The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Cleanlots: America’s Simplest Business, a Parking Lot Litter Cleanup Business You Can Be Proud Of by Brian Winch

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

Cleanlots: America's Simplest Business, a Parking Lot Litter Cleanup Business You Can Be Proud Of by Brian Winch https://amzn.to/3R938JB Cleanlots has been described as “America’s Simplest Business” and “almost as simple as a walk in the park”. Entrepreneur magazine said parking lot litter cleanup is “a simple, inexpensive and potentially lucrative business to get into, and the market is growing”. The Cleanlots book is an operations manual on how to start and operate a parking lot litter cleanup business. Each book purchase includes FREE email and telephone support from the author. Since 1981, author Brian Winch has made a six-figure annual income cleaning up litter from parking lots, and he'll teach you to do the same. It’s an excellent way to take control over your life and income; you can start this business with very little money, without a college education or advanced computer skills. It’s an ideal business for anyone who likes to work outside, who’s responsible and can pay attention to detail. You can also operate this business part-time, as a side hustle until you’re ready to go full-time.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com. The Brain Voss Show. Makes it official. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. We certainly appreciate you being here and being a part of the show as always for 15 years we bring you the ceos the billionaires

the pulitzer prize winners the astronauts the government officials all the wonderful brilliant minds who put all this stuff down on paper write these amazing books and share with you the stories of your life of their lifetime you can share for your lifetime. As always, I say stories are the owner's manual to life, and that is the beauty of all the great stories we share with you on The Chris Foss Show and the wonderful guests that come on. So I go through every one of these shows, folks. We've done close to 2,000 shows now. We've been doing this for 15 years.

There isn't a show I go by where I learn something new, where I gain an epiphany, where I'm able to look at something from a different perspective. And if you're not experiencing that same thing, either you're a whole lot smarter than the rest of us, or maybe you're just not listening hard enough. But as always, we ask you, refer the show to your family, friends, or relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss. On LinkedIn, subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter, the 130,000 LinkedIn group group and also chris voss one on the tickety-tockety we have an amazing gentleman on the show today and he's going to talk about entrepreneurism and how he built what he builds as america's simplest business personally i thought it was

only fans but evidently it's not brian winch joins us on the show today he is the owner and author and creator of clean lots as once again billed as america's simplest business we're gonna be talking to him about what went into that and how he built it you can find his book that came out august 3rd 2018 clean lots america's simplest business a parking lot litter removal business that you can be proud of. Welcome to the show, Brian. How are you? Great. Thanks for having me, Chris. Thanks for coming, Brian. So tell us about what you've done here.

You basically grew a simple environmental cleanup service from a side hustle in 1981 into a six-figure business over 40-plus years, and you can teach people how to make money from green service that's almost as easy as going for a walk. Let's give you a story.com and then tell us the overview. What's inside the book? The book details my 40 plus years experience starting and operating this simple green service based from home.

I started with very little money, a high school education and no special skills. And about four years into the business, I got the idea, you know, why not share this with other people looking for a simple business opportunity? I'll be the first to admit it's not the most glamorous business out there, but, you know, it appeals to a lot of people that like to get outdoors, do something different, you know, get paid for going for walks, you know, like I like to say, and maybe introverts or the night owls or the early birds that like to go out and get the work done and then have the rest of the day to do as they please. There you go. I wonder if this could help, maybe help homeless people and people that are struggling financially. You know, we kind of have a lot of that going on around the nation and people living in RVs and financially.

Interesting. Yeah, interesting. I've seen in various cities, including my own city, you know, something similar set up where they're to clean clean up litter you know the like the downtown business association you know does that and so I you know I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of spreads throughout the country yeah I mean you think it would be a smart way to not only you know help keep the city clean you know and and these folks are sadly already on the streets but maybe it could give them a boost up they could give them a way to pay for rents, rentals, you know, maybe put them in communities

and stuff. And since they're, you know, they're working and doing stuff and it's technically not a business you require a lot of inventory for, is that correct? Exactly. You know, the tools we use are just simple, but unique hand tools that you can pick up from a cleaning supply store. So it makes it easy, almost as easy as just, you know, walking up to an item and cleaning it up. There's no touching any of the litter material that you're cleaning up and, you know, you can get in and out of there. But outside of, you know, a couple of hand tools, you need just a vehicle to drive you from job site to job site. And most people start out like I did just with the vehicle that they have.

