EP #22 - How Profitable is Carpet Cleaning as a Business?

Once you've got this client, you don't want to just be servicing them. Once you want to be building that in as a client that you're servicing every single year.

What is the market demand like for carpet cleaning?

Yeah, it's high, which is great. It's a local person supported by a national network. It's day and night.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, right there in front of me, you know, and I can't believe that I was. Our kids were laying on that carpet.

Jarrod. It's a very exciting time for the local guys business.

It is.

Open up a new division. Yeah. Carpet cleaning.

That's right. No, it's been a project that we've been super excited about and it's at fruition. And, you know, we've got franchise partners out there now. So, yeah, really excited to have that under the local guys umbrella and really be experts in that, in that field as well.

Just to differentiate, carpet cleaning is not normal. General cleaning is. It's quite specific.

It is, it is. And that's how the division kind of came about. Harvey. We actually had carpet cleaning as kind of like a bolt on to our normal cleaning division. And what we discovered was the fact that carpet cleaning is a whole nother industry in itself. It's very, very technical. There's very specialized equipment that needs to be used for it. A lot of this equipment ranges from like $10,000 all the way up to $100,000 for a truck mount.

Yeah.

A lot of chemistry involved. Stain removals can be, you know, really detailed. And you got to know exactly what you're working with and all the rest of it, to be experts in it. And what we discovered through having that carpet cleaning element of our cleaning division was that our guys weren't complete experts in it. And we wanted to be making sure that the work that we were providing to the market was the best in the industry. And. And I couldn't say, hand on heart, that that's what we were providing. So we said, no, if we're going to do it, we're going to do it properly. So we ended up just completely scrapping that. And now general cleaning and commercial cleaning was all in one. And the carpet cleaning is a separate thing in itself. And you're either an expert carpet cleaner or you're an expert general cleaner.

Yeah. You've taken me out to a couple of carpet cleans now, and there's a lot of different equipment and chemicals involved. So do you want to quickly detail all the different equipment maybe?

Yeah.

Go over hot Water extraction. What's involved?

Yep, yep. There's a lot to unpack there. It is definitely the most equipment heavy division that we have by far. One of the elements is that we require a van. You need to have something that big to be able to carry all the equipment and all the rest of it. So really important that we've got that vehicle. We've got both hot water extraction and encapsulation that we offer our customers and our franchise partners have that in their arsenal. So the two of the most, the best ways of cleaning carpets. So all of our new franchise partners that come on board for the carpet cleaning have the option to do either or just depending on the circumstance and the condition of the carpets and the location and all the rest of it. And then, you know, heaps of different types of chemicals and. Yeah, all different types of stuff. Hard surface cleaning as well. So tile and grout. So lots of different things there that they've got the ability to go into. Yeah.

And that hot water extraction unit, it's huge. It's like a washing machine size unit and it's really heavy.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's a big boy. Yeah.

A couple of muscles to move around.

Yeah. I mean, there's a few different options when it comes to the hot water extractors. So they do come in varying different sizes depending on the type of person and as you say, the size of them because they aren't, they definitely aren't light. And then as I said, that goes all the way up to truck mounts where the unit just completely stays in the van itself anyway. And you're just taking the hoses in and out. So there is a little bit of customization we can do on that depending on the franchise partner and their needs and, and all the rest of it. But, but yeah, no, as I said, the equipment itself is, is serious equipment. So yeah, it's, it's got some, so it's got some size and weight behind it.

It's really cool to watch. It's very satisfying work.

Well, you saw it when we'd finished up at finishing up, doing the bond clean and just the color of the water and all the rest of it afterwards and being able to show that to the client, saying that's what's sitting in your carpets. It's really rewarding. And as you say, the before and after shots as well. It's really highly impactful night and day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you, you know, it's nice to be able to provide that service and have the clients come in and just Go, oh, my God. Yeah.

Because how often would a household get their carpets cleaned? It's not something you think about.

Yeah, yeah. I think generally speaking, once every 12 months would be sort of at a minimum. I would suggest that's one of the big elements that, you know, we impart on our franchise partners is once you've got this client, you don't want to just be servicing them once you want to be building that in as a client that you're servicing every single year for forever. You know, I just had my pest control done this week by one of our guys, and he just got me on a rotation now. So he just knows as soon as it gets to spring, every single year, he just books it in. I decided, you want to know about it, just send me the bill. And it's just locked in. And then that way I know Stace and the kids and all the rest of it aren't going to be freaking out about spiders everywhere and all the rest of it. So it's the same thing that we found with the carpet cleaning is a lot of people just want, you know, we're getting into spring or we're getting into entertaining time and know maybe over winter they've got. The carpet's got a bit more dirtier because people are carting stuff in and out and all the rest of it, and it's time to freshen them up before spring and summer.

