Special Guest Episode: From Mop to Media: How Vicki Built a Cleaning Empire With Help From Her Personal Brand

0:00Victoria Gordan:Welcome to Brand U, the ultimate personal branding podcast. I'm Kaz Grant. And I'm Toby Lee. Together, we're here to help demystify personal branding. And to make it accessible and effective for everyone. Follow along as we guide you through creating your own personal branding journeys. So, let's get started. Let's Brand U.

0:25So, hello everyone and welcome back to Brand U. we have got a special guest for you all today. So this episode, we've kind of called it From Mop to Media, How Vicky Built a Cleaning Empire with Help from Her Personal Brand. So basically, we've got Victoria Gordon today, Vicky, from Pocket Rockets Cleaning, and she's grown a massive 143 ,000 plus followers on TikTok, with a whopping 1.7 million likes on the channel as well, and has recently been featured on This Morning because of her personal brand. So I am so excited to jump into this episode today because I think traditionally we've kind of thought of maybe like cleaning services as that kind of how do we put that out in line?

1:08How do we put our own spin on it? Like most cleaning service companies probably hide, but Vicky hasn't done that. So I'm really excited to dive into that today. So Vicky, I'll hand over to yourself. if you could just tell us a little bit more about yourself and maybe pocket rocket rescues as well well thank you yeah it's not glamorous is it when you're trying to uh market yourself in this industry um so yeah the journey began about eight years ago and it did happen a little bit by accident um I was in a bit of a crossroads um with another business and my daughter was starting in school and I thought I've got a few hours every day now and I'll start a bit of cleaning locally because I love cleaning I'm one of the weird ones and I'll just see how it goes until I figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life and so I set up a Facebook page literally had the idea set the Facebook page up that day and within two days I was fully booked between nine and three Monday to Friday.

2:14And then people were asking me, are you taking cleaners on? Are you hiring? And it just, it was like a whirlwind. Eight years later, the business looks completely different. We have pivoted slightly, but we are still very much in the thick of the cleaning industry and, yeah, growing all the time. So it's very, very exciting. That's awesome.

2:38Victoria Gordan:So going back to the beginning then, When you started, you know, you created this Facebook page and suddenly you were booking up. What were you sort of putting out there? How were you putting yourself out there? Because I think it's quite interesting to see that before and after picture to what you kind of use content for now. Yeah. So I think initially, because I was already on the networking scene and on social media for a different business, when I set up my initial Facebook page that day a lot of people already knew who I was in the local area and they already had not necessarily knew me as a cleaning lady they knew me as something else but they knew and trusted me they knew who I was and you know I think it's really important people buy people don't know it doesn't really matter what you're selling somebody they're going to buy into you so a lot of people that knew me already was booking in and telling the friends and family sharing my Facebook page people in the local villages that knew me anyway um but obviously very quickly I had to um create content for you know to advertise and I think initially I was a bit it's really hard to go into somebody's house and it's their private space it's their you know it's their home it's their belongings it's really difficult to say oh you know your house is really grim and I'm going to make it amazing and that would look great on photo so please can I do some filming or take before and after pictures it's really really difficult to get that balance right of showcasing your work and your skill set and but also not offending your clients or loving people a long way and but people do love a before and after picture don't they yeah that's it and and you know that that that's what sells isn't it because you're that middle part, you're the solution, aren't you?

4:31Victoria Gordan:And I can imagine that's really trying to do that delicately and respectfully, but also get people that are willing to, I guess, be put out there for their mess. Absolutely, absolutely. I think you've done that really well because I've known you from the start of that. So I was one of the probably the people that were at those early networking events together. I think you were probably there before I was, but then I knew you from that. So I've watched it go from that beginning phase to what it is now. And you do it so well. And what I love now is like you have, it's the hoarder ones as well that you do now and you share.