You don't need to go out and buy a special truck or a vehicle dedicated or, you know, no special heavy equipment necessary to start this service. Litter pickup is a service best performed on foot, where you walk the entire exterior property of a commercial property and clean up litter materials from the sidewalks, parking lots, surrounding landscape. And it's done after hours before the business is open. So you can clearly see and clean all the litter material. There you go. So what does Clean Lots do, your company? Is that just specific your company do you franchise out how does that work you know i looked at franchising but it's such a simple opportunity and so i decided just to you know share it in a book and it's more of an operations manual you know quite frankly it's not you get more than just a book. It's pretty detailed,

concisely written. There's various other business building products that I have on my website. And then I also offer free support or free coaching. And, you know, some people take me up on it and I'm more than happy to help. I get a kick out of helping people, you know, become successful in this business. And it's one way of giving back to a business that has provided very well for me and my family for the last 40 years. There you go. You grew it into a six-figure business. So I imagine you approach commercial centers, set up contracts with them to do the cleanup and all that stuff? Yeah.

Our prospects or customers are property management companies. We don't work for the individual businesses that make up each commercial property. So, you know, we just contact them and, you know, pitch our service. And I tell everyone to sell the benefits, you know, and nobody likes to be sold anything, but, you know, we explain we can give them a cleaner litter-free property for less money. And of course, property managers, who wouldn't want to know how they can accomplish that? They're always looking for the best service for the best price. And then we provide extra value. Anybody can clean. What makes our business model successful, other than the way we operate,

is the additional value we provide so i'll give you an example of that we could be out cleaning and we noticed maybe the building was hit with fresh graffiti or somebody's dumped off a mattress and a tv at the back of the building we just take a picture of that and with our phone send that to our customer the the next day first thing in the morning. And they appreciate us being an extra set of eyes for them. And it's one way we make their jobs easier. So, you know, if you remember that, you know, you've got customers for life, for decades.

There you go. Yeah, I mean, you set up a contract. I mean, we've run brick and mortar contract businesses with companies. And if you do a good job and you're kind of – with our company, it was an overnight courier express, and we had mailboxes everywhere for the people on site, or we had keys to their office. And so we call ourselves the great invisible business or great invisible courier because we just show up in the middle of the night, pick up what they wanted to ship. Many times, they missed FedEx, they missed UPS, cutoffs. But we had a system where they could get stuff late at night.

And so we call ourselves a great invisible courier. And we had customers for over a decade, probably still would, if we hadn't moved on to another state. But the invisible nature of what we did, you know, we didn't really have to interact with them much. There were some of our clients who never had seen us for 13 years because we just show up in the middle of the night and do the stuff. And we just did it like clockwork and they're like, I don't know, every night when we show up, it's done. So, and then the nice thing is, you know,

maybe if you don't get along with others, or if you kind of have that entrepreneurial slant, it's kind of nice to run your own business where you're not having to work with a bunch of other people all day long. You know, I mean, between picking up trash and sometimes having some trashy people in your office, I'd probably just want to be on the street taking up trash. That's right. You nailed it. And, you know, we, you know, we go do the work, you know, you know we we go do the work you know you know we're not dealing with

people we're out in the morning hours where most of the people are still sleeping so we can get around the city very easily and and you know it's great like i tell people it's great for introverts just just show up do the work and you know you know we you know it's not like our phone is ringing off the hook you're you know running a retail business during the day and you've got people coming in and out of your shop. You know, the only time you're communicating with your customers is, like I say, when you're communicating these issues such as graffiti or broken glass or something like that. In most cases, it's just done by email. You know, I mean, I've got some customers where I've never met them. You know, we've just communicated with them, them you know either by text or by phone or email

and then we used to have a thing with our mortgage company where we would have or occur company we had a lot of mortgage companies where the when whenever the agent we were dealing with the company he or she would usually leave and go to another company and usually they kind of do the same sort of thing. They call us up and be like, hey, you know, we used you over there. Can we use you over here? And so I imagine it's kind of the same way in that business where you can get pretty good referrals and, you know, I suppose if you land a big enough contract for a large enough thing and stuff.