Yeah, I was going to ask. That goes into my next question.

Really.

Well, what is the market demand like for carpet cleaning?

Yeah, it's high, which is great. It's an interesting market because there is a lot of competition out there, but that's a good thing. That means that there's a strong demand out there where people always say to me, worried because there's heaps of competitors and all the rest of it. A lot of competitors are a good thing. A lot of competitors that are able to pay their bills still means that there's a strong demand from the market.

Yeah, proof the market.

Yeah, exactly right. So you've just got to make sure that you're the best of that lot. And I guess that's where it comes in from, buying into a franchise and, you know, being trained in the best systems, and you're not just someone that's gone out and purchased a carpet cleaner for $1,000, brought some cheap chemicals and gone. I'm a carpet cleaner. I know what I'm doing. You know, we've had people come through the training process of sort of been like that. You know, I've been doing it for a while, blah blah, blah. And then we've gone through the nitty gritty PH scale, how to take out this stain, how to clean this particular carpets and how to do burn tests, how to do this, how to do that. And then they've gone, oh my God. I thought I knew what I was doing. I had no idea. There's a lot involved. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I guess that is the benefit of a franchise. We give you the training, we give you the information and if you're ever stuck. Yeah. Just give us a call.

Yeah, yeah. And even on top of that, like one of our biggest resources is the franchise partners connecting with each other.

Yeah, they've got the WhatsApp group.

Yep, yep, Absolutely. So only this morning I was seeing the test and tag guys and you know, someone had jumped on there. Okay, brains trust, help me out with this one. What are we doing here? What are we doing there? Blah, blah, blah. Straight away, instant feedback. So the guys help each other out and it's really, it's really nice and heartwarming to watch because they're just this cohesive group that just genuinely want to see each other succeed. So that's the whole benefits, I guess of being part of a greater network, part of a franchise is it's the whole one plus one equals three situation.

Yep, yep. I love that. So let's say I'm interested in buying a carpet cleaning franchise. Sure. What are the first steps?

Yep. Well, first step is to reach out to us at the support center. The girls will get you booked in for a discovery call. Used to be that we'd have about a two week lead time for those discovery calls because a lot of demand. So we couldn't get people in for a couple of weeks. We've got a couple of extra people in those roles now. So I think we only sit at a couple of day wait time to get into a discovery call. That's with one of our franchise onboarding consultants that are able to take you through absolutely everything, explain all of the costs and the inclusions and the, and the fees and everything like that and what you can expect and what does training look like, etc. Etc. Any questions about us from there? Once we've identified someone that we think will be a good candidate and they've expressed their interest to move on to the next stage, they normally get booked in with a phone call with myself where I'll just have a friendly chat basically and just get to know a little bit about themselves and make sure that they're again, the right fit for us and we're the right fit for them and they're getting, getting into something that they know that they're getting into and it feels like it's going to, you know, lift them higher and, and, and, and obviously make our brand. They're going to represent our brand in the right way as well. Once we have that meeting, if we're both all happy to proceed from that end, then we continue on from there and the girls will assist a little bit more. Due diligence is done. We give a blank franchise agreement in our disclosure documents, let our franchise partners, franchise candidate, do some their due diligence and all the rest of it and they start to get all of their documents together and, you know, they got to get business name registrations and company name registrations, a bit of admin to do them.

Yeah.

And then from there we get them into the next training session. So we run those every six weeks here in Australia and in New Zealand as well. That's it. Once we're finished with that, business opens up the next week, as long as we've got all the licenses and insurances and everything that we need and they're off and running. And then we move them more into the support stages, things where they've got a dedicated franchise support person touch base weekly for the first month and then it's every month or every six weeks for franchise partner meetings. We've got heaps of support staff after the fact to make sure that they're up and running and doing well and.

That whole process, it only takes about six weeks to get your business up and running, is that correct?

Yeah. So six weeks is average. We've seen people do it faster, we've seen people do it slower. Six weeks tends to be the average, the average point. It really depends on how quick our franchise candidates are being able to get the documents back. There are some stuff, like legal stuff where we have to wait, we have to get a franchise agreement out and there has to be 14 days before they can sign and things like that. So that's some of the things that some of our new franchise candidates, they think, oh, you just sign me up, I want to start next week. And unfortunately, there's a few things we've got to do along the way to do this properly. So we want to be firing off a battleship, not off of a canoe. So we make sure that they're set up properly first and executing properly as opposed to just, you know, gung ho and getting better. So, yeah, about six weeks Is average.

