Inside Crime Scene & Hoarding Cleanup With Alex Philbrick

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Introduction

Stephanie: Hello, everyone. Welcome, or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host Stephanie from Serene Clean, and guys, I have been so looking forward to this conversation with Mr. Alex Philbrick. He is the owner and operator of T.A.C.T. Central Arkansas, and this is the first time in Serene or Serene Clean, my business, Filthy Rich Cleaners history that we have spoken to an owner who does the specific type of work that Alex does. And I crowdsource questions from the mastermind. I asked my cleaners. I thought a question, so I was like, I need to utilize this opportunity to its fullest. Alex, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the podcast.

Alex: Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m very excited to join and discuss, you know, the world of the cleaning businesses, which I guess we are different, but we both fall under that category. So, yeah, I’m glad you invited me on, and it’s nice to be here.

Stephanie: Yeah, and shout out to Jesse, our mutual friend who connected us. I was so happy when she made that connection. So, Alex, tell the folks that are listening what all services do you offer at T.A.C.T.?

Alex: So the two main services that we offer and that we get the most calls for sure, are biohazard remediation, which falls which includes things like blood cleanup, suicide cleanup, crime scene, unattended death. It doesn’t have to be a death. Like I said, it could just be a blood cleanup or something like that. And then hoarding cleanouts, which is a kind of a umbrella term, because it can be a situation where a house looks like one that you’ve seen on the episode of the show Hoarders. We’ve had many of those, but it could also mean like someone needs their garage cleaned out, or they have one room in their house that needs cleaned out, or they just kind of have too much stuff and are overwhelmed, or maybe they can’t get around very well and they just need some help with that. So those are the two most common types of jobs that or services that we offer. We also do like rodent, rodent dropping cleanup and sanitizing those areas, and we’ll also just do odor treatment. And yeah, those are the most common ones. We do a little bit of mold jobs if it’s small and it’s something that we can just like know we can cut out and treat. But yeah, those are pretty much our main services and all the things that we do.

Stephanie: Yeah, and obviously, for me, I’m so intrigued by every single area, and I want to touch on every area, of course, because we don’t do any of those things at Serene Clean. We have done light, I would say light to medium hoarding jobs where it’s like we’ve come in and just cleared everything out into a dumpster. But those are few and far between because I personally want to be on those jobs. One, I think it’s fun. Two, from a, you know, just liability standpoint, it’s just not normal for us. But dang, are those fun to do? But again, we’re usually hired by like a landlord or something, not the actual individual itself. I could imagine that is way more emotionally taxing because you’re going through somebody right in front of you stuff. So tell me about it.

Alex: Yeah, I mean, that has happened to us several times, and sometimes it’s fine. Sometimes they’re actually helpful because they are, you know, providing clarity and instruction and on things that we aren’t sure about. But then there’s definitely other times where it’s like, not only are you slowing us down, but you’re not helping yourself because you’re not allowing us to get rid of things that you need to. But yeah, it’s something you have to navigate. But it, I honestly thought that it would be more a more prevalent of a thing whenever I first started this. I thought I would have guessed like most of our hoarding cleanouts would be would have somebody like that who is not that, not that, don’t, no, no, I want to keep that, and it’s like, but it doesn’t happen quite as often as I expected to. But we still have encountered it for sure.

Stephanie: I gotcha. Okay, so I have so many questions. I actually, I usually never write questions down before podcasts, but I did not want to forget anything because I have so many. So let’s just start from the beginning. I want to know, Alex, what did you do before this job? And when you were considering opening this business, was it more just general cleaning, or did you know right away that this is what you want to do? So I want to know your background.

Taking Over a T.A.C.T. Franchise

Alex: Yeah, so we’re a franchise. We are one of two franchises in the state. The other one is in Northwest Arkansas, a few hours away from us, and so they pretty much just take care of that corner, and then we do the rest of the state, the rest of Arkansas. But I had the previous owner of our franchise, T.A.C.T. Central Arkansas, was a friend of mine, and when he was doing this job, I worked for him off and on for a couple years, just helping on jobs. So that’s how I just knew about it in general, and I did all kinds of jobs with him. You know, felt like I could do any type of job. Obviously, I needed to learn a lot about the business side of things and some other stuff about just operational things. But I recently, before I started, before I took over this business, I was buying, selling, trading sports cards. Oh, I know that sounds funny.

Stephanie: Cards or cars?

Alex: Yeah, cards.

Stephanie: Ah.

Alex: Yes, I know that, sounds, but it’s a huge, a huge industry now since COVID. But anyway, that’s what I was doing. And one day, I was actually driving back from St. Louis when I was going to meet a guy to pick up some cards from him. And my previous owner, my friend, called me, and he just, he was like, “Hey, I’m looking to sell T.A.C.T.” And I just, I know that you had express, I’d express interest in the Northwest Arkansas franchise, but we, me, my wife, and I passed. We were just newly married, and it just wasn’t, wasn’t right. But so he said, “You know, I know you expressed interest. I just wanted to give you a, like, let you know before I just start finding, trying to find anybody.” And so, you know, my wife and I just talked about it and kind of figured some things out and decided to go for it, and that was about, let’s see, May, June of 2023. So we’ve been about three and a half years now, yeah, and it’s just a good opportunity we thought, and so far we think it’s been working out well. So we’re glad that it happened.

Stephanie: Did you guys have to move because of the region that you were in, or it was it still was feasible?

Alex: No, yeah, we lived in Little Rock already.

Stephanie: Perfect.

Alex: And so that was, yeah, that was no issue.

Training and the Benefits of a Franchise

Stephanie: Nice. Okay. So let’s get into the startup, the licensing, the training before we get into any more nitty gritty. I want to know how did you become qualified to do these jobs? As T.A.C.T. being that it is a franchise, provide all of that education because I would have nowhere, no idea where to start.

Alex: Yeah, so every new franchise owner is required to go through T.A.C.T. training. Yeah, owner training, I guess what you would call it. But you, we’re our, I would say our headquarters, like T.A.C.T. headquarters, are in St. Louis, and so I, you know, I went up there for I think it’s three or four days, and each day you just go over different things from regarding the entire business, not just like here’s how you do this type of job. That is that is part of it, but it’s also like here’s how you should like develop your marketing strategy. Here’s you know all the different tools that you can use that we’re going to provide for you. Covers every everything you could imagine. You know, at least in general terms. Obviously, there’s specifics that you know nobody could, could cover or know that are going to happen, but so yeah, we do that. Part of it is there’s some OSHA training involved in that, also that’s part of that training, and everybody, yeah, like I said, everybody is required to do it, and also like employees or yeah, people who work for you who are going to be doing jobs without you, without your direct supervision, they also are required to go through training before they are allowed to do that without you know having your direct supervision. So yeah, everybody, they provide the training, and you can, you know, one great thing about T.A.C.T. is our founder, I guess his name’s Matt. He, you know, he’s a text message away, and so you always have support and help when you need it, which is, I don’t, I would assume that’s probably not the necessarily the norm. You know, we’re still growing as a overall company. We are adding new franchises all the time, but you know, just having that direct line of communication to him always, and to all the other franchise owners, is also a big help.

Stephanie: You know, I typically poo-poo on franchises. I’m like, just do it yourself. But I could really see the benefit of going the franchise route with this specific niche, because it is so niche. I would feel it. You know, the more broad something is, like just general residential or commercial cleaning, right? That feels like, why go the franchise route? But I can completely see the benefit. So I’d love to hear for you what has been the main benefits of going the franchise route in this.

Alex: You know, this, the support that you receive, and like you said, it’s a niche industry, and so it’s you. There are things that go into it that I there was no. There’s no reason that I would have. I wouldn’t have had any reason to know about, you know, before I started doing this, or how to do certain things before I started doing this. So obviously that is a huge help, you know, and just the credibility. I would say just starting. I would. I feel like, you know, not that it’s, not that it’s impossible or anything. Obviously not, but just starting out from scratch with this kind of business, it’s like, well, what? I don’t know. I feel like I would think, what makes you qualified to do this, or how do I? Are you? You just know how to properly clean up these types of messes? That seems like I might be a little skeptical of that, and maybe people aren’t. I don’t know, but yeah, I would just say those, those couple things are have been very beneficial to us for sure.

