124. The Side Hustle that Became a Full Business with Brian Winch

Hey, welcome back to the Average Joe Finances Podcast everybody. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni and today's guest is Brian Winch. So Brian, I'm super excited to talk with you today and just have this conversation. I know we had to reschedule a couple times thank you COVID for everything that it's done for my family. Yeah. Really appreciate that. But I appreciate your flexibility and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today.

No problem. I'm glad to be here, Mike.

Yeah. Awesome. Hey, so I'd love to ask you the first question now, which is the same question I ask everybody that comes on the show and we wanna know about you and who you are. So if we could dive into your background, if you could share a little bit about yourself, share your story, how did you get started? And I definitely wanna talk about what you do and about your book called Clean Lots. So if you could, share that with us.

Sure. I have been cleaning up litter from parking lots for over 40 years now. And I found my calling and it really was back in 1981 when I was working a full-time job and I barely graduated high school. I obviously didn't go to college. Didn't have a lot of money in the bank and many skills, but I decided I wanted to do something for myself and work for myself. I couldn't see a future for me with, in my job working as a shipper receiver because my lack of education. So if I wanted to make good money, which I wanted to at the time I realized I had to be for myself. I started looking at different options. And make a long story short, it all came back to some sort of cleaning business and both my parents were great examples to me when I was growing up. My dad was a janitor. I guess the cleaning is in my blood, but he was a janitor, but he needed to supplement his income and he did so by doing various side hustles himself, except back then, it was probably called more of a spare time job or moonlighting. And he would cut grass in the summer and clear snow in the winter, but he also cleaned up litter from a nearby shopping center and he had taken me along with him a couple times when I was a young teenager. And I remember how easy it was to do that. We basically got paid to go for a walk early in the morning and we didn't have to touch any of this litter material. We used a simple litter collection tool so it made the work almost as easy to do as going for a walk, quite frankly. I thought, okay, you know what, maybe there's a business in that. Unfortunately though, back in 1981 nobody saw it coming. He died unexpectedly at the end of July from a massive heart attack at the age of 61. And it hit the family hard and I kept thinking about my dad and what I was gonna do. And uh, a couple of months later in September, I decided, you know what, maybe there's something in his side hustle, the cleaning up litter from parking lots. And I decided to test the market for the business. Can good money be me be made doing it? And I started making some cold calls. There was no internet back in the day. There was the big fat yellow pages, telephone directory. There was a slogan at the time, let your fingers do the walking. And so I started thumbing through the pages under property management companies and just cold calling them and about three or four calls in, the property manager I was talking to said this was a really great, in a very opportune time for you to perform me, because we were just discussing having that conversation in the office that we needed to look for somebody else to clean up the litter from our properties, because we weren't happy or they weren't happy at the time with who they were using. And so he gave me a couple of addresses. I went out, put together some prices that I thought were reasonable and it all started with those first two buildings and the school of hard knocks. My education began as to how to start a business and how to price the service, what tools to use, et cetera. But I quickly scaled within three months into an income where I was making more money working part-time than I was for my full-time job. So I left my job and at the time the motivation was just to work for myself. Keep things nice and simple. But after a while, my customers started asking more of me at more of their properties and there's only one Brian to go around. I started adding people and recruiting an army of people to go all around the city and do a lot of the litter clean-up for me. And then, over the years, over the past decades, we kept growing. And so in a nutshell, I grew this business from a simple side hustle to one that does over $700,000 a year, just in cleaning litter from parking lot.

Yeah, that is awesome brian, what a story! What a background with how you got started in this. I'm sitting here writing down notes and just taking back with how you were able to turn something so simple in to a great business, to the point where you able to walk away from your W2 job and make this like your full time gig and looking at this and I know it was a while ago, but, sorry for the loss of your father, but back in 1981, when that happened, and then you started this business. Would you say that was that kind of like a motivation that kind of pushed you to say, you know what, Hey, maybe my dad really had something here. After his death, is that something that pushed you to say, Hey, I really wanna pursue this, like in his honor and to keep that moving?

