How to Grow a Washing Business and Build 264K YouTube Followers

Discover how Spencer Claeys built a thriving exterior cleaning business and 264K YouTube subscribers. Learn his strategies for growing a home service brand, landing high-ticket jobs, creating viral content, and living in flow without burning out.

Discover how Spencer Claeys built a thriving exterior cleaning business and 264K YouTube subscribers. Learn his strategies for growing a home service brand, landing high-ticket jobs, creating viral content, and living in flow without burning out.

SPECIAL THANKS TO

getjobber.com

This episode is brought to you by jobber jobber is the all-in-one software management solution specifically for home service and trade businesses. I remember when I was starting BearClaw several years ago I was wondering how the heck I was going to send estimates keep track of a job schedule send invoices and collect payment when I came across jobber I felt like I had found the Holy Grail. Jobber makes the back end of my business so efficient and it saves me time as a business owner so if you are in the early days of starting your home service or trade business look no further than Jobber as your software management solution. If you've been enjoying the podcast this is one way you can support us visit www.getjobber.com.

stryker-digital.com

Striker Digital specializes in SEO Services specifically for local service businesses bod and Andy the two co-founders have helped me get Bearclaw Land Services to the number one search result on Google inside my state for my specific search term if you want to learn more visit Stryker Digital.com.

Dialed In Bookkeeping.com

This episode is brought to you by Dialed In Bookkeeping. Ben and his team provide bookkeeping services job casting reports and accurate financial information for the Home Services industry. If you're looking to keep your books up-to-date, visit Dialed In Bookkeeping.com. When you use this specific landing page you'll get your first 3 months 50% off.

ownrops.com

If you haven't signed up for the Weekly Newsletter yet go to ownrops.com newsletter. We summarize all the learning lessons from the interviews with the guests on the podcast and we distill those into short actionable tips, tricks, tactics, and strategies that you can use to grow your own local service business sign up for the newsletter at ownrops.com. We will definitely keep moving in this direction because one of the goals I had with this was like man I just like getting to know other business owners because like I learn from you right.

OpenPhone.com

I use OpenPhone to keep my business organized without juggling two phones. Custom voicemails, auto-replies, and shared team numbers make it way easier to stay on top of calls. If you’re running a service business and still using your personal cell, this is a no-brainer. We moved our phone line to OpenPhone so that we can record calls, summarize & tag customers with AI, and integrate with Jobber. Get  20% off your first year now.

Episode Hosts: 🎤

Austin Gray: @AustinGray on X

Episode Guest:

Spencer Claeys: @spencerclaeys on X

OWNR OPS Episode #92 Transcript

Spencer Claeys: If  If it helps, like one person. I know that sounds cheesy, but there is like this ripple effect. It's an infinite change. People don't need to be stuck in doing things that they don't want to do, and that stuff exists. It's crazy. He has like a poop scoop business. It's up. He says he is done like $5 million in sales. That's crazy. If you're doing something that you don't want to do, don't do it. And that's what I've tried to really chase and put into the channel is, hey, do whatever you want to do. Whatever makes you feel alive and share that with the world. What would you do if you weren't afraid? You could do anything you wanted and it would be fine. It's gonna be fine, dude.

Austin Gray: Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Owner Office podcast. I have a special guest. Spencer. Spencer is an exterior home service business owner. He washes roof washes, exterior homes up in Washington and he's built a. Fairly decent following on YouTube. He has about 264,000 subscribers. He's gone firewall on TikTok left and right, so he's been building the business, creating content around it. So this conversation was a little bit non-traditional if you have been listening to this podcast, but you're probably going to pick up some things about more on the content side about how you can film some videos. But then the last half of the conversation, we went down a whole spiritual, religious God conversation and it was fun. 

I've been praying a lot about like where, you know what I'm supposed to be doing with this podcast and for whatever reason, like this is what happened and I went with it. And so yeah, we're just gonna run with it. So check out this whole episode. Uh, it is a little bit different than we have done in the past, but it's fun. Spencer and I see the world very similarly. We like getting into flow, being productive, doing things kind of in an unscheduled format and yeah. Stick around for the whole episode if you want to hear how Spencer has built a exterior cleaning business, done the whole content thing and then now he's buying property and he's going to go build his own house. So very interesting personality. I had a lot of fun with this and I hope you guys stick around Clay's. Alright, Spencer Clays, welcome to the pod. How's it going man?

Spencer Claeys: I'm good man. Yeah, thanks for being on. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, glad to be here. Just a little bit. A little bit earlier than I'm used to. 

Austin Gray: It's all good man. It's all good. I came across your YouTube content that's probably been like a year ago. And you were creating like the power washing content and then the how to stuff, like you've blown up on YouTube.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, it's been, YouTube has been good. I love like just being able to put out like good videos and the weirdest thing, some of my best videos, it almost took six months to eight months to just pop off and then, then it just goes on the algorithm. It's the weirdest thing. So. YouTube is definitely just like the, put your head down. Don't even necessarily, you can focus a little bit on the nitty gritty numbers, but I don't know. Some of these social media algorithms like you, you literally have like almost no control. So I don't know, just put out more videos and get better at your craft for sure. But, and it can be frustrating enough for people just starting out. 

Austin Gray: I'm genuinely curious about this though. I jumped on YouTube and the reason was is because, I'm trying to think of, I'm trying to think of the exact reason, like why I did it. I knew it was a platform that could help us get more eyeballs, right? As marketers and as business owners, the goal is to get more eyeballs to the business. Yeah. Because then you can have more conversions on whatever job or product or service you're selling. So that was the initial reason. But something you said just now is like, it's really hard not to focus on the output numbers, but I just knew that if we could just start and create that we would get better over time. And then it's funny, it's like we just focused on like creating the videos and all of a sudden, like some of them have popped and like the ones you never think Yeah. Would go, will just go and then all of a sudden you're like, holy crap, it's going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, th 7, 8, 9, 30. What was that like for you whenever you started?

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, I think I remember, 'cause I started in like 2022, like the YouTube short was also going off too. And we had some that just went, just blew up like millions of views. And it was it, it is like super frustrating because like you're always like wanting to chase that. But now like I'll put, I post some videos now where it's just like me talking to the camera, super laid back. Some of 'em only get, I don't care, like a few hundred views, but then I can look at the comments on that one. It just resonates so much more with people. And so, I dunno, once you're a little bit more confident in your message and that that does come from, I think I posted.

Probably like a thousand videos at this point or something, I don't know. But once you get a little more confidence in just the posting and like your content's good, I dunno, you just got, you gotta turn off the switch where you're like worried about views at all. 'cause if it helps, like one person, I know that sounds cheesy, but there is like this ripple effect, like if I help one person and that person helps another person, then it gets, it's an infinite change. So we are all like connected. If you help one good person, like that's gonna go out. So that's all you, I want people to focus on if they're thinking about doing YouTube, podcasts, whatever. Just, just be extremely helpful to just one person. And then

Austin Gray: I recently got back from launching a land clearing business down in Austin and this last winter I launched a snow shoveling business alongside Bear Claw. And in both businesses I've implemented jobber as a way for us to efficiently manage quoting job schedules and invoicing and even collecting online payment. Why? Because it's worked so well for us in Bearclaw and it's saved us a ton of time and headache. So if you are looking for a software that can help you manage the backend of your business, look no further than Jobber, you can visit go dot get jobber.com/owner ops O-W-N-R-O-P-S.

Spencer Claeys: If the content takes off, great. If not, like who? Who cares? Like the next one? Well, so you really can't get bogged down with the details and the numbers of it 'cause it, we have no control of these algorithms are designed just for, to optimize for the most sensational. So anything that's honestly a lot of the fear-based stuff, like anything like in the news, like that's what gets clicks. It's from all of history, just the fear and I, that's something I always like, really don't want to get into. You see even certain people on YouTube, it's, oh, the market's failing. Do this now. And it's just, I never want to be that guy. I always want to try and be like. A beacon of like light and hope for people, Hey, here's how you can like do cool things. And that's really the kind of the whole purpose behind it.