Stephanie: I can imagine. Okay, I want to just dig into the listeners’ questions because I have so many. Okay, so number one, I think you said in your intake form you use contractors when necessary, right? You don’t have any staff members.

Alex: That’s correct. Like full-time employees, yeah, I don’t have any.

Stephanie: Is that because I would imagine just like post-construction is hard to staff regularly because the jobs? It’s like one-off jobs, right? It’s not like you’re having hopefully recurring murders happening in a building, but you know, the recurring basis of a job that’s not really possible in this niche, right? So you have like, it makes a lot of sense to have ICs.

Alex: That’s exactly right. Yeah, it. I would like to, and there are some franchises that do that, are able to have full-time employees, and I hope to, hope to get there. But you’re exactly right. Just the inconsistency at times, it just makes it really hard to hire people full time and be able to give them enough stuff to do to make their, you know, make it worth the pay that you’ll have to give them and all that stuff. So yeah, you hit the nail on the head there.

Stephanie: That makes perfect sense.

Pricing Hoarding and Biohazard Jobs

Stephanie: Okay, so let’s start with pricing and business economics as the topic. So, I, my hypothesis is that the typical price points on these jobs that’s a question from Rochelle in the mastermind, is going to be higher, but maybe I’m off base. Maybe you do have small jobs with, you know, like just like we got a little blood that we need to clean up or something like that. So considering also how much you have to pay somebody, I would imagine, like, what are we talking about with your average job price? If you even could pull that out of a hat, those types of numbers.

Alex: The first thing you’re mentioning, like smaller jobs, we do have those sometimes. If it’s just like our basic odor treatment, that’s we just we. If people call about that, they we just tell them it’s $650 for our basic odor treatment, and yeah, that’s that. We’ve had a few smaller jobs, like if somebody just has like a smell in their car, or if somebody just has like, I don’t know, something that is going to take us no time or or like no effort basically. Those are going to be smaller, but for so for bio cleanup jobs, let’s start there. It’s a little bit. There’s a different aspect or factor that goes into that, and that is that if we are able to bill someone’s homeowners insurance for that type of work, we obviously do, and so that’s a huge factor as far as like pricing and just the money side of things goes for those types of jobs. For hoarding jobs, I just go look at them, or I have a like a lead tech that will go look at them, and then I just base my I just find a number where like I can compare it to a previous job, or I kind of know, you know, how long, about how long it’s going to take us. How gross is it? I mean, to be honest, like, how much? The main expense or the main factor that goes into pricing those jobs is how many dumpsters are we going to need and what size, and because that’s the biggest cost. And then, you know, how long is it going to take us? And that’s how I come up with, you know, about how much pay am I going to have to pay people? And then, you know, I just compare it to a previous job that we’ve had because we’ve had a bunch now, so that’s nice to have. I would say just your average hoarding cleanout will range from, I would say, four thousand up to eight thousand, maybe. I mean, we’ve had, we’ve had some that are over that are like our biggest ones, or yeah, the most severe cases. But, you know, I would say that’s probably in the range. And then for a bio cleanup, just on average, that’s, I’d say, somewhere. I mean, probably somewhere similar in that similar range, maybe a little bit higher. But it people, and I understand people who call almost. I would say at least eighty percent of them will say something like, “What are y’all’s general price ranges or ballpark price?” And I would do the same thing if I were in their position. So it doesn’t bother me at all. But it’s just so it can be so different based on the situation. It’s a job-by-job thing. That’s why we like to, you know, be able to go look at it ourselves before we give a price estimate. And even sometimes after we do that, I’ll give them a range because I’m like, this is a lot of stuff. I don’t know if it’s going to be four dumpsters or four and a half or five. So this is the price range that we should be in, and you know, we’ll see where it comes out as far as as as far as that goes. But yeah, I don’t have like a set rate for these types of jobs other than, well, could you? Yeah, but yeah, that’s why I was curious. And a lot of times, people are taken aback or surprised by like, because I mean, and I’ll tell people that this is expensive work. You know, this is, you know, we have to be specialized in this, and it’s, it not to be flippant, but it’s a lot of times it’s stuff that other people don’t want to do. And I understand, if I wasn’t getting paid to do it, I probably wouldn’t.

Stephanie: High demand.

Alex: Yeah.

Stephanie: Exactly. Yeah. So low supply for sure.

Alex: Yeah, and so I understand when people are like, “Oh, I was expecting to be like, you know, a thousand dollars at the most,” and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m going to have to pay two thousand dollars for dumpsters just by themselves.” But again, like I said already, I don’t. If I wouldn’t have, if I didn’t do this job, I would have no clue how much this kind of stuff costs anyway. Either so, it’s not like something that annoys me at all.

Stephanie: I totally understand it, but all of us being in the cleaning industry, I would have I have zero bearing. That’s why I’m like, I don’t know. I have no idea how something like that would cost. And when I think about, you know, how we estimate in a normal house, right? We’re looking at our production rates. We’re looking at the size of the home. But when I think about hoarder situations that I’ve seen, I mean the layers. It could be, I mean, just multiple layers within a home that you have to get through. So when it comes to, you know, how we estimate for residential or commercial, we’re looking at production rates, right? How fast we can clean a space based on, you know, averages from previous jobs. And is there any type of calculation in your mind, or is it truly this is about as bad as that job was? So, therefore, and it’s just a trial and error of learning for you.

Alex: Yeah, there’s some calculation. I mean, obviously, I know the prices that we’re going to have to pay for our expenses generally, and if I’m kind of can’t figure out where my good starting point for a certain job, I will our rate usually comes out to somewhere between twenty-two hundred or, two yeah, twenty-two hundred to twenty-seven hundred dollars a day for these for hoarding cleanouts specifically. So if I’m ever kind of, you know, stuck trying to figure that out, I’ll just kind of use that to ballpark it, and then I’ll, you know, do my expenses and all that stuff, and then see where I come out and adjust from there. So that’s, I guess, that’s probably the only calculation. But I mean, obviously, you know, how many days is this going to take us? With how many workers, I think we could, we’re going to have. That’s that’s something I think of for sure. But as far as like, if you mean like square footage, you know, times whatever, I don’t really, I don’t do it that way. That is that is helpful information to know, just because it can kind of give me an idea of how you know big it is and how much, how much stuff might be in there and all that stuff, or how long it might take us. But yeah, as far as like specific calculations, not, not anything besides those things that I just mentioned.

Stephanie: No, that makes sense. The day rate does make sense. And when you say a hoarder cleanout, do you give? Because when I think of situations where we’ve done just simply the cleanout, and then you know, landlords coming in to gut it, right? So we don’t have to actually then clean, right? But when you price a cleanout, do you mean literally clean space out and then physically clean it like a house cleaning?

Alex: So that’s actually how I got in touch with Jesse. So, I a lot of times people, and a lot of times I get calls that are just think that we’re a cleaning service. But, so, but I do have clients that will ask for a, you know, so does this include a deep clean afterwards, or you know, if we’re talking about expectations of what it’s going to look like when we’re finished? Or now that I’ve partnered with Jesse, I’ll offer it more often because I know that I can. I’m going to contract them out to come in and do a deep clean after we’re finished with what we’re going to do. And I’ve always, anytime someone’s asked, I’ve always said we can include that if you would like us to. And usually, I’ll just say, I’ll be honest. I’m going to contract it out, but if you want us to still, I’ll take care of you know finding somebody, scheduling them, paying them, and all that stuff. And a lot of times people say yes, but so that’s, yeah, we don’t do the like deep clean our aspect ourselves. We have for like one job, and I just wasn’t able to find anybody to come do the deep clean. So that’s why. But yeah, in general, no. We just, we’ll get any anything you want out, and we do demo demo work too. With the bio jobs, sometimes it’s, it has to be done to you know, fully clean it. But we’ve had a couple, we’ve had some jobs too that are like, yeah, I want this. I’m going to take, get this whole countertop taken out in the kitchen, so you don’t have to worry about… And I’m like, well, if you want us to, we can do that. And they’re like, okay, cool.