Well, that's a great question and I was going to start the business anyhow. But the fact that he passed away and it was just so recent at the time, it gave me extra motivation not to quit and to prove that he had something there, but also to prove that I could turn his little side gig into a profitable business. When times are tough I would just buckle down and have to find answers or people that could help me with whatever issue or problem I had at the time. But, I also wanted to make sure that I wasn't letting him down or his memory..

Yeah that's awesome. It sounds like he was a really good role model to you and touching on that, when you look at your inspiration and the things that have pushed you to get to where you are today who would you say were your greatest role models, as you were growing up?

I'd say both my parents. My two brothers and I grew up in a family where we both saw our parents hustling and doing extra things to make money. It wasn't just a full-time job. My mom babysat, we always had a basement suite in our house where we would rent out to various renters. And my dad would do different things and I guess it was about seven or no about maybe six years old when I thought you know what, other kids in the neighborhood, they have lemonade stands. I'm gonna do something different. And so I gathered up some of my younger brothers toys and they're like, they're both a year younger than me. I've got twin brothers. And so I gathered out some toys and grabbed the card table set it up in front of the house and started selling my brother's toys.

Were they willing participants in there? Did they know?

No. No, I know what I mean. I was only six at the time. I thought it was a great idea, but yeah, that was one lesson learned, but my mom put a quick stop to it., I remember selling quite a few of them. I can't remember if I shared the profits.

Oh, wow. That, is that something they hold against you to this day?

They remember that whenever I bring that up they ask, where's our share of the cut?

That's funny. So instead of the lemonades stand, you were like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna sell some of my brother's toys. It was an innovative way of thinking, cuz you were like, oh I gotta do something different. Everyone's got the lemonade stand. I need something a little different. But I was like, Hey, these kids that are at the lemonade stands, they might want toys. We've got a plethora of toys here, they're not mine. So whatever. Oh man. That's yeah, that's, it's a different way to do it. You, so you had that entrepreneurial bug in you since you were six years old. As you grew into adulthood, you were working at your W2 full-time job, and I know that you started with cleaning the parking lots and everything, but what made you decide that you wanted to start a side hustle, what was that motivator that was pushing you to say, Hey, I wanna do something more for myself? Was your goal to like actually get out of your W2 or was it just to make a little extra cash?

Yeah, it was to get out of my job. I couldn't see myself working there the rest of my life. And quite frankly I didn't see much opportunity for me to advance because my lack of college education. And I've, I always enjoyed working outdoors. I've always been independent. I'm introverted. I like to do my work and be finished and call it a day whenever I, what I choose. So the the idea that I could work my own hours really appealed to me and and not within the same four walls every day. And then, the idea that, the whole principle of this business that I got into was so simple. It was just showing up and doing your work. Nothing difficult about it. And that's the key. And giving a little bit more value than you promise. I After all, anybody can clean up. But if you provide your customer a little bit more, they really appreciate that. That helps cement that relationship you have, and after all, because your customers are property management companies and they manage multiple properties. If they're happy with your service at one of their properties, they're gonna give you more work. And so it, it seemed to me to be a no brainer to get into that. And, I really enjoyed seeing the, not only the results of my work after I cleaned the property, but feeling satisfied that my I'm leaving my community in a better place or a cleaner environment than I was before I went in. I get a lot of satisfaction from doing the work I do.

Yeah that's awesome. And I wanna touch on a couple things that you talked about there, right? So you said that you had a lack of college education and you also said you're an introvert, right? So I wanted to kind touch on both of those because with the lack of education that you said that you had there to get to where you're at now, you had to build some type of business model and start to understand that. So how did you develop your business?

Before the internet, there you'd have to go to the library pick up some publications, take some books out or go to the bookshelves. I read a lot about marketing and sales, and sales skills. And what I learned pretty quickly was you need to sell the benefits of your service or your product. People are not gonna buy the features they're gonna buy, what's in it for them. And the fact, I would hit upon those when I would talk to property managers, Hey, I can give you a cleaner property for less money, and I'd love the opportunity to send you some more information as to how we can do that. And, no hard seller, as an introvert I didn't hesitate sharing what I could do for my prospects and give them a cleaner property. So I never looked at as looked at it as I'm gonna pick up the phone or and try to sell something to somebody. I'm rather, I'm going to share the benefits of my service. And who would wanna know more about it?