Austin Gray: Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's such a good word because, and I've heard before Mosey talk about this too, it's like at one point he was almost like optimizing his content for reviews. 

Spencer Claeys: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: He was like, yeah, we had views, but then I made this change to I only want to focus my content specifically on business 'cause he's like all into lifting and all that stuff. Yeah. So I think he was doing some exercise stuff and all that and he is like, once we dialed in who we wanted to create the content for to help, he's our views just skyrocketed down. Yeah. But he said our engagement and our comments went up, like the type of person we were trying to create the content for it was resonating with. And then now he like rebuilt that foundation and then now he's back up. To hear and yeah. I'm curious to hear your thought process. I saw a lot of your videos on like how to content for pressure washing. Where was your head that, like when did it click for you? Oh, if I just help people or show people more behind the scenes on how to do the pressure washing stuff, this might be helpful. When did that click for you?

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, I remember just like when I was like on the way to my first like roof job, I was like on YouTube and I was like watching people talk and it's like there was a, there was a lot of good videos at the time, but not that many. And so I was like, huh, this guy is talking for 20 minutes about how to start a pressure was, I'm like, I like it to be a little bit more faster paced. And that's another thing that like everyone's, oh, you, your videos need to be eight minutes and you can get monetized and make more money. I was like, I don't want to ever follow any little rules like that. So some of my videos are like three minutes. It's like, hey, you need to know how to do this and that's it. Video done. And so I've always just wanted to make it, make things easy for people to start making money, do their own thing. And then I think that's even better, like the more. Some people, it's almost lazier when they just make these long videos. They're just talking and then they don't edit it out. They don't take any of that time.

And so I've always just tried to genuinely put out good videos that I think are good. I've only used an editor like twice, almost everything else I've edited myself. So I don't know, try and keep it like very good specific and yeah, just focus on that. Yeah, that the resonance, I love that word too. It's like you're just speaking to specific type of people because Yeah, there's not that many of us that are like out here working calluses on our hands, making money outside. Like it's a very specific group of people and so yeah, you're not gonna be able to talk to them like, like they're dumb or like some of these other people. I, I just see a lot of creators that are on YouTube and I wouldn't even call 'em creators. They're just like turning out this garbage that they just like, yeah, I might get a million views 'cause they're just like, they're doing something crazy or whatever. But. I never really cared about that.

Austin Gray: It was more about go do the thing and then show people how to do the thing. Right?

Spencer Claeys:Yeah. And sometimes too, like when you just learn something, it's the best way to capture that knowledge. Just make a video about it really quick. Especially like when you've only done it a few times. 'cause that it's so fresh. So that's always good too.

Austin Gray: Why? Why power washing? Why did you start with all the wash stuff?

Spencer Claeys: That's I power washing. I think I only have a couple on those. It's, I mean, it's the, like I said earlier on the off camera, just, it's like the stepping stool business. It's like the bottoms here, get off the ground, get your first machine, and then once you like have your own machine and you're making your own money, you're like, wow, this is cool. I could just do this forever. As long as I know how to like make money. Like we were, I was walking my son and my dog just around the neighborhood. We were walking to the store and I see a roof that had like fricking a tarp on it. And I was like, dude, I gotta knock this door. And so. Knocked the door. We ended up like, like sending out one of my other guys sub out another job. We sub out a lot of jobs, but he does roofs. So roofing works for a roofing company.

And so that's closed like a 17 k job just from a knock on a door. And so I think stuff like that, just like sharing stories like that where I would've never imagined that when I was a kid. Oh, you can just like go find people that need things done like a roof replaced or you guys do like excavation and all this sort of stuff. Like you don't need to be like there's, there's so much out there. And so I think we're still just like scratching the surface about what we can do. And I wanna share that with people because it gets you really excited. People don't need to be stuck and doing things that they don't wanna do and that stuff exists It's crazy.

Austin Gray: Yeah, of course. So you started your first outdoor service business in roof washing, correct?

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, yeah. Like back in the pandemic like five years ago or so. So yeah, we're mostly just doing that and then we're still doing, that's probably our main still is like the exterior. 'cause it is really grimy out here in Washington state for sure. There's like really no. What's the word they'll limit to amount of customers and such. It recurs pretty much every year. So a lot of work to be done.

Austin Gray: How, like what, what size did you build that business to?

Spencer Claeys: Nothing crazy. We've always, and that's the thing with like home service business, you've gotta focus, like, I, I think there's, I feel there's two types. You can either be big or small. We've chose to say small, like never more than 30, 40 KA month. And then that's where we focus the rest on the online and then also like the product business. And yeah, the online is like the software and such too. Because yeah, you could hire, like now the revenue's going up 'cause we have the four or five guys we're subbing out. But like the profits, just the profits are, the percentage is less. We're make it more overall. And that's something that, I don't know. I don't, I just, with the home service, it's weird. I like to be able to like, I like to do some of the jobs still too. So it's, I can, but I can feel myself out there when I'm on the job.

Huh. I'm like actively like holding my business back by being here and not being able to delegate. But I don't know, that's, I just kinda also look at it as a fun way. Get outside and make money. That's how I look at it now. And then also use it for content as we just start focusing on bigger jobs and like the roofing and such. And we, like I was telling you might get an excavator too, 'cause you can just, I didn't know that either. Like I saw on another podcast and I was like, oh you can just buy a machine. It's like a car. It's just, you get a 700 bucks per month payment. It's like, huh, that's freaking cool. People need to know that. So I dunno.

Austin Gray: Yeah, I'm with you. What's interesting and the reason why I bring on people from different services on this podcast, because it's all the same game, like sure it's a different service, but you still have to go figure out how to get your customers. You still have to go market to them. You still have to sell, you still have to close the jobs. You still have to send them the estimates, you still have to send them the invoices. It's all one big system and it can be applied to any different. So I think, and you said something off camera too, or Man, I struggle bad with a DD too. That's like the focus thing is the hardest thing and it's so hard to not see, holy crap.

Like there's an opportunity in trees or there's an opportunity in roofing or there's an opportunity like I could go do this. We just did that too, to count a tree. Did you? And that's the hardest part. 'cause once you figure out the game of getting customers and building the brand and closing, closing deals and then hiring the crews, it's like that game can be applied to really anything. Yeah. Yeah. I'm interested though. I think what will be really interesting is you go build this new house. So you were telling offline like you're going to, you're going to buy some land in the middle of the state. You're gonna build your own house. Dude, that's how I started my business too. And the excavation, like I went to build my own house on a piece of land and saw the ticket that people were trying to charge for excavation. I'm like. We gotta get into this.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, no, it's cool man. And that's also kinda where my mind goes too, like with the pressure washing and I, I, I still to this day don't have a single like decal on my vehicle. 'cause I've always thought, ah, there's more. I'm like, I'm not sure what the final, what the final product is gonna look like, what the business is gonna be about 'cause I also, yeah, there's, there's trees, there's roofing, there's all this stuff. And my, probably one of my weaknesses is just like trying to focus on, there's too much stuff. But yeah, we're gonna build on some land and yeah, the excavator, I think just focusing on bigger jobs. 'cause like you said, everything's just like all the business is the same, so you might as well try and go for the biggest ticket essentially.

 I've definitely seen people talk about that or definitely talks about that. Just sell the most expensive thing you can. And so. That's where I would challenge myself and challenge anyone listening is just, okay. What, what is the bigger job that you could be focusing on? On selling? Yeah. The two, I just posted a tweet yesterday. Some guy like Caleb Hammer, he's like a financial dude, but he had some kid on who was like, oh yeah, I'm a failed entrepreneur. I started the car detailing and that failed, and so then I went to pressure washing and I don't know, and like he just was like this very lackluster person. I was like, yeah, pressure washing and car detailing are like the, the bottom tier, like it's meant as the stepping stones. I dunno. He was just kinda that, that, that, that kid was funny though, but low ticket is kind. I'm trying to get away from that. I think I saw, oh, the other shift to my brain was I saw Tommy Melo posted, he, oh, even garage doors are too small of a ticket. If I had to start over, I'd be focusing on anything that's bigger. Ticket and garage doors are like, you know what, 1500 minimum, or, I don't know, 3000, but he said even that was too low ticket for him if he was to get back into the home service business. So that was interesting. 