Stephanie: That makes perfect sense. A good partnership opportunity. Yeah, we do the same thing with our local Servpro, where they give us jobs, we give them jobs of, because they do way above anything. I don’t think they do. Maybe they do crime scene cleanup or death?

Alex: Some, some of their locations do some of those. Yeah, yeah, based on my experience.

Stephanie: So I think that’s a perfect opportunity for partnerships. From the sound of it, okay, that is good pricing. So, when it comes to recurring clients, like meaning somebody you work with, what does that look like? Could there be? I mean, do you have any clients that you have done multiple jobs for? So, I’m thinking like hotel chains, apartment complexes, municipal agencies. Like, I’m assuming there’s like a preferred partnership thing that you could apply for in some flavor.

Alex: I probably need to look into that specifically. What you just said, I’m not sure, but I we’ve had some recurring clients, like, like you said, apartment complexes, just multi places where a bunch of people live. Yeah. Whether it’s an apartment or whatever, we and we’ve had there’s one in particular we’ve done several jobs for, and then we’ve had a few that have that are just normal people who we’ve helped out more than once. You know, there’s the there’s been somebody who just struggled with their health, and they we cleaned out their apartment once, and then a couple months later, they’re like, “I need help again.” And then there’s like people out of town who had elderly parents that live near Central Arkansas, and so they’re, you know, it was just kind of, a they needed things done, but, in I guess, they needed to space it out a little bit, kind of. But they, you know, they’re like, “Well, hey, we’re coming back to town.” “Can y’all come help us again?” That kind of thing. So, which is, I mean, I think that’s great. Obviously, just that, because that tells me that we did a good job and they liked us. So I’m always, I’m always happy when that happens. But trying to think if there’s been any more. I know actually last week I went to do an estimate and I was driving to the house when I pulled up in front of the house. I was like, this, I’ve been here before. I walked in the house and I was like, yep, we’ve done a job here before. We just like cleaned up their living room and kitchen, and I guess it was two years ago. So, you know, a lot of time has passed. I think it looks like it’s gotten bad again, but so they’re needing help again. So, you know, those are obviously not you don’t want to see that happen to people, but it does. So you know they need help whenever that does happen. So you know we’re always looking to help again. But like you said, the most common ones would be people who manage hotels, apartment complexes, you know, anything like that.

Stephanie: Sure, no, that makes perfect sense.

Startup Costs

Stephanie: Okay, so Amanda has a question about startup costs. Like, if I was wanting to add these services, and maybe you could split them up, biohazard versus hoarding separately. If you think it’s different, so if I wanted to add this, Jenny is just attacking at my microphone right now. If I wanted to add these services, when it comes to training, PPE, insurance, equipment, I mean, again, I’m not holding you to these numbers, but are we talking thousands and thousands? I mean, I’m assuming for especially equipment.

Alex: Yeah. So, because I bought from a, yeah, already existing franchise, my startup costs and for all that was not the normal way. Like, if I if we would not had a franchise in Central Arkansas and I was just wanting to start one under T.A.C.T., I didn’t. It wasn’t the same for me. Having said that, I would think that if you’re wanting to add like the bio, yeah, you’re gonna have to have all the PPE, the OSHA training, and what yeah OSHA training and all that stuff, your chemicals, and you know, just miscellaneous supplies and equipment like that. If you’re just starting a T.A.C.T. or opening up a T.A.C.T. franchise from scratch in an area that doesn’t have one, I want to say that it’s and this includes everything that, which, you know. If you were just starting to want to add bio services, you wouldn’t have to do it through T.A.C.T., obviously. So I don’t, it wouldn’t be quite the same. But I want to say the startup cost is expected to be like ninety to one hundred twenty thousand or so, and that, you know, that includes like, I have a, I have a box trailer where I, that I haul stuff around in, and I got, you know, a lot of supplies and equipment from the, from whenever I took over from the previous owner, so that helped our startup. Start our startup cost a lot. But yeah, I mean, you just, the things would add up, even if they’re small, compared like something that costs maybe a two three hundred dollars. It’s like, that’s oh well, that’s nothing, compared to I have to buy a trailer and I have to have a vehicle that can pull a trailer and I have to. It’s but there’s several of those types of things, so they obviously do add up. But for hoarding, I mean, really, if you dumpsters is going to be your biggest thing, and then people that are willing to help. Other than that, it’s just, you know, some masks and gloves and stuff like that. The bio is where you have to have, you know, the suits and the full respirators and all the stuff, and you know, the ozone machines and the chemicals and all that stuff. So, you know, yeah, the bio would be more expensive to just add. I would think than the hoarding would, but yeah, that’s like I said, we didn’t have to do the regular startup cost for everything just because we were, we already existed. I guess before we became the owner.

Stephanie: I’m curious with T.A.C.T. Do you know if any of the other franchisees have normal services that they offer? Like, meaning, like a residential or commercial cleaning company that then buys into the franchise to add this? Do you happen to know, or are they all like, this is what we do? We don’t do normal cleaning.

Alex: As far as I know, there’s not any, any that have any deals like that. I’m not. I guess I can’t say I’m a hundred percent sure, but I haven’t heard of any, any of them doing that. As far as I know, they’re just kind of like I was saying, where they have partners, where if you know, hey, we’ll refer you or contract you out, and then if you get calls, you know, goes both ways. But yeah, I don’t, I don’t know if any that have that have become, you know, part of their actual business in the way that you were saying.

Stephanie: Yeah, obviously, we’ll, we’ll link all that information down below because anybody wants to look into a franchise location, I think that this would be a great opportunity to do so.

Finding and Paying Independent Contractors

Stephanie: Okay, so because you do independent contractors for your jobs, how do you find those people? Obviously, I’m sure you have like a some regulars now that you work with, but if you’re looking for a new IC to bring on to your network, how do you find them? How are you finding these people? And how do you advertise it?

Alex: Yeah, I, that’s a it’s tough sometimes, especially. I don’t know if it’s easier, and depending on the area, I’ve only had experience in this area. But yeah, it’s definitely tough. I have one. I have a guy who’s done, who’s been with me since the, since we, you know, took over three and a half years ago. He’s done most jobs with me. I would say probably eighty percent of the jobs we’ve had. He’s been with me. He’s done every type of job with me, and he, you know, is very experienced at this point. And he’s somebody I’ve known for a while, so I just know him personally. I’ve had workers from through like Labor Finders and temp agencies like that. I’ve had just it’s, like, just make connections. Like, I went to, I went to a school for college called Harding University here, just outside Little Rock. I know people that are still I still know people that have a lot of connections there. I know people that are on their football coaching staff. One last, yeah, a year and a half ago, they posted on Facebook like, “Hey, we have a lot of players who are going to be here over the summer instead of going back home.” If you have any job opportunities or need work, like let me know, and we can get pass out your phone number, and they can, you know. And so I did that, and so the past two summers I’ve, you know, used a couple of those guys when when needed. I have a relative who’s a high school, a high school teacher, and so during the summers he’s off, and so he’s helped me whenever he’s during the summer because he doesn’t, he doesn’t have to go to school, obviously. So I would say my situation regarding that isn’t like the definitely is not a blueprint, or is it’s probably not even. I don’t know how common it is for that type of situation, but I just kind of find people where I can, and yeah, I’ve had I had another guy who was very consistent with us. He just he moved away a year or so ago, and so you know, losing him, that hurt because there was like me, and you know, I had two guys that I could rely on, and they were great, and now I just have one of them because he doesn’t live here anymore, but yeah, so just kind of find people where I can, and I know some other franchises in bigger cities are like, “Oh, well, we can we use this website or this app or whatever,” and we and they just probably have a bigger pool to pick from, but yeah, just kind of make it work or figure out ways to find people however I can.

Stephanie: I mean, I would imagine it’s very similar to just what all of us cleaning business owners do, is that a lot of times it’s word of mouth, it’s you know, networking, obviously we post on Indeed, that type of thing. So, however you would normally get independent contractors, just obviously these jobs pay, I would imagine a lot more. I mean, when are do you pay a day rate or are you paying them hourly or a percentage of the job?

