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Sales Success Magazine | Sales Training | Success StoriesHow I Went From a Shoe Shine Boy to a Millionaire and Found Passion for Life
A Series Written to Inspire Those Who Want Passion for LifeChapter 5: Boyd Makes it Big Click here for "Millionaire" directory. Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. SALES SUCCESS MAGAZINE ©2001,2002,2003 Published 7/20/2003 
Sheridan, Wyoming left few options for employment. I had returned to Sheridan in 1981 after spending 2 years attending college in North Dakota, and 8 months of training in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I purchased a trailer house with a loan from the bank, and resumed running my cleaning business I had started the previous summer break. My grandfather had operated the very small business while I was away.
Sheridan’s population was, and still is, 13,000 people. It is very beautiful country, but as children grow up, most are forced to look elsewhere for jobs. Since I had been raised here, and wanted to be near my family, I decided to give Sheridan a chance. I remember the day was rainy, and I had just lost my only cleaning contract with Boyd's Supermarket the previous week, leaving me with no income. Boyd's son had decided it was to their advantage to hire a professional cleaning service that had fancy trucks and uniforms. I did not understand about building an image for your business at this time, but this lesson taught me quickly on that subject. To help build my image, and to get equipment to start expanding a cleaning business, my father loaned me his life savings of $3000.00 to purchase some carpet cleaning equipment, and I started to build a clientele for carpet and upholstery cleaning. I borrowed money from the bank to purchase a brand new white truck, had a logo designed for my business which I called Miracle Maintenance and Cleaning, put signs on my truck and purchased white uniforms and white jackets with the logo on them. I had several small business before that were more less part-time, but this would be my first full-time endeavor in business. I named my new business Miracle Maintenance and Cleaning. I knew very little about business at this time, and I had little information to draw from my family. My logic told me I should get an office downtown Sheridan WY, put a big sign out, get a secretary, desk, and phone. That week I located a nice office downtown Sheridan, and my wife was my secretary. I painted a 4 foot by 8 foot sign, and hung it out front, and waited for drive by traffic to create enough business for me to build a business. After a week of sitting around waiting for people to rush in the door nothing happened. I decided I had to do something different or I was going to starve. A told my wife to answer the telephone and I was going to start banging on doors try to find us some cleaning contracts. A walked down one side of Main Street and back up the other. I tried to talk with each owner of every business, but if they were not available, I would leave my card and ask them to give me a call. When I returned to my office my wife was excited because I had a call from one of my contacts. They wanted a price on a janitorial contract, and I ran back up to get my very first 60 dollar per month contract. After that day, I learned that I had to make things happen. I had more business come in that day, than I had week waiting by the telephone. I needed a mop. I needed a large mop. But I had no money. I mean, no money. The contract required a mop and bucket. I had found enough pop bottles under my trailer house to purchase a $17.00 mop bucket with a foot operated squeegee, but I did not have enough money left for a mop. I stopped in to Boyd’s grocery to say hi to my dad. On the way out the back door I noticed a familiar object sticking out of the dumpster. It was the mop I had used to clean Boyd’s, (my former contract). Ironically, the contract I had been fired from provided me with the tool I needed for the next. I picked the mop out of the dumpster, and continued with my chosen career. Winter was coming, and I could feel the chill in the air. I would listen to the radio in my car as I drove around town in the wet cold, presenting estimates to businesses for janitorial work. Even though I felt the fear of being without income to pay my bills and buy food, I still was excited about building a business of my own. The music on the radio helped me to focus on my goals, and the rain on the windows seemed to bathe me with comfort. One of my favorite songs I listened to was Eddie Rabbit’s song about windshield wipers keeping perfect rhythm with the song on the radio. I had tried being an employee for 2 1/2 years at Boyd’s grocery from age 16-19, and even though I enjoyed it, and was told by Boyd that I was one of his best employees, I knew that I would rather be Boyd. Ironically, after refusing to pay me $6.00 per hour instead of $4.00, I had quit and obtained a cleaning contract with Boyd’s that netted me $12.00 per hour. Boyd often told the story of how he was fired from a grocery store in Sheridan as a young man, and in retaliation opened his own grocery across the street. He built it into a small chain of 4 supermarkets across northern Wyoming. He seemed so proud and happy to be in control of his destiny, and I also wanted to be in control of my destiny. Boyd Rader was a great man in my eyes. Even though he was tough as nails to work for, he genuinely cared about his employees, trying to provide good health insurance and working conditions. He treated everyone as family, and insisted everyone call him Boyd, not Mr. Rader. At the height of his success, he built a home in his own development, and named the street his house was on, "Easy Street" because he said he always wanted to