Austin Gray: So what would he say he would do?

Spencer Claeys: I'm not, yeah, I'm trying to find the video. I tried to find the video again. I can't remember what he said, but I think, yeah, just roofing, hvac, like stuff like, I think HVAC is like one of the biggest like businesses, but I don't know some, just anything that's a ticket size of plus 5,000. 

Austin Gray: Because once you realize that you still have to do the work of, you still have to be on the back end controlling your marketing spend. You still have to build a sales team. You still have to close deals and all that takes the same amount of time. Yeah. And effort to close $150 or $250 job as it does a 15,000 or $25,000 job.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, exactly. So. Yeah, the $200 jobs are not gonna, they're fun, but yeah, they're not gonna move mountains. As far as like your companies, 

Austin Gray: I think what you've done is really cool because like you said, your sort of ICP was that like 18 to 30-year-old person trying to get into, starting their own, their first business. And what you've said is power washing, exterior cleaning can be a great stepping stone business. 'cause you learn all those things. 

Spencer Claeys: Yeah. Yeah. It's great to start, it's great to start, but I think, yeah, just how can you do more as well? Like you're sitting there with a little gun of water, which is cool, but I dunno, it's, I've always thought, man, there's gotta be, there's more ways we can help and do things. That's, we've also gotten into chemical a little bit more, like doing some tests of our own, like what is the best chemical? I'm always thinking about this stuff like, while I'm doing jobs, okay, what could we do this faster, like better? Is there a way we could, I dunno, there's just not that much that goes.

It's interesting, I've, I'm reading like other books now, like invention and such, like those, that type of thinking like James Dyson is cool. Like he, he. Has like his Dyson vacuum cleaner, he had like 5,000 iterations before he got the one that he liked. And so obviously now he is multi-billionaire. But you just focus on solving a very specific problem, like how can we get a vacuum cleaner that's, that sucks, this tiny little micron of dust. And I dunno for anyone, listen, there's problems and every single day that you come across. So I think about solving those is, that's kinda where my brain is going to now,

Austin Gray: You know what will be really interesting and I'll be so excited to stay in touch with you as you go into building this house. It will be really interesting for you to see where the demand is in that specific market.

Spencer Claeys: No, exactly. It's a completely different climate from where we're moving to. It's two hours over the mountains, like I was telling you. It's like basically it looks at Colorado, it's pretty much just pine trees, dirt, and yeah, like I, I, I do see the, my, my brother-in-law, he's doing pretty well with the concrete and such and excavation out there, so. That'll be cool. But yeah, definitely not as much. Roof cleaning for sure. There's, everyone's got either metal roof or it's just bone dry, so there's no moss, but there's all this, all sorts of stuff that we can do. My wife was, she was asking like, what are you gonna do? Everyone's asking, whatcha gonna do over there? I'm like, I don't know. I'll figure something out too. I'm not worried about it. I'll figure you just wait. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, you just wait.

Spencer Claeys:  I dunno. And that's something that I really do love about this business and home service is Yeah, if you just like don't, yeah, take the pressure off of yourself, who cares? Like what's gonna happen I know. As long as I just genuinely just do a good job, help people do good work, like everything's gonna be fine. We're gonna make money out there. There's a lot of money out there for sure. So I wouldn't worry about that.

Austin Gray: That's the beauty. Yeah. Since you build these skills, when you have the brain that you have, and once you have the repetition and the skills that you've built, you can do anything in any market, pick, any service, or any trade once you have these skills built up. And once you know how to market and sell. Then, oh by the way, if you're willing to do what you've done, start as an owner operator do start as an owner operator like I did too. And then it's like you can build the team from there. So listeners, I think what's really cool is Spencer has built a exterior washing business, but he is not married to that. When he's moving his family two hours away, he's open to where's the demand here. It's gonna be really cool to watch and I think it's gonna create some really cool content for you as you build that.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, building it like there's, yeah, we'll be seeing like the prices of pretty much everything too, like talking to contractors and seeing how other people work their business. It's interesting, like we have a pest control guy that like. Pest control is like super, it's a very interesting model. It's like pretty much all door knocking. And so I pretty much now just like, how do all these businesses work? We were just talking like a well drilling company like a couple weeks ago and it's, it is cool just to look behind the curtain and yeah. Back to the pest control though, it was, they're just so focused on that recurring revenue, like it's impo almost impossible to cancel you. They want to put you on a monthly or bimonthly service and yeah, that is very low ticket, but I think I saw something that's 90% private equity owned is they love like the recurring model so people can like, yeah, like I said, there's, it's big or small if you want to go big and focus on the recurring Yeah, the monthly or the quarterly do the spray someone's house for bugs, like you could do that.

It's, you've gotta focus on even like the poop scooping, I've seen that there's a guy out here or out in the other side of the state, he has like a poop scoop business. It's up. He said he is done like $5 million in sales in the last, I don't know how many years. But that's crazy. But that's the revenue I guess for the recurring revenue is the game is pretty insane. But I'm more like your mindset, okay, let's just do bigger jobs, man. Let's just do one job for how can we get a $15,000, 20,000 job. That's now where my brain is going to, and there's people out there doing 200,000 jobs. So it's like just going towards that route is what I think is cool.

Austin Gray: Yeah, that's, it's interesting because a lot of people are focused on building the businesses right now that private equity is interested in.

Spencer Claeys:Yeah.

Austin Gray: And recurring revenue, pest control is one of 'em. I had Nick Huber on the podcast earlier this week, sweaty startup guy, and I asked him what business he would build if he was, if he couldn't do and if he had to do home service. He's like pest control all day long. I don't disagree there. I do think that, so it's like why we got into service initially. It's like all the smartest people are competing in tech and e-commerce. SAS and digital marketing and all that stuff. So now it's like, now that people like Nick are making service businesses or sweaty startups, really cool to go build, there's gonna be really smart people who get into the recurring revenue business models.

What I think is like, like private equity doesn't buy excavation businesses. Yeah. It's like if you want a cash flow machine though, and if you just want to go outcompete a bunch of people who probably don't really care about digital marketing, that's where I'm gonna play. I'm gonna let all the, all these people who are coming over into service, like compete in the recurring revenue maintenance, pest control, pool service, like, they're just like really smart minds in that. Right? So I don't wanna compete with them. I just wanna go to the high ticket tree or excavation service.

Spencer Claeys: That's a good, that's a good question to ask. Yeah. Like you said, like smart people, like. What would you do and then not do that? Like I, I do like that. 'cause yeah, and I don't know, man, I just never really, that doesn't excite me, man. Getting, I don't like con, I hate contracts. I've never had a contract ever with anybody as far as my business is concerned, I'm gonna clean your roof and this blah. Or like, when people come into my, like, online space, you can cancel anytime, man, if you don't want to be here. I've never wanted to like focus on that model that's like hard to cancel. Like our gym, like it's a good gym. We go there, it's close, but I hate how they handle like the whole, like, there's always a fee if you want to change something on your thing or my wife's card expired and now it, they just charge her again. But it's, it was gonna be like 150 bucks just to restart her account.

 I'm like, what the heck? We've been going here for years, dude. It's just like weird. Once you get these contracts and the monthly involved, it does get interesting in that I don't necessarily like it so. I don't know. I've never wanted to go down that hole. Yeah. How? Because yeah, the gutter cleaning, if you have, if you really focused on twice a year or yearly, oh, I have 300 customers on contract, it's, that is cool. Maybe you could sell that. But I don't know. That's just not what I want to get, really get super into, I don't know.

Austin Gray: Let's talk, I'm really interested in your social media growth.