Alex: Perhaps I just kind of base it on the job, and I mean I’ll roughly have an hourly rate that I am going to at least pay, and you know, is and… I might, I might, I might not pay everyone the same, depending on you know how long they’ve been with me and how you know how much they’re doing and all that stuff. But you know, I guess what I, how I, how I like to put it is I want to pay like fair based on the, based on that job, based on your the value that you provided for that job. And that doesn’t mean that I’m like, if you, if I, you know, find somebody however and they come to work for me, I’m, and they didn’t, I let’s say I didn’t think they did a great job or like they weren’t you know working hard or whatever, I’m not going to say well you weren’t very valuable, so I’m not going to pay you. It’s not like that. It’s just like, if we have a hoarding job that is all day, you know, we’re working eight hours or whatever, then I might. But then, compared to a bio cleanup where it’s gross and like a lot of, you know, technical, more technical work, and a lot of dealing with, you know, gross, you know, substances, I guess, but maybe it only takes us two to three hours. I’m not going to pay that person. Well, here’s your hourly rate, and then your hourly rate for both jobs are the same because it’s like, if that, let’s say, that job is a five thousand dollar bill, I’m not going to pay them seventy five or a hundred and twenty five dollars when, if they, you know, it’s just me and them. It’s like, well, you provided a lot more work, a lot more help, and a lot more value, even if it didn’t take as much time. That’s a long winded answer, but…

Stephanie: So I could see, like, basically a minimum in your mind, and you would go up from the minimum if…

Alex: Yeah, for sure. Like a crazy job, if, like I said, it’s just me and one other person and we’re doing a suicide cleanup or something. It’s like, yeah. I mean, this is going to be a good money for us, and we’re having to do some kind of gross work in a lot of situations. And so, I’m not just going to pay you a thirty, thirty-five, forty dollars an hour rate for that because it doesn’t reflect the value that you provided for this and the help that you provided.

Stephanie: That sounds really fair and very nuanced, and that you can’t give a blanket answer because there’s such a wide variety of jobs that you see. Which, of course, we’re going to get into.

Alex: Yeah, and for you know, for like a hoarding job that is multiple days and you know pretty much full days, then it’s a little easier to figure up just because I’m more likely to at least loosely go by an hourly structure. Just when I’m adding it up in my mind, it’s just easier to kind of figure it up that way. And then whatever number I land on, if I think, ah, you know, I’ll do, I’ll add, you know, a hundred dollars or fifty dollars to whatever that number is, but it’s just yeah, it’s those really the bio jobs that I don’t really go by hourly rate.

Stephanie: That was super helpful. I appreciate you being transparent because I want to give people tactical, like, this is what you can expect from this if they want to get into it, not just like the stories that I wanted to ask you of. I want to actually know, like, okay, cool. How would you actually go about this? So, thank you for your transparency.

Handling the Mental Toll

Stephanie: Okay, when it comes to like mental and physical toll, obviously we want to get into more of like the nuance of the job. When you first started doing it, I’m sure your friend that you eventually bought the business from, like he was very honest with what it was. What was your hesitancy getting into it, considering the type of work, especially when it comes to like the death cleanup and the biohazard? What do you think it is about you that allows you to be able to do that? Because I think a lot of people would not be able to do this.

Alex: That’s a good question. I don’t. I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought about that. Just for me personally, I mean, obviously having experience on these types of jobs. I mean, not only did I know how to do them, but I had seen, I’d been exposed to pretty much any, anything that I’ve seen as the owner. I already have helped on those jobs. I’ve seen all those scenes that we come upon. But so I don’t. I just got used to it. I don’t know why it didn’t really bother me from the jump. It was a long time ago. I’m sure there probably was. I did. There was an aspect of like, kind of took me a minute to get to be okay being around it, but yeah, I don’t, I’m not really. I don’t really know why I’m able to get used to it easily. It doesn’t bother me.

Stephanie: Yeah. Are you able to? Do you think compartmentalize or maybe like almost numb yourself to what it actually is? Because otherwise, you’re able to do it.

Alex: Yeah. I mean, that’s and I tell people all the time, like people that call me for you know potential clients, like I especially with hoarding, they’ll be like, yeah, this is a level four, level five hoarding situation, and blah blah blah. It’s so terrible. I don’t even. And sometimes they’re right. Sometimes it’s not that it’s not that bad, just because I can compare it to other situations. But I always tell people like I’m desensitized to this just because of my line of work. Like, you feeling the way you do about this is normal. Like, I’m the abnormal one here. Like, not being bothered or not being like super fazed by this. So, don’t feel like you are overreacting or anything. If I didn’t do this line of work and I came upon my relatives’ house that was in this condition, I would be like, oh my gosh, what? This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. So, I understand people are, you know, they don’t feel the same way that I do about them. And, there are some situations where I’m grossed out. I mean, I’m grossed out by a lot of them, but I can just kind of ignore it. Or, there’s some that I’m like, you know, for the bio side of things, that are very sad situations, and I, you know, nobody wants to have to deal with that. But, I, the way I think about those is like, you know, these people need help in this situation, and you know that’s what we’re providing, and so you know that helps at least me personally not you know get this sounds like I’m making the light of the situation, but like too too bogged down by sadder or unfortunate situations when it comes to like the bio side of things.

Stephanie: You have to be, yeah, very action-oriented. I would imagine, of like, okay, this is the job. I’m getting this job done because getting emotional about it. I’m assuming it’s very similar. I would imagine to a lot of how like law enforcement or first responders, like, it’s, you’re seeing the aftermath. They’re, you know, potentially coming up on the scene, but I’m sure that a lot of those folks need to be able to, like, you got to turn it off, not fully off, but like, you got to get your job done.

Alex: Yeah, for sure, and I mean, especially when you’re like, it’s time to actually do the do the job. You know, there’s a lot of, what’s the word? I don’t know. Deal when like having to talk to people who are crying on the phone, or just you know talking to somebody in person who’s very upset, or you know. So you have to be able to handle people in that way, and you know, be caring and compassionate. But then once it’s time, like okay, like thank you, we’ll go get started. It’s like okay, now we just have to just do the job, like you said. So that for me, that makes things easier, just because I now I have something else to I need to think about, and so that’s what I’m going to think about, and you know, we need to get the job done. So that does help me, you know, be able to just compartmentalize a little bit easier.

How After-Death Cleanups Work

Stephanie: So when I knew I was going to have you on, I was curious about things, and I couldn’t wait because I was like, who even hires, like, for example, an after-death cleaner? And I was shocked. Like, I just assumed it was like the police or your insurance or something handles it. But explain the process of somebody passing in our home. How does this work? Like, walk me through the process. Whether it is actually like suspicious circumstances, and they have to, like, it’s a potential murder. Like, and so, like, how does that timeline look when you come in to clean versus clear, heart attack, or somebody you know, somebody pass away, natural causes? They get the body out, and then the family call you? Does their insurance call? Like, how is this process?

Alex: I’ve had. I mean, we market to first responders a lot, so because and a lot of especially police, a lot of them will tell you know, we can’t direct directly refer a one specific business to people, but maybe they have a pamphlet that has, hey, here’s the people who do this in our area. So you’re like, yeah, well, I want to get my name on there. So usually it would be them referring or like telling a family member or whoever, hey, here’s some people you can call if you need to get this taken care of, or if they ask, you know, what do I do about this? Then they’ll do that. Most commonly, we get a call from a family member or a friend of that person. But you know, I’ve had a couple from an that started from an insurance. I’ve had a few referral partnerships that have given me, you know, given me some jobs. But like you said, most commonly it is a family member or a friend. So they would just call me and say, “It also depends on if it’s emergency situation or not,” but they’ll just call and say, “Explain the situation,” or, “Yeah, explain the situation,” and then we’ll just, if they, if they’re, if they’re feeling like wanting to get bids on it or estimates, you know, we’ll obviously schedule that. If they’re just wanting somebody to come there, or sometimes I’ll say, “I can, we can come there ready to do the job right now,” and then, but when we get there, I’ll go in, look at it, and give you a price estimate, and then if you want to do us, we can start right then. So that’s just kind of generally the most common way that it goes, but like you said, the body’s always gone. Anytime it’s a homicide scene or like a something that needs to be checked out by the police, it’s always cleared before we go in. Yeah, and so we don’t, like I said, we don’t ever see a body or anything. But, and I haven’t, I haven’t run into any situation where I’ve had to be like, wait, hold on. So the police haven’t been here, or I’m sure that’s happened, but like with other franchises or something, maybe it will for me as time goes on. But I haven’t had to deal with anything like that yet. It’s always been pretty, you know, pretty easy and clear as far as you know, police clearing the scene and all that stuff before we get there.

