 Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. I am with Matt Ricketts today, and this is smart business moves. Hey Matt It's um good to see you Yeah Liz had some other stuff in her world going on today And I knew that she was gonna be off site and she thought she was gonna be able to join us but Got a text here about five minutes ago and the stars. I aren't lining up so Matt and I are home down the fort today Yeah, I am I'm excited to be here and Another topic is holiday marketing and things like that so we can talk about that or anything else anybody wants to Pick my brain on and what I'm working on I I was telling Tom I just moved into my my new home office They're actually moving appliances in we got a kitchen down here And it's not totally done with this room is kind of coming together and I have a window again I was working out of an office closet for about a year and I'm moving my camera out here to show it I guess it's harder to do than I thought but having natural light in an office and not being in a closet all day. That's It's a big win. I'm happy for that. Does that change how you feel about stuff I don't know I've been thinking that it was A little dreary and a little closed off just having a window open it up if I want to get some fresh air It's you know, it's nice. So I'm Looking forward to kind of getting all set up and getting all my Camera, I have all these different cameras that I sometimes use for different video shows I don't have my my big gun hooked up yet for for yet, but I've got a GoPro that's running our show today so I like to I used to do a lot of my own videos for my business So I have all these toys sitting around that I Now I just use them for web production and stuff like that. So You ever do trading videos wearing a GoPro You know what we've tried it. It is headache inducing. Um, it it's just a little too much movement Um, it it felt we tried it. It felt Like it would cause seizures. I don't know just it didn't turn out Yeah, we've played around with that before too and kind of the same thing The idea of being able to do it like from a first person perspective Kind of like a video game, uh, you know Seemed to make a lot of sense, but the execution just didn't Although the technology has gotten a lot better. So this is a GoPro six here which I've got a GoPro eight going and now the GoPro 10 is is out So they've really improved that image stabilization a lot. So I have not tried it since I was using this GoPro Which is like four or five generations ago at this point So maybe it's gotten better. Maybe we'll try it again. So it would be It would be great if you could make it work And you know, they've got like the handheld stable lies, you know devices that will take a lot of the the movement out. I'm wondering Now we played around with like strapping it to your head or strapping it to your chest I mean you've seen all the harnesses and stuff. They've they've got for that. I wonder if It's like you need a gimbal like something like this that would stabilize it on your chest So you need you would need some sort of gimbal to do that. So I've got that stuff sitting around where maybe I'll Maybe I'll piece something together and let you know what I come up with But you've seen the gyroscopic ones though that you can hold your hand They're kind of big. I don't think they've got them small enough that you could like you might have to have it on your head Or something like that. It might not sit on your chest, but Yeah, I actually have a I have a small They're called a smooth. No, that's not a smoothie. I don't know smoothie is like when you have a on a Um on a slider. I'm not sure what that's called What it's what the technical term is but I I own a small one that I that I bought a while back for shooting it And uh, maybe that's when you take like a banana and some berries and throw it in a blender, right? Right, right? Yeah same same principle so uh we have uh Yeah, some people showing up. It's uh Again, you know, we're talking about marketing. So cameras come in handy to make some of those videos I've I've done a little bit of that this year but maybe uh Should we talk about gift cards or what what should we talk about? Yeah, well, this is like all all things holidays and you know, this is the uh, last last smart missus moves of the month Next month will be in november and Honestly, I need to check the calendar and find out what we're going to be doing in november. I'll look that up but Matt, I know that you have for for a while kind of been on the forefront of using gift cards and other type of promotional items to generate additional revenue and over the holiday season and I think it would be very timely and useful if maybe you could just kind of Share your some of your programs and the things you've learned and and what works Yeah, so first of all, um, I do You know have a good strong history of running gift card promotions through holidays like you like you described oftentimes generating an additional After discount revenue back to my company of about $30,000 annually, so it can it can be a big pop Um, I allow them to be sold to my existing customers But I limit it to like a thousand dollars max per customer so that they can't buy the whole year worth or something like that So you need to put some reasonable limitations On it so that you know, you are upside down on customers that are going to use them But in general When you promote them to your email lists and everything else my redemption rates Have been right around like 73 to 85 depending on the year So generally even if you give a 20 discount, you're not giving up the full 20 percent because a lot of them never get redeemed So let's let's see the math on that just to just kind of you know, keep it easy You're doing a 20 discount and you're say selling them for $100 a piece. So I pay you $80 you give me a hundred A coupon that's worth. I guess a gift card that's worth $100 But if you sell 10 of them Only seven of them come back on average. So you collect 800 dollars and only 700 get redeemed. So You know, you're really you're really getting a better margin Gross profit off of the cleanings that you're getting with those those cards and then what you would if you didn't do the program at all It can't it can work out that way, you know, the hard part is Um, you know the hard part is is tracking them. So what I do is I sell them through an outside software Called gift card cafe and then I put that credit into quick books so that when They redeem them through made central it applies, you know It goes and finds that customer that we've created And it finds that credit that that we're keeping on our books And so that way like every visit it's deducting from that balance every time So I have not found an automated way to do all of that yet, but Maybe we'll talk about that in uh in a design meeting at some point time. We'll have to yeah, we'll have to It's