On Amazon, it shows the book is priced at $113. Is that correct? Is that because you're selling the business blueprint? Brian? Yeah. Well, there's two. There is the hard copy for $89.95. Oh, is there?

Okay. And then there's the... You could get the book on all the online bookstores, including Amazon, but also... No, the paperback is for $79.95 on our website. And $89.95 is the hard copy. And then like I mentioned, there's different bundle packages. If people want to get the explainer video series, the business documents, which is a simple zip drive. There's various products but i tell people basically if you're tight for a strap for cash all you need really to get started

is one version or the other of the book there you go and so yeah i see it here now the kindle version is separate 79 bucks right now people can get it or it sounds like the best place for them to get it is on your website there Mm-hmm. There you go. So, clean lots. You know, this could solve so many problems with homelessness and people that are broke. And you can really turn this into a six-figure business, huh? Exactly. And, you know, I mean, I decided to sell it in a book and keep it as affordable as I can.

I'm not making six-figure income from selling books. It's a little bit of extra money to help build the retirement account. I still clean parking lots. I think I always will. It's such easy work. I've scaled back my hours and people can do that themselves. If they're working for themselves, it's really up to you. So that's the benefit of it not being a franchise i'm not telling people how they have to operate how many hours they need to work in what territory they must operate and just keep it nice and simple and and you know like i was thinking about other people you know like just like me you know there's a lot of people out there that didn't go to college you know but

they'd like to make some extra money for themselves, whether it be as a permanent side hustle or build it into a full-time six-figure business. The choice is yours. Yeah. And I imagine it's not too complicated. I mean, you don't have to learn computers so much. You don't have to have anything extensive for starting a business. I mean, it's literally go out, knock on some doors, offer to help people. You know, I mean, you can definitely find who needs help because if you go

to their commercial property and see there's trash everywhere and, you know, I know some, let me ask you this. I know some companies, they have those big machines that come out now and try and suck up all the trash, but it seems like a lot of stuff still blows in the fence and outer areas. So how do you sell it as being better than, you know, those big machines are a compliment to them? You know, ours is a different service where, you know, we're not providing any sweeping or like where you've got the street sweepers that come in. Of course they can only maneuver where they can drive,

you know, like on the parking lots. But we provide an entire or a thorough, you know, exterior property litter cleanup where we walk the sidewalks, the parking lot surrounding landscape. And we don't go in there once a week. It's the whole point is to maintain these properties litter free. So it takes literally the time it takes almost, you know, to walk the properties. So, you know, depending on the sizes, it could be a small, a medium or a large property you know we could be in and out of there in you know 10 minutes 20 minutes 45 minutes maybe maybe an hour and a half depending on the size there you go and i imagine i mean even like

abandoned commercial properties they they don't want them to look that blighted right so they probably hire out to have people clean that as well, right? To maintain the properties. If not, the city oftentimes will send them notices from the bylaw officers and give them 48 hours to clean up the property or else the city will go in and clean it up for them and then bill them on their property taxes. So it's not a hard sell. Property owners, property management companies recognize the need to maintain their properties.

And to be honest, you know, the first thing when you pull into a parking lot, you're going to notice, you know, how much litter is on the property before you even enter the buildings, you know, to see how clean the janitors are keeping the buildings clean. So nobody likes to see an unsightly litter-free property, whether it be the property management company, the businesses located in it, or the community, or the shoppers. So, you know, and especially after COVID, you know, a lot of people are pointing out, like, you know, who are these people that are just discarding their masks in parking lots outside grocery stores, for example.