Yeah, that's no, that's a great way to look at it too. Hey, I'm not trying to sell you something I'm trying to share with you what this can do for you. And, I ask about the whole thing about being an introvert, cuz I don't know if you could tell I'm very much an extrovert. I love to go out and talk to people. But there's a lot of people I talk to especially that are in as investors or in the real estate field that are introverted and they have trouble talking with people and they have trouble networking. So how did you like overcome being an introvert and being able to put yourself out there the way you did to actually grow your business? Because I know that couldn't have been easy for you, but you have, maybe you have some tips for somebody that might be an introvert as to how to do that to make themselves a little bit better at that?

I believe if you have a passion for what you're doing, It's easy to share what you can do for people and and share your story if you will. But also if you realize everybody at various stages of life, when they're growing up have had to sell themselves. If you're a kid and you want that new toy or you wanna raise an allowance, you find a way to appeal to your parents, whether it be your mom or your dad, or both as to why you need that toy or that extra raise an allowance. And later on, when you start dating you have to sell yourself really. You need to be presentable to the candidates, if you will. And then even when you are applying for jobs like your first part-time job, if you're a teenager you, when you're interviewed, it's the same thing. You learn what you need to do to look good in an interview. But what you're really doing in all of these examples is selling yourself.

Yeah, no, that's a great point. And at that point you're detaching yourself from yourself. And I guess that's a good way to look at it. You're saying like, Hey, this is me as a person, I'm presenting this to you. Instead of you trying to go out and just present yourself, you're presenting yourself separately. I maybe I got it mixed up in my head, but I feel that's maybe that's the way I'm picking up on it.

Yeah, and that's true. And then not look at the fact. You're having to sell something or in this case, I may be talking to thousands of people, rather I'm sharing my story with an individual with you with a friend. And so it makes it a lot easier.

Okay. Yeah. So that's a good way to look at it. Treat the people you're talking to, like they're your friend and eventually maybe they will become your friend and more than just an acquaintance that's how you build these relationships. So that's awesome now. So I definitely appreciate that point of view so thank you for sharing that. So you started this back in 1981, right? So you've been doing this for a little while 41 years, that's more than a little while, but so as you're going through and you're growing your business, just rewinding back to when you started making those cold calls and on that third call, you landed like this property manager, right? Did they have multiple properties? Cuz they were looking at replacing who they currently used.

They had more than just the two that they offered me, but okay I guess they decided that was a good place to start.

Just to test the waters with you.

Yeah, exactly. I said yes, but when, as soon as I hung up after I obtained the addresses, I thought, okay, so now what do I do? I had to learn, I was flying by the seat of my pants. So I went out and walked the property and Okay, how am I going to price the service by the square footage or by the estimated time that , I figured it would take me to clean the property. And at the end of the day over the many years, that's the best way to price the service is the time or the estimated time, because you can have two identical properties, there's variables that are involved. Like one property can have far more businesses typically generate trash or litter material. They could be in a very busy shopping district and maybe across the street from a school where there's a lot of kids that hang out at the property. So one property's going to take longer to clean than another one that maybe in is the same size, but it's maybe that most of the businesses are professional in nature. Maybe doctor's offices, lawyers offices, et cetera. So anyhow, I put together price and they turned out to be pretty close the time I estimated it would take me to service the properties and this was on a daily basis. One building was for five days a week, another one was for six days a week, they wanted some weekend service because there were some restaurants and a couple of bars, et cetera. And the first day and the first week I was spending more time cleaning the properties. And then after a while you learn efficiencies. You learn to be more efficient in how you service the properties and how you clean them. And without cutting too many corners and sacrificing the quality of your work, you also learn what tools are best to be used because not every litter cleanup tool is the same. I came across a litter scoop tool that I still use to this day because it's by far the most superior product that allows me to clean up all sorts of litter material in less time. And so it makes my work that much more profitable, it makes my customers appreciate how every little Nick of material, cigarette butt is cleaned up. And I'll give you an example. I see some competitors still to this day out there walking around with maybe a bucket or a trash bag and, or those little litter grabber tools. Can you imagine grabbing 400 cigarette butts, one at a time with one of those, or even some of those small little large, or small little lobby pan, but we have a tool that's larger where we could sweep up the smallest cigarette butts to a large pizza box. And in almost the time it takes to walk the property, be done. Some properties could take 10 minutes to service, some are 20, some are 45 minutes, some might be an hour and a half. It all depends on the size of the property and the type of property. It could be a retail shopping plaza, might be a small office building or even in industrial park, with warehouse days at the rear of the proper.