5:06So again, it's not just necessarily you're cleaning traditional houses now either. there's all of that mental health side of it that you you do so well at not making anybody feel bad disrespected through the content that you're showing you do it in a really good I wonder if we could just talk a bit more about that because if people go on now they'll see some of that content yeah definitely so during covid times I realized I needed to um pivot slightly still wanted to remain in the industry but I think like a lot of businesses it affected us hugely all of a sudden our industry was shut down we weren't allowed into people's homes even when the cleaning industry started to open back up slightly and people were isolating they had the kids off school it probably took us a good year to 18 months to fully recover so in the meantime we started to think about what can we do so we started to do a lot more empty properties end of tenancies military march outs you know there's a lot of ref bases around lincolnshire houses where people were moving in into and out of etc and but I had in the back of my mind that I'd always wanted to do more specialist cleaning anyway crime scenes trauma biohazards always really interested me so that was the perfect time so now if you look at my socials and particularly TikTok because I only really started doing my TikTok when to kind of right at the start of that journey to almost record it for myself it was a bit of a diary for me and didn't really think anyone would watch it the start of that so it's really the last sort of three and a half years but what it does mean is the work that we do is even more sensitive and we have to be even more careful what we're posting it's not just someone's limescaly tap or mouldy bathroom it's people's lives where they are suffering with severe mental or physical health issues obviously we do some cleans that we would never show so you know I'm never going to post a crime scene or an unattended death or something horrific traumatic that's happened to somebody and even though those posts probably would go viral for me that doesn't sit with my sort of moral you know compass and the values and however as you just said we do a lot of hoarder houses and houses where mental health and physical health are having a massive impact on somebody's ability to maintain a clean and safe environment than some of the houses that we go into are really extreme the kind you see on the documentaries so to sort of capture that and showcase that work without bringing more shame and stigma to the person who's home that is again it's finding the balance so a lot of what we post on tiktok is more around raising awareness of why people might be hoarding or might be living in what most people would consider to be squalor conditions and it's always mental health or physical health or both and people are often on that vicious cycle where they want to sometimes they feel like they want to do something about it but then it's too overwhelming and so with permission and we do post some of those sometimes but again a lot of the time people don't want you taking photos and so it's finding the balance again of marketing your business and showcasing what you do and then fundamentally our client welfare is always our priority and to respect you know what they want so um that's always going to come first so it is a bit of a balancing act definitely but it's a good um example as well of of how you use your platform for good now as well because okay originally it started to share your business and grow your business then it pivoted into this other world and then you're showcasing some of that and then it's like oh no hold on I can actually help write some of the narrative on this about this the mental health issues with this and raise awareness of it and also I think you use is it through TikTok the money that you get through TikTok you also put that back into free cleans yeah yeah yeah so that's exactly it so one of the sort of incentives of somebody to allow us to maybe do a bit of filming or record the before and afters is to say we'll do the clean for free or heavily discounted.

9:35And we use TikTok creator fund to fund those free cleans. Sometimes if a video goes viral, it does make, you know, a few hundred pounds, which is amazing. So we do free cleans and as a sort of thank you for the free clean, they let us showcase. and we've done that as well for a couple of documentaries as well where a documentary or a film crew have wanted us to follow us around and again we've sort of said to the person like we'll come and offer the service for free as a thank you because we know it's really invasive but we explain as well to them that it's not just to show the context is always really important for me and the narrative and I've turned down quite a lot of TV work because the sort of vibe and the attitude towards it hasn't been, again, it hasn't fitted with our values as a business or not just my moral values.

10:32I don't want people to be judged or for people to go in and look how horrific somebody's living. You know, Kim and Aggie back in the 90s were going round with a petri dish saying, oh, look how disgusting your house is. I don't want it to be like that at all. more about sort of showing that actually hoarding and you know unable you know not being able to maintain a clean and safe environment is a widespread factor of mental health issues but it doesn't seem to have the same understanding as a lot of other factors and for example if you had maybe OCD is one that most people would understand what that means you might need to turn the light switch off and on six times before you leave the house and you know not everyone would understand that but you're not necessarily going to be judged for that people will just accept that that's part of your OCD as a symptom is a factor but if you've got an obsession or a compulsion to never throw anything away so you ended up end up over a number of months or years in a hoarded environment people are very judgmental about that and there is a lot of stigma and shame and then it worsens for the person because they just isolate.