definitely coming. It's definitely coming But you know, the cool part about it is it isn't like it. This is something that you're doing all day every day You know throughout the year. It's just kind of How much how much of a how much of a lift is it to? Manage through through gift card cafe and just doing it in quick books Not hard at all. I mean it's every single time one comes in you do need to make a you need you need to make a register transaction You know in your in your quick books So that's manual so but I mean you're gonna only do this like you said one time a year probably where you're going to do a big push and You know, maybe you do some other ones from others day or things like that But they're not going to sell at the level of black friday I mean that's and honestly this year might be the year to do it. Maybe don't do a 20% Maybe just do 10% this year Um, you know, and here's the thing with the supply chain disruptions We might be their best gift that they could possibly deliver For a last-minute choice, you know this year. We might be it, you know That they can wrap up and give to their wife and be a hero on You know, they might even be buying it on christmas eve Yeah, I mean truly if uh, they're waiting last minute to go shopping. They're not gonna Run out to a local store go to uh, amazon and get it because it's not going to be there You haven't met my wife tom, but she's already done with her christmas shopping We have to you'll have to meet her but she's very a very prepared person Um, I would not call her a prepper that close She uh, she believes in being prepared and having a full pantry and having christmas shopping done before thanksgiving So we're we're done. I think you know, I've got to buy her gifts still but Other than that our family She handles every she's you're you're only responsible for one person and that's pretty much it So I need to get on top of it and find out what she wants, but uh Yeah She buys what she wants for the most part. We don't have any like You know, so I you know, I never know what to buy because we You know, we generally just treat ourselves if we need something we get it So, you know, we'll we'll have to you know, figure out what would be something You know unique and I own a cleaning business so I can't give her that Um, you know, I don't know what kind of experience, you know experiences are always great though. That's why Buying a gift of cleaning is is a fantastic gift. We're all so used to it We think everybody gets this but it is a very unique gift. Um, it's it's a great experience to get your house clean um I'm sharing gift card cafe their website Is there anything here in particular that uh, somebody would need to know in terms of How to how to plug into this? Yeah, so they so grow the plans and pricing This is kind of important because they have two different tiers of pricing. So, um What I would look at doing is if you think you're going to sell a lot of gift cards Is that they have different fee structures that they that they offer Um, I think I'm grandfathered on something else, but they take a they take a fee of Let's see some small amount of the purchase. Well, you know, if your gift cards are a thousand dollars, right? You don't want to you don't want to give up another three percent to them So they'll take a flat fee if you go to the largest plan So that would be the one I would I would do if you think you're going to run a program like this So you're not giving up additional percentage in addition to your credit card processing so This is almost five percent with a one time fee of 50 dollars. This is three percent With Okay, and I'm paying ten dollars a month every month. I guess Yep And this is a fixed fee paying Ten dollars a month so three percent Divided into two dollars and fifty cents A little bit of arithmetic here If your average job was more than eighty four dollars and forty cents, which I'm sure it would be You're probably it's more economical to do plan number three here And you can do packages anyway, like where you only sell gift cards in different tiers Like no matter what so you can sell a gift card for like two hundred fifty dollar value five hundred dollar value Or like so I kept mine at a thousand so that I don't have and again The reason behind that being I don't want some customer buying a whole year's worth at the whole discount I mean, I'm willing to let my current customers get in on the deal But not all of them do not everyone has the money to do that anyway to To pre-plan the year like that So you will get some customers your existing customers that do this and that'll that'll definitely drive up your redemption rate But a lot of them will be one-time gifts and things like that And what I would probably do is set it at a minimum of two fifty for your gift card because really You know, it's the first time in a house Two fifty is probably for actually our minimum this year became three hundred So we probably if we did this this year we would need to change our minimum Uh to three hundred I guess Okay So that's how I would structure it or or you can do packages Where you have, um, you know a certain number of Estimated cleanings and things like that where you can do it. So but that plan makes the most sense if you're going to sell a big volume for that For that, uh, I'm out there So in my mind, this is the easy part though because Any of us could go to you know gift card cafe and set up an account and Okay, I'm selling gift cards now and I guess the way it works is they give you A hyperlink and you click on the link and it goes to what the options are and they actually into their credit card and actually are buying these You know digital cards if you will through gift card cafe Yeah You're not you're at that point they gift card cafe takes the money and pays you and gives your whoever's buying the gift card the gift card in a digital format, I guess, right So the hard part is How do you drive demand for that? Because it's easy to set up the link and nobody ever clicks on it. Nobody rebies anything. So what's the trick to actually selling them? Yeah, the trick is you have to leverage your lists, right? So you have to you have to You know decide who you're gonna sell this to who you're gonna You know, how you're gonna how you're gonna market this so The best and easiest place to do so Is your current lists? So you have an email list that you've generated So I use made central now for all of my email lists. I can actually segment out Um, you know past customers that are no longer customers Uh, so the first people I try and sell this to are people that have gotten quotes from us in the past And that don't do and they have nothing business with us So I segment my list into different lists. So I'll segment it out into, you know leads Uh, like, you know, they've gotten a quote from us and then I'll segment it out into Um past customers and then current