Service Industry Rent Seeking

I’m writing this out of frustration with the current state of the service industry, and with the unfortunate prediction that things are going to get worse before they are going to get better. I also read Monopolized by David Dayen which leaves an unfortunate aftertaste in your mouth, even after what is supposed to be a rallying call of a last chapter.

In my complaint today, I’m talking about classic rent seeking. This is the type that’s always shown up when honest people are trying to make a living, because honest people pay fees willingly.

I’m talking about platforms like HomeStars, Yelp, Angie’s List, Handy, Homeflock, Flamp, the list goes on. Google and Facebook act in similar ways, but their extraction is to a further degree, as they sell ad space for you to purchase (and potentially off of the traffic they generate from the ads).

Same Pitch, Different Platform

The pitch is always the same, that it’s for the customer’s benefit, but the company profits are the end to its means. The whole goal is to have their platform be the intermediary, because they don’t perform any of the services.

Each of these platforms works by cultivating itself as a place for clients to submit proposals of the work that they want to get done. The proposal then gets tendered to several vendors (depending on who has paid most recently) and the client can select between a few choices.

Any provider who has worked with one of these intermediaries knows their whole focus is to get you to spend more time on their platform, and to use your credibility to increase their credibility.

It means that service providers need to be ready to respond quickly in-platform so that a “slow response time” isn’t posted to their account (unremovable, even as a paying member) which will drive down their ratings.

These platforms also have direct control over the amount of proposals an account can see, or the location they are seeing them from. None of this is to better the consumer, it is to extract as much money as possible from the service provider.

Draining Your Resources

An extreme example of this can be seen with their website plug-ins. They want you to feature HomeStars as a component of your website, with links to them that increase their back-end PageRank and SEO. You might say, but HomeStars puts a link to my website on their page too, doesn’t that help me in the same way? And that’s a pretty honest and fair assumption, which is why HomeStars doesn’t do it. Here’s what Neil Patel (a world-class SEO expert) has to say about why a website would use a “nofollow” link for vendors on their website:

“Why would a website use nofollow links? Because linking to low-quality or low domain authority websites can hurt the link-hosting website’s rankings. So websites will often use these links to avoid destroying their own rankings with a low-quality external link.”

So websites like HomeStars don’t want to risk their reputation by potentially linking to your poorly optimized website, but they’ll absorb all the value they can from you. These platforms rely on the assets of the companies that use their platforms at every point of their business model – parasitic through and through.

It’s just like how Google and Facebook both fight to have web-crawling pixels/lines of code so that they can take as much information. The more crawlers you add to your site, the slower it functions, but the faster it can be indexed, and the more valuable data is captured.

Google Monopoly

Google also works to extract rents from service providers, and recently it is expanding the depth of its reach in this area significantly.

You could already pay to be at the top of the results, or the top of the reviews, or the first results on a “maps” search. Google had already started playing with submitting quotes directly through search, but it recently added messenger on Mobile (a bit over a year now) and Desktop (added within a year) so that people don’t have to leave their search results page to ask their questions directly to the company.

Google is closing the loop on direct communication with clients and service providers, which is one of the only ways that you can further entrench yourself after you already control a majority of internet searches.

Closing Thoughts

The model is the same with all of these rent-seekers, dominate as the intermediary by any means necessary. For Google and Facebook, this means coming pre-installed on devices and being unable to delete them, a standard practice in the mobile phone industry now.

For others like HomeStars, it means betting that they can optimize their online presence better than the local competition and holding customers over the heads of those businesses behind a paywall.

These practices are terrible. There is no benefit but to the intermediary.

As the late David Graeber would say, these are Bullshit Jobs.

And the legal landscape of Washington seems to be changing its tone towards these tech monopolies, which is a good thing for Canada too (and the world, ultimately). I hope we see antitrust and break-ups in the near future, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

2021 Top Books and How I Pick What to Read

I started reading more than I ever had last year. A silver lining in a global pandemic, but a silver lining nonetheless.