11:44They don't let people in, they're too embarrassed, they don't let family or neighbours help. So it just escalates and it becomes, you know, extremely unsafe, some of the environments we go into. So the context that we are trying to show, whether it's just on TikTok or Facebook or any media opportunities we get is always raising awareness. Let's not judge these people. Let's understand. It's not lazy, it's not gross, It's not somebody, you know, nobody wakes up and thinks, oh, I'm just not going to clean my house for 20 years and see what happens. Like nobody's living in these conditions in a sort of healthy state of mind.

12:23But it's not very well understood. I think people just don't really, they think it's rare as well. It's not, it's so common. I am shocked of how common it is. When I did my biohazard training, hoarders wasn't really part of it. and I was really surprised the first few jobs we got were hoarded houses and I'd only ever seen them on telly before and thought that it was like a really rare thing and it's not. There's a hoarder on every street at least guaranteed.

12:51Victoria Gordan:Yeah, it's really interesting. I photographed a couple of events last month. Different industries, completely different organisations but what has come up on the agenda has been hoarding. Really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I was really surprised given the areas, I won't get into too much detail, but like the areas that these organizations are working, you wouldn't necessarily expect it to be a concern for them or for those crossovers. But yeah, it's surprising. So I think what's really nice is what you're kind of saying is the way you're communicating things is like, it's really clearly demonstrating what your brand values are, aren't they?

13:28Victoria Gordan:how do you kind of balance that difference between you are pocket rockets cleaning rescue but you are your personal brand as well as like how how for you how do you see the two going hand in hand and how do you utilize both so i think for me your brand is i mean you might disagree i think branding you know people may be thinking like your logos or your colors or what your website looks like but for me I think my brand is really what I'm known for and the sort of reputation that you've got and what people if you weren't in a room and your name was brought up what would people say would people say oh that really little cleaner would people say oh she's real feisty she's a pocket rocket I mean my business name has come from me being nicknamed pocket rocket my whole life I've never ever referred to myself as the pocket rocket but whether it's been a change of job or a move house or I've ended up in a different kind of environment with different people very quickly someone has just nicknamed the pocket rocket and I think that's just because of my character my personality I am obviously if you if you've met me in real life which you two you both have you know I'm four foot eleven and I don't stop you know if you put someone follows me around for a week they'd need a holiday I'm always on the go I get things done I'm fiesty and I think that is actually part of my brand so when I'm at work or at a networking meeting or doing a social media post I just try to be authentically myself don't be afraid to let myself shine through and then I think your characteristics and your values will follow and it it's visible just because you're being authentic anyway I think if people are trying to be something they're not um for branding or for marketing then they're gonna come unstuck because you can't like fake it for very long I don't think yeah definitely have you ever had a plan of kind of when you started right I'm gonna go on Facebook first and then I'm gonna start TikTok and then I'm going to do you know get TV into it or is it all kind of come organically and I guess how tied into that like how did this morning come about so I don't really it sounds bad I'm not very good at planning and I kind of just do the do I know that sounds really weird it's so hard to explain to people but I feel like I'm just winging it all the time and I have these ideas and I implement them instantly before I've had time to think about it and some things work and some things don't and I've made loads of mistakes along the way and that's fine as well because it's all a learning curve I don't feel like in business you can do anything too wrong as long as you're learning from it and growing and I've never had a social media strategy at all in fact I did resist TikTok for quite a long time because during the sort of COVID times I thought This is just kids dancing.

16:33But when I, and I thought, what am I going to post? I'm a cleaner. I've got nothing interesting to say. But it was a really good time when I did the crime scene cleaning course. I thought, right, this is the start of a new journey. So I'm going to document it. And it was just me sat in my car, introduced myself. This is what I'm up to. This is what I'm doing. I've been a domestic cleaner. I've got this business. We're diversifying now. I'm really excited to do this course. and then initially it was just for my own benefit really just to sort of almost like a diary for myself um to just capture the journey um and people started to watch and it did take a while i think with any social media um it's never instant you do need to be consistent i think if you enjoy doing it which i love like i would never outsource my social media because i do really enjoy it and I think you know if you do it's easy to be consistent and to not kind of burn out from it and get fed up with it because you don't feel like it's a chore there's loads of things in my business that I don't like doing I do outsource and but social media is not one of them and it took me about a year to get to 10 ,000 followers on TikTok so that was a bit of a slog But then once I hit that momentum, I went from 10 to 100 ,000 quite quickly.