customers And I'll I'll wait to see how the the other two perform before I send out to current customers as well so, um, you know, you can automate some of this with, um With your email provider where you can set these all these up in advance So I have, uh, let me see if I can open up an email here and share it. So I'll have Let me see what I got going on here if I can share it But these are just the images I don't know that I have the actual copy from the emails going on but let me share my screen here if I can Give me a second. There it is. There's the show button Okay, it's like I can share the whole screen. So it's like a big lob of stuff going on over here, but um So that, you know, I'll I'll have an image set up, you know, um You know, I'll edit the image you could use canvas or something like that put your love on it Um, put the offer in it. The other thing you can do Is use your lists your email lists to target people on facebook now I know that we're all thinking like facebook nobody's using it as much anymore, but we're all broadcasting on it now um The demographic that's leaving facebook rapidly is under 35 Like but we're all over 35. I assume that's on this and probably a lot of our buyers are They're the facebook is incredibly sticky to that demographic over 35 so it is Still where people our age are Or older are spending their time on social media. So You could create like an image like this and then target your your previous customers your your leads And even create lookalike audiences if you want to go broader And target them as well. So we'll do some of that as well when we when we do this So what you're describing there? I know some people probably have done that before taking an email list and you know building a building a campaign and Uploading the email list into facebook, which basically at that point The facebook accounts that are linked to those email addresses then Start seeing that ad coming up in the news feed, right? Yeah, I'll be totally honest the thing that delivers the best is just the email But we do sell some through that channel as well. Yes, and it's cheap to test But we all we all probably have bigger email lists than we even use I would assume that most of us have Even if you've got a hundred leads a month. I mean, I don't know that might be high Whatever it is, you know, most companies are generating between 500 to 1,000 new leads a year Um, that they they don't sell all of those Those are people still that are engaged with you in some way Um, and if you've been collecting those leads for years I mean, I came to my list up a few years ago I had like I had like 30,000 emails and I basically said anything over Like three years old that has never responded anything. I'm just going to get rid of because it's just It's not really good for my deliverability and stuff like that and I still ended up having like 16,000 emails. It's like um you know, so Most of us have big lists I think that we've been in business for a while and if you haven't then this is harder to To scale you would you need some sort of list to work off of but we can all be Building our lists and you know, maybe that's a topic for another day, but you know, that's certainly certainly important but we all have a list and um The actual campaign you're doing do you you know, what's the how many how many emails? What's what's the actual sequence look like and what's the timing of it? Sure So we actually kind of do like black friday early. So we actually start sending these on monday. We actually We're actually trying to capture the buzz before all the other black friday deals go live So like the monday of thanksgiving week We send out an email. We'll send out an email Wednesday night Saying black friday came early like here's the deal And then we'll send one final email on friday to try and capture any stragglers like hey last chance. So generally three emails um And generally we do them in the morning At you know, you know the first one on black friday the one on black friday We send out fairly early because the kind of people out shopping for deals They might be in a line at a store and they might open their phone So we might send that one out like five five in the morning or something like that The rest of them we all send out at kind of more normal times like, you know, nine a.m Through noon basically to try and get most of the day for them to get some eyeballs on that on that You know Do you find actually using the the word the words black friday and the subject line get you a higher open rate? I would have to look at what we've sent. I I think what we usually do is like, you know Our best cleaning deal all year basically is what we typically Like is what we typically cover is, you know, the best deal for made central all year because it truly is It's the only time we ever do any discounting is this one week Where we where we offer this discount. So um, some people wait for it all year and um, You know, I you know, you got me thinking I may do it I was kind of thinking we aren't going to do it this year, but you know, I'm going to do 10% this year I'm going to just but in the cool part about it is what you're what you're telling me is the first email doesn't go out until Like the wednesday before thanksgiving. Is that right monday before thanksgiving then the wednesday right before and then the friday after So you start the week of thanksgiving monday wednesday friday, so So one of them might be, you know, the wednesday one might be black friday, you know came early Um, but the first one is our very best deal all year And then the very last one is something like last chance to get better life made's best deal all year So so, you know The sequence is something along those lines where the last one is kind of last chance You know the you know black friday came early as the middle one And then the first one is our very best deal all year and it really should be your best deal year because you don't want to be You don't want to be discounting often You know, it's uh, it's something special And the thing to keep in mind here though You don't all of these gift cards Some of them aren't redeemed. I mean if 30 of them aren't redeemed That's basically free money. You know, it's very much the case that that they regularly are not redeemed People buy stuff like all the time and it goes to waste Is there Something like in the terms when it was being purchased that that says that this has an expiration date of such and such time I don't because they're a cash value So like, you know in 10 years if somebody came with one and you know And we had applied it to quick books and it would all be there. We would we would We would treat it You know our cleanings have gone up in value So that $100 gift card that they bought 10 years ago is worth $100 still so it's not like we I would never sell a gift card For a deep clean and then like somebody redeems that 10 years