Most interesting, though, is what I learned about my own learning. After I performed an audit on everything I read in 2020 and pulled some lessons out of it, I made adjustments to my own consumption for 2021.

The results have been amazing. I’m reading just as much (if not more) than I was in 2020, but more importantly, what I’ve been reading has had a more thorough impact on the quality of my ideas and my outlook on life.

I cut out all the noise of fad books and looked for ones that resonated with me at a deeper level. I’m happy to say that out of the 8 books I’ve completed this year, there has only been one that I wouldn’t consider fantastic. Even then, it was a shorter book, so I didn’t feel like I was wasting hours of my life pushing a boulder up a hill. And I still enjoyed the book, it was actually pretty good, the others I read just set the bar incredibly high.

Here are the 8 books I’ve completed this year, ranked in order or Favourite:

1. Think Again (Adam Grant)

2. Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor E. Frankl)

3. The Relationship Economy (John R. Dijulius)

4. Start with Why (Simon Sinek)

5. The E-Myth Revisited (Michael E. Gerber)

6. Scaling Up (Verne Harnish)

7. The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)

8. Rocket Fuel (Gino Wickman & Mark C. Winters)

Here are 3 methods I’ve been using to make sure the books I consume are more important to me.

  1. Listen for recommendations everywhere you go, but wait for a book to be recommended multiple times before you commit. I used to try and jump on any recommendation that came from a source I was trying to impress or emulate. Now I wait to see if it has staying power – that is – will this source continue to recommend this book and will I see this recommendation pop up in other places. If the answer is yes, there’s probably a little magic tucked away on those pages that will light up your brain. (I actually appropriated this concept, and a few books from this Tim Ferriss blog post)
  2. Have a trusted group of people to recommend for you, but ask for context. I love talking about what I’m reading with other people that are close to me. It helps solidify my thinking on the concepts I’ve read (talking means you have to turn it into a cohesive thought/narrative) but it’s pretty obvious there are some topics I love that bore others to sleep. I try not to recommend these in my circles, but it happens occasionally. Asking about the context of the book can let you know if it’s something that will resonate with you, or if it’s just something that really resonates with the other person.
  3. Consider the timing of the book relative to what you are doing in your life. As I’ve stepped into more of a leadership role in work, I’ve found myself crushing management and leadership books in my spare time. It’s not that I’m trying to work overtime, it’s that I have burning questions which don’t go away at the end of a 8-4. The more relevant the book to what occupies my thoughts this week, the more likely I am to enjoy hearing a different perspective on the topic. Having a depth of perspectives on a core groups of concepts has been much more fulfilling than trying to spread myself across the width of documented knowledge in the universe.

My Favourite Book of 2020

Nonviolent Communication (Marshall Rosenberg)

Key takeaway: “What others do may be the stimulus to our feelings, but never the cause.”

We need to step back and consider the language we use to convey the emotions we feel. Often we find ourselves using tropes and clichés that put the blame of our internal feelings on the external world. We need to accept that although others may trigger our feelings, the cause of them is a need of ours not being met. Only then can we move forward with ourselves.

It is not some perception of strength that will help us meet our needs, it is vulnerability. Only when we are vulnerable enough to let people know what our needs are will we have the opportunity to meet them fully. We must also accept that individuals are allowed to make their own decisions, which does not always align with what we desire.

These are powerful lessons, and they’re delivered in digestible segments. I could not have asked for a better coaching segment than listening and re-listening to this book. The only other suggestion I would make is listening to some more of Marshall Rosenberg’s work.

The direct follow-up that I would recommend is Speaking Peace. Some people just get it. Marshall Rosenberg is one of those people. He sees things differently and invites you to join him. Patience, insight and a positive outlook on life seeps through every page of his writing. I found it to be an absolute joy to hear what he had to say, even when it cast light on unpleasant characteristics of myself.

And that’s because it’s an invitation to see the world through a different lens. To broaden your horizon for yourself. To love more deeply and to let that love drive positive convictions in your life.