Another classic Jared saying. Battleship, not a canoe. Yeah, it's one of my favorites.

You like that one? Yeah, no, I'll pull that one out of s. Okay.

So let's say we've signed up a new franchise partner and I'm out in the field. How do I get my first job?

Jobs come through from two different ways, depending on the division, up to three different ways. Let's say for carpet cleaning, for example, the main two different ways are we've got leads that come from the support.

Center, so we will do marketing on their behalf.

We do. We do. And to be fair, like, we probably do the lion's share for most franchise partners. We probably typically sit between, you know, 70 to 80% around there. If we can get our franchise partners to be doing 20 to 30%, that's a sweet spot for them to be sitting. We've got some franchise partners that do a lot less, and we've got some franchise partners that do more. But ideally, that's. That's where we're aiming for them to kind of sit. That's the sweet spot for us. So we give them all the tools and the resources. We don't just go, go find your own work. We literally plan it all out. That's what training's all about. We give them all of flyers and training and different processes, lists, maps. We've got all sorts of software for that mapped out with potential clients. Everything you need, scripts at the whole lot. That's one side, which is where we will provide them the leads. And that's done through, you know, Google, Google Ads, online email marketing. We've got a whole marketing team that's. That's their whole role is to focus on that sort of stuff. And we're very, very heavy and leaning into that side of things. The other side is, as we were saying, the local. The franchise partner side, which is the 20 to 30%. And that's called local area marketing. And yeah, we go through all the stuff that we just spoke about. Yeah.

So just getting out there, getting out.

There, getting to know you're the local guy. Yeah.

You're a real person.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We call it the local guys for a reason. So you want to be known as the local carpet cleaning guy out there that, you know, everybody knows when we need someone who we use. We've got some fantastic franchise partners, rural franchise partners that are in the Christmas show every year. They've got the vehicle, the show every year. They're dressed up as Santa, throwing out the lollies, you know, like they are connected into the community. They are known as the local. Whatever division they're in, guy, they'll sponsor.

The local cricket club.

Yep.

Get a nice banner out there on the field, 100%.

The vehicles all it's around and all the rest of it. It's a local person supported by a national network. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a really great way of bottling up actually.

Yeah.

One thing I'm dying to talk about is the content opportunities with carpet cleaning.

Yeah.

We've seen it happen to our videos. You know, we just stick a iPhone in the corner, set it to time lapse mode and clean a carpet and bang, you've got a viral video, essentially.

Yeah. So it's that easy.

Well, yeah, I know I'm talking down my job, but yeah, I know it's.

Because it's most impactful. I think that's the reason why is you can see it, you know, when you're seeing test and tag. Obviously we can put a tag on, we can deem it as safe, but you can't visually see that safety, how safe they are. Same thing with pest control. Pest control is great but you know, if we put a bunch of chemicals in a roof or whatever, you can't physically see that that's, that's done this or that.

It's a bit harder to film as well.

Yeah, exactly. Where obviously if you're looking at cleaning and particularly carpet cleaning, it's day and night.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, right there in front of me, you know, and I can't believe that I was. Our kids were laying on that carpet with it being that dirty and look how it looks brand new again and it might be a 30 year old carpet and all of a sudden you've brought the thing back to life. Yeah. So I think that's probably why. I mean, obviously social media is a very visual tool. So having the ability to have something that has that much impact from day and night, from a service, it just sells itself, basically. And that's what keeps repeat customers going and that's what keeps referrals going and that's what keeps our franchise partners a business. Yep, yep.

And if you've spent more than three minutes on TikTok, you've probably watched a carpet cleaning video and they go gangbusters every time. Millions of views.

Is it weird that sometimes I need I watch them to fall asleep? It's the rug cleaning ones if you ever want to fall asleep. Oh yeah. Check out the rug cleaning ones of how they do it and they Just soak the things in a, in a proper warehouse. This is a rug cleaning warehouse. And they sit there and they just.

Push the dirt out with a.

Push it all out because they flutter all out. You just see this thing and it's just something super soothing about it.

Yeah, yeah. So carpet cleaning content, it's simple, it's effective. And look, you, you may not convert people from one video.

Yeah.