that could be problematic As long as it's a cash value It it really can't come back. I heard you really really it's working for you Especially like inflationary times and if your rates are continuously going up they come back in 10 years And it's like well, you know great A cleaning is you know $500 That covers 20 percent. Here's you know, that's fine. We'll take that and we'll we'll cover the rest There are some legal parameters. You need to look at each state has different rules on gift card expirations There's federal rules requiring them that they last at least five years, I believe Um, and so you want to basically follow at least the federal guidelines as your minimum You can you can probably get that from gift card cafe. I'm assuming they manage all that for you though, right? They do they do they're not going to let you put together a program that's violating The law I would say I don't know. I think that I think that you probably can still on it You know, I don't know for sure, but I I do know that they give you all the guidance as to what you know What the the federal minimums are but some states have stricter Rules and you just need to make sure that you're in compliance with your state rules too because some states Don't allow gift cards to expire at all. They have to maintain their cash value indefinitely The truth is though as long as you put them into your into your quick books at that point Um, even if you decided not to keep a subscription to quick to gift card cafe You've at least recorded that liability moving forward on that, you know potential customers account But customer a buys that card It's a gift card though. So if they give it to their next door neighbor You don't know who I mean you do jump the we they do generally fill it out for who it is They put the name of the recipient and their email address So because they're digitally sent to that person They they do get a digital you you have enough information to create a unique identified customer in quick books with a unique email address generally So if i'm uh, if i'm Have one of these gift certificates worth 300 dollars and I call up better life maids It's like hey, my neighbor gave me this gift certificate for 300 What's your email address? We'll search it in quick books first. That is that's kind of the key field Is there any type of control number on it that makes it like unique? There is there is a there is a certificate number and we put that in the the notes as well Okay, but we redeem them out of gift card. So we don't use gift card cafe For the reduction feature because I don't want to have to keep a gift card cafe Subscription forever. What if I don't want to use their service anymore? That's why I immediately put them into quick books and track them that way Okay But I've been using gift card cafe for years. So it's never really been It's really never been an issue. So I you know, I could probably just do the redemption gift card cafe I've always just been looking for a better tool or to integrate it More seamlessly with the way I do things, but it's the best thing that I've found for now I'm sure if somebody had a better suggestion. I would be open to at this point Like I you know, I'm I'm always evaluating tools We will we will we will build a better tool, but for the moment. This is a pretty cool idea And I love the idea of a pulling the revenue forward because this is money that you can get now that You might not even get it all in the 30% art redeem. That's uh, that's free money Yeah, I think and also I mean It is a great gift like it is and it's such a exciting thing that like You know that people think of our businesses enough to actually even give it as a gift, right? Like, you know, not all service businesses like a plumber that can't sell a gift card, right? People think this is a waiting waiting for the hot water heater to blow up finally. Okay. Now I can use that gift card Right. So I mean think about that. We have a service that's exciting enough for people to even buy most service businesses Like window cleaning anything like that. They can't sell gift cards We have something that people desire We actually sell such a luxury item that people would buy it in advance and give it to someone as a gift That people forget our businesses are a luxury item That is pretty cool. If we deliver it in a great experience and package it well It's uh, I mean, it's not a Louis Vuitton purse But it is it's very valuable and it's a status symbol thing for a household to have their house clean too So I guess the other part of it is you're sending these emails out to inactive customers or leads maybe that have never converted Some of those are going to turn into new recurring business. I would think right That's that's my first hope is that we recapture some of those leads and we And the reason I segment them into three different lists is I want to see which lists perform the best And where that revenue came from and the sales came from and um You got to segment your list. You can't just send this out in one big blast You need to know which list got the best opens which lists got the best purchases Um, it's you know, there's a lot of reasons to segment the list But yes to re-engage old leads that you know, maybe hadn't thought of you in six months or you know um, I mean you should be emailing your entire list once a month. You should be like, um What's the company that sends out a coupon every month in the mail? Um, they think they're like a home furnishing provider of some kind. Um, I'm thinking val pack, but that's not what you're talking about No, I'm thinking of a store like where you buy all your stuff for college. It's not Ikea, but it's like, um, Anyway, they they send out a coupon every month for like 20 off one item And rain or shine you have this coupon in your inbox And so when you're looking for something to buy like you need like a A new pillow or something like that you go to this you go to that You go to your email address and you search for that company So you know rain or shine once a month that they're going to send you something. I just can't I'm sorry. I'm blanking on it. Does anybody anybody out there? Uh, know what I'm talking about. It's like, uh, I have no idea. I'm thinking it's a st. Lois thing. I'm a zuri thing No, it's uh bed bath and beyond there you go. See care. Get out. Get out. Thank you, Karen Whoa, you saved us. Okay. We do have bed bath and beyond here. I never paid attention Yeah, bed bath and beyond. See what I was talking about. I just couldn't think of the name of the company But uh, my wife is on their subscriber list and whatever she needs to buy something You don't buy anything full price from bed bath and beyond because it's all marked up Which you got that 20 off coupon and sometimes it's 20 off your whole cart And sometimes it's 20 off your one item and if you get the 20 off your whole cart one You're going to go