17:53And obviously, it's quite, you know, you get your dopamine, don't you? The more people that watch, the more money you're making from your videos going viral, the more free cleans you can do, the more people support you. And I've got a lot of people on my TikTok that are cleaners that follow me. And I've got a lot of people on my TikTok are hoarders and people that suffer with mental health. And their houses are similar to the houses that I show. and they follow me because it makes them feel like they're not on their own as well. It's really varied. The kind of messages I get into my inbox are sometimes from like two completely different sides of the coin, really.

18:28And I can help both in different ways. And I love that as well. So, yeah.

18:34Victoria Gordan:That's really fantastic. I love that. Do you get much work or lead generation from TikTok? or is it more that you see it this is your brand reputation and like you know a marketing tool for you but it's not necessarily where the lead's going to come from it just reinforces your brand overall anyway doesn't it yeah so regarding actual cleans we get a bit through tiktok not um well yeah we do to be fair we do get a bit through tiktok but every single franchise i've sold has come from somebody that's followed me on tiktok right a lot of the other stuff that comes from tiktok that might not necessarily be paid work these people wanting a free clean and even if they're not somebody that we can do a free clean for they might be too far away or we might not have the budget at the time and i will always help and advise them or put them in to sort of sometimes there is funding available anyway people don't realize there's pots of money all over if you're suffering with mental health issues physical health issues you might be under adult social services anyway you've got somebody in the house with disability that kind of thing there are pots of money and which aren't necessarily advertised widely and and sometimes people can get a clean done for free because the council or government will pay even if it's not me doing it so even if I can't help them physically myself I will still advise and support and in that way as well so but paid work does come from tiktok and we i think probably more more local paid work comes from facebook because tiktok's a bit more widespread which i think why it's attracted franchises whereas facebook is still quite localized but it's interesting because even if we're having a meeting with someone you would never expect to be on tiktok it might be somebody from the local council and we're applying for a tender and we go and have a sit-down meeting, nine times out of ten, they'll say to me, I follow you on TikTok.

20:38So it is just, you don't know who's watching. And you were just asking earlier about where this morning came from. This morning came from being visible on TikTok. They contacted us and said, we really want to do a clean with you. And they want to do more with us as well. It's just finding the candidates because a lot of people like the idea of having a free clean but they don't actually want to be on a big tv show like this morning yeah having a few pictures put on tiktok but being on the telly is different isn't it so we're still always looking for candidates for that because this morning have said that they want to do more with us um but yeah it's all from all different media opportunities have come from tiktok podcasts i've been on um different uh say different tv shows the crime scene cleaner on channel for all from from social media yeah fantastic it's almost like you're future-proofed your brand haven't you because at the at the start you were just building it and then you went into the crime scene side of things and then you it's only recently that you've gone into franchising hasn't it so you've almost built this audience and then you can use it to grow even bigger and bigger all these different business milestones which is so complicated yeah so 18 months ago we started franchising and again really that was just because we were being inundated from people all over the UK please we help us you know my aunt Mildred's a hoarder but they live in Cornwall or whatever and so it just made us realise that there is there are all the businesses that offer our service same services obviously but um we just knew that there was more people out there to be able to help so it was a choice of do we franchise or do we try and employ people all over the UK and myself, my business partner, decided to go through the franchise route.

22:31So it's going well so far, but it is early days. We've got six so far. I saw your Christmas party. I know, it's so much fun. I did. Long too many cocktails.

22:46For us, Spark House was a great place to start and grow the brand new podcast from.