Prepare to look deeply at yourself and your own actions if you read these books. They showed me how little I was willing to contribute to my own needs. They showed me how ineffective my communication was (and continues to be at times). They will give you literal examples of how to approach nonviolent communication. This is why they are so effective – they bring about change quickly. They are currently the #1 and #2 books on my personal list. I consider them fundamental readings for emotional intelligence.

I consider these books deeply inspiring to the core of humanity. I revisit them when I find myself low or lacking clarity with my own feelings. Perhaps most importantly, I come back to these books when I’ve fucked up and need to solve a problem of my own making. It centres me and provides a framework to take next steps.

There isn’t a band-aid solution for the human condition, but Nonviolent Communication is as close as I’ve found.

2020 Reading Audit

I read more this past year than I have in a long time, maybe the most I’ve ever read.

That’s because I changed the way I consume books. I bought a kindle (and I’m a fan), but what really increased my intake was the shift to audiobooks.

I clocked a total of 7 days and 11 hours of listening. I average 1.3x-1.5x listening speed depending on the book.

So here’s my reading list for the year, ranked in order of Favourite:

1. Nonviolent Communication (Marshall B. Rosenberg)

2. Speaking Peace (Marshall B. Rosenberg)

3. Mating in Captivity (Esther Perel)

4. No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer)

5. Traction (Gino Wickman)

6. Religion for Atheists (Alain de Botton)

7. How I Built This (Guy Raz)

8. The Deficit Myth (Stephanie Kelton)

9. The Practice (Seth Godin)

10. Enchantment (Guy Kawasaki)

11. Post Corona (Scott Galloway)

12. Vagabonding (Rolf Potts)

13. Essays in Love (Alain de Botton)

14. The Righteous Mind (Jonathan Haidt)

15. Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers Programs 1-6

16. The Expanse: Caliban’s War (James S.A. Corey)

17. The Son (Jo Nesbo)

18. The Expanse: Leviathan Wakes (James S.A. Corey)

19. His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman)

20. His Dark Materials: The Subtle Knife (Philip Pullman)

21. His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman)

22. Stalling for Time (Gary Noesner)

23. Status Anxiety (Alain de Botton)

24. Predictably Irrational (Dan Ariely)

25. Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke)

26. Debt: The First 5000 Years (David Graeber)

27. Sapiens (Yuval Noah Hurari)

28. Tribe (Sebastian Junger)

Here are 3 lessons I learned from a year of relatively intense reading.

  1. Don’t get caught in the hype of thinking you need to read best-sellers or really long books. Most of the time I wouldn’t finish these books. The ones I did finish ended up near the bottom of my list. (this leads to my next point)
  2. You don’t need to finish the book. Also, feel free to jump around. The book is for your enjoyment, not to suffer through so that you can say “I read THAT book”.
  3. Re-listen to parts of your favourite books when you need inspiration or guidance. This was a huge turning point for me after reading “Religion for Atheists.” I went back to several favourite passages and had soul food for the mind.

Tim Ferriss Marketing Case Study

Tim Ferriss is one interesting character.

I’ve been following him for a few years now. I ingest large swaths of his content in waves. He’s calculated and strategic in what he does. Recently, there have been a huge amount of podcast episodes published on his self-titled show.

This isn’t particularly surprising. Podcasting has picked up popularity during the pandemic.

I took interest when he started showing up on other podcasts. Tim is notoriously selective with his time and doesn’t often feature on other podcasts. Generally, guests are plugging something, but I couldn’t figure it out.

Guy Kawasaki and Guy Raz have both done recent episodes with Tim and I’m now expecting other features to show up all over the place.

I’m also expecting them all to share a similar story. The story of Tim’s long-term depression and various strategies he’s used to combat it.

I expect psychedelic treatment to come up as a consistent topic too, though it may not in some of the more conservative conversations.

Overall, it will fit into the narrative of psychedelic treatments for long-term depression with Tim as a case study.

And this shouldn’t surprise anybody who follows Tim. He’s a vocal advocate and investor, so there’s a double stake for him (triple if you consider the fact that psychedelic treatment IS the future and has real potential for harm reduction).

He has 14 links to “psychedelic” related blog posts on the homepage of his website. He’s not hiding anything.

That’s what makes it all so brilliant. It’s true, it’s meaningful and it’s reaching millions of people at a time when audiences are craving long-form content to soak up all those screen-time hours.

And that’s a recent take on a brilliant marketing strategy by one of the living greats. One day a book will be written about Tim, but until then the podcast (and its transcripts) will have to do.

#27) More Lessons from a Start-Up Culture

It’s not that I don’t like people, I just can’t stand small talk for more than a few minutes. I hate the idea of having to “make conversation” with somebody and I’m the type of person to be comfortable with silence in the presence of others.

I will also talk in great detail with complete strangers if we’ve hit it off on something specific. These are some of my favourite memories because they caught me off-guard in the moment. And being caught off-guard is a great learning lesson, if you let it be.

By recognizing that some of the most profound conversations I’ve had have come from taking a chance with a total stranger, I was able to see past the bullshit I had pigeon-holed myself into.

The truth is, I love people. And now I’m convinced almost everyone else does too.

As anti-social as I may view myself (it varies from mood to mood) the world around me is built and run by people. Yes, algorithms now dictate much too, but so much of our world is based around human relationships and connection. Even the algorithms are just trying to figure out what the relationships and connections can (or should) be for X to occur.

Uber, Lyft, Doordash, SkipTheDishes and Postmates are all algorithms, but they don’t work unless there’s an actual entity delivering your meals (although it won’t be people for long…) Beyond this, it’s the relationship that the Apps are able to make with you that determine their success. The way they choose to interact with you (push notifications, text messages, emails, etc.)

It’s the communication that makes or breaks a service in the long-run. And it’s the communication of the team that makes or breaks the long-term success of a start-up. Ceteris paribus, the company with better communication will steamroll the other.

And then the light clicked on – I wasn’t contributing positively to my team with regards to communication.

As a 1-man-marketing operation who was also doing analytics, web design, operations reports and budgeting cashflows, I had hidden myself away in my details. It seemed like a good rationalization at the time.

I convinced myself that the work I was doing was more important to get done by myself (I was surely the only one who could do it), to do it as quickly as possible (time is always of the essence at a start-up) and that I didn’t need to leave a record of it for others or communicate updates (nobody else was going to read them anyways, they were busy with their own work).

Writing it out, it’s pretty obvious this mentality was a mistake. But how could I have caught it in the moment? How will I prevent myself from doing it again in the future?

The first piece of advice I’ll offer is: Ask yourself why you made the decisions you did.

If it’s because you’re not interested in the work anymore, if you’ve been looking for an exit for the Nth time this month, if you hate where you work or if you are uninspired by what you do, maybe you should just walk away. Figure it out and move on, but understand that the company will likely continue without you. It could be successful or it could be your entire social group. Business is the lifeblood of more than just the economy.

On the other hand, if you wanted to succeed, but messed up thinking that you could do it alone (or some variation of this) then that’s a much different story. Icarus son, you have flown too close to Sol. But like a phoenix, You shall rise from the ashes.

Pick up your pride and come clean with all the people that you work directly with. Be open about the mistakes that you have made, and be clear about why they occurred. Do it as it relates to the work you do with this person.

Next, ask them about themselves and ask about the ways that they like to communicate. Then focus on their needs when you communicate with them.

Finally, actively work to communicate with your team consistently. I have to actively think about this (and I still don’t always do it) but I know that I feel better and perform better when I do.

The people who are aware that their sociability has an impact on those around them and try to make their environment better are the silent heroes of this post.

Writing this, I am reminded of the fact that I am endlessly fascinated by people. It is because things don’t fit together quite right that the puzzle is fun.

-Jake

The Case Against Programmatic Ads

I’ll start by letting you know that I’m a hypocrite for writing this. I generate revenue from programmatic purchases of Google AdWords. I’ve spent a lot of time narrowing down to some really lean specifics, to get it to a self-sustaining point, but I do use them in a limited capacity.

It’s a net to capture what is already coming through, not a dial to be turned to increase or decrease that amount.

Past that, I was a large supporter for a while, but after not seeing substantial results for years, I can’t help but feel like programmatic ad purchasing is akin to the pre 2008 financial market. The reason for this is because online advertising was intentionally created to mimic the financial markets which had just been turned into highly profitable machines (at the time). The missing piece was the commodification and abstraction of human attention, but the IAB had us covered.

In 2014, the group released an extension of its 2004 work that standardized the concept of a “viewable impression.” To achieve a viewable impression, more than 50 percent of the pixels in an advertisement must occupy the viewable space of a browser page for greater than or equal to one continuous second after the advertising renders.

There are tranches set up that capture the bottom half of the internet, mostly patrolled by bots and other web crawlers. Then they merge these weak purchases with the strong purchases simultaneously and the buyer has been heavily (if not entirely) removed from the process. This is the exact type of framework that led to the 2008 crisis.

What is different about the present-day online advertising system [compared to older, non-programmatic advertising] is the extent to which it has enabled the bundling of a multitude of tiny moments of attention into discrete, liquid assets that can then be bought and sold frictionlessly in a global marketplace – (Tim Hwang, Subprime Attention Crisis, 2020)

Combine this with the fact that all of the consumer data available in the world, the very same data that is the input to these incredibly complex algorithms, is strikingly wrong a lot of the time. A recent PwC study found that “1/3 of supply chain costs in the programmatic ad space represented an ‘unknown delta,’ which could not be attributed to anything.” I don’t know anyone that likes the concept of 1/3 of a budget going into thin air, but I do know a lot of people that advertise on these platforms.

I had always thought ads could show up in strange places (and I noticed that they did on my programmatic “discovery” campaigns), but was assured that this was a glitch, or a minor issue. Scaled across an entire industry, it seems pretty clear how the feeling of the 2008 financial crisis looms closer and closer.

And just to add some canine teeth to this post, I’ll add links to 2 more interesting articles that cover this topic. The first one compares Ad Tech to the internet bubble of the early 2000’s. The second is a first-hand experience of Nandini Jammi trying to change what online advertising looks like.

Like I said at the start of the post, I use a small and highly concentrated set of keywords within Google AdWords, but not much else in terms of online programmatic purchases. I’ve found that using the free platforms those same companies offer (Google MyBusiness and Facebook Groups) harness the exact same financial results as when I pay for programmatic.

That doesn’t stop the Google Account Specialists from trying to get me to purchase display network programmatic, which I just don’t have the stomach for anymore. I hope the online digital buying platform is reworked within the decade, because there are much better ways to advertise than the current model. I think that has become overwhelmingly clear during covid-19.

#25) How I Turned $13,820 into $229,402

Let’s look at some of the fundamental reasons why this marketing season was a success.

The first is that I work as a marketer for a great product, and it’s executed by an even better team. $98 Exterior Window Cleaning (this get’s people in the door) and we 100% Guarantee our work. It’s a low-cost provider that simultaneously offers great service and guarantees the result. There are not a lot of businesses that can say they offer the lowest price AND a quality guarantee.

So I have a great product, which makes my job much easier.

And I have a sales team that is able to work magic. Part of that magic has come from having my working desk in a call centre for the past 2 and a half years. I get to hear the pulse of the company, whether or not I want to. It can feel overbearing at times, but the value in hearing what customers have to say at different points along their purchasing and servicing journey is an intangible asset.

I can’t tell you how many of my own ideas have been proven wrong just by listening to the other end of a client call. There are invaluable lessons hidden away in your clients, you just have to listen.

So I’m close to the action, and I keep my finger on the pulse of the company. The last piece of the puzzle is that I’ve actually been a window cleaner (albeit for a season and a half only) but I’ve done the work. I’ve seen the look in a client’s eyes when they look at a home of perfectly cleaned windows. Knowing what that is like, understanding the feelings going through a client in that moment – that’s the magic.

It can’t be rushed, it just has to be worked away at consistently. You will begin to see the patterns emerge over time, and you’ll continuously interpret and re-interpret. It’s all a part of the cycle and it’s all good. Keep thinking, learning and challenging your assumptions.

So that’s the background on my understanding of the service offering, execution of the service and the client interpretation.

Now where did I spend the money? Digital, mostly. Of that, mostly Google AdWords and Bing, bidding on specific keywords and trying out different programmatic ad strategies (which I now recommend against using). I also used Mailchimp, and spent about $2K on a small radio buy.

A quick note on using Bing. First, they let you import your campaigns from Google AdWords, which is just incredible. Second, there’s much less competition, so you can easily dominate results. Finally, the people that use Bing are older and less tech savvy, someone that uses Internet Explorer. They are more likely to click on ads and they are likely to be older. This was our target market, so it was a great fit. I don’t expect companies to sleep on Bing forever, but it’s a solid platform if you know what you’re doing. This is mostly because it mimics Google, but what’s new?

The keywords and campaigns that I use on Google and Bing have been refined over the past 2 and a half years. I have trimmed all the fat on them because from the get-go they needed to be self sustaining. I didn’t have a burn rate until after I didn’t need it anymore. The first year it was a tough conversation to get any money for advertising that didn’t immediately drive sales.

That last sentence is probably painful for any marketer to hear, because anybody worth anything in the marketing world knows that things take time. Just because you can have better ads or copy today, doesn’t mean that people will buy it immediately after you change it.

And yet you do need to make change happen, and the faster it happens, the better off you will be.

As far as I can tell, Elite Window Cleaning creates a significantly larger amount of content than any other window cleaning company on the planet. This means that there is a lot of material for me to work with as a marketer. It also means that we’ve found a way to harness creativity in our teams across a collective brand identity. That last point is critical, because it means that we will consistently be producing high volume and high quality content. Both of these things bring us ahead of the curve, but it’s what we do next that solidifies it.

We engage with and post in localized groups and platforms in the areas that we operate in. Specifically, I use our Facebook organic presence, Facebook Groups and Google MyBusiness. I use these platforms first because they are the ones that I see consistent returns on (except Facebook organic in certain situations).

We also post on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter and occasionally Snapchat, but the point is they don’t drive consistent revenue, so this is where I spend my spare time, not my priority time. I post on all of them, because each of them has the ability to go viral in some capacity. We recently had a Facebook video start to track globally 12 weeks after it had been initially posted. It’s pretty cool for a window cleaning video, but it also didn’t lead to any additional revenue yet. I expect that video to lead us to significant revenue in the future, the value of it just hasn’t been recognized yet.

The value that recognizes itself immediately is the spend that gets a client on the other end of the phone or filling out our quote calculator. I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel with free posts and free email blasts (limited to under 2000 people) to generate the revenue, then I could justify putting spend behind it.

That’s the same strategic mentality I use with paid channels of advertising.

“Lock down” revenues with proven methods, improve those methods consistently, then use that success to allow you to operate in unknown territory. Cover your bases so that you can have the freedom to express your creative ideas, without worrying about the security of your position.

This season I ran a pretty tight ship as a one-man-marketer, but that doesn’t mean I could not have done a better job (just see the last week of June to early weeks of August below). I was also, essentially, just pulling levers and making sure things looked good, while I was mostly occupied with experimenting on a bunch of other ideas, or going deep into analytics to try to find more inspiration.

I also was able to run a tight ship because I had a lot of design work from a former colleague who helped bring a professional flair to our brand image and another who was an AdWords genius. I had the luxury of working with both of these people for just 8 months, but the work that they put in during that time will continue to pay dividends for years to come.

Anyways, we’re almost at the juicy part of the post (the actual numbers). The marketing bookings for the first 4 weeks were all generated through free channels, SEO or email blasts. This is what I mean when I say “Lock Down Revenues with Proven Models”. Build on what naturally occurs (such as a huge influx of calls and searches in Spring) but also don’t try to fight fire with money.

The end of June to the beginning of August is a definitive dip. I’ve graphed it in a multitude of ways, yet I still thought I could just throw money at the problem in the same channels we were using. I was wrong. I should have been looking for a different and more creative approach to the mid-season dip that we see every year.

The work that you do diligently in your spare time, the stuff that you know will make a difference down the road – you’re right about it. It will make a huge difference. In fact, it’s the reason why I didn’t need to spend marketing dollars in May this year, but I couldn’t start with the long-term solutions, I had to chip away at them consistently over a few years. It’s a marathon, not a spring, you’ll get there.

Next year, I won’t make those same mistakes, I’ll make new ones. And I’ll make sure to cover my bases first again.

-Jake

WeekTotal Marketing Spend $Total Marketing Booking $
May 3$0.00$9,496.00
May 10$0.00$21,998.00
May 17$0.00$12,772.00
May 24$0.00$13,360.00
May 31$259.46$5,406.00
June 7$519.98$8,871.00
June 14$685.71$8,956.00
June 21$636.51$14,189.00
June 28$620.11$2,616.00
July 5$499.87$6,532.00
July 12$1,111.92$7,719.00
July 19$791.33$5,471.00
July 26$974.70$5,693.00
August 2$644.80$3,375.00
August 9$861.45$5,438.00
August 16$773.17$3,465.00
August 23$607.91$13,247.00
August 30$955.68$15,302.00
September 6$670.69$8,403.00
September 13$695.53$17,843.00
September 20$841.37$14,826.00
September 27$504.52$7,305.00
October 4$379.70$7,105.00
October 11$411.47$5,704.00
October 18$374.22$4,310.00
$13,820.10$229,402.00

Source: Elite Window Cleaning 2020

(#24) Lessons from a Start-up Culture

I’ve learned a lot in the last 2 years and 7 months. That’s when I jumped head first into a window cleaning company, working in an office where the back doubled as the shop for storage, parts, ladders and sometimes vehicles. My first desk was on top of a filing cabinet.

I was supposed to do “marketing” and was supposedly the 4th on the line for calls. I didn’t really answer the phone and the other three quickly learned that. I’m still not a natural on the phone by any means, but it gets better.

I quickly felt like I was out of my league, they were all naturals where it not only intimidated me, but also made me feel inadequate. So I tried to double down on what I was doing, while hiding “the why”. And I wasn’t hiding it from anybody except myself.

I was refusing to properly acknowledge the hard work of the people around me, and it led me away from collaboration. It was hard for me to recognize my own weaknesses, especially in the face of others’ strengths.

Looking back, I’m honestly surprised it turned out as well as it did given my stubbornness. I struck gold once I realized my success was linked to the success of the people around me. When you phrase it like that, it seems so simple, but when you’re living it day-in-and-day-out, in those moments, it will not be simple.

Unless you let it be.

Learn to control your emotions and let other things be. Learn that the things others do is the stimulus to your feelings, but not the cause. The cause of your feelings is based on your needs.

Then seek to make others pleased in the work they do.

I try to remind myself all the time that I’m surrounded by other people that work hard and diligently, all for the same purpose, the company. Then I try to take a role in guiding it.

I hope I’m not coming across as a saint or a preacher. I probably fuck up more than most. I try not to let that stop me…for more than a few days max…who doesn’t throw the occasional pity party for themselves, but sometimes it does last longer than that. I’m here to say it will come around, though, even if it takes a while, it will come around if you work on it.

I’ll try and leave you with some specific advice, rather than this rambling garbage I’m treading into rather quickly.

When you’re marketing, you’re only as good as the weakest player in your customer interaction chain. This means that you have to go through every single point and make sure that it is exactly the expectation you have set from the get-go. That means aligning sales, operations and customer support and complaints – mapping out each of those touchpoints.

If you want these changes to actually be implemented, you’ll need to have good working relationships with all the members of your team, otherwise, it’ll be dead in the water. There, I brought it full circle.

As a last point, if you map out all of the touchpoints, and ask yourself how to improve from the client perspective, you will find creative and outlandish answers. In other words, the best kind of answers.

-Jake

P.S. read about Non-Violent Communication