there and buy like everything for your dorm or whatever you need, you know for for college, right? There you go. Linda knew what I was talking about too. There you go So it was uh, so bed bath and beyond is like If I were to if I were to give you a piece of advice is market like bed bath and beyond Send one thing to your customers every month to stay relevant and in their inbox So that you keep your list fresh at least once a month Send something to your entire list even better if you segment it to like different targets on your list but Yeah, you need to be you need to be marketing to those lists pretty regularly Wow that makes a lot of sense so You know You take it's kind of a convenient convergence, right? You got the holidays coming up It's a good reason to you know offer gift cards because people are going to have an interest You can discount the gift cards to give people instead of say, hey, I'm getting a deal. I can't pass this up Send it to an active customers and in leads that have never converted So you're going to generate more recurring revenue from that. I mean, it's it's You think about all those reasons really it we're any if if you're not doing this, you're missing an opportunity, right? Yeah, I think the marginal costs of the discount of 10 or whatever we decide to do are certainly Overcome by all the things you just described. So yeah, I think it would be Some sort of once a year big promotion would be Would be good. I mean letting I talked about like that like, you know, Louis Vuitton doesn't offer discounts So you might want to do it as a different A different structure if that doesn't fit your brand if you are like Truly the luxury brand. I don't consider my company the luxury cleaning provider That's not my target. My target is like Uh, a family of five people in a three bedroom house. They've got a dog. There's too many people living there And it's it's messy. It's it's dirty. It's not like some showroom house I don't I'm not a showroom cleaning company like I may we make these busy lives better Right like that's my name and the company's better like maids It's really strictly my market what I'm trying to sell to is maybe different than Like a true luxury brand, but it is such an everyday luxury to these people that we want to make accessible So I guess it just depends on your on your positioning in the marketplace on how to do discounts Well, you know discount is is one approach And I know that it's you know, I think what we discussed It's it's really important to be doing it on a dollar amount as opposed to You know give us, you know, I'm going to clean your home You know type gift certificate because you really don't know what you're dealing with there But is there a way that you could roll in? Extra value is a five hundred dollar three hundred dollar whatever gift card And in addition to the five hundred dollar credit, you're also getting Yeah, I don't know Deep clean something another or refrigerator clean or another another way to do it instead of discounting Is to do this is that the gift card cafe allows you to do this is that you could do bogos Is that for every hundred dollars in gift cards that they get? Especially if it's for your existing customers That they get twenty dollars So so basically they get a twenty dollars you twenty dollars you gift certificate You can set the bogos at whatever you want to buy one get one So that might be a better structure if you don't want to show a discount But you want to creating, you know, you want to create an incentive for your current customers to buy these for other people You could offer these buy one get ones as an opportunity But you buy you buy for every hundred dollars you get an extra twenty Yeah, that's an opportunity that I think is is instead of even discounting It the same thing happens, but it um It maybe increases the value proposition for them to buy these for other people too Beyond even just buying them for themselves Yeah Does uh gift card cafe give you the ability to set it up that way? It does it does you can even run daily deals with gift card cafe where you could actually have Like a like a countdown timer and um, you know run this like, you know So that there's a timer on it it creates the urgency of the situation of that this deal is just till friday, right? So you can run, you know, you can run a lot of uh You know different promotions like that through it. So So this is a a little off the gift card idea, but if you're using that for like, uh, production planning purposes and if you knew Like I've got a really light day on tuesday. Could you run a uh a daily deal and say tuesday only and Yeah, I mean you could I would probably just uh do a quick search and made central for all of my on-demand customers and send them a text message, but Yes, you you could do that. Um The way that I currently do that is is just I look for customers with certain tags and made central and send them A text message and I even sort it down to the To the zip code the method zip code to the zone that I want to send to like Um, you know where we where we actually even have the the opening app where I want to try and fill it and uh, we've been really nailing it with those on-demand customers, but You know, yes, you could do it like that where where you were trying to to fill some revenue I don't Structurally, I'm not exactly sure of how you would get them to redeem right then and then do that, but you could Um, I would think about more of like a month. It's low like where you want to Drive some demand and maybe do like a certificate like almost like the old group on days Where it's like hey limited time offer and this certificate Um, if it's like a group on type of deal It can have a shorter term expiration than a than a than a gift card too so like a daily deal has different rules than um A gift card where you could actually drive some short term to man demand like what you're talking about So I guess that a daily deal is Something that's deeply discounted, right? Yeah, probably probably more discounted than 20% like but if you were trying to fill some short term demand You could put a cap on it where like we're going to sell 5 000 of these things You have to use them within the next 30 days So you could you could create some You could create some short term demand with that tool and that's a that's a feature built within uh, give card cafe okay I haven't done anything like that in years, but I I'm remembering a group on that I did like It's got to be like 10 years ago. I did I don't know how long group on that's it's been a while, right like Did you ever do was group on and living social was that the other one? Yes, I did a living essentially, right? I did living social. Yeah Yeah, are they slow people Yeah, I don't I don't know. I think they've more morphed into various things. I don't think Daily deals are very popular. I I know some some cleaning companies got themselves and you know Some awkward spots doing daily deals and sold a bunch of business that they were upside down on and you know You can get yourself in trouble if you don't set those up, right? Yeah, you got to have good limiters and good like what's the cap and You know, even just like, you know, those daily deals They didn't care where they sold that to so you could probably end up with like a Deal and like, you know part of town you don't want to go to it's too far or like whatever. So it's uh Yeah, I haven't done one in probably 10 years, but I did and we made some good money off them and we turned a lot of them into customers so, um You have to have a really good follow-up plan if you're going to do some kind of daily deal You need some kind of follow-up plan with it to turn as many of them into recurring customers as you can Um, obviously that's not what all of them are wanting But some percentage of them need to turn into recurring business or else the whole thing is not worth doing So here you go. I I digress, but this is the Charleston market group 20% off Yeah, they're not giving crazy deals, but I mean, oh no, someone's doing 50% off $120. Wow 50 two man hours of house cleaning. So it's like 30 dollars an hour. So You know, so they're they're rack are they saying their rack rate is 60 dollars an hour. So yeah, they're they're definitely discounting pretty deeply, but at least their rate is good Yeah, I'm wondering if it really is 60 dollars an hour though They might actually be selling it at 40 and they say 60 in order to make the The numbers work look look better. Sure. Yeah, I don't know There's a little bit of gamemanship in all sales a little bit, right? You know, you want to be as honest as you can with your sales presentations though because it'll tend to It'll tend to come back to bite you at some point if it's if it's not so I think that they would regret that if they If they were kind of gaming that too much Yeah Definitely Definitely, you don't want to don't want to do that um So is there anything else to the the gift card idea? I mean we've talked about, you know The platforms to set it up and there's probably others out there But yeah, we've we've used gift card, you know cafe over the years as well and have had good luck with it Yeah, I think the biggest thing is I think it's fun Just on Friday morning to kind of sit there and drink and coffee and watch the money roll and and just be like You know, you know, you're not working that we always take off I don't know if everyone else does this but we've always taken off the friday after Thanksgiving I've never been open that day And uh, so normally and the way I think about it is I want to be off that day I wouldn't want anyone in my home. So I try to put myself in my customer shoes and I've never I've never regretted that other than I'd love to make the revenue on the day, but it just It doesn't feel right. Like, you know, I want to be off that day as well So we've always been off, but it's fun to watch the revenue come in that day um Is there Any value and and like putting a page on your website or at least No, a link or something on your website that would take visitors to the Yes, let me uh, I mean, I think I've got the page up. Let me share what I've got going here. I think I've got it share screen One of the things I don't love about vidyard is that you can only share the whole oh no, you can do it a window Oh, I was wrong here. I thought I just didn't realize that was the top there it is so You would build a page on your website, you know, you don't have to be as graphic about this But the buy now button would take them to your gift card checkout, but you would you would put this on your website as well And you can you know, we the last time I did a big gift card push was We actually were shut down in st. Louis during covet um, and we did a gift card push and uh, you know, that was very helpful in you know, generating some revenue to kind of Whether whether, you know We didn't know all that ppp money was coming all that stuff We talked about we didn't want to talk too much about that stuff today But here it is coming up again, but we didn't know what we didn't know and um And so we we did a gift card push and put about $20,000 in our bank account, which which felt really good at the time because uh, we were shut down for six weeks and um You know that money probably was the difference between, you know, whether or not if the ppp hadn't come in whether or not we would have had spool up money to to get through again because we had I mean, we just watched our accounts dwindling down every week, you know every week after week, you know, so um This was part of our restart plan was to sell some gift cards and have enough cash in the bank to Make our first payroll basically after all this was said and done so I didn't have to go into personal Uh You know, I went pretty liquid and I was ready to go into the personal funds But I did not have to go and use any personal money to restart my business after covid. So that was a good thing Could you share how how much revenue and gift cards you saw? Uh during covid I think around 20 around $20,000 is what we collected We did a 10 discount is what we did just to you know for and and you know customers that were very loyal the other thing we did that wasn't gift card related was we we put a A link on our website where they could do a donation to an employee assistance fund Where we would make direct cash contributions to our uh to our employees that needed cash assistance strain covid So we we gave them the opportunity to both support the company and to support the employees directly Wow It seems like that was a lifetime ago. Doesn't it it wasn't that long ago, but you know, that was a very generous People were very generous though. I am very thankful for the generosity of our of our customers during that time and uh you know I had feelings at the time that covid was going to bring our country together and obviously that didn't happen We were going to all come together kumbaya and get over this together that didn't happen But it was in the end I remember it being a very I felt very positive about the whole experience because of the way that I felt about my customers And how they took like, you know took care of us at the time So I do remember having some positive feelings even though we were going through a scary time uh, there were there were there were a lot of kind people doing kind things, you know, it Didn't fix everything and maybe it you know Didn't stick the way that that we would want to but you know, those people are still out there and the thoughts and sentiments are still there Yeah, hopefully we can can get to a better place without having to have a another pandemic to To get us there Yeah, we'll get you know, we'll hopefully we'll we'll all get together on the same page again some days It turns out it's not cove that's