Spencer Claeys:Yeah,

Austin Gray: Let's talk TikTok. Like what? Talk to us about that.

Spencer Claeys:That was fun. Like, TikTok was like when the, I feel like the bull run, it was really fun 'cause now it's like really, I don't, I would say it's died down. It's just, so the algorithm, I saw really good Mr. Beast video where he is just, you gotta put out a viral video is just something that no one's seen before. And I was like, oh, that's a really good way to condense it down. 'cause we've all had a video that's, or seen a video that's just like, whoa, like what's this guy doing? And then you see it and you're like, okay, cool. Scroll. But that one video might have millions of views now and. So I'm just used to always gonna be optimizing for things that people haven't seen. And so anytime I'm doing stuff now it's okay. What is, I'm gonna go help one of my friends or my parents' friends today, I'm at my parents' house too, just like doing jobs over here and I was just, was pulling out his old gutter guards and replacing them with the new ones and like pulling out that sponge from the gutters that I'm about to do that got like fricking 30 million views.

It's crazy. I just happened to pull out my camera and record it me, like ripping it out. That one got me onto fricking like Business Insider and like Buzzfeed and all these like business, like podcast things too, like just blew up. Just from that one little video. And I dunno, anyone just optimizing for just what do, what can you, what do you do on a daily basis? All of us have a cool, unique little way we see the world. What is something that no one has seen before? Just show people that. And then like we said earlier, like you really can't focus on the numbers. Of the whole social media game because yeah, if you really wanted to like, I dunno, you look like the Paul brothers or something, which they're successful, great. Maybe they're happy, but I don't know. I see people that are like super, like successful, that are successful and I don't know, I feel like they're not as happy as people would think. Like they always have to chase that next viral video. And I've never wanted to be chained to that. So I just wanna make good content. I think it's cool. And that's pretty much all there is to it.

Austin Gray: What's your favorite platform to create on?

Spencer Claeys: Ooh, I probably YouTube. I can just, and also I do write like I, whenever I have time, which now is pretty much never, but I have a little, I have a little blog that I still sometimes write. And yeah, we were talking about Twitter earlier, like off camera, like Twitter's a very interesting like platform too. I'll write a, I'll make a nice tweet, I'll spend some time thinking about it and then. Goes out like 50 views or like 70 views. I'm like, fuck, what am I supposed to do here if I post a stupid video? Or the ones where you like get them, get something wrong in a video or you post something that like people don't like and they comment on it. And some of those have gotten like, yeah, millions of views just from those roof cleaning videos or whatever. And I know the Twitter though, it is weird, but yeah, definitely YouTube though. I like anything where I can just like talk and not get super, I don't know. I'm not super like politically correct, so I just wanna, I don't wanna have to worry about saying something dumb, so I just like YouTube, you can just kinda just talk, have your own podcast, your own platform, all that sort of stuff.

Austin Gray: Do you process, like when you talk, are you able to process your thoughts as you're talking?

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, like when I'm in flow too, that's another thing. Like I do YouTube because you can get more in flow. And now recently I've been going outside just finding whatever your flow is too. Like for me it's outside. With like my handheld camp, I'll just put a like my phone in my hand and then just finding whatever you can get into flow with. And that's what I really focus on now. And so it's, yeah, I can't remember what the main question was, but

Austin Gray: We're gonna go down a deep rabbit hole here on this one.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, no, I'm here for it, man. I've been really focused. I gotta stop using focus man. That's a, I gotta get a different word, but as the audience tell, I probably, I'm a little sick today, but yeah. How is, how's energy work? How does all this, I've been thinking about that a lot and videos are a way to capture that energy. We're talking Austin right now and it's just hundreds or thousands of people are gonna see this. We did the energy once, so I've been thinking about that the last few years and like, how can you get more energy from this, the system of social media essentially. So yeah, you can go down the rabbit hole if you want.

Austin Gray: I'm interested because dude, like my a DD is so freaking bad. And you said this earlier, but when I get into flow. It's insane the amount of productivity or things that I can get done, but when I'm distracted and God bless my wife, like seriously, like she, she is a saint for dealing with me through this kind of stuff, but like she just knows that if she comes into my office 

Spencer Claeys:Yeah. 

Spencer Claeys: At this point, and she interrupts like it's gonna take me like, it, it, it could shoot a whole hour if not the rest of the day for me.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: If I get pulled out of what I'm doing, there's a really good chance that I don't get back into that level of flow. And I am a flow junkie man. Mm-hmm. Like once I'm in it and I'm in it right now, I'm very focused on this conversation. But if I was distracted right now and I got pulled out similar to how it, it's interesting and this is like. A lot of times when I start these recordings, I'll just start and we'll get straight into the conversation and the flow starts happening, right? Yeah. You and I had a conversation offline here in the beginning, and then I never do that whole try to tee up an intro because it always, it seems to just, yeah, it interrupts the flow.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, for sure. That's a good way to put that. You can see me. I struggle to get started. I struggle to get into it and so it's, but once they, once you get into it, then yeah, the words just come out, dude, if you really zoom out or you look at people like Nick Tesla, dude, he would just say he saw images in his mind. They would just pre peered him. He saw these inventions like beamed to him books like Think and Grow Rich, like Napoleon Hill, he is, he calls it infinite intelligence. So people call it God and it's, you could even call it consciousness. Like it just, it is out there and yeah, the words we're just, we're talking right now. It's like we're not actively thinking it's, I dunno, it's just coming from somewhere. That's a weird way to think about it.

Austin Gray: So when are you most productive and how do you get into that flow? You mentioned outdoor.

Spencer Claeys:That's, that's the million dollar question. Like yeah. How can you get, be productive and, yeah. I've been thinking about this too, like a DHD or a DD is, it's a superpower. If you really look at it like, like for guys like you and me, like back in, if we go back like 2000 years, like 3000, I don't know, we've been outside hunting, making kills. We gotta be out in the woods like making sure that like not getting jumped out by a bear or something. And so we gotta be able to focus on 10 different little tasks and like optimize for man, optimize that, throwing that word into as we're in the jungle. But I dunno, I went with our, the way we work is just, is 10 different things that we got going on at once, but we're kind of like weaving all like my day through all these different things like, oh, I'm gonna do this and then do that. And so that's how my brain works. Yeah. It drives my wife absolutely crazy too. But you know just how it is.

Austin Gray: Are you a hunter?

Spencer Claeys: Oh yeah. A little bit. Yeah. So I haven't been the last couple years 'cause yeah, just life and just haven't been able to get out to the mountains as much. But I did done like. Last, what, five years? Three till three deer. My bow. So yeah, I don't post about that much. 

Austin Gray: Sweet, sweet.

Spencer Claeys:How about you?

Austin Gray:Yeah, yeah. I'd love the elk and deer hunt. Yeah.

Spencer Claeys:Elk is, or it's Arizona. It's pretty hard to get a tag for elk. I dunno how it is, Colorado, but here it's like, it's pretty easy. I actually haven't gone to elk hunting though. I wanna go for sure. But

Austin Gray: yeah, you can get over the counter stuff here. That's why I moved to the mountains. I, I worked for an outfitter after, after college for several years. Nice. And man, like the level of flow that you can get into during those situations. There's absolutely nothing like it. Yeah. Especially bugling elk with a bow. It's incredible. Let's go back to the content piece though, because you've obviously tapped into something here, especially from a YouTube perspective. Like how have you thought about creating that environment to open up that flow?

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, dude, like some people are, everyone's different, man. Everyone is. Your DNA has never existed before. You are, you, Austin Gray have never, you will never exist again. Like all of us have a unique DNA, and so all of us have a unique way of life and looking at things. And so whatever that is for you, whatever that is for me, like for me, it's, I do having a good office where it's like clean, like this right now is not like my normal setting. Once you, once you have a good conversation, you can, like, we're talking about great things now. It's getting me like, excited to talk about, and you're really good about asking good questions, but yeah, people need to f find something that, yeah, excites 'em. That's a great word. What gets you excited, gets you in a good energy state.