live on easy street. He also purchased a very large self contained motor home to take his family out on Sundays. He wanted to share it with his employees, and in the middle of the workday brought it to the store and gave us all rides, letting the 16 year old bag boys drive it on the highway. He seemed pretty happy. But as time went on, I noticed Boyd became unhappy after his retirement. He started to stay in his home, more and more becoming a recluse until he finally died. It seemed that he had a nice ride for a while, but it was a sad way to end a life. Boyd’s dream was not taken up by anyone except himself. He was alone in his success. His son’s did not share the dream either, and after having the business left to them, upon Boyd’s death, they started selling off all the stores so that they could become a part of Sheridan’s retired social elite. But in fairness, none of the boys were really given a choice. They were all high pressured by their father to join the business, Boyd tried to force his dream onto his children. The boys never caught the dream their father had, and as soon as his influence had left, they abandoned the dream all together. It seemed such a waste. My father never provided fancy vacations or motor homes, but he did insist I follow my own dream, and to choose my own life. Of the two fathers, I think I got the better deal. I thought often of how Boyd’s life was spent. I admired his independence and dream to build a business, but pitied him that all he built through life was gone very soon after he was. I pitied him that the last part of his life was so empty and hopeless. As time went by, I applied these memories to my life, determined that I would not only control my own destiny, and try to build a nice income, but create a life that would be meaningful until my death, and hopefully after. Our first month in business as Miracle Maintenance and Cleaning, we did 700 dollars or so in sales. I thought that was a large sum, but my goal was to reach 2000 dollar per month. I believed that level of income would make me rich. January after one of our worst blizzard's in the start of a national recession, we only did 50 dollars in sales for the entire month. That particular winter was one of the hardest I had ever had. One day I had lined up $300.00 worth of carpet cleaning jobs to do, which was almost half of our jobs for the month. But the engine in my truck blew up, and I had no money. On top of that, one of our horrendous Wyoming blizzards had started. Temperatures in Wyoming would drop down to 30 below for 2 weeks at a time, and sometimes dip as low as 50 degrees below zero, not counting the wind chill factor. When temperatures are that low, unless you have experienced it, it is hard to understand. Nothing moves, if your car seats are made of vinyl, they are hard as a rock. Your car engine will freeze solid just from driving slowly down the street. You have to bring your car battery in the house over night, or it will just be a solid block of ice in the morning. The weather wasn't that bad yet, but I knew it was coming. I went to the bank and told them I needed to borrow more money to put in a new engine in my truck. I had called all my jobs and rescheduled them for 3 days later. The bank told me I was already behind on my payments, and could not loan me any more money. I only was one payment behind I told them, and if I could not get the loan to keep my truck running, I would not be able to make the next payment, or any after that either. This to them seemed to make sense, so they loaned me the money. I borrowed my Grandfather's truck and drove to Gillette Wyoming to purchase a engine from a junk yard. I rented an engine jack, took the engine out of my truck in my driveway in the blizzard. I did not have an inside garage. This was the first time I had ever done such a thing, and I had to make several calls to my grandfather to ask him what to do next. After I had installed the engine, I got inside to start it up, and nothing happened. I did not know what was wrong, but I looked everything over, and went in and called my grandfather again. He said, "Well son, there must be a wire loose somewhere, you will have to go check the wires again". I did that, jiggling wires, still nothing. I was getting frustrated, kicked the truck, made a few comments, got in and the truck started. It ran great after that. I was motivated to own my destiny. It did not bother me that I had to replace an engine in the snow, it did not bother me that my friends seemed to be having an easier life than me. It did not matter. I would rather be freezing, cold, and dying, and starving to death, than to hold down a job and let some other person own my soul. Now please don't get me wrong. There is a lot of great people with wonderful jobs, and if they were not doing it our economy wouldn't work. But it just wasn't me. I wanted to have my own destiny. There were many times I had enough gas to get into town, but not enough to get back home that night. If I drove into town and did not get a job that day, that paid me in cash, I had a problem. One of these days as I was knocking on doors to find some carpet cleaning jobs, it was snowing and cold. And then my nose started to bleed. I set on the edge of my truck seat, with my head hanging out trying to keep the blood out of my truck, and my butt warm. The day was getting dark, and finally my nose stopped bleeding. I used some snow to clean up my face, looking in the side mirror of my truck. And I went back and started banging on doors again. Finally, I got a small spot job for $20.00, paid in cash, and I went home with some gas in the tank and groceries. I had learned from these days that as long as you did not quit, you would always get the lead or job you were looking for. Although I had many days that