Yeah, that was going on a lot. And so, yeah. So, you know, so property managers, you know, thought, okay, well, we have to make sure that, you know, this service is being done. Otherwise, you know, these people are going to shop elsewhere. Yeah, that was going a lot during COVID. I would see so many masks just dropped on the ground in the parking lot. It was freaking insane.

I was just like, is this for real? And it's unfortunate. So with marketing, do you just knock on doors, call people, maybe send them emails through websites and stuff like that? How do you usually do the marketing for something like this if you want to tease that out maybe? It's pretty easy. You just do an online search you know various search terms property management companies or real estate management companies list of property management companies yeah and then you know i tell people

it's best to compile your own list it's more up to date you know and and then just start contacting these people and you know your whole point is not to sell them anything from that initial phone call or communication. It's to find out who the decision maker is. And then you want to share information with them. You know, you keep it brief. You know, we can give you a cleaner, litter-free property for less money. We'd love to share more information as to how we can do that, you know.

And it just starts the conversation going. And the ultimate goal is to get a couple of addresses or, you know, sites to go out and take a look at where you can get back to them with pricing. There you go. You know, it sounds like a great business. You can work your own hours. I used to love our courier company when we started. You know, we were working 18 hours a day doing it ourselves and I used to love it because the the hours between when the business closed when it opens is when we could do our work

and there was you know a whole system that we had but the beauty of it was is if we were running late or there was some sort of issue or maybe if I wanted to start later as long as I could hit my mark of when we were done with everything by the time the business opened, it gave us a lot of play to where we could, you know, we didn't feel like we were like, oh God, we got to be there at this time. And, you know, you just, you're dealing with that rigmarole of just timelines, et cetera, et cetera. I suppose if you have a big enough business, you know, you're on a timeline system, but you know, you kind of have a little bit of freedom because you're in the middle of night. No one watching you you can you kind of go about your own business you can probably dress like you like i guess depend upon the weather but for the most part you're not having

to wear a suit and tie i suppose to go out and do it working with the working with a personal relationship business like that i've always loved more because it's not technical but you know we've had people on this show. In fact, there was a guy who wrote a book about blue-collar millionaire that was on the show, and he talks about how, you know, blue-collar work like this is some of the most highest-paid work now because no one wants to do it. It's not popular, and so it pays really well.

I mean, you look at what a person who picks up garbage gets now, people work in the sewers, people work in construction and trades. I mean, they're getting paid extraordinarily well. And for some reason, this new generation is like, well, you don't want to work out there and sweat, you know. But good for them, man. They're getting paid like, you know. I think there's some people making you know, making like 40,

70 bucks an hour, you know, and yeah, I don't know. The kids are like going, go ahead and work for McDonald's for, you know, 10, 20 or whatever. They're actually getting paid pretty well now, I think. But yeah, it's a business that it isn't going to go anywhere. I mean, you talk about AI and robotics and all these crazy things, you know, until they make a robot that goes around and picks up trash, which I don't think they're going to.

It doesn't seem like there's any money in that for people who make robots. It sounds like a good little business. The other thing I should mention about your business that I think is great is I love contract businesses. Having a business like this that no one wants to do, that isn't popular, there's not a lot of competitors, and having a contract where you just do business with people year in and year out. And because you're invisible and stuff, they really don't think about you much. They get the invoice to pay it. You do your job as long as you're consistent with it. The years go by, man,

and people just pay the bills. And're like i don't know that one guy just cleans a lot and it's done and we're fine and that it's just it's just it was a great business for all the years we had our our business that was in the same sort of nighttime you know after hours format you didn't have to deal with anybody you have to say hello to anybody so there you go what about do you ever have security issues in different cities yeah no i mean they're you know most of these properties now do have security patrols that you know run through the properties a few times a night so we might see them and you know just a quick you know a little friendly conversation or whatever but yeah i mean