And, and, and I think another word that you mentioned earlier is labels. And I've, I've been on like a personal battle against labels. Like, labels are like, they put you in a box, they put you like, oh, you just do this, just do that. And I see so many people and, oh, I'm only, I'm a pressure washer. And so they get putting these, this label, this box and that, that really limits like how they can like move and operate. I've kept pretty much all labels off. Like I don't even really call myself anything. I just like my channel's, just Spencer Clays and it's just, I've always wanted to just have freedom to be able to talk about whatever I wanna talk about. And so essentially then you can just get paid for existing. Like when you really think about it, oh, I'm just gonna make a video about what I'm doing today, which we're cutting down a tree, or we're doing this or I dunno, I post other videos too. It's, it's cool 'cause you can share your unique set of like code with the universe. And so I don't know, not to be like too woo wooo, but it's like really? Think about it. That's what it is. 

Austin Gray: Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bodie and Andy, the two co-founders, have helped me get Bearclaw land services to the number one search result on Google inside my state for my specific search term. If you wanna learn more, visit stryker digital.com. That's S-T-R-Y-K-E-R digital.com. 

Spencer Claeys: Like you're sharing your unique, some guy I follow, he called it the A light code. 'cause we are energy beings and so we are a light, we are made up of light. And so your unique light code with other people, if you can share that man, tap into that. That's what it's all about I think, so. 

Austin Gray: one thing that was challenging in the beginning was, and I think a lot of people struggle with this, you want to create the perfect video or you want to have the perfect setup.

Spencer Claeys:Yeah.

Austin Gray: You, you seem to just move fast and just do things like what is your video set up like? How do you, when, when you go out, when you're like, okay, my phone, I got this video idea, like I'm going to record, like what do you do?

Spencer Claeys: I mean, my know, my phone, it's like all almost on my videos are just for my phone. Just for my phone. iPhone. I got a, I got all the stuff now. I got like a GoPro, a drone, and I got a little Insta 360 camera. Never used it, never used the GoPro. I don't know. 'cause yeah, it just, those don't get me for some reason. There's just too many steps. It's never, the flow's not there. I've never used it. I have a bunch of other camera equipment, never fucking use it. Just use my iPhone because it, it's really easy to just tap in and just get going. And I dunno, I just think about like, when I see a video, sometimes I will play in a video like, okay, we're doing a cool roof job, $2,000 job. We should get some good content behind this. And so sometimes I will, and then it's awesome. But. Sometimes it's like I'll just see a cool shot. Like I'm at a place and I'm like, oh, this would be a cool shot.

 Like I used to do, like back in the day I did a little bit of modeling and so it was interesting to see like different how the lighting is good or the shots like. And so now that's how I think about, oh, this would be really cool to see like this angle, like me standing there doing this like cleaning motion, like that would be sick and I, you can see it, you get better at it over time. In the beginning it was purely accidental. Like I would just whip out my phone and we did some cool, had some cool little videos, but then you get an eye for it and then yeah, like just whatever excites you just start filming that dude. 

Austin Gray: So you said something there, like the shots, does that excite you? Like the creativity behind finding? 

Spencer Claeys: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, because most people don't really, and that's where even like scripting videos, I remember, oh, you have to script videos, you have to do this. And I was like. No, like, that sucks. Like I don't wanna sit and I've, I scripted a few videos for sure. And it can, yeah, if that works for you, great. But for me it just, it just is not so, I don't know. And that's why I really do like content like this where we can just have a conversation. And so you can go down so much more than just Yeah. A straight script. Which some people need that though. Some people do. I don't know. For guys that we're trying to talk to a bit smarter, I'd like to think they want to hear about the higher level stuff that we're thinking about. And so a script isn't gonna, we're not gonna talk about energy and God, like I bet people weren't really thinking that they're gonna be diving into that on this podcast here about home service. But it is what it's, 

Austin Gray: I like following the energy, man. I'm such an energy person. It's like if the energy's there, I follow it because I truly believe that that is, that energy is embedded in us from God Yeah. And, and. It's there. It's going to be there regardless whether I push it away or whether I lean into it. And man, something you said about the scripts, it's very interesting here. I've tried it a couple times, especially like using chat GPT to script out things and dude, it, there's too much friction, right? I don't even like reading a script. I've never scripted a podcast. I've never even cat's how the bad guys, I've never prepared for any of these podcasts. Never once. Yeah. Like I just look up Spencer and I'm like, oh, yep. I've come across his YouTube videos a couple times, like I know what he's doing. Like I've spent time on your channel.

Right. I know what we're gonna talk about going into it. Just, yeah. A couple questions. How do we get going? Where does Spencer's energy. I think people can feel, if you're listening to this, you can feel the energy. There was a transition about 27 minutes where Spencer got excited. Right. That's his energy and then that's where the flow is happening right now. The filming stuff. The scripting, I don't know about you, but like some of my best videos too are literally from this iPhone and it's like on the fly. I'm very in the moment, but the second I've tried to plan these things out, I even got the GoPro drones and everything last year I had to delegate that to our, one of our field crew members. 'cause I'm like, this is just too much friction for me to get into the flow.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah. And pe most people Yeah, they don't understand that it's, and that's why I've been reading a lot more like, like autobiographies of Yeah. Like I'm reading like Nick T's autobiography right now. It's really interesting to see that. That dude was awesome, but definitely was like on the spectrum or something. Like he had, he couldn't sit in a room unless the chairs were like. Divisible by three. He had everything was like super weird, bro. But like once, but that worked for him, man, he it like, and that's gave us so many cool things. But he was, he would talk about seeing images in his head and, and whatever it is for people, whatever that excites them, like that literally gets their energy going. That is, yeah, you need to be chasing that. And so that is the question. And like you said, God too, reading the Bible, like that's like the ultimate like blueprint.

Look at what Jesus said and he is like, the kingdom of God is already within you. Like I already, I love that verse in Luke where he is talking about God is you, like God is among you. And I really, and that's another thing too, we talked about religion all day long too. It's what is God, what are we doing here? What is the, what is our purpose here? And so I think our purpose here is just to be fully aligned as ourselves, express ourselves, and experience this world as whatever we want to do. 'cause God gave us free will, which everyone God gave you free will. So. You should be doing whatever you want to do in a day. If you're doing something that you don't want to do, don't do it. And that's what I've tried to really chase and put into the channel is, hey, do whatever the fuck you wanna do, whatever makes you feel alive and share that with the world. That's it.

Austin Gray: Yeah. We could go down a deep rabbit hole here now, boy, did you grow up in the church?

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty Christian. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And then did you ever go through any phases where you questioned it or have you just always been straight and narrow?

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, no, definitely. I think, and that's the thing too with church, I look at religion and spirituality is like almost different things. Like some people need religion to get spiritual, but I think if you are, this is gonna obviously sound clip this, but the higher IQ you are, the more religion doesn't sometimes mesh with you. And so that's when you start asking questions, thinking outside the box and okay, what is really going on here? Most people can just go to church. Read what they're told. Okay, cool. And they don't think about it at all. And so that some people do, like religion has played a very important role in thousands of years of keeping people, like giving us a manual of like how to live, which many people need that.

Same with rules like, uh, on, in our country, some people need the rules, but for other people, we don't really need that. We can think, we know we can tap into that ourselves. The spirituality, like you said, you're on a hunt, you're be an elk. Like you're experiencing like this creation and it's freaking awesome, and you're like, wow like this is amazing. And you don't need, you, you don't need to find that in church. Like you can go outside and find it yourself. I dunno. Everyone needs to find that for them, for their own self essentially.

Austin Gray: You ever listen to, have you come across the Deep End podcast? 

Spencer Claeys:No. 

Austin Gray: Have you heard of Taylor Welch? He was a, he was like a Facebook ad.

Spencer Claeys: Oh yeah, I know him. Yeah. I think he's posted some of his videos on Instagram. I've seen, I've seen some of those clips recently. Yeah. Yeah. He's cool.