started out with only enough gas to get me into town, knocking on doors always paid off for me as long as I did not quit. I always ended the day with gas and groceries. I remember one day, my wife and I looked all through the trailer house we were living in, that I had purchased from the bank, just to find enough pennies to go to the coffee shop and split one cup of coffee. The hard times to me just did not seem to matter too much, because I had my dream. I knew that someday that my cleaning business would be doing good, and I would have a system that I could duplicate in the towns around me. I decided I needed to add a little stability to the early growth of my business, so I took on a job driving a 72 passenger school bus for a local elementary school. This job worked well for me as I built my business, as the first run was finished by 8:30 AM, letting me get into my office and first cleaning jobs by 9AM. The afternoon run was from 2:30 to 4PM, letting me make evening appointments for cleaning also. Every afternoon, I looked forward to a little 5 minute broad cast called, "See You at the Top" by Zig Ziglar. Those recordings helped keep me going, and the little motivation was worth more than gold to me. Business started to pick up, but it took me an entire year to figure out that I could duplicate my efforts. I continued to pick up small contracts around Sheridan, eventually replacing the income I lost. My philosophy started to develop that 10 small contracts are better than 1 large contract, because if you lose a contract you only lose 1/10th of your income. My main office was the local Perkins restaurant. I had a booth the waitresses knew I liked to sit at, and anyone looking for me would look there first. Sitting there one night, I observed the manager washing all the windows with a spray bottle and newspapers. When I left after 1/2 hour, she was still washing. Driving by 2 hours later, I saw her outside finishing up the windows. I calculated that if the restaurant was paying her $7.00 per hour, it was costing them at least $20.00 each time for her labor, plus she was being taken away from managing the restaurant, which was sure to lose more money. On top of all that, the windows still did not look that clean. It seemed to me that it would be worth the restaurants money to pay me $15.00 to do those windows. I approached the manager with my proposal, and she was more than happy to give up those windows, and got my contract approved by her boss. I had a professional set of window squeegees, and using my ice cold water secret I was able to clean the windows without any streaks in 45 minutes. I waited until 2 AM when the restaurant was empty and I could travel booth to booth very quickly. The manager quickly saw that I had a pretty good deal there, earning $20.00 per hour, but was more than happy with the arrangement. Learning that I could do windows so quickly and streakless, I knew there were other people in town that would rather not clean their own windows. Looking at Main Street lined with businesses, I could see that many of the windows would only take a couple minutes, and most no more than 10 minutes to clean. But it took a lot more time to drive there, get the equipment out of the truck , and then pack up. If I could clean them all at the same time, I would only have to unload and pack up one time. This would save more than half the time. I made out form estimates and filled one out for each business and presented it. The larger store fronts I bid $5.00 per cleaning, estimating 10 minutes worth of work. The smaller windows, I bid $1.00 per cleaning, estimating 2 minutes worth of work. I picked up enough work the first day to add $300.00 per month to my income. It only took me about 10-12 hours to do the actual work. This was at a time when jobs available to me were only $4.00 per hour. And there were lines of people waiting for those jobs. I was earning $20.00 to $50.00 per hour cleaning windows, floors, and toilets. I started to understand a formula. You need to give a service that is worth more than you are charging, but you have to have a system to make it profitable. Most of the stores that I charged $5.00 for window cleaning, would have to spend at least one hour labor on an employee to do it, and still have a messy window. $5.00 without the hassles was a good deal for them. And it was a good deal for me also. It was a win-win situation. I liked the win-win situation. And I continued to seek that relationship with all my customers. After one year of returning to Sheridan, I had built a struggling income. Although I really enjoyed being my own boss, it was scary at times trying to pay all the bills and get the work done. Then a possible disaster turned into an opportunity. I spent a lot of time looking for ways to expand my business, and we were offering window cleaning services Janet oral services carpet cleaning chimney cleaning wall cleaning disaster restoration. However, as they came to office early one morning as a usually did. I was sitting in my 12 foot square second floor office, that over looked main street, when the phone rang. The person on the other end had shocking news for me....I was to change the name of my business to his, and become a franchisee, or he was moving into town anyway to put me out of business. I quickly arranged a meeting and drove to Billings, Montana to meet this man. The spectacular events that happened in Billings that day forever changed my life. Click here to go to chapter 6. This article is copyrighted by Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. and no one has permission to copy or reproduce any part without written notarized permission from Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. ©2001,2002,2003 |
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