My honest review of ISSA Business Growth Strategies Conference

I’ve been to Chicago twice in the past 2 weeks…

I was in Chicago 2 weeks ago joining my wife on her work trip. Got to spend a few days in the West Loop exploring and working from a WeWork. I like working out of WeWorks, especially when I’m outside of Toronto. It feels like I’m the new guy in a new town working for a fledgling new startup. Gets me into a flow. The only downside is if you have a lot of calls and have to use their call rooms, which have a 30-min time limit (not strongly enforced). But overall it’s a fun working environment.

Last week I wasn’t working from the WeWork in the West Loop. I was in Rosemont, Illinois for the ISSA Business Growth Strategies Conference. This was my 2nd year in a row attending the event. If I remember correctly, last year’s event was the first time they hosted it in a few years.

I left last year with an overall positive experience. Though the turn out was smaller than I expected, I met a lot of new people and enjoyed the talks. I thought it was a good regional event that covered the bases.

Going into this year I generally expected the same turn out and the same overall experience. As I reflect on it now I actually think this year was a lot better, for a few reasons.

1. The turnout was great! The room was fuller than last year and there were companies of all sizes, and a few BSCs that I had never met before. There were companies with 75, 250, 1000, 2500, and even 15,000 cleaners in attendance.

2. ISSA planned group dinners, which meant everyone had a group to network with after the first day. They picked 3 restaurants and separated people into groups of BSCs and suppliers. I really enjoyed the group I was in and the restaurant we ate at (Harry Caray’s).

3. The Speakers were strong.

4. The sessions felt more interactive this year and had a lot of audience participation.

Some of the notable sessions include:

The Welcome to Growth Panel (How did we get here)

This was not the name of the actual panel. I don’t think it had a name, because it was thrown together at the last minute. The keynote speaker was awol so they asked a few of us if we wanted to jump in and fill the slot with a panel. I’m obviously not one to pass on an opportunity to orate. I got to join Luiz Da Costa and Paul Greenland and we talked about approaches to growth and some of the strategies and techniques we used to reach our current growth levels. Seems like the impromptu panel was well received because we had quite a lot of Q&A. Some great discussions around sales, revenue expansion, and M&A.

Becoming Relevant to your customer - Danny Murawinski

I missed the first half of this presentation but the second half was really good. Danny was talking a lot about how his company is able to track data across devices to improve ad targeting. Seems like he is quite knowledgeable on search engine marketing (SEM).

The Hard Refresh (Live Podcast)

I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast a couple months ago. Caden and Karina are fun hosts and are very knowledgeable on commercial cleaning. Makes for an easy conversation.

They were joined by Brad Klein and Alex Crowley and they discussed their strategies around brand, growth and customer acquisition. It was a fun session and I really like how Brad has evolved his business to be more segmented so he can better serve his ideal customers.

Group Dinners

Last year we didn’t have any set plans for dinners. We just organized amongst ourselves. This year the ISSA Team planned group dinners at a handful of restaurants. Not sure how they decided the groups, but I was very happy with the group I ended up with. We went to Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse. Got to sit with a few of my friends and peers in the industry and talked shop and caught up on life. Fun stuff!

Janitorial Prospecting: A Rifle Approach to List Building

I met Jordan Tong a year or so ago and I’m a big fan of what he’s building. Besides running and expanding his family's company, Frantz Building Services, he is also the founder of Elite BSC which is a community of commercial cleaning owners and experts. It’s a fantastic community and a great resource for all things commercial cleaning.

Besides all the above, he is also super knowledgeable on sales and marketing. His talk was focused on methods to finding your ideal customer, and how to go about approaching them with cold outbound. He shared some insights and stats on what he is seeing and the tool and technologies he is leveraging for growth.

My one takeaway: Email is getting super noisy with conversion rates dropping rapidly which is leading to “old school” lead gen methods producing better results.

What A.R.E You Doing?: The Ultimate Growth Hacking Workshop

Karina Kneff and Caden Hutchins lead this workshop and honestly, I was shocked by some of my results. A.R.E stands for Acquisition, Retention, and Expansion. Everyone got a workbook and filled in scorecards to see where we stood

What A.R.E you doing was a fun and interactive session. Was surprisingly eye opening and really made me wonder if we’re actually being deliberate and intentional about the things we do. As a company, our data shows that we are far above industry averages in retention, but some of the questions around on the retention topic made me wonder if we really are doing everything we can to stay at the leading edge. I kept the workbook and will be referencing it moving forward as there were some really great strategies around acquisition, retention and expansion.

My overall take away from the 2-day event…

I was very impressed with this event! John Barrett, Executive Director at ISSA, was in attendance for a few hours each day and he said something to me that I think well summarized the event. He said “We wanted the experience to be more than just vocational. We wanted it to feel fun and informative.” If that’s what they were going for then I think the ISSA nailed it with this one.

For a conference that is really only about 36-hours long, I actually came away from the event feeling like I learned some new tactics, met some new peers, and got to connect meaningfully with my friends in the industry. Even the suppliers in attendance seemed to treat this event a little bit differently. I spoke to all of them and it wasn’t like they were all just trying to sell their widgets to me. We were just having conversations, which in turn made me more curious to hear them out because it didn’t feel like I was being hit with sales pitches left and right.

If you’re a BSC I would encourage you to mark your calendar for next year and do your best to attend. This event feels more like an education seminar mixed with a networking event. I will definitely be attending again next year!