typically when we provide the work you know everyone's home sleeping you know you know it's not it's not too busy and then you know if somebody should come up to you and ask you if you know if you could spare a buck you know they want to they want to buy a coffee we just make sure we tell all of our people and i just tell people i'm sorry i don't carry cash and then you know they buy that they leave you alone because the worst thing you can do is pull out your wallet open it up And that's probably what they're looking for. They're looking for the opportunity to grab your wallet and take off. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, like you said earlier, we're dressed, you know, we're not dressed in a suit or anything. We're wearing work clothing. So we don't, oftentimes don't look much better than the people that are asking us for coffee money. Yeah. You're leaving the Ferrari and the Rolex at home. Yeah, that's a smart idea. But no, these businesses get paid really well, and you provide a service, and a no-brainer.

I mean, like I said, I kind of have this vision that somebody like in L.A. or something should come up with a way to make this, help people get off the street, help them get money. You know, people want to make money. They want to have some dignity. And we can get paid so well for this.

I mean, come on, man. I mean, it's really amazing to me how many people don't understand that blue-collar businesses are still some of those highest-paid things. In fact, right now, we've got so many people that are retiring that are high-transmen, high-knowledgeable, high-experienced. They're retiring, and most of the new people replacing them are beginners or novices. And people don't realize that they're just getting paid more. You look at what UPS workers are getting paid now.

I mean, they just had the union with the thing. Have you reached a point with your model or your business where you've got employees working for you and you've expanded or are you still doing it yourself? That's how we built it into a six-figure business. I started as a side hustle part-time. I grew it into a simple one-man operation, which I enjoyed doing for about four years. But then my customers wanted more of me and more of their properties. So then I just brought in some subcontractors

to help me with the cleaning. So now we built the business up to anywhere from $650,000 to $700,000 a year in revenues, just cleaning up litter from parking lots. We don't offer any other services. We're not a landscaper. we don't do snow removal we're not you know we're not a janitorial company and like i often tell people it's it's with us it's better to be seen as the expert in your field of operations than try to be a jack-of-all-trades and wind up a master of none

there you go and the other beautiful part about this is there's no inventory that's one of the biggest problems you have with most companies if you're selling something you know that you're just selling sweat equity at this point you can generate that you're you it's not it doesn't require like one of my first company i'd work for years as a kid with my dad doing stucco so i knew how to do the trials and you hear the mix this man i knew every aspect of the business i didn't want to know because i was a kid you know i live in the age where your mom's like take those kids and do something with this summer because i don't i don't want to deal with them you know it was the latchkey kid era where you didn't come home until like street

lights came on and so yeah i learned that trade and so story in my book of when i worked at mcdonald's in my teens i i uh got fired i my dad said what are you gonna do now because you can't sit around the house work for free this is a different age and live for free and i said i don't know he says why don't you go do my own stucco business you know i shut it down a few years ago but you know all the tools are out in the shed and i think they're still on account of the builder's thing. And you know how to do everything. The only thing you've got to do is go get new customers because you don't have any. And so I was like, okay, great.

And that's how I started my first business. But I did know the trade, and I did know the work, and I did know how to do this stuff. In your business, this isn't a high-skill thing that you have to do. You don't have to go to college for four years to figure out how to pick up litter. That's for sure. You know, and the way I, the reason or how I got started as a kid growing up, I often would go with my dad who was a janitor and he didn't make a lot of money. So he supplemented the income by, you know, cutting grass in the summer, shoveling snow in the winter. And he would clean up litter from a nearby shopping plaza. And when I got a bit older and I was probably 12, 13, 14,

he took me along with him a couple of times. And I thought, wow, this is easy. You know, I mean, we would just walk the property, clean up the litter with our tools. So, you know, no bending, stooping, sweeping, or handling the stuff. And we were in and out of there in just a matter of minutes. And I thought, that's pretty cool. And then when I was 21 and working a dead-end job at a sporting goods store,