Yeah, no that's all, that's awesome. Because you found different efficiencies and ways to make your business more efficient. And make it, so it's something that you're spending a little less time on, you still got to work at all those kinks and everything, but, I'm curious, you really struck out lucky getting your on your third cold call to nail that contract. Now, as time has gone on, obviously you built the business to a point where you were able to walk away from your W2 job, but I would think at some point it got to be a little bit too much for just you to handle. So did you start outsourcing anything or higher staff members? Like how did that work as you grew?

Yeah. What we found to work really well for us is to subcontract the workout to other people that are looking for a side hustle, like the work and the money to be made, but not the marketing. A lot of people, they just want the opportunity to make some extra money and do the work without having to go find clients, et cetera. So we've been really lucky. We've had people, the same people work for us for 15, 20, 25 years. And it works really well for them because they have their full-time day job and they have the opportunity to get up and get out and do a whatever. Depends how many buildings they have for us, but whether it be an hour or two or three before they go to work and we get a really motivated workforce, very little supervision is necessary because they understand, if so long as I give Brian the results to clean property and do the reporting that he's asking of us I'll continue to work for him and make good money.

No that's all a fantastic point and a great way for you to grow, not only your side hustle, but now into this whole other business, cuz that's a great way now for you to have this passive income, right? Because now these people are, I'm sure, part of what they're getting paid is going back to you. And of course, that also has to pay for the marketing and all of that. And you're basically handing them a job ready to go. That's pretty awesome. Now, I understand that, for other people that are interested in getting involved in something like this, you also offer free support for anybody that's interested in something like this, is that right?

Yeah. What about four years into the business, I realized, Hey this is a great opportunity. Not just for me but also other people that wanna it was, it's a pretty simple business. It doesn't take much to start. You just need the three P's. I call it the passion, patience and persistence. And so I started writing my experience down and over the years as I get more experience I keep adding to it and I've got a book called Clean Lots, America's simplest business and a website called cleanlots.com. And so it's a way for me to share this low cost, simple opportunity with other people across the country and make a few extra bucks that way as well. So I've got another side gig going.

Yeah, that's fantastic. It's awesome what you can do with something that you started as just like this simple idea, and just a simple way to make a little extra cash on the side and able to turn it into something that's so awesome. And what I really love about what you're doing to Brian is, You created a side hustle or now a full time job for yourself that not only, pays the bills and you were able to walk away from your W2, but you're doing something that provides a fantastic service to the community, right? So besides just people in the real estate realm, where you can help out people that have apartments and things like that, you can also help these other commercial businesses, strip malls and things like that, and really help clean up the parking lots. A service like this you're not only just helping the people that own that area, but you're actually helping the planet as well. So I think that's huge. And maybe something that people aren't really thinking about right now at this point, but what you're doing is, especially like where I live out here in Hawaii, that is a very big deal is cleaning up after yourself and keeping everything clean. And you still see that stuff all over the place. You still see rubbish everywhere and to have somebody that's providing a service that actually does this is just super fantastic. You're hitting like, you're killing two birds with one stone here. You got an awesome business that's going, but at the same time, you're, you're helping the planet with this with what you're doing right. With cleaning out these parking lots. Definitely awesome. Interested in your book. That's really cool. We're definitely gonna talk about that a little bit here towards the end, but I'd like to transition into something now that I call the final round. Where I'm gonna ask you four questions. They're hard hitting questions but it's gonna give the audience a better understanding of you and where you came from to where you are today and and where you're going. So if you're ready to go we'll get that party started.

Yep. Let's go at it.

All right, Brian. Awesome. Hey, the first question of the final round is what's the biggest mistake you've ever made?

I'm trying to be a Jack of all trades, but winding up is a master of none. One of our clients contacted us and said, Hey, Brian, you're doing a great job cleaning up litter from our sites, but you know what, can you cut some grass for us. We've got a couple properties. Can you take on some, the lawn maintenance? Oh. And then by the way, in the wintertime, we've got a, a couple sidewalks in front of the stores. Can you clear the snow? So at the time I was afraid for losing that client if I said no and I grew up learning and the message back in the day was that the customer's always right and you gotta do everything to satisfy your customer and everything. We reluctantly agreed and we did it for a few years and grew to hate it. It wasn't why we got in business, it wasn't the service that we enjoyed doing, which was the litter cleanup and we made the decision to go to, not all of our clients were doing this, but a few of them, we had taken on this extra work. And so we contacted them and said, look, we gotta be honest, we can't do this anymore. And we'd definitely like to stay on do it, providing the litter pick and to our relief. They said, Brian, no problem. We just thought that maybe we would we'd send you the ability to make some more money if you wanted to do those services. But Hey, we can find a landscape. We've got a landscaper by the way, who happens to do the snow removal and they can take on assume those responsibilities. And then we got back to doing what we do best and it's better. I think what I learned from that is it's better to be seen as the expert or the go to company or the best at what you do than trying to do everything for everyone and trying to keep everybody happy.

Yeah that's a great point. And, a really may maybe not so much mistake, but a great learning experience for you as you were growing and developing your business because I get it like sometimes, somebody that come to you, especially, I understand this as a real estate agent, too. Everybody wants to come up with what they think is the best idea or something, or have you do something a little bit different. And as soon as you start going outside, What is normal for you, and it's not so much going outside your comfort zone for something like this. This is something that's Hey, this is completely outta the realm of what we do and you can see that's where it starts to get a little bit hairy. Glad you only did that for a couple years before you recognize that and moved on from that. But speaking of that kind of ties into my next question of the final round and that is what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started your business?

The way I would answer that question is because I've been in business for such a long time and seen the huge change of technology like when I started there, wasn't the internet, there weren't cell phones, back then. And then now we're here present day everyone knows how easy it is to start a business and conduct your business. But I was always fighting technology and drag kicking and screaming. The only reason I got into it is because my customers are there. And then, once you learn these different skills and, it's a lot easier. You have to adapt and you have to be where your customers are and you have a great time doing it, but I'm never I'm never professed to being a natural at a lot of social media, but you know what, you don't have to be everywhere. You just have to be where your clients are. And so as long as you're seen and they can see you and so I guess that's the biggest lesson I learned. And that's how I'd answer that question.

Yeah, no, that's great. And that's a great point, you have to adapt and just adapt to your situation, because especially for some of the younger people listening right here, they're like, oh we're all over social media there, cuz that's, that's we grew up with social media, right? Things are gonna change over the years and you might have to start taking on some new skill sets, something that you might not be too familiar with the same way that other people had to get into social media that weren't really familiar with this technology. That's a great point and and a great lesson learned. And this kind of rolls right into the next question of the final round and that is, do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started today? Maybe somebody that wants to get into this business in general, what would you say to somebody that wants to start something like this, a side hustle like this.

I'd say do it for the right reasons. Don't do it for the money. Don't chase thebig bucks or promises of instant wealth because nothing is instant. It takes a while to become successful or to get a business off the ground. I would tell people, especially young people find something you enjoy doing. It could be a hobby. Everyone, I believe has a skill. Everyone has a talent and if you're not sure what that is yet, because you're young and you're still trying, you're searching ask your relatives, ask your friends, your brothers, whether, what am I good at? And, maybe there's a business in that. Maybe you can monetize a hobby.

I don't know if you ask siblings, some of them might just be like, oh, you're good at nothing or yours might say you're good at stealing my toys.

Okay. So there's maybe some opportunity in sales for me.

Yeah, there you go. awesome. No, that's fantastic. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you there. I just wanna jump in on that. No, that's awesome. All right. Cool. Hey, the final question of the final round, this is more of an opinion based question and that is, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both? And I'm really excited to hear what you say about the book. Cause I know you said you hit the library and that's how you really learned your stuff. And I wanna point something up real quick before you answer this. Because you did say that you had this lack of education, but honestly just going off of what you were telling me with your story and your background and hitting the library and reading all these books, you really did a great job to educate yourself, to be able to understand what you're doing. So I would not say that you have a lack of education. You are very self taught. You really went out there and went above and beyond to learn everything yourself. Probably better than any college education would've given you. I just wanna say awesome job with that. But yes, so back to the question, do you have a favorite real estate or business related book or podcast or both that you could share with us?

I listened to a number of podcasts. Yours of course. And then some related to Side hustles. Like anything from a simple thing, such as mine to something a bit more elaborate or maybe more glamorous which is, like an online business or whatever. There's Nick Loper. He's got a Facebook group and he's got a podcast. I believe it's a Side Hustle Nation.. But in terms of book and then books, and then you mentioned about sales. One book I really found to be of great help is a book called Mastering Marketing and it's written by John H. Watson. And it really breaks marketing down. A lot of people think marketing is just throwing a bit of money at this and a bit of money at that and hoping something sticks. You'll never, you're gonna, blow a lot of money if you take that approach to marketing and just hoping that something works, you have to come up with a roadmap or a plan and his book does that. And yeah, it was a real eye opener. And so I highly recommend that book to anyone getting starting or even to improve their sales skills or marketing skills.

Yeah, fantastic. I wrote that book down to add that to my list. That's great. And also thank you for the recommendation about Nick Loper's Podcast, definitely one of the good ones to listen to, especially when it comes to side hustles. And I think I'm, I think I'm in his Facebook group as well yeah, it's really awesome stuff. Great. Brian, this has been an awesome conversation. I do have one more question for you cuz the final round is over, but I do have one more question for you and it's the most important question of all because for the people that have been listening to this episode and saying, wow, I can't believe this guy started business from a side hustle of cleaning parking lots and was able to leave his W2 job. I need to know more about what Brian's doing, more in depth from what I heard in this podcast episode. So I need to see what else is going on. So if you could, where can people find more information about you? Do you have a website any social media you could share with us, the social media that you're on because of where your customers are and then also, if you could tell us where we can pick up your book.

Okay. The best place to get more information is my website which is cleanlots.com. And on the homepage there these are the opportunity to download a free report. If are gonna consider this as a business opportunity and you wanna look more into it, I encourage people to download that free PDF. Also on my website, there's a three minute video that actually shows me servicing a parking lot, going around, cleaning up litter. And so people can see the tools I use and they can actually see it really is almost as easy to do is going for a walk. And then on terms of social media, I have a Facebook Business page for Clean Lots where I kind of share the various podcasts that I've been on and we comment about various side hustles and questions related to side hustles. And then also I'm on LinkedIn but a business profile, if you will. But also a business page. And I always tell students of mine that if, when they're starting the business you gotta make sure you're on LinkedIn, but get that business page because you wanna reach out to property managers in your city and every time you post something, they're gonna see it. And it's a great way to get to know people and without forcing or selling people, giving people the hard sell.

Yeah, absolutely love that, Brian. I really appreciate you sharing that with all of us and I'm gonna make it easy for everybody. All those links will be in the show notes. So just go ahead and copy and paste or click away. Go follow Brian, go follow what he's doing. Go check out the different podcasts he's been on and show those podcast support as well because you're out there just spreading this message and I really believe this is something that can help some people, especially some of my listeners that might be looking into a good way to start a side hustle, to start getting a little bit more income to invest on the side as well. That's one of the biggest things I talk about with side hustles is to start a side hustle so you can take that money and invest it. Really awesome. Really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with me today on the Average Joe Finances Podcast. So thanks again, Brian. This was a blast.

Thanks Mike. I had a great time.

All right. Aloha from Hawaii.