Stephanie: Yeah, one of that was one of my questions because maybe you haven’t had the situation or like what, like, what would you do, perhaps, if it was a homicide? Police cleared it, and then you found something that, like, do you cross? Do they give you photos to cross? Like, what if the police miss something on the crime scene? You come and clean up, right? Like, how would you know?

Alex: I was just about to say that’s a good question, but I don’t, I don’t know that how I would. I don’t know that I’d be able to know if it was something.

Stephanie: Yeah, exactly.

Alex: Like, I would just probably either not even think about it being possible evidence, or I would think that you know they already saw it. There’s, there’s really, there’s only been one that, at least that comes to mind, where that was a shooting. I don’t know that it was homicide, just because of the details of the situation. But anyway, where? But there was like bullet holes in the wall. But there was like little sticky notes that you see on, like, you know, TV shows, cop shows, or stuff that were like marking, like, evidential, you know, things because, you know, there was a lot of shooting. And that scene had been cleared. But that was the only time that I’d been like, oh, I guess this is for, like, evidence, because other times I haven’t, I haven’t seen anything like that. But yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think I’d be able to tell if I could. If I could tell, I’d be like, wait, I guess we need to. We probably need to call the police department, I guess, and let them know. But yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know. I don’t. I guess I hope that doesn’t happen. But it would be kind of. It could be kind of interesting. Maybe fun.

Stephanie: Yeah, because like you’d have to have something to reference, of like, this is what they took photos of, this, you know, like something you found, you found something embedded, or I don’t know. But obviously that’s on them if they miss it.

Insurance Coverage

Stephanie: So yeah, that was just something coming back to the insurance, like, of it all. So do you know? Do most homeowners insurance policies cover cleanup? Is that something that, like, I’ve never thought of this before? So I’m like, is this an insurance thing that you can be like, hey, somebody died in my house. I need to get this cleaned up?

Alex: In my experience, most do. I’ve only had, I mean, maybe a couple that they, that their insurance denied their claim, or, and you know, didn’t pay for it. But there’s really, I know of one for sure, and I’m just thinking there probably is one more that’s happened that I’m not thinking of right now. But yes, as far as I know, and it probably depends on what kind of policy they have. But there hasn’t been now. I’ve had, I’ve had a few where the insurance company doesn’t agree with my pricing on the invoice, and you know, there’s been some.

Stephanie: Oh, insurance companies are the worst.

Alex: Yeah, I don’t want to get started on that. It’ll be a bad look for me. Yeah, but yeah, they’ve just had some, and there’s only most of them get worked out, or they we come to an agreement where it’s like, oh, I’m fine with, yeah, I’ll if as long as this, if this will make the process end, I will agree to this to this price for sure. So yeah, in my experience, there most of them are pretty easy to deal with and approve and all that stuff. So you know, I always obviously have the documentation, take before and after pictures for those types of jobs, especially. And you know, have get everything that I need to sign and all that stuff, and just send it like a package to, and basically, here’s my pictures, all my paperwork, you know, a write-up of timeline of events and all that stuff. So usually it goes pretty well. It takes a little bit longer to get paid for those jobs, but it’s okay. Yeah, I’ve only had a couple that got denied, but I don’t know of any insurance companies in general, like as a whole, that just don’t do that. So I would think they probably all do, just depending on the policy.

Stephanie: But yeah, that makes sense. Every insurance adjuster is different, so yeah. Okay. When it comes to now that I’m on the, you know, last insurance topic before I know everybody’s like Stephanie asks the juicy questions, but I want to know about these things too, Is what kind of insurance do you need outside of like what I like general liability? Because I’m assuming related to chemical exposure. Like, what do you need as a company for insurance?

Alex: T.A.C.T. requires life insurance, and they they like set it up for you, and then you pay monthly to like reimburse it. But it’s, yeah, it’s a requirement, and it’s not, it’s not super expensive a month, so it’s a, it’s a good thing because I mean if I didn’t have that, I would have my own policy too, I’m sure, but yeah, I mean workers comp. I guess that’s the same thing as liability, right?

Stephanie: Can’t, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

Alex: And then I don’t, I didn’t have to have anything for anything for like chemical exposure specifically. I don’t, I, it might be like in the workers comp policy, you know. But I’m trying to think if there’s any other. I mean, I was going to say like my insurance for my truck, but obviously everybody has to have car insurance. I just think of it in that in those terms because it’s I bought this truck when we got the job because I knew I’d have to haul stuff. So it’s like it’s, you know, part of our business. So I think of it in those terms, but nothing crazy. Yeah, nothing else in particular that I can think of.

Stephanie: Okay, cool, cool. I just wanted to ask before I before I moved into this.

Emergency Jobs and Being On Call

Stephanie: Okay, this question is from Amanda… What operational rules, whether that’s scheduling hours or a post-job debrief, they use to prevent burnout from psychological fatigue? You mentioned in your intake form that, like, being almost on-call and being able to take jobs very quickly because you said that some are like emergency, and I’d love to hear like some examples of what that would look like. So have it like you have to be ready if you want to make the money, right? You need to take jobs very quickly.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I only, I’ve only had a couple times where I get like a call in the middle of the night because a lot of people, that’s what you think of when it’s like you’re on-call 24 or like y’all are available 24/7. It’s like, oh, you must. What if you get a call in the middle of the night? Like, then I have to answer it. But that only happened. That’s only happened a few times in so far to me. Those are, and really, that’s just like somebody. It’s almost always a bio job, and it’s like basically, somebody just saying, “We need this done tonight,” or “we need, you know, we need this done as soon as possible.” It’s not like an actual, like 911 type emergency. Although it could be a, it could be like a, the aftermath of that. But that’s what I mean by emergency, I guess.

Stephanie: And is it like they want to live in the house? Like somebody died, people still live in the house, so they’re like, we need to get this cleaned up. Is that the most typical?

Alex: Yeah, that’s probably the most typical. I mean, which I understand if.

Stephanie: Yeah, of course.

Alex: Something horrible with one of my family members that I lived with happened. I would obviously, I would not I would want that cleaned up as soon as possible. And if there’s a company that offers it, yeah, I would be like, yeah, please come right now. So that’s definitely the most common type of emergency type job that we see. And I honestly, I expected there to be that to be more frequent, that to happen more frequently when I was first starting, but then I’ve come to learn that people will call and you know they want it. They might want us to schedule an estimate sooner, come do the job soon, like the next day or something. But most of the time, it’s that they are, they, you know, say, yeah, tomorrow would be great, or you know, even two days later, or whatever. And that’s something that I, you know, often ask people, like, what kind of timeline are you looking to be on here? Is this something that you just kind of want to get done as soon as we can, or do you need it done today? Or are you know, are you looking out a few weeks or a month or so? So most of the time, it’s something where, you know, they say, “What’s your availability the rest of the week?” Type thing, not not an emergency, emergency situation.

Stephanie: Okay, I gotcha. That makes a lot of sense.

Getting Sick on the Job

Stephanie: Okay, so this is from my HR director, Crystal. Have you ever gotten physically sick from a job?

Alex: Yes, I. Not because it was like, oh, this smells so bad. It was, I think, the like third job we ever had since we, after taking over the business, we had a it was a hoarding cleanout in a small town in Arkansas, and it was the very beginning of July, super hot. And this particular house had it was like an entire house clean. It was a small house, but it was packed full of stuff, and there was a bad bed bug infestation. So because of that, I had I had never done a job with you know involving bed bugs or their presence at all. And it was too full of stuff for like pest control to go in there and treat it because they’re like we’re just treating like trash and stuff like… And so because of that, I was very I have two small children. I was not wanting. I was worried about bed bugs like getting on me and getting to my house.