going to bring us all together I kind of thought it was going to be like a 911 moment again where we're all hanging our flags at the door and And kind of coming together as americans that didn't happen But we can hope for the best like there's You know, there's still a lot of things that we have commonality on that We don't need to fight about everything so it's not covid. It'll be something else What we're going to figure it out But uh, you know, I was very I was very pleased with how you know, the good moments of covid with how people treated Our staff with kindness and with a lot of dignity and respect and really showed their appreciation for them by buying both gifts certificates for us and you know helping fund that employee assistance fund which we We used every drop of it and helped our employees We matched that dollar for dollar as well. So for every dollar that the customers gave Angel and I also donated to that as well that got very expensive But it felt like the right thing to do since we were laying off our employees, you know, right And then fortunately the sba came along and with yes ptp and other things to Make uh make that easier to do too. Yes. Yes We were able to be very very generous with with getting our staff back on board and working again and Yeah, all of that helped obviously but Yeah, you know to to get to the to drive it home with gift cards is that You know the the thing is you can use it a lot of different ways But this is kind of a big moment. We've got, you know, three weeks to plan for um For this so what I would suggest now is the first up is Getting all your tools together You know tools that you might need to do this might be gift card cafe and canva maybe to create some artwork You know for for the ads, but it could just be a simple It could just be a simple ad that you have uh on on your Uh, you know like in the email. It doesn't have to be crazy. There's buy now buttons directly from um Gift card cafe where you can you know do all that we don't even need to do any graphics if you don't want to I'm looking at your your your website mat. There's This isn't really in the menu, right? No, it's it's not it's on the about us on the on the side menu there on the about us I'm not directly trying to put this into my header menu You'd have to get to this through a link or if you use the about us link on the right hand. So if I go here Uh, where is my so if I go to about us here And then if I go to get certificates they can find it here But it's not in my top level navigation I got you Because it's not really what I want to drive every day to I wonder though if it was just like right on your main landing page like where it says I mean, I don't I don't know how you would do it, but something making that just for you know the holiday season Yeah, I mean I certainly could go right to my own page and put It's not a bad idea. I mean again, it's a it's a wordpress site. So you can certainly do whatever you want, right? I could probably write below Here just be like, you know, how like I could put a banner here Um, you know right on the header, but you know holiday gift cards. That's probably not a terrible idea I hate to be going there thinking that I want to get my home cleaned for the holidays and find out I could do the gift cards. We'll shoot all you know get something for Mom My neighbor and Hey, this is kind of a fun a fun thing. I noticed today made central is I have seven trainees Right now my staffing situation is getting like back to normal I think we're gonna break like 32 or 33 technicians again We were at 37 prior to covid We peaked at like 40 Maybe in you know, december of that year or december of 2019 Like, you know, we always are a little bit higher staff in december and kind of come down a little bit in january february march The following year we you know, it just kind of trends and cycles because we we Used to do like 20 of our business was uh Was one time work now. It's like five five percent because we just don't have the labor But I think we're gonna be in a pretty good position right now Maybe maybe the rest of you if anyone wants to chime in Are you seeing that you're having enough labor to maybe, you know, sell some extra cleanings over the holidays? Are you getting on top of this again? Because i'm starting to see a good trend I can tell you Pretty much across all branches. We're in better position now than we've been anytime since covid You know a little early despite the football yet, but we're we're we're feeling we're feeling good about it It's good Yeah, I was like I was showing somebody the software today. I was doing a demo and I was looking at Just the there's an employee Scheduled page where you can see all all of your employees and I had all these employees up on the not scheduled tab And I was like, oh my god I haven't had that in forever where I've had extra labor that we haven't even assigned yet Like we need to we need to still put these people on teams and And I was like, oh my god, we're actually like the good old days when we I don't know if people remember our like years ago. I used to hire floaters and I'd be like I'll sell the business. I'm gonna hire these people. I don't have jobs for them yet I don't have teams for them yet, but um, I would sell I would I would hire them as floaters and um We would call them the day before and let them know if they had work or not or if they would be off and we generally always told them there was work, but You know the rules with floaters in Missouri is you had to give at least four hours pay If if you didn't let them like there was rules to this like in Missouri at least I don't know if it's in every state It's different But if you didn't let them know the night before you had to give them at least four hours of pay So we would want to make sure it was clear that they got, you know, you know notified either the night before or uh Or uh, you know, at least give them something to do the next day Did did you guys ever have that like floaters where you have you know people that you didn't have assigned work to? Yeah, yeah It's been years since I've had enough labor to do that. But yeah um so We we actually and I'm rolling the clock back, you know, probably 20 years but we run a temporary labor service called service staffing and we staffed hotels and restaurants and Oh, cool. All kinds of stuff and uh we would also use that as as like Reserve inventory for for for castle keepers because we put them through training where they could could could you know do professional house cleaning but You know, we would form them out to to other businesses and give them extra hours cleaning homes if we we had extra demand It's great. Yeah, I remember I remember we've talked about this a little more That was a good program that you guys were able to run But no more staffing no more staffing agency at all. You still have the LLC but you don't run it after them Yeah, we as we do it for more internal things, you know running a temporary labor agency Has a lot of challenges as well Not least of which is you need a ton of cash Because your your clients basically use you as a bank and you got to make payroll every week but you might have receivables that are 90 days out and We had more than than where one scary moment where you know cash was short. We were chasing it There's a lot of companies that use temporary labor services for that very reason cash is short for them too. So um, they pay a premium for the temporary labor, but uh, it Is is as good as bank financing if if you're an important job Yeah Oh, yeah, that's interesting. I never thought about how like how much capital intensity that probably has at I mean, yeah And I was one of the reasons why we kind of kind of backed off of some of that is just um, I didn't have the stomach for it Yeah, I think most of us in our industry love like Do the work get paid the same day like very little up receivables little very little um very little risk really as far as as far as Um bad debt, that's you know, it's I mean, I can't even I can't even say that it's more than a percentage every year in bad debt of unpaid invoices whatever gets above that that would be Like miraculously low in a lot of industries. So we don't even really realize how good we have it for that in our industry Yeah, um, you know, this is pretty much a cash business and you know, I think most of us gone, you know electronic, you know running credit cards Kind of curious, you know, what percentage of companies even, you know, take checks anymore Yeah, I mean, it's probably even less than a percent. You're right It's probably less than even a percent now for most companies We're 99.9 credit cards. I still have one or two customers that we allow to do a check and Really, I think it's just one customer now. I think if I were to look at like Yeah, I think it's one customer that we batch invoice. That's it. I think everyone else that we have a credit card for them So that's uh, that's changed dramatically even in the last couple years Logistically it just creates so many more opportunities as well. You know, you don't have to have You know, your your your technician is coming back to the office to hand in, you know checks or cash or something It's just too many things that can can can go wrong Especially, you know post covid where you know more and more You know companies are going to solos and you know technicians are working from home and so forth Yeah, you know, well, we are Approaching the top of the hour. We're winding down here. We're going to be uh next month We're going to be talking about accounting and finance And all this is kind of leading up to convention which is going to be the 15th through like the 17th of November we're going to be talking about that as well um You know, I'm hoping to see a lot of people at convention. I've kind of heard You know that that there's some people that that that oftentimes go that may be thinking that they're going to be passing this year But you know, I've heard some of the numbers are starting to tip up as well I just talked someone into it today. I I said that, you know, they really need to be there for the networking opportunities for the I mean I get a lot of my I mean I get a lot of my best ideas for my business once a year that I execute I remember Kathy gauge years ago told me something I can't even remember what we were talking about and I went home Like from that convention is in chicago probably eight years ago I went home and executed on it and it was like it was a big deal I got to remember what it was But it made me tens of thousands of dollars from this one little idea that she was doing that she was willing to share She's a local competitor You know And it that's really what it's about to you know, it's not like, you know coming back with a with a with a with a basket full of You know stuff to implement. I mean you might but Usually it's just one idea that you never would have come up with if you had Been there and you hadn't of And you would never gotten it through a webinar or anything else it's just the the whole thing of being with other people and networking and Um, it happens and you bring it back and and it it could be a big thing It'll it can change your business and I've seen that happen time and time and time again Hey, robin's going to be there awesome That's good That's good. Look at looking forward to that robin. Where are you going to be there? We're going to be speaking we're going to be Talking to people about made central. We're going to be doing all kinds of stuff I just got worried that uh, I asked to say one of me to do a couple of spots at the show too So I got a couple of pinch hitter rolls I didn't apply it initially Initially to be a speaker, but they asked me today if I'd pinch in a little bit So I got to make some presentation. You know what you're going to talk you know what you're going to talk about I'd like to talk about kpi's, but I don't know if you're already talking about that. Maybe that's not what I'll talk about Maybe we can we can we can coordinate we can coordinate. I've got um, you know We could talk for for weeks about kpi's. We've we've done it before So there's uh, there's a lot of real estate there That is true. I had a presentation I like about uh, the the main kpi's people or that I look at every day running my business But there's a few other things that I have kind of in the can that I'll probably play around with well monday, we're going to be back and uh, we're going to be talking about accounting and finance for the month of november And kedma. Oh is going to be our guest all monday and if you've never seen kedman I know a lot of you have because she's uh, she's a she's a rare talent. She's uh, wow She's a force of nature and you don't want to miss kedma. She brings it. She brings it 110 percent um We are at the top of the hour matt. Thank you. This was uh, this was good Um, I've got notes here and honestly, I gotta tell you that I wasn't really Uh focused on you know trying to push gift cards this year But we can certainly get ourselves together here the week of uh, thanksgiving to do this and We're gonna do it You've you've inspired me That's good. You're one. I got to get myself fired up I was I was thinking I was going to take a pass this year, but now that I talked about it I think I'm going to do it as well. So it's uh, you know, it's it's It's always been good for my business. I just was kind of thinking You know, hey, we're doing so good this year. We were labor constrained But then I saw all these employees we hired it's time to I might need to actually get them busy So I I need to do it myself Okay, well Thank you matt as always. This was awesome. Thanks for joining us today We'll be back uh, monday at five o'clock eastern with uh, ked malo till then take care. Bye. Bye