But if you keep at it for a year, I'm guaranteeing you will get customers through your social media.

Yeah.

If you, if you set it as an ad, if you want to spend a few dollars boosting your posts, you can set the location and the demographic you want to target. Yeah. And.

Yeah, well, I've seen it, we've seen it firsthand with, with our guys in the fact of cleaning, particularly whether it's carpet cleaning or cleaning, I would say carpet cleaning, probably even more impactful. But you just literally go, do you want this? And just, you can set it to Facebook, you can set it to TikTok, any of those sorts of social media platforms. And they have a strong cut through some of our other divisions. Not at all. Doesn't work at all on there. So you need to know which platform is the right one for which division. But carpet cleaning is definitely very good at sort of being able to do it on that side of things. Same thing with, you know, you've got your local groups, community groups, you know, if you can be seen as the trusted advisor on there, you know, and it's not always just trying to flog your services. Sometimes it's, you know, someone on there of, we've had a spill on our carpets. Does anyone know how we can get this fixed? Oh, yeah. Try doing this, this and this. This is a good home remedy. Do that, you know, and you can say, if you struggle after trying that, please hit me up and I'll happily come out and have a look at it. And it's, you know, it's adding value first and then people are seeing, you know, the who it's coming from, it's coming from a carpet cleaning business and all the rest of it. And you're just genuinely adding value in there. And you do that enough consistently and people, you become the trusted advisor.

You're the expert. Yeah, yeah. They come to you.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what we're trying to do with all our divisions.

And I mean, the thing is, with that as well, you might, let's say that the client couldn't get it out and they call them out there just to get A small stain out. I think that's the beautiful thing about carpet cleaning is the ability to add more value and increase. Your ATV or your average transaction value is fantastic compared to a lot of other industries. I'll give you an example. So, you know, you might have gone out there for that one little stain or whatever and then you said, hey, why I'm out here. Would you like me to clean all of the carpets? Yeah, okay, cool. No worries. Let's do that. All right. So going through and doing that, it seems like a shame that we've done all the carpets and the couch is sitting there, just, you know, it's still got the stains on there. The kids have written texture on there and all the rest of it. Would you like us to go through and do that as well? Yeah, okay, cool. Go through and do that as well. Well, we've done all of this now. You know, we do offer hard surface cleaning. We do offer toll and grout cleaning and all the rest of it as well. So, you know, I'm here, I'm set up. Maybe I can give you a bit of a discount because you've taken a few other services and you've already got all your equipment set up and so it's not hard to add that little bit extra on. You do that and all of a sudden you've turned what might have been, you know, you've gone out there for the help them with a little stain. That was a, you know, minimum charge job or whatever, and you've walked away of $750Y. And you've done it purely by adding value. You know, you haven't taken the customer for a ride. You haven't done anything like that. You've, you've offered genuine value and, you know, and that's, you're getting rewarded for that with certificates of appreciation with the queen's face on it. So. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think they switch over to the king now.

The king's face. Okay.

All right, now on our new coins.

Oh, I don't use, I'm like everyone else. I don't use money anymore. So my ones have still got the queen on it, but I do tiling.

Grout's interesting though, because you don't think of, you know, grout when you talk about carpet cleaning.

No.

And when you think about cleaning grout, you think about the old toothbrush getting down your hands and knees and spending a whole afternoon scrubbing away, which no one wants to do.

No one wants to do. And it's, it's slow and it's cumbersome and it doesn't turn up great. Where with our tools, they've got the ability to go in there, get them looking like I, I get blown away more by tile and grout cleans than I do by carpet cleans. And super satisfying. And they can do the walls, they can do the shower inside the showers, they can do the floors. They can do inside, outside as well because you've got, you know, plenty of spaces outside. You know, you've even got driveways and stuff like that. You could venture out and do as well with the same equipment that you've got all from the carpet cleaning one. So again, that's what I'm talking about. Continuing to add value. Continue add value. You go away and you can do a driveway job and then all of a sudden that's adding on an extra 4 or 500 on top. So all of a sudden we've walked away with, you know, well over a thousand dollars from a small job. But you've got to be trained and you've got to know how to spot those things and how to offer them to the customer by adding value. Not trying to, you know, sell them stuff. Basically. Yeah.

And what is the barrier to entry with carpet cleaning? Can anyone do it?