Austin Gray: Those, those videos or those podcasts? He's getting deep on some of that stuff right now. 

Spencer Claeys: Okay. I'll have to check it out.

Austin Gray: From a Christian perspective, which is cool because I think that's where, that was my biggest struggle in my twenties with religion. I'm like, none of this makes sense. I, I always, I could always feel something like growing up in church, like I, I could feel the presence of God in a worship song. Yeah. That's something I can't doubt. But once I got to this level where my brain was developing to a certain point, I'm like, dude, none of this like cookie cutter. Do this, do that rules makes any sense to me. Like there, there's so much more out here. And so I think I personally, my twenties went like super far into the, is there e, is God even real sort of question. And like what about the biggest question I was trying to answer was like, what about the, what happened before Jesus?

Was he? Yeah. If we truly believe that Jesus was a savior, you know what happened to thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, who knows? Who knows how long? Right? Nobody knows. Nobody knows how long we've been here. And dude, I just couldn't wrap my head around that question. And finally, I just came to this point, it was like probably two or three years ago where I was like, I'm just not gonna have the answers. And that to me is the concept of faith. The faith being like I either get to choose at this point, I'm not gonna know the answers. I either get to choose whether I believe that there is a God or whether I believe that there's not. I'm like, I've felt this before. I know there's something. Yeah. So then that brought me right back to, I'm gonna choose to believe that there's a God. And then dude like after that, it's been so fun because I feel like he's just opening up so many different dude, it doesn't have to be this cookie cutter thing to point you said was like, I am in you sort of thing. Yeah. Like I think that's what he is trying to tell us. You are who you are because I created you that way. And that has been so present in my life now. And I think before it was like I had to push a lot of these things away and I think you've done an incredible job of embodying this.

Spencer Claeys: Trying to, you

Austin Gray: you, you've just been like, dude, I don't care if this is who I am. Like if I wanna create a power wash video, I'm gonna create a power wash video. And if I wanna help people there, if I wanna do a video driving in my car and talk about, I saw one of your last videos where you were talking about this concept of God. Yeah. So hats off to you for doing what you're doing.

Spencer Claeys: I appreciate it. Yeah. It's another really interesting read is like conversations with God by Neil Donald Walsh. It's a great book. I'm reading it right now, but yeah, that's new one. It's like on, I have it on Kindle, so I don't know. It's like the, it's like the first one, so I don't know. But

Austin Gray: I have it right here in my book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one's, that's a banger, dude. Yeah, it is. But, but that one also sent me down the rabbit hole.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, dude. Like once you get down it, it's so weird, dude, because my family is very Christian, but it's, you couldn't really talk to them about this stuff. 'cause Yeah, that's the thing with religion, it's very, a lot of, it's very fear based. It's, oh, if you don't do this, you're going to hell. That is what, and that's what most people know. Religion as, which, you know. Yeah. In that book, God said, why would I give you free will and then damn you forever if you don't, if you don't do your free will. Like that doesn't make any sense. And I think we've all kind of felt that. We've all known I'm not gonna go to hell for not like doing this or that.

It's just, and yeah, we don't know what it is. And so in that book too, it calls it like all that is, or consciousness essentially. I dunno, just like each of us needs, so we all know it, we all can feel there's something there. And so every human on earth, there's so many different religion, religions, all this and that 'cause we can all feel it, but we all don't know how to describe it. And then of course there's always those people, like you watch the movie, like the Book of Eli, he's like the book, we need the book to like control people. And so that's how a lot of people do see it. And that's where it does get very interesting is when now we have people like that defend a certain church and they'll die and they'll kill other people for this church. And it's, man, I know I, I may not know that much, but I know that that's not it, that's not God. 'cause oh we, this is our religion. You must bow down to us. And I don't know, that's, that doesn't seem right. So

Austin Gray: Yeah, it seems like we're missing the whole big point at that part.

Spencer Claeys: We have a lot, we have a long ways to go and I'm like, I got a couple other books like on the queue and some of 'em like have like UFOs and or ETS and whatever. And so that's another interesting convo. What else is out there as well? Like other extraterrestrials people call them. But dude, if you look in the Bible, like from the descriptions of angels, it looks like there's some crazy shit. Like you can go right now on YouTube. Like they have AI generated ways of what people saw as angels. And I know, man, that that sounds like a U ffo dude, that sounds like a fricking, it's like a, a floating like eye or something like, like circles around it. And I dunno, it's weird dude. Like when you really look at it like all this stuff. So I dunno, I think it's hard to not talk about it and like now that's, I'm glad we are initially started money and doing this and that, but it's like, what are we doing here? I think that is really the ultimate question

Austin Gray: That's been crazy is I've been praying about this a lot. I'm like, all right, podcast has taken off. Like what the heck am must like to a certain point, right? I can only talk about building service businesses so much. Yeah. I've already created, I don't know how many episodes we're in, probably close to a hundred up outing local service based business. I truly believe people are reaching out left and right. It's like we're helping people create a better life if they're going to start their own business. Like that's something I'm actually proud of because I know that once I, when I made the decision to start my own business and like actually nut up and just go do the thing, instead of just sit here and make all these excuses, life got better, right? Life got better for me. Life got better for my wife, my family, like I started feeling more fulfilled and so that feels good, but also like I, I know that there's something bigger and deeper, I guess is what I've been trying to pray through and it's crazy like this just happened. Our podcast manager, I believe, reached out to you and just happenstance booked this podcast, right? Yeah. He decided to come on and we're having this conversation right now.

Spencer Claeys: Dude, Jesus was a carpenter man. Jesus was a carpenter until 33, and then he like. The word of God came with, came into him and then he is, oh shoot, there's so much more. But dude, he was the original home service dude. And then he started out like talking about God man, and then it's changed the world. Which if you really think about it, that's what all of us are trying to do here.

Austin Gray: Jesus was the original home service bro. Literally. Yeah, you can quote me on that. 

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, it's funny man. Like we were watching the show, righteous Gemstones. I dunno if you've seen it. It's, it's a ridiculous show. It's funny, but it's about megachurches. It's got some of the funny actors in it. But yeah, the megachurches, that's a very weird thing. You see all the money and power from religion and such. And so it's interesting to see them talk about Jesus and like they, they don't really, they're really like on their own thing. But yeah man, I love like the, the religion rabbit hole and spirituality and such. And now you see a Catholic, the Pope and such. And I'll see that on Twitter too, like the tweet. People are like. The War on War goes back and forth about between the Catholics or Protestants. It's fun to watch.

Austin Gray: so you'll have to go check out the Deep End Podcast because they are bringing on some people who go deep down this rabbit hole. It's really the only podcast I've been listening to at this point. And one thing that you said, we're in an interesting age right now with AI and I think there are a lot of people starting to talk about this and like people can feel it, like what you're talking about, UFOs, extraterrestrial beings, things like that. And like you read the Bible and it's like, what's funny is like, you know, the die hard, like religious Christians are gonna be like, that's crazy. UFOs are stupid. But then yet they're like believing in the Bible. And if you go back to the beginning of the Bible, like we're talking about Nephilim and you know where the Giants came from and all this, if you truly believe in the Bible, like these types of things, like what we would consider like crazy out there, conversations right now are stated in this book.

Spencer Claeys:Yeah.

Austin Gray: And that I've always found fascinating. Where do you think we are right now with the eyes just gonna radically change this whole thing? It seems.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah. I remember seeing someone talk about aliens are real, blah, blah, blah, but like, they're waiting for us to wake up. They're waiting for us to become more conscious. Like we are not there yet. Like it's very, like I just read like the Wright brothers, they invented the airplane and such. And it's just so interesting and sad that like the first thing that people are like interested with an airplane is, oh, how can we use this for, to kill other people? Like the generals and the, the, the governments got interested in the airplane for a war per perspective and it's like, dude, we, yeah, we are so not there yet. We, we've got a long ways to go. We as humans, like all we can focus on is killing other people. And it's at a government level, like all these wars going on and it's just, so whatever it is, we are not collectively conscious enough yet. You could say that's a word for it, which. Most people wouldn't know what we're talking about right now, but I think those that do, it's, that's what I've been trying to articulate.

