for that podcast recording of how, she had to, get get away from a very rough life from such a young age, and to to then use that to fuel her motivation and, to make a better life for her family. It was just so inspirational. And and hearing that, because when you hear what people the struggles people have gone through, and then you’re seeing what they’re doing to work, and it Yeah, it may not be perfect. Maybe it’s yeah, maybe it’s not the prettiest website or anything. But if I, if you’re speaking from the heart, people are gonna take heed, you know.
Authenticity in Marketing
Ryan: And you can tell when somebody tries with their marketing or branding or whatever, when someone just throws it together with no thought, it’s how it’s how bad do you want this, or how serious are you taking this? And you can tell.
Stephanie: And that’s, that’s what I mean. Of it’s interesting, because it just reminds me, not to get meta right now, but this podcast, of why do people seem to like this. It’s because, I’m being very authentic. This is who I am. I’m silly. We’re not checking a box. We’re not checking a box. This is very important to me. It’s really, really important to me that this is, helping people. And so it’s just you guys and your cleaning business was I hope it’s very, very important to you what you’re doing. And that can come across, because it’s authentic, and people can sense it. People can sniff out inauthenticity a mile away. It’s so easy, you know? We just have, we all have that instinct I feel, you know.
Ryan: I would agree fully. Have any other off the wall questions?
Stephanie: Oh, let me see Canva ads, let me look. Let my answer. Didn’t Read this. I may intentionally send a typo in one of our emails. To see the listeners. A little easter egg. Okay, let me scroll here. We can pause and edit so I can find, ooh, would you rather accidentally launch a campaign with your competitors name and the header or realize you’ve been using the wrong phone number on your website for six months?
The Competitor Name Mistake
Ryan: I think of marketing opportunities and good stories. And I think the competitor one, it would pain me so bad to, have been running the wrong phone number. That’s not that’s not funny, you know, not funny. That’s not funny at all. I would rather launch with our competitors name. And I think it would just and you know what’s cool about competition, especially when you’re, staying in your lane and doing your own part, there’s more than enough business for everybody. And, what an opportunity to relate to your competitors. A lot of the times, I think of MailChimp. They did this campaign, and you guys should all Google it, but they did this campaign where they intentionally let out some, different variations of the MailChimp name. So nail shrimp and nail cramp and snail pimp, just random stuff. And that’s don’t take yourself too seriously. And I’m not saying you should go put your competitors logo on your website or email or whatever, but imagine what you could do. What fun you could do with that.
The Role of Fun in Business Marketing
Stephanie: Obviously we’re on the topic of, being funny and light hearted and that’s very important to me, that, I make everything fun. That’s just who I am. We all can we make this fun? But I’m trying to think, in Serene Clean however, implemented that obviously for you and ZenMaid, it’s a different kind of market. And you guys, I feel, can be more playful when marketing to you’re it feels almost weird to be playful to, my cleaning business clients, I kind of struggle with that a little bit more. What, what role do you think, fun has in this?
Ryan: I think it’s, again, it goes back to just being human. I think, I mean, especially with, in the age of AI, we kind of need to hold on to our humanity. Humor is one of those ways that we can connect with people, just connecting with the connecting with people via story, your background and the story that that that makes you who you are. Humor is another way that we can it’s a universal language, when somebody laughs or smiles, or just all languages, across all languages, and so, I mean, I think it’s you have to be appropriate, right? You can’t just do wrong. G jokes or whatever. But just, have fun with it. It’s the things that we remember. You know, I would say, this retreat with with ZenMaid, this is the thing we’re going to remember 50 years from now. It’s fun. It’s not too serious. We’ve done a ton of work and shipping new features and products. And I’m going to stop saying shipping, launching new features, building them and this, you have to have fun with it. What’s the point of life? What’s the meaning of life if we’re not having fun and living in community? And I know that you have to draw that line and tiptoe with that, with with clients. And I think it’s just, it just goes just about being relatable and being human.
Building a Culture of Excellence
Stephanie: And that, really, for me, relates back to workplace culture as well. Because, you know, I we have a really casual workplace culture, Serene, clean. And by casual, I mean it’s silly, it’s fun, it’s a little unhinged. And definitely, you walk in, it’s oh, these people are all friends. And the only way that we can, what I would call afford to do that, is because we have a culture of excellence. And so, the service and and what you are providing needs to be of such value, and that allows you to have fun and be silly and be a little bit more lighthearted. Because if we are, sucking at everything, and we are providing a terrible service, and we’re getting complaints all the time, it is. No, it’s not a time or place to have fun and be silly, because it’s we’ve got a problem on our hands. And I’m not saying again, remove it, just being harsh and just getting down on people, but it’s I always come back to the bedrock of all of our businesses needs to be excellence in everything that we do, and obviously we’re going to mess up and all of that. But it’s, it’s a lot easy to be it’s easier to be relaxed when you’re doing good work, you know, and also when you’re doing good work, and we’re all taking pride in that. It just, it’s an entirely different environment, because it’s not about getting paid, you’re just getting paid to do your job. It’s I want all of my staff to feel that pride in themselves for doing a good job. And that really, it creates a different type of energy, for sure.
Earning Your Fun
Ryan: It’s authentic, and so people can really just read through the bluff. If you’re, trying to, have fun, but your culture sucks, and you’re, there’s, it’s just tense all the time. It’s take those companies, throw pizza parties, very corporate, this will make their their lives better.
Ryan: This, this may not be a good analogy, but I think of if you’re if you’ve got goals, fitness goals, and you’re going to the gym and stuff, but imagine how much more you enjoy that, Saturday cheat meal, or, just that relaxing, when you there’s nothing like sitting down because you, because you earned it. Same thing with when you work hard and you play hard, it’s because you earned it. It’s so much more enjoyable. And it’s if you if you just have, a truly productive day, and you just gave it all, and you just lay down at the end of the day, and you just have that joy. And that’s joy, it’s authentic, it’s not forced, and it’s the same with, the culture in the workplace.
Stephanie: It feels good to work hard, be appreciated and make a difference. And that really should be what we all aspire to, I think, in our in our businesses and as leaders as well. Well, cool. I think we’ll wrap it up. Sounds like dinner is about ready. Maybe we hit the pool, you know? Cool. Let’s go.
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Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.
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