Anyone can do it. And I guess that's probably a little bit of a problem in the industry is that it's the barrier to entry is a machine and some basic chemicals. The problem with that is, is the skill set of the technician is generally very low. Oh yeah, I read the instructions manual. Oh yeah, I saw a video online and it is way, way more technical than that. Hence why we created a whole division around it as opposed to just letting our carpet normal cleaners doing it. So as I said, it's you. If you go into hitting a carpet with a too high PH level pre spray and it ends up being a wool carpet, you can completely damage the whole thing. And now you're up for 5, 6, $7,000 to replace the carpets in the place because you know, all the gear and no idea. So it's really, really important. Or you know, you're doing an upholstery clean, you're going, yep, no worries. I think it's this type of fabric that's fine. I'll just go on and hit it with my pre spray. It's worked on the last 20 jobs, all good and all of a sudden it's completely different type of fabric and you've turned the thing brown and now you're up for $12,000 for that. Really expensive carpet clean. Sorry, that really expensive new sofa.

So that why we do the burn test.

That's one. Yep. So we'll do the burn test. We also do some other tests as well to test the chemical on there. So like a bleed test and stuff like that to be making sure that when we're going through and we're testing, we're cleaning the carpets, that we're not completely blowing out the chemistry of it and we're only using the highest amount of ph that we need to be using for the material that we're cleaning. Yeah, yeah.

All right, so to recap, carpet cleaning, great business opportunity, fairly low barrier to entry.

Yep.

Repeat customers.

Yep.

If you can get them on your schedule. Yep. And high demand. And you can go viral on TikTok.

You can go viral on TikTok as well, which is what we all want, customers that way. Yeah, yeah, no, no, that's right. It is. You know, by the end of our training, we have a three day office training in here. Then we have our training where we go out into the field and we do actual real jobs. I just finished up doing some training on that last week, I think it was. By that time you will be confident to be able to go out there and not only be able to clean the carpets effectively, but you understand the business side of it and then you also understand the customer side of it, setting it up for success and then adding as much value to the customer as possible. So, you know, you don't have to go out and do six jobs a day, seven jobs a day, you might only have to do two jobs a day because, you know you've added the most amount of value to those, those two jobs.

So, yeah, I'm convinced. Yeah, yeah, I'll sign up.

Well, it's good. I said to, I said to Stacy a little while ago, I said, if the whole local guys thing doesn't work out, I'm just going to go clean carpets. Yeah.

You've got the equipment already.

Yeah, I've got, I've got it. The van sitting there, I've got the equipment. So, you know, it'd be. And it's, it's pretty, it's pretty relaxing sort of job, to be honest with you. You know, homeowners welcome you into the home. You know, you've got the access to commercial and residential as well. So that's a really important thing. So the market potential, market's really high. So it's not some of our divisions just commercial, some of our divisions just domestic, residential. This one covers Both, which allows you to tap into both. You might be going out and cleaning an entire hotel one time, a cinema, and then doing a few homes after that. Everybody needs it done. If they know that you're good at it, they're going to get you back for repeat work every year. So it's definitely like a really good way to build a sustainable business. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's one of the things I like about any franchise business, especially carpet cleaning, is you're out and about.

Yeah.

Doing different jobs, seeing different people.

Yeah.

And it's fun and.

You mean you've been out. Yeah. That's the thing I missed about, you know, me doing it and being on the road myself the most is the fact that, you know, I'd go to the bakery for lunch. I'd try a different bakery. I'm in. Oh, I'm in this new. I'm in the hills today. I'm by the coast the next day. It's really, you know, meeting different people, as you say, different environments, different workplaces. Oh, I'm going into a cinema and I'm going and checking out places which I would have never had access to do by doing this sort of stuff. So that's, that's my favorite part of the whole service based industry is just. Yeah. Who you meet, different places you get to go and then the freedom of being out on the road as well and being able to write your own ticket as well. So, you know, if you want to work, if you, if you're after big money, you can go out and you got the opportunity to do that if you're going. You know what, like, I pumped it really hard for the last month or whatever. I'm going to ease back a little bit and just book myself out for some time. You've got that flexibility as well. That's. That's what I love about it and that's what I love, that we get to give that to our franchise partners.

Well, I think we've convinced the world. Yeah. So. Yeah. Where did that go at least? Well, I'm. I'm on board, honestly.

All right, I'll sign you up.

Where do I go? Where do I sign up?

Where do I. Yeah, just go to our website. You can start the live chat with our team or you can submit a inquiry worry from our Join us page on all of our websites. The girls are super helpful and super friendly and just reach out and start the conversation from there. And away we go.

Fantastic.

Thanks, mate. Cheers.

Thanks, Jared.

No worries.