Like people can feel it. You can feel it. And so yeah, I think we still have a ways to go and, but we're all moving towards it. We are. All the world is, it's rapidly. Yeah, you said with AI and stuff it is getting more complex and so I it is cool. Like we are still going down that the road and I think it'll be, I don't have any like worries about AI taking over like the, the sci-fi. I dunno. I think the future is gonna be amazing. And yeah, like I said, we're just here to experience it and so I think it's a really cool, it also takes the pressure off too when you're like, oh, we're just, we're like in that book conversation with God. He is like, we are just here to experience life and just be aligned so God can experience himself through us, essentially. And that's, and it is interesting. Like what, so then. If we do have free will, then you could just sit on a park bench and just live and not really have any like expectation. You could, if that's what made you feel great. But I dunno. For me, yeah, it's getting outside, making money, sharing the message, and yeah, I'm, I'm excited to build this house, do all that sort of stuff.

Austin Gray: But have you ever gone through a phase of life where like sitting on a park bench wasn't, like, just doing that all day was enjoyable?

Spencer Claeys: I don't know. I've always been moving, dude, because I think I got that phrase right there from the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Like he mentioned that like in the beginning, oh, I was more light enlightened, sitting on his park bench than it ever been and so for me, I don't know, I'm always like enlightened when I'm like doing things when I'm working with my hands. And that's the thing too, I could, like earlier we were off camera, we were talking about like online business and coaching and making money online. And dude, I don't know what it is about me, but I just do not like sales calls. I don't like having a meeting as well, like a time just also like fucks in my brain having even, even this podcast, like having a set time and I'm trying to explain this to my wife, she's like, you're crazy. I don't know, I'm, I don't know, man. But we're all different. And that's, I could just tell, I'm not meant for like this laptop lifestyle where I'm just gonna be coding an app or doing this online stuff for 10 hours a day.

That just doesn't make me feel great. Then I'm like, everyone's online business is the only way to make money. It's everything else is not scalable. All this stuff, you gotta be able to work from anywhere. But I don't know, like I could always, you just know if you like, are working on your laptop. If it's not firing you up, obviously there's stuff you gotta do, but try and do things that fire you up and don't do things that don't.

Austin Gray: Absolutely, dude. And it's why, it's where we started this conversation because so many people have been like, dude, why don't, why aren't you offering like a, like a school community plus group coaching plus platform? And I was like. Because I like going back to this. I love just to follow the energy. If I have something scheduled on my day, it sucks. Like I don't really care. So outside of the podcast, like I love doing the podcast, but I love doing it with a cup of coffee in the morning. It's why I only record on Friday or Saturday morning because that's when I have the most energy and the most time to give to this. But after this, dude, I'm gonna be wiped because I've been on a Zoom call, right? Yeah. This is the only Zoom call I take in anything, dude. If people reach out and they're like, Hey, can we schedule a call? I'm like, absolutely not. No, absolutely not. Hate Zoom calls. I know in the middle of the day. I hate it. I just wanna be out there like doing something, driving business, putting out yard signs, like I dunno about you, but when I'm out in the field, my brain just ignites, right?

Like I'm going from job to job. I'm like, okay, sweet. That needs that. We need to stop there. We need to knock on that. We need to call this person. We need to call. Alright. Uh, that developer said this. It's just boom. And then I come back here and it's like a scheduled Zoom call at 3:00 PM No.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, no. And some people I guess like it. I don't know. It's hard to imagine, but I don't know. It's, yeah. Fuck dude. I remember I was working this one guy, he was a killer with like SEO and websites. He was great. Helped with go high level CRM stuff. But that guy wanted to do a Zoom call like every day and just, I'm just like, I cannot do this, man. If that is how you need to express yourself, great. But we cannot work together, man. I'm sorry if that's what you need. I'm not the person for you, dude.

Austin Gray: Yeah. And I just tell people, anybody I hire, I'm like, I'm not gonna do weekly meetings with you on this. And I do one with my main sales guy at ba, but he brings me a lot of energy, right? Like he and I jive big time. And that's like a yeah. Flow thing.

Spencer Claeys: But you could, people do give you energy. That's the thing to chase too. There are other people that bring you energy. See, I'll find those people and be around them too.

Austin Gray: I am curious if you've used this, but I'm just going to loom everything. If I need to update my name on some, yeah. I just record on Loom and I send it in Slack and I'm just like, please watch this video. If I need to communicate something to somebody, or if somebody has a question for me, I just record it in Loom and I'm like, please document this in Notion, use this to reference and answer the question. I don't want to be like jumping on calls answering the same question over and over again. Why? Because it's taken me outta that flow and I know that I'm at best when I'm in flow driving business. And it sounds like you're the same way.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah. Yeah. Loom is great. Yeah. You can just pop it up to a couple clicks or Yeah, for videos too. Yeah, dude, like flow is, if you think about like water, which is where, where a lot of our language comes from, money, electricity, flow, like the current and all that stuff. If we were just working on a job yesterday, we had to wash this roof and like the, my wife took my truck, so we didn't have the good hoses, but we had the customer's hoses there. And the balloons super kinked up and it starts having to unwork it and it like, but this hose is like how I feel like when things are not flowing, like, it's like a kink, you could feel like when the energy is stopped. And so whether it's a certain person, a job, or even a certain place, like you can get energy from, from different places.

And just finding ways to un kink that hose. Just let it flow. Be your best self. It's gonna, it's gonna do its thing. And I, that's, yeah, I'm, I really like, like talking about stuff like this now. 'cause that is what, it's, what it's all about is like finding how you're able to use your energy for the best purpose and letting it just go.

Austin Gray: So another piece of flow is momentum. And I know that you're gonna agree with me on that. Once you get the ball rolling, the ball just rolls faster. Tell me about your perfect day. If you could just pick, if you could just pick your perfect day, what does it look like? You wake up tomorrow, ready to go.

Spencer Claeys: I can tell you every day's the same. Pretty much like I wake up and I spend the first two, two hours a day with my son, pretty much. He's always up early. He's almost 11 months. And that was an interesting shift too 'cause I always worked in the morning, I always got my like, videos writing. I'd be up six or 7:00 AM doing my videos and now it's, that's gone. I'm with my son now pretty much until nine or 10 in the morning until my wife gets up. 'cause she has to be with the kids. So I'm with my son in the morning. But that's just, that's amazing. Like you have a kid, you have another one on the way, so congrats about that. We'll see how many we can get. But it's the coolest thing. You have this little person that's like hanging out with you and it's just, it's awesome. So anyone who's, yeah, now, yeah, I could do way less work than I could. Can't do as many videos, but hey, maybe that's a good thing. My content's changed up a bit and, but you just go where everything, where the path is taking you essentially.

So hang out with my kid and then usually then my wife will take him for a little bit, maybe make a video and then if it works, like if I have something to talk about. I haven't made videos the last couple days 'cause my, my voice has been all goofed up. But when it, when I feel it, I make a video and sometimes, yeah, sometimes it doesn't happen, man. It's funny. And, but I, I do, that's, that is the ultimate of creation is like being able to create whenever you want to. And so if it's not working, I just don't, and then I'll go maybe do a job or not whatever, just whatever I feel on a given day. And then I used to be way more into the gym as well. Like I would go pretty much like five, six days a week. Now it's go maybe two or three times a week if I'm being honest. But we go on walks a lot, still stay in shape. But I dunno, it's just a different season of life now. And so that's cool. And I don't know, it, it is funny, like you, whenever you're in like a certain phase of life, like when you're, for me, I was really into the gym, this and that. You're like, oh yeah, this, imagine not like going to the gym every day. And now it's, oh man, I can't even imagine like. Focusing so much on the gym, like it doesn't really, just doesn't really excite me as much as it used to. Oh yeah. Cool. You can bench press another plate. Your son doesn't care. Like he needs you, like other people, like you gotta I, so you see what I'm saying? There's just, I don't know. There's so much out there that like I try not to put any labels on anything too. That's the whole point of my day. I just wanna just be in flow as much as I can and yeah, that's it.