22:51Victoria Gordan:The fact that they have flexible office spaces and lots of different areas to work in makes it great to spark creativity. It's also a space that enables businesses to grow, which perfectly aligns to the messaging that we wanted to get across with the brand new podcast to enable businesses to grow along with us. So if you're looking for a collaborative office space in the city that will grow as your business grows, then email sparkhouse at lincoln.ac.uk. you can also find that email address in the show notes of this episode so along this journey that you've had vicky and building your tiktok and your other sort of online presence like what have been the main challenges like have there been any moments where you've had a bit of self-doubt about the way things are going or yes well i think one of the things is really hard for anyone um putting themselves out there on social media is like the fear of like judgment because when you're putting yourself out and you say you don't know who's watching it could be somebody that you went to school with or it could be a stranger halfway across the world and and that is great because it means you can reach so many more people but it also means that there's no sort of protection and we all know the internet can be absolutely brutal and and so there's no shield really from people giving you hate and criticizing what you do and you know sometimes a video just hits the wrong side why I say the wrong side of TikTok and you do have to have a bit of a sick skin regarding my content where you know if I'm being criticized for the way that I clean the toilet seat or something like that I literally couldn't care less I don't value people's opinion on you know if my client's happy with the way I've cleaned their toilet seat and actually one of the things that you will notice some of the algorithms work better if you're getting a bit of hate my one of my toilet cleans ended up in the daily mirror because it went so viral because all the controversy of the product that i use so oh no way of a double-edged sword you know all all press is good press is that the phrase um but you have to accept that people are gonna you know be a bit mean sometimes and that is really hard if you're not thick-skinned or you haven't got the confidence um but most of the time it doesn't bother me where it does bother me and sometimes I'm like oh like that's hurt is when people are questioning like my values or my motives and um like my business decisions that means more to me than if someone disagrees with the way that I'm cleaning the toilet seat you know what I mean so even though I'm always explaining why I'm posting what I'm posting and I use voiceover over the videos to say this is posting with permission it was an elderly gentleman suffering with mental health please be kind sometimes people are just going to say you know you shouldn't be posting this or you know why are you doing that and then there's the other thing of the jealousy as well and I think this will be for anyone in any business the better you do the more feathers you're going to rustle and that is just a fact of life if you're going to be successful in anything even if you're not putting yourself out online just people around you sometimes it's the people closest to you will just not like what you're doing and again you just have to decide to stay in your own lane don't I don't look at what any of my competitors are doing I'm not interested.

26:25I feel like I'm on a tunnel vision half the time. And I do most of the others, even in the industry, to be fair, because the crime scene sort of trauma, biohazard cleaning industry, it's heavily male dominated or has been until quite recently. And I do feel like I am part of that change. And a lot of these, you know, old men, white van man kind of going around, they're not on Facebook. but they're certainly not on TikTok or Instagram or anything. And someone like me that comes along into the industry, I'm female for a start. I am making some noise on all different social media channels. And people do, I do get comments like, oh, well, I'm not trying to get famous on TikTok.

27:13And I'm like, well, that's fine because it's working for me and my business. And you do you, what works for you and your business. but I think anyone that's trying to build a personal brand in any industry you have to be like confident to raise your head above the parapet a little bit and be a little bit different

27:30Victoria Gordan:otherwise how are you going to stand out and since I've done my training it was really heavily dominated when I male dominated when I did my training but since I've been doing TikTok and I've got a load of followers and franchises and everything and the training team that I did my training course with and they've actually invited me to be on their training team now because they wanted a female in the team because so many more women are now doing the crime scene and viral as a training course and a lot of the I mean every day people ask me what course I did so it's not just me having an ego I know most of them people that are doing that qualification is because I've sent them there and so but it's absolutely like the biggest honor for me to be asked to join their training team um but I think it just shows that even in just the last three years the movement um and it's not so much of a heavily male dominated industry anymore there are a lot of women following kind of what I do and franchisees coming through and I think it does some of this work does need a bit of a female touch so I think that's great for the industry yeah absolutely can I ask you how you deal with um any kind of negative comments and things whether it's regarding you know a client's property and the content of the video or something you've done or an opinion you've shared like what is your way to respond do you post something explaining trying to justify or you know what what's what's your approach it depends i have done videos explaining and trying to justify myself in the past i think it depends what i'm being criticized for and how important it is for me to explain or have people understand.

29:15If somebody is questioning my motives or my values or somebody gets the wrong end of the stick and I feel like something's quite unjust, I might respond with a polite video reply, explaining. Sometimes it's a ridiculous comment about my fringe or something and it's literally irrelevant to anything and I don't value someone's opinion of what my hair looks like so I won't ever respond I never respond with anything nasty even if somebody's really rude to me I try to be really polite back and respond with kindness and use it as an opportunity to raise awareness and I think that again from a business point of view it always looks better than in you know getting into some sort of keyboard warrior fight um but I try not to let things bother me I am quite a thick skinner.

30:05I don't value a lot of people's opinion and I think you have to have that mindset. But obviously I am human. Sometimes someone says something and I'm like, oh gosh, they've taken that completely out of context. I need to explain because I don't want people thinking that. But I think if you responded to everything, that would, you know, you just can't.

30:27Victoria Gordan:No, and I think it's sometimes how people conceive. It's a misconception, isn't it? because 99 % of your audience haven't picked up on whatever it is. Yeah, you might have 100 positive comments and one negative one. But, you know, it's the one negative one that sticks a bit more. That's just human nature, I think, though. Yeah, definitely. And I guess if you learn over time, like, again, through doing it, through putting yourself out there, maybe if you'd received something at the start of this journey, it might have cut a bit more deep. but the more you get used to the type of comments and the things that come through and yeah you see that it's faceless account or something yeah well that's it when it's coming from a stranger and usually you can tell if it's even a person or not quite often it's just a troll account I think it's harder when it comes from somebody that you know personally like a friend or family member or even just an acquaintance someone knows you when they're like actively criticizing you it can be a bit more stingy.

31:26I mean, even when we first, I have touched on this on my socials before, but when we first decided to franchise, we had a promo video made and a mutual friend voice noted to say how embarrassing it was and I was humiliating myself and absolutely ridiculous to delete it immediately. and I literally, it just put more fire in my belly to prove a point. And I hope that that person is watching my socials now because 18 months later, we've already got six franchises covering half of the UK.

32:03Victoria Gordan:Yeah. And the plan is to be, you know, UK-wide. So what if I listened to that person? Yeah. And I deleted the video and decided I can't franchise because you know one person says i'm embarrassing myself you've got to kind of have the confidence and the gumption in your own self-belief really but not everybody has that so i do understand how hard it is and when people are critical you know it is easy to listen to other people but i think you have to just stick to your guns well that's it i think i think often we we rely too much on other people to justify our own beliefs and if that if you've got any self-doubt whatsoever and then somebody says something like that to you you're naturally going to shut down aren't you and remove any anything you've posted or shared and close up but you know good on you for trusting your own instinct and and the end of the day it's your your goals and what you want to do with your brand isn't it that's the important thing um you know even if it doesn't work you find another way don't you and you know you try things but you've got to i think that is the interesting thing about personal branding and what stops people in the first place experimenting is you've got to put yourself out there to see what works to see what can help grow and what doesn't work to then try something else or adapt and change and uh you know if you were to look back on your story we've obviously touched on like you know the the milestones but there will be bits in between those where you've tried something gone yeah you know it's not that you just signed up to tiktok and you are off you know your content will have changed to have to engage more people and things like that you know and it's it's all part of a process yeah definitely so vicky in every episode we share an action step that our listeners can put into place have you got anything anything that they could do today that will help move their personal brands forward so i just think if there's anything that you've been putting off or you've kind of know that you need to do but you've been thinking, oh, I don't do that, or what will people think, I think just get it done.

34:12Just take that step, be brave, and whether it's opposed or something else, just try not to think. Everyone's going to judge you regardless of what you do, so you might as well be judged for trying. If it goes wrong, it doesn't matter.

34:30Victoria Gordan:And we want to know your success stories as well, So definitely contact us at the brand new podcast with whatever you take from this episode. You go, you know what, that thing I've been putting off, I'm going to give it a go. But there's no way you get on because even if it works or doesn't work, it's always good to hear. And imagine 10 years from now, like where you could be and what business you could have if you do just move forward through those things. Because you're a testament to that, Vicky. Like what you've grown is brilliant. And I'm actually really, I'm really glad that I was there at the beginning stages.

35:01And I've seen this because it inspires me and it gives me that push to keep going with things as well. And I'm sure you do that for many other people as well. So thank you so much for coming on today. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.

35:16Victoria Gordan:Cool. Do the follow bit. Yep, I'll do the little wrap up bit. So thanks everyone for joining us for this episode of the brand new podcast. Don't forget to like and subscribe on whichever platform you're listening to. And if you have any questions about your personal branding journey whatsoever, don't hesitate to contact Kaz and I at the Brand New Podcast and we'll be more than happy to help and support. Here's to branding you.