Stephanie: Yeah, it’s a nightmare to deal with at your house.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, and so because of that, we wore the full hazmat suits. I don’t know if you’ve ever worn one of those and done any type of work in them. That’s it’s like you’re like a wrestler cutting weight. You, I mean, you can only work for, I don’t know, especially in the summer, you can only work for like literally 20 or 30 minutes at a time because you like physically need to sit down, for even if you feel fine, like you’re sweating so much. So this was a multiple-day job. There was like, I think it was, yeah, it was our last day. We were like finishing up, and I don’t, I don’t know. I thought I was doing a good job hydrating. I apparently was not. I started to feel a little nauseous. I told my workers like, “Will y’all go do this last thing?” I’m gonna start gathering our stuff out here. I’m not. I don’t want to put my suit back on. I’m not feeling great. And then a little bit later, I got sick over in the yard. I, you know, threw up. Thought I was like fine. I just got hot. And so we’re driving back. It’s like a two-hour drive back to Little Rock. I’m like, hey, will you drive my truck? Like, I don’t this windy road. I don’t. I end up having to pull over. I mean, I’m really not exaggerating. Probably eight to ten times within the span of 45 minutes, because I was like, I need you to pull over. I got to throw. I ended up just stopping at a hospital in a town like between there and Little Rock, and I just got. I mean, it was just like heat exhaustion type thing, but just super dehydrated and just from all the, from the heat and all the sweat and just pushing myself too much. I guess I didn’t feel like it was one of the things, one of those things where I went from I’m fine to this. I need some help within like 45 minutes. So it wasn’t like I’d feeling been feeling bad the days before or even that morning. So that definitely was, a in a way, it was a good thing because now I’m like, that’s not gonna, I will not let that happen again, or to somebody I’m working with, like, I’m like, “Hey, everyone, we’re gonna take a break. Like, let’s go sit outside. Do you have some water?” Okay, well, you’re gonna drink some water or some Gatorade and stuff, but yeah, that was it was a little bit scary, but it ended up being okay. Definitely taught me, taught me a valuable, a valuable lesson when it comes because, I mean, these jobs, and we don’t have to suit up for every job if it’s like hoarding jobs, most of the time, we don’t. I would say, yeah, I’d say most of the time, but I mean working in those suits is like, if you’re like, I said, it’s like a you see boxers or wrestlers that have to cut weight before it’s like I should sell those to wrestlers because I’m like, this you will sweat weight off, I promise.

Stephanie: So, on all biohazard jobs, do you wear the full suit?

Alex: Yeah, yes. Especially starting like, whenever we first start the job, it might, you know, by the end get to a point where you know you can take it off and just have, you know, other PPE on because you’re not really at risk of being exposed anymore because we’ve done the majority of it. But, yeah, I would say ninety-five percent of them. I would have to think about like specific job, like maybe if it’s just a where there’s just like little, little like areas or spots that need cleaned up that would technically be a bio job. But any, any, you know, your average bio job, bio cleanup, yeah, we wear them to at least to at least start off for sure.

Stephanie: That makes sense. Well, that was unexpected. I was expecting you would been like, yeah, this job was so bad, like we had to. But that makes sense from a safety perspective. Why, why that would happen?

Equipment, Odor, and the Toughest Surfaces

Stephanie: This is a field operations and safety question from Amanda. What would you say is a sanitation habit every residential cleaner should adopt immediately based on the type of work that you do, or perhaps something that is unexpected that you guys have to do from a, if you can’t think of an answer there, like, what is something that I would be surprised by? Of like, this is how we handle this properly. What? Give me an example of what something would be. Maybe equipment maintenance or something where you’re like in between jobs. Like, how do you handle all of your equipment to make sure it’s clean? What you wear, your own personal safety, perhaps. Yeah, all sorts of things.

Alex: Yeah, with for equipment, I mean, we just spray our, treat them with our chemicals. We, there’s not really a lot of equipment that we use for bio jobs that get exposed to bio material. I guess that we will re, that we that we plan on reusing. There are certain things like if we’re like, we need a crowbar for pulling up a floor or you know things like that. Carpet cutting tools that we might reuse, but I’m trying to think of what else. I’m not. I’m not sure. I wish I had a better answer.

Stephanie: That’s okay. That’s a very niche question.

Alex: Yeah, very specific.

Stephanie: Okay, smell. My manager April asks what product they use to get rid of the smell. I’d love to hear. You mentioned ozone machines. Is that like used pretty much in every job?

Alex: That’s our most commonly used, and I would not, not every job. I would say at least half, maybe. But that’s what we also use, their ClO2 tabs. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that, but it’s chlorine dioxide. So there’s, there are these little tabs. So we have like five-gallon buckets. We have several of them, but depends on how big the area is, how many we use. But you fill it up with a certain amount of water. They have like holes drilled in the side of them and the top. I shouldn’t have just done I shouldn’t have done that.

Stephanie: We’re gonna clip that. We’re gonna clip that, Alex.

Alex: And then they have a tubes that run into the hole and then down into the water. One end of the tubes in the water. The other goes to a, so a little motor that pumps air into it. So you drop the tabs in, let them dissolve for a few minutes, and then turn that little motor on, and then so it pumps air, and so it bubbles up, and then it releases those that stuff into the air because it’s, you know, air into water is going to make bubbles, and that is something that we’ve done. You know, we’ve done it, helps odor a lot. It also just like sanitizes the areas that it gets on and stuff.

Stephanie: Wow, I’ve never heard it. And so it’s just, it’s literally cleaning the air by doing that.

Alex: Yeah, and I don’t. Yeah, and other ser. I mean, other surfaces too. It’s not a thing where it’s like you can do that in as a substitute for like actually cleaning something. But it’s just kind of a once we’re we do that at the end, and so like we you know do all the cleaning out and cleaning up that we’re going to do, and then we’d run that just kind of a just just to make sure we’re you know getting everything we can type thing, and then like I said also helps a lot with I mean a ton with odor, but yeah that in the ozone machine is what we use primarily. And I’ve, I keep saying, I tell people this all the time. I say this to people, like, you know, what’s going to help in the most immediate is, like, getting the things that smell bad out of there, so that is a big help, but then, yeah, afterwards we definitely run at least one of those machines if we’re, if we need to treat the odor.

Stephanie: What is the most difficult surface to, like, let’s say, we got a big blood stain? What is the toughest surface to get that out of?

Alex: If we can clean it off of a hardwood floor, let’s say, or you know, any type of floor that’s not carpet, then we will, and you know, that’s best case because we don’t have to pull up the floor and they don’t have to replace their floor. But if it’s, if it’s like, if it’s, we can’t clean it up just on the surface and you know, make sure that’s fully cleaned, or if it’s carpet, like, we’re just gonna, we’re gonna cut that out or pull the floor up. And a lot of times we need to because it’s like seeped through there and it’s, and it’s like, we’ve had a job where, yeah, we’ve had a job where a guy was, it was unattended death job, and there’s carpet in the room, and like, you could see, okay, yeah, we’re gonna have to pull up the carpet here, and we pulled it up, and it was, it was as if the incident happened, and then the carpet was put on, like, there was way more underneath than there was on the surface, but anyway, we had to cut the subfloor out in that job. But the worst surface to have to try to clean stuff off of, or deal with, is a popcorn ceiling for sure.

Stephanie: Oh yeah, I mean, gosh, I can imagine. I’ve seen. Yeah, we have even just normal cleaning where people are like, “Can you dust the ceiling?” Because the dust is stuck to the popcorn, and it’s like, you’re gonna knock the like, it’s impossible. So I can’t imagine.

Alex: It’s impossible not to scrape it off. I mean, what we, it’s, yeah, it’s just impossible not to. It’s so like, it’s so brittle and so and soft too. But yeah, it’s, and then you’re, the fact that you’re having to look at, and then it’s kind of, yeah, easily gets down on you. So you kind of have to, kind of have to do it at an angle. Like, you have to be like, “I’m gonna get that one up there, and I’m gonna stand back here.” But that’s, I would say, that’s definitely my least favorite.

Stephanie: So, like, if that happens, and like, you guys have to scrape it all off, like, what is this? If a client’s like, “Well, I don’t want, like, how do you handle that if they are dissatisfied with you having to structurally change the home? Right? Is that just a stipulation of like, we are cleaning this even if it means taking something like permanently off?”