Austin Gray: This is so energizing. It's awesome just to, to talk to someone else who sees the world in the same way. It's also cool just to have, I don't know, it's also cool whenever you're like, man, I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I'm not the only one who feels this. And even my wife, it's taken us seven, eight years. The first couple of years of marriage were hard, but marriage is awesome. It's like, yeah, yeah. Just like pushing through those phases of getting to know each other and then like now she just knows that. I'm not, she's like, why don't you just put it on your schedule? Like when you go work out? I'm like, because every day is different. I'm, some days I may have the energy for the gym at nine in the morning after I've crushed like three or four hours of work in the morning. Some days I may be on a project like deep in like building an automation or something where like five in the morning until 10 and I'm not going to the gym until 11 or going for a run, whatever it may be. But I like just following that, like you said. And to me, that's where the momentum comes from, right? Because you stay in that flow and then things start happening and it's just so hard to communicate that to, to most people.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, most people like, because it's really, it's bred out of us, man. They want us to just be employees and go to school. And it's the classic, most classic example is like the beginning of the matrix where it's like, where he's like, morphic is, oh, you can feel that there's something wrong. Like he just, he doesn't know what is, but he can feel like, oh, this isn't the way things should be. 

Austin Gray: This episode is brought to you by dialed in bookkeeping. Ben and his team provide bookkeeping services, job costing reports, and accurate financial information for the home services industry. If you're looking to keep your books up to date, visit dialed in bookkeeping.com/owr ops. When you use this specific landing page, you'll get your first three months 50% off.

Spencer Claeys: And I don't know, I think everyone can feel it like with whether it's their job or school or all this stuff, and they're all just like, everyone's just like lying to themselves now. And so some people need, you'll see people go into spirals of drugs, alcohol, like people trying to find God essentially. And so if you don't, what was it that I was, it was another book that I was, or something, I can't remember. But yeah, they were talking about that where if you don't find a good outlet for your energy, it's gotta go somewhere. So some people put that into like destructive habits as well. And a lot of people that's, I think that's why the world sometimes is the way it is. A lot of people are not following their own path, and if everyone did follow their own path in life, I think that might be the ultimate. 

So I think, yeah, pushing the message out, just getting more people to essentially wake up because yeah, once you are like this, like once you see the world for how it is, it's, I dunno, I used to be in the military as well too. Like I remember being, like, before my brain was fully developed, I, I think maybe, yeah, I wasn't really until 25. Like how they say your brain doesn't fully develop until then, but before that it's like you're just like gung-ho. Oh yeah. Like America, like I'm gonna go die overseas. Like I was just reserved. I didn't go like full-time. But you get in that mindset. But now it's, dude, any thought of war is just, just bad, dude. I don't know. It's, but your perspective changes and they don't really want to in that thinking, actually they, I don't think there's some like grand conspiracy. I think there's just so many people that do benefit from people not being awake. You could say. Yeah, I don't think there's a massive conspiracy necessarily, so I don't know.

Austin Gray: Spencer, we're gonna have to do another podcast and probably multiple more because yeah, this is some fun stuff to talk about. Let's do it. Yeah. Let's wrap this one up. Dude, this was fun. I haven't done one like this yet. This is awesome.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, no, I'd love to. We could go down. Yeah, that could be the next one and or next time we're in Colorado too. We gotta stop by because that this has been, yeah, this has been awesome, dude. I didn't even know. Yeah, I didn't really know. I've seen you talk about like the home service stuff and I was like, oh, cool. Yeah. But yeah, no, you're right. It's how many times can we talk about growing a home service business? It's, I know. Yeah. I think this is the cool message, and it is weird at the beginning you're like, oh, like I'm gonna be talking about like God and consciousness on my YouTube channel. This is weird. But then it's, you gotta just go with it, man.

You just gotta go with it. 'cause then you lose it. Like you mentioned when your wife like interrupts you like on a video, it's like, dude, that video or that project. It's gone almost forever. Like it was there and now it's gone. It's weird, but not, it's not bad though. It's not like a bad thing, but it's, it's funny how many, yeah, how many videos have died. Just 'cause I didn't write it down or like a thought. You have, you didn't write it down, but you just forget about it. It's just gone. It's just like all these things just coming in case the ones that you can and one you can't. I don't know. It's a, yeah, man. It's fun, dude. Whatever's going on.

Austin Gray: Agreed. What's, What's one challenge you're gonna lead me with?

Spencer Claeys: Ooh, one challenge lead. Lead you with? Or lead you with? Yeah, just we were talking a lot about YouTube. Just, yeah, just following your voice, man. You gotta, I can tell, man, you're really smart. You're really in tune, really aligned. So that's, yeah, just follow that in the owner ops pod. Next it's gonna be talking about spirituality, I guess now, but that's good. Then the right people are gonna show up. Even only five people watch it. Who cares? Like those five people could go on to do, who knows? So I don't know if the. It's impossible to judge like what our little actions today are gonna cause I don't know. Just follow your unique voice, dude. So yeah.

Austin Gray: Love it man. Love it. Good luck with everything. I can't remember if we got on the recording or not, but listener Spencer's going to buy some land and build his own house. He's had some success with, uh, the exterior soft washing business and, you know, doing software and all that good stuff. And now he's gonna go build a house for his family. And you're keeping an eye out for the demand in that area, right?

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, we're over there all the time. My wife's family's from there, so yeah, we already know like pretty much what we're, yeah, we'll see, dude. But yeah, also not really putting too much, like too much expectation on it. Just gonna go and see what happens and yeah. Faith, no fear, like fear is not, I don't know. You could see when people were in the fear state and so never try and never get into that. It's weird when you think about, oh, if you just weren't afraid. I remember hearing that quote. What would you do if you weren't afraid? And it's like. You just do everything you ever wanted. And that's what you can do, man. Like anyone listening right now, they could book a plane ticket to Hawaii, Bangladesh. You could do anything you wanted and it would be fine. It's gonna be fine, dude. So yeah, anyways, I know, yeah, I could go, I talk forever about that, but everything's gonna be fine, man. I'm excited.

Austin Gray: Awesome. I've had so much fun with this, Spencer. Good luck with everything you're doing. Let's stay in touch. Um, I'll shoot you a message after this on X and I'll send you my cell phone number, so just whenever you're out here in Colorado, let me know. And yeah, it would be great to meet in person, but appreciate you coming and sharing some energy.

Spencer Claeys: Yeah, sounds good, dude.

Austin Gray: All right. Thanks again, guys, for listening to another episode of the Owner Ops podcast. Uh, every week we publish episodes On most week we publish episodes about building and growing local service based businesses. But this week, if you guys stuck around this whole time, we got into some different topics. Um, and that's cool. I'm just gonna go with it. Um, but. If you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, we take the summaries and the high level points from these podcasts, and we send those to you in a weekly newsletter on Saturday mornings. So you can sign up there, owner ops.com/newsletter. That's OWNR ops.com/newsletter. Thanks again for listening, guys. Don't forget, work hard. Do your best, never settle for less. See you in the next one.

This episode is brought to you by:

✅Jobber: The all-in-one business management software for service businesses.

🔥GET 20% OFF JOBBER YOUR FIRST 6 MONTHS:🔥
https://go.getjobber.com/ownrops

✅Bear Claw Media: Proven digital marketing strategies for contractors. gobearclawmedia.com

Stryker Digital: Helping service businesses dominate local SEO. stryker-digital.com

Want the summarized actionable tips from this episode?
Subscribe to the OWNR OPS Weekly Newsletter at https://www.ownrops.com/newsletter

Continue Viewing