that memory popped into my head. And I thought, why can't I do that? You know, unfortunately, at the time, this is back in in 1981 my dad had passed away unexpectedly at the age of 61 so just as i was starting up with this idea he wasn't around anymore to give me any help or tips but i still had that memory i thought you know if he could do it you know he was a immigrant polish immigrant you know his language skills weren't that great i mean i can do this too you just you know, he said language skills weren't that great. I mean, I can do this too. You just, you know, the one example he showed me and my brothers was, you know, how hard work would pay off. And so, yeah, you know, here we go. 40 years later, 40 plus years later, you know, I took his idea and I turned it into something that, you know, I think a lot of people would

be interested in doing just as much as I've enjoyed it for the past 40 years. There you go. And plus you're not in the weather so you're sucking down some clean air. You're not in some polluted, poor filtrated office building. You're not dealing with office lights. I mean you're not dealing with other people in the office. You don't have to smell the guy who drinks in the fish and puts it in the microwave. Or the woman who wears too much perfume oh yeah yeah or guys i've seen both yeah we used to run a big facility for cincinnati bell telemarkers like 800 telemarkers a day

and yeah that one we had to you had to ban we had to ban like perfumes where like, you can't, you can't be wearing, like if you're, if you're piling that stuff on, we got to send you home. Cause you're just, you're just going to kill everybody in the office. So we had a, and I think at one point with one of our companies, we had to ban perfumes in general. We had somebody who was hyper sensitive to it, but yeah. Yeah. So you can walk around, you don't have your boss hovering over you micromanaging you i mean this sounds like a great business maybe i should i might quit my job and go do it tomorrow if i'm not collecting trash people not doing the podcast

anymore you know what happened you know what like there there's some actually some bonuses you know it doesn't happen every day but you know sometimes the pizza place is just closing up shop and you know what what do they do with leftover pizzas they offer to their delivery drivers or you know if they don't want it if you happen to be there you know hey you know brian you want it you know because i get to know some of these guys because they're open late hours so brian you know you want a pizza to take home so why not and then it's amazing how careless some people are with their with their money you know we find money in parking lots and i think it's because people put they stuff their their pockets with the bills you know 10 20s 50s whatever and then they put their car keys yeah and then when they

pull the keys out out come the bills and it's in the parking lot and sometimes i'm wondering i'm walking and i'm looking straight ahead. What is that? And then I'm thinking, you've got to be kidding me. Nobody else has noticed this. You know, I'm the first one to arrive at the scene and I'm starting to pick up the bills. Like I say, it doesn't happen every day, but the most I've ever found, and this goes back 20 years, the most I've ever found was a roll of bills. And it was pretty muddy.

We're wrapped in an elastic band. I took it home, dried it out. And then I started peeling the bills off. It was over 600 bucks. Holy crap. 600 bucks. I'm quitting my job. That was my best payday for doing nothing other than showing up.

Free pizza and that. I'm out. I'm going to go do that. Screw this. Just the free pizza alone has my stomach rumbling right now. So there you go. Give us your final thoughts as we go out. Tell people how they can.

You can't be too picky. That's true. I mean, free pizza is free pizza. Yeah. You know, you can't be picky if it's Domino's or Papa John's or whatever. It's just, it's free pizza. Free pizza. Well, it's got pepperoni on it.

But, you know, if people want to learn more, I suggest that just go to my website, cleanlots.com, and there's a free report if you want to download it. More information is the right opportunity for you. And there's also a three-minute video that shows me walking a property, cleaning it. And so you get the idea of what work is involved and what tools I'm using. And so yeah, that's the best place to start. I tell people just cleanlots.com. There you go, cleanlots.com. I love it. This sounds like a, I wish some city would pick this up as a way to fix a homeless situation or

something, or people that need money. Cause it sounds like, you know, you can have an army doing this and then you can get people off the streets too. So there you go. Thank you very much,

Brian, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. And a great time, Chris. Thank you. And thanks to our audience as well. Go to good reason.com.

Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com. Fortress, Chris Foss.com fortress chris foss subscribe the big linkedin newsletter the linkedin uh group of 130 000 people over there go to chris foss one on tiktok and chris foss facebook.com thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time