Alex: Yeah, the latter. I mean, I, and they’re usually aware of that before, whether they just already know or I tell them. But, you know, and there’s been some situations where, you know, they’re really particular about that, and I’ll say, okay, we’ll we’re going to just go about doing the job like we normally would, and if there’s anything that like, if we need to cut up a carpet or if we need to cut out a piece of wall or a little section of wall or something, I’ll let you know and you can give me the okay or not before we do it. But if you if you choose not to, you just have to know that like it’s possibly or probably not fully cleaned up and remediated properly. I think I said properly twice, but yeah, it’s because if you’re like, well, I don’t want you to cut out that section of wall, I’m like, well, I okay, I guess you’re gonna have this spot on here. I don’t, but that has I don’t even know if that’s happened once. So because I mean, especially if it’s an insurance situation, like an insurance job, because their insurance is gonna that’s gonna be a part of the claim is the repair that needs to be done after we are finished. And you know, I often or almost always try to make sure people know that you know you are going to have to you are going to have to replace, you are going to have to put down new carpet or new floor, or you are going to have to, you know, do some paint work right here when we’re finished, but it’ll be, it’ll be safe to, in safe condition for you to live in it and be around it and all that stuff.

Stephanie: My manager Katie asked, “Do you listen to true crime podcasts while working?” Many of our techs do while they clean. Do you do that?

Alex: I don’t. I am just, I don’t. I am not a big true crime podcast person in general. We always, well, not always, most of the time. If the situation is not a sensitive one, we will have speaker, a speaker and have music and stuff playing. But no, no true crime podcast. No, maybe I should, maybe that’d be, yeah, put something a little bit interesting.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

The Biggest Jobs

Stephanie: What is the biggest job you’ve completed? What and what the situation was? That’s from Michelle in the mastermind. Biggest in terms of, like, maybe price, or maybe it’s like we could. What is worst thing you’ve seen?

Alex: Is one biggest job, like biggest payday? You want to say, or maybe our biggest payday is was a suicide that the room that it was done in, was used as like a at this person’s house. It, they it seemed as though they used it as like a storage room, kind of, because there was a bunch of packed up boxes, memorabilia-type stuff, and it was that room was pretty much full of it, and that’s where the incident happened. So we had to like check for checks so many little areas, and it just made it take a lot longer. It wasn’t anything like crazy. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for that type of situation. It just it was just the amount of time it took, and you know the amount of things we had to go through, and little things we had to clean off, and make sure, and check on all of that. That’s it. Yeah, that’s the biggest payday that we’ve had for one job, but it’s not a particularly interesting one comparatively. The if when you say like the biggest jobs, the biggest hoarding ones are the jobs that come to my mind, just big houses that are that families have lived in for decades and have accumulated the amount of stuff that a family would accumulate over decades in a large home. So that’s just the most. Those are the biggest ones that we’ve had as far as that goes. I mean, take jobs that take five dumpsters, you know, forty-yard dumpsters worth of stuff, and like they are old homes. These two jobs that I’m thinking of in particular, and so they are the layout is not like a nor is not very normal. So there’s like these this random set of stairs that goes up to the upstairs attic, and then you go up there and you’re like, oh my gosh, this is like another thousand square feet of packed full of stuff that we have to now get down. And so yeah, it’s like, it’s it. Sometimes it’s like, why are we’re discovering new? Feels like we’re discovering new rooms. Like, when is this going to end? When are we going to stop finding places that have stuff packed up? But yeah, it’s the one, the ones like that are a large home that they want completely cleaned out. Basically, those are the ones that, yeah, just require the most dumpsters, the most time. They, you know, they pay a lot, but it takes a lot of work, a lot of manpower.

Working Efficiently on Hoarding Cleanouts

Stephanie: Also, I mean, just any like quick tips on becoming more efficient if somebody does want to start taking hoarding jobs off. Of like, you need to get stuff out of a house. Like, is there any particular? Like, are you using wheelbarrows? Like, like especially in houses like that where you have like hallways. You know, like you gotta get to different areas. Is there any suggestions you have on like how to work as efficiently as possible?

Alex: That’s a good question. So, I mean, the way that we go about it generally is we have, and it just depends on the type, of like, if you’re, if there’s, if it’s a house where there’s a bunch of trash on the floor, then we’re just gonna have barrels and usually like, what’s the word, construction bags in them, and we have shovels and we are just shoveling them in, and then once that’s, you know, just keep that, keep that on the loop. If it’s a deal where it’s not necessarily a bunch of trash but just like, let’s say, an old person lived in their home and they passed away, and now you know there’s just a bunch of stuff that you can’t just kind of bag that, shovel and bag that, as easily because it might be too big or whatever. But what I’ve, what I’ve kind of figured out is, if you have, especially if you have enough people, it’s like if you have people doing different things, almost thinking of thinking of it as like a supply chain, almost. Just like you know, your job is going to be you’re going to be filling up these barrels, and then as soon as they’re full, your job is going to be, I’m pulling this bag up, putting a new one in, taking this to the dumpster, and then I’m coming.

Stephanie: Assembly line, like, yeah.

Alex: That’s what I meant, not supply chain. Assembly line. Sorry, thank you. Assembly line, exactly. And so, you know, because if you’re all trying to do the same thing, then it just seems to take longer. Kind of get, can get in each other’s way a little bit sometimes. And that’s another thing is like, okay, y’all go do this room. We’re going to go do this room.

Stephanie: Work separately.

Alex: Yeah, exactly. Just because we’re kind of knocking multiple areas out at once. But yeah, those are kind of the two things I would say help us to be more efficient. Because there’s definitely been times where I’m like, man, it feels like it’s taking forever. And as we, you know, got more used to it and figured some things out more, that was kind of some things that we learned help help move more efficiently. And you know, if somebody’s wanting to start doing hoarding type work with their job or their business, I would something that’s been huge to me is to have a very good relationship with somebody locally who has a dumpster, runs a owns a dumpster company. It was like my second job I had. I was helping this lady clean out her parents’ house. She was. We needed to get another dumpster that day because we had one filled up. I was on my second job ever, so I didn’t really. I was like, well, I can try to call them, the people that I used for this one, and she’s like, well, we used a new company for like to clean out the backyard last week or something. Do you want to? You want me to call him? And she did, and he brought a dumpster out, and you know, she’s like, “Here’s his number,” and I’ve used him ever since, unless it’s unless it’s out of their service area, like if it’s out of town. But yeah, that’s been huge for me, a huge help because it’s like I don’t have to be like, “Okay, now I got to track down a dumpster that I can rent.” I just text him, and that’s how, and they’re like, “Yep, what’s the date? What’s the address?” So that’s been something huge for me. So I would definitely recommend looking into that for people who are, you know, just getting into it if they want to, because that’s something that you’re at least we have to have for most hoarding jobs. So not having to have to figure that out or worry about that is very helpful.

Stephanie: Yeah, I can imagine, especially when it’s like, okay, we have three days booked for this, and we’re going to need five dumpster runs. Like that could be a huge detriment to the job, like because that’s what you’re doing is just hauling stuff out.

Alex: Yeah, even with the, you know, they’re called Dump It Dumpster here in here in central Arkansas, but there’s even been a couple times where usually I’ve forgotten to let them know that we need a fresh dumpster for the next morning, or there’s been some confusion, whatever it was, where we’ve had to either adjust our plans or delay our schedule a little bit, just because. Well, if we don’t have a dumpster, it’s like we can only do so much, and so yeah, that’s definitely a big aspect for sure, especially if you want to be able to get done as efficiently as possible.

Stephanie: Yeah, that’s a really good tip for sure.

What Turns Up in Hoarding Houses

Stephanie: This is one. Have you ever seen something at a hoarder job and you’re like, I need one of those? Let me take that. Like, have you ever like taken an item?

Alex: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Stephanie: And you know, because going to garbage.

Alex: So exactly. A lot of clients will say, if y’all see anything that you know could be useful to you, take. You know, I don’t care. And you know, even if there’s not somebody there approving it, it’s like, if, like you said, if it’s going to be put in a dumpster, I mean, I don’t, I don’t care if my, if somebody that’s working with us, you know, keeps it or if it’s something.

Stephanie: Yeah, they’re like, this is a nice cabinet. I want this cabinet.

Alex: Yeah, yeah. I’m like, I’m not gonna. You know, you have to handle it yourself, and like, I’m not gonna help you like haul it necessarily. But like, if you want to, I mean, yeah.

Stephanie: Yeah. Otherwise, it’s going in the trash.

Alex: But yeah, like, oh, this is a unopened drill set. Like, I bet we’ve, I bet we’ll come upon a job where we can use this. I’m gonna put it in the trailer, that kind of thing. And there’s been some, you know, a few large or like, large and or like, valuable items that, and I’m gonna say it again. I always literally do always tell people for hoarding jobs, if we come upon something that we think has value, whether that’s monetary value or family value, pictures, letters, things like that. I’m gonna, we’re gonna either set them aside or for you to come look at when we’re finished, or I’m gonna call and say, “Hey, what do you want us to do with this?” And that’s happened a lot, a lot of times. And you know, sometimes they’re like, “Oh yeah, thanks. I didn’t even know about those photo albums or whatever, or that, you know, my framed degree or whatever it was.” But then sometimes people are like, I toss them. I don’t, you know, which I understand. So we do that. One in particular, this house, and it’s one of the two that I was thinking of for like biggest jobs. Just a huge old house that we were cleaning everything out of. They had a an old piano in there. It was a little bit beaten up, but it sounded okay. It’s a it was a Steinway, which I didn’t apparently is a very popular, nice brand of like piano. Like, it’s a classic, you know, name in pianos, which I didn’t know. I know somebody who works for Piano Specialists of Arkansas, and the people who hired me were they were a third party, and so they were like, if y’all, if y’all, we just want it out of the house. I don’t, we don’t care what happens if it’s in the trash. It doesn’t matter to us. We just don’t want it in this house. And so I call, I send them some pictures, some videos, and he gets back to me like later that day, and he’s like, “So this piano was built in 1906.”

Stephanie: Oh my gosh! Wow.

Alex: And he’s like, “Steinway is I don’t, I’m taking his word for it on this, but he said Steinway is the Rolls Royce of pianos.” I some people might disagree. I have no idea, but it’s it’s a enough of a brand to where, like, I have two good friends who are like very musical people. I told them, and they’re like, “Hey, we found this old piano. It was built in 1906.” One of us, like, “Is it a Steinway?” I’m like, “Okay, then that must be. It must be. He must be at least close to right.” Anyway, he came and picked it up, and we I think he’s still trying to sell it now, but we kind of worked out a little deal. So that was, and that just came from that house. And I, that was another situation where I told the people who hired us, like, “Hey, here’s the info that I found out about it. This is what I’m going to do with it. If y’all, are y’all sure you don’t want to keep it for the family or whatever?” And they’re like, “We don’t have to move a piano, so get it out.” I’m like, “All right.” So, everyone, I mean, that’s a, yeah, that’s the most, that’s the best example of one of those like types of findings. But there’s some little stuff that we find that we’re like, “Yeah.” Yeah, we did a hoarder cleanout, and we call it the chicken house because they had had live chickens in the house as well as like Rottweilers and stuff. Anyway, so we found a rubber chicken.

Stephanie: That sounds like a dangerous combination.

Alex: Yeah, I know, right? So we found a rubber chicken in that house, and we keep it in the office now as a reminder of that job.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, it’s funny you come up with these little nicknames, and usually it’s just like the street that it’s on, but then sometimes it’s like, oh, you know, that, like you said, like that chicken house. It’s like, oh yeah, I, we have, we have jobs like that too. Yeah, we had our first one we ever did. We called it the cat house because we literally had to chisel like cat piss off of like hardened cat pee off of the floor. That was a doozy of a job, and that kind of…

Alex: Yeah, I’m sure that smelled very good.

Stephanie: Oh, it was horrific when we were, when we’re bringing on. Oh my goodness. Okay, so what is the strangest collection that you have seen somebody have while you’re here? Because I’m sure in a hoarder home, there’s a lot of collections of things or items. So either strangest item you saw or strangest collection that you saw.

Alex: Okay, so I put like a little, I made some notes like common, most common things that we find in hoarding houses. Seemingly, like this is no surprise. Like food bags, but in like containers. But like delivery, it’s always delivery. Multiple pets that are making the house gross. Not, not they’re alive, but I’m saying like that have been living there.

Stephanie: Yeah, just going everywhere because that’s what it was at that cat house. Of like the lady couldn’t clean the litter box, so yeah.

Alex: The little like grabbers that you like, they’re too.

Stephanie: You know, yeah, pick things up with. Yeah, I use them at the trash cleanup. I was yeah.

Alex: It’s just funny because like those are always in hoarding in hoarding cleanout jobs.

Stephanie: It’s because they’re using it to grab things and find them.

Alex: Yeah, or it’s buried under stuff, and it’s like at one point they were like, “Oh, this will.” I always think their their thought process. This will help me pick stuff up easier, and it’s like, didn’t it? It didn’t. So, and then, sex toys.

Stephanie: It’s… I was… I had to know.

Alex: Yeah. It it made me like it. It got to the point where I wondered, okay, is this hoarding people specific in some way, or do people just have these? And I was unaware how common they are.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know. Maybe, maybe, maybe like everybody has them, and if anybody got their house cleaned out completely, you’d get you’d get found.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, that’s probably the case, but yeah, that’s something that we find in hoarding houses, which is just an aspect that combination is like, that’s just, that’s gross.

Stephanie: Are they always like, when? Is it commonly like they’re literally out just in piles and you stumble upon them, or are they like hidden in things?

Alex: Usually in like a drawer or something.

Stephanie: Okay, okay.

Alex: But, or, it’s either that, which isn’t, in my opinion, normal. Probably what most people who you know anyway, or there’s like a box that’s just like amongst the trash. Yeah, yeah. A box of, you know, that it came in. I think, you know.

Stephanie: So obviously, we do regular houses, and that’s, you know, super common to see that. But I will say, one of my cleaners, Ashley, is one of her clients. This is one of my favorite stories that she was looking for garbage bags, and they weren’t under the kitchen sink. So laundry room was right there. So a lot of times they’re under the laundry sink. And this is a house that has like young children in the house. And she opens under the laundry room sink, and it’s just a giant duffel bag of dildos. And we’re like, why are they there? Why is there so many?

Alex: Yeah, that’s interesting, especially on the bottom counter. You think that would be a top counter thing or a top cabinet thing?

What Death Cleanups Look Like

Stephanie: So do you always do? They tell you when you’re doing a cleanup of a death. Do they rarely, always tell you what was it, a like, what it was? Meaning, like, do they always tell you this is a suicide? Like, because you know that’s going to be different than somebody who had a heart attack, because it’s probably going to be messier.

Alex: Yeah, it’s not like something that I have to know necessarily, I guess. But I, as I think about it, yeah, they’re always like, you know, so somebody took their own life, or, you know, we, you know, so and so was found dead, and he’d be, he’d been there for the police said a few days, or he’s been there for maybe up to a week, we, whatever. And I’ll just say, well, okay, what’s the situation? If they say, like, you know, we need some cleanup, I’ll say, well, can you explain the situation a little bit? And they’ll say what happened. Yeah, I can’t even think of one where we were unsure of what happened, and it’s pretty obvious. I mean, because if it’s a homicide, I feel like you’re gonna, you, they’re gonna tell you, or you’re gonna be called by like maybe a third party, so like they would tell you, and if they tell you like the scene’s been cleared, it’s like okay, well, if it’s just a normal death, then there’s no need for the cops to come and clear the scene.

Stephanie: I got you. Is there a? Now I’m just being morbid, but I must because you know the answer is. Is there a most common place that you find bodies or that you have to clean up? Whether and is it by category? Like, do people mostly die in the bedroom?

Alex: I haven’t noticed a pattern as far as like, of, I, you know, these suicide cleanups are, are they? They’re always happening in these types of rooms, but I would say the most common is definitely someone’s bedroom and usually like their bed or their bathroom. I don’t know if there’s a reason for the bathroom. The bed makes sense obviously, but you know, people, yeah, die in their bathtub a lot, or like bathroom, sometimes bathtub, but, and sometimes this is unfortunate. But somebody is probably like, whