Opportunity Awaits podcast Episode Transcript
Aaron Henriques (00:03):
Hello everyone. And welcome to the podcast as usual. I'm Aaron Henriques and I was literally on a Sunday evening. And I've just moved into this new flat on the Isle of Wight. In fact, it's called an apartment and the other way, and I've done that. I've probably for six months up front moved into an apartment here while I'm starting up Dustr my commercial cleaning company. And you know, I moved here because as we all know, COVID is still around. We're apparently banned from travelling. So I thought, let me go somewhere where it's a bit like a holiday and, you know, we can have some nice open walks, you know, do a bit of boating, a bit of flying, I've got the airport, a couple of miles away from me, a 10 minute drive. And you know, I've got these lovely sea views that the apartment walks out onto literally looks over the sea across Shanklin and Sandown.
Aaron Henriques (00:59):
And yeah, it's pretty awesome. But I was just, I was just sort of getting ready for the evening and getting ready for my Monday. And I started thinking about something that come up in a conversation with my mate earlier today. And it was just a phrase he said, which I've heard a million times before, but do you know it really grates on me this phrase, you know what I mean? It's like, Oh, you know when someone scratches the chalkboard. And it's like, uh, it just goes through you through you. Right. And you know, that phrase is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. What the hell are you talking about? Like that phrase really winds me up. And so that's why I've put the title of, if it ain't broke, then break it! Something like that. I actually can't remember what I put or I'm going to title with this as, but if it ain't broke, then go and break it because the problem I have with aint broke, then what's the bloody words?
Aaron Henriques (02:01):
The bloody words, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, something like that. Yeah. So the problem I have with that is all that's telling you is that if you're starting up your business and you're going into things with that mentality, yeah. I get, you know, people want to play it safe and ask great. You know, if you just want to play it safe and just be mediocre and average, you know, you want to be that average business doing the average thing that everyone else who's average is also doing then. Yeah. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, keep doing that one thing. But you know, particularly if you're entering into a market and you're a brand new company, you need to be like innovating. You need to be coming out with ways of doing things a bit differently to everyone else, or maybe like massively differently to everyone else.
Aaron Henriques (02:45):
So with Dustr my commercial cleaning company that I've just started up. You know, for those of you who haven't heard me before, I haven't just randomly started up a commercial cleaning company. I've owned a domestic cleaning company for eight years. That's part of a franchise and I've been in the digital marketing space for a long time. And one of the things that happened when, as part of that franchise is I won national franchisee of the year for my innovations that I bought to the franchise. Now I've been looking, I've been eyeing up really, you know, but I've been eyeing up the commercial cleaning industry for a while now. And one of the things that I noticed is one, they're not really small business friendly; two, they make it impossible for you to get an idea of what it's going to cost you, unless you're actually picking up the phone and having some sales person come round with that clipboard eyeing up the job and all this stuff.
Aaron Henriques (03:42):
There's no way to book online for, you know, nearly ninety nine out of a hundred companies. To be honest, I've not seen one so far for commercials. And it was a real big challenge. My biggest challenge was how do I solve that problem? You know, being able to find a way that these companies can just book instantly online. It sounds so simple. That's like obvious it was something, you know, it's something that's there. Now. Here's the thing. When I started up in domestic cleaning online bookings for cleaners, wasn't a thing, right? There's not saying they weren't anyone doing it at all back then, but it wasn't a, a big thing. Like most companies didn't do it. You know, they expected you to make a phone call or just fill in a form, which would say you know, a callback form, like with your name and your contact details.
Aaron Henriques (04:30):
And then someone would call you back sort of thing. That's what it was. And that's one of the first things I introduced him to, into that franchise was like, this is ridiculous. Why are we not going online? Bookings? Why are we not taking automatic payments? Why we've not got direct debits, you know, ability, all this stuff just didn't make sense to me. And it's the same in the commercial cleaning industry. And that's one of the things that I'm looking to do differently. There are other things which I'm not going to mention right now, very new, just starting out. But if I was to go around that mentality of, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like every single other person, you know, every single competitor that I've got that I've looked at so far, and I've been able to find online or doing it all in the same way, they all look the same new or mediocre.
Aaron Henriques (05:16):
They're all approaching it from the same thing. They're looking at their, you know, someone else, you know, if they're starting up a new company, starting speaking really fast or getting excited about this, but the basically, what they're doing, right, you know, they come into the industry and they're looking at, Oh, what's everyone else doing? Let me just copy that. Now, just a carbon copy of the average of everyone else. No, one's daring to put their foot out there and do something differently. Now I've just got a theory that, you know, one yeah, you can fall flat on your face and it'll go completely wrong. And your idea, that's sort of a bit wacky and a bit out there, a bit innovative, doesn't work, try something else. You know, if that's the case, try something else, but you need to do stuff to sort of make yourself a bit different from everyone else.
Aaron Henriques (06:02):
And that's why I'm saying that it's important for you. If you understand this, it is important for you to really think about how you're approaching your business and your, your mentality with it as well. You know, being innovative can do wonders for you. You know, it can really change your business. And I'm hoping that, you know, of course I hope touching wood and everything. Of course, I hope that the sort of approach that I'm taking here is going to be something that is not only received well. But also something that, you know, in the future of a company is going to try and copy. That's what I'm hoping is going to happen. So you know, I know from the first, the first day I run 24 hour test of an ad campaign that we've set up just to get a bit of data into it.
Aaron Henriques (06:58):
And on that first day, within, within 24 hours signed two customers and those customers, you know, from nearly negligible spend using this new theory would be worth several thousand pounds to me over the life of that contract over the life of their minimum contract with me. So, you know, that was just in a couple of days and that was testing a campaign, it currently off currently doing some more optimizations on it, which I've been a bit lazy. Haven't done anything today, but it we'll do it tomorrow. And yeah, I mean, this is, you know, there are opportunities out there for you to just, you know, be a bit different. So the next time someone says to you about, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's just someone who's scared, you know, they're, they're running a bit of fear of being different, bit of fear of putting their foot out there, you know, trying to be a bit different to different differentiate and you know, really actually create a really big business.
Aaron Henriques (07:59):
If you, you might not want one, right? So don't get me wrong. I understand that some people just want to do, you know, plot along and just be average. And that's fine. No problem with that. I'm not putting you down for that. You know, if you're starting a business, you start your business for you. You know, you start at for what you want to get out of it. And there's no right or wrong. Not everyone has to start a business thinking. I want to be worth millions and millions and millions. Some people are just quite happy where, you know, they might've been only in 50 grand (£50,000) a year at their, their job. And they just want to earn about the same, but not having to sort of report to other people. And that's fine, you know, if that's you and you know, you're happy to just plod along and, you know, have that, have that sort of level of, you know, salary and stuff like that, then that's great.
Aaron Henriques (08:48):
You know, that's fantastic. It achieved your own goals, but you just need to bear that in mind, people it's something that come in my head and I had had to share it. Cause I was just thinking, what the hell are people talking about? Where if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like you're nuts. If it, if it ain't broke, go and break it people right. Go and break it wherever it is. You're doing it right now, wherever your industry is, wherever your company is, you know, think about ways that you can go and break something. Message me, you know, get me on Instagram. @AaronHenray on Instagram. Pop me a message. And tell me what you're doing. That's different to the rest of your, you know, your competitors in your industry. Like, what is it? What's that one thing that maybe you've been thinking about doing it, but haven't been willing to do it because every time maybe when you, you know, maybe when you've mentioned it to someone, maybe it's your business partner. Maybe it's just your, you know, your partner, your family, your friends that are worst people to speak to about your business, by the way, the business partner, but your family and friends, my God, they're the worst people speak to, they will come out with phrase, stupid phrases like that. "Oh If it ain't broke, don't fix it", well, how'd, you know, it ain't broke, you know, have you tried anything different? Probably not. So go and do something different. Let me know. It's @AaronHenray on Instagram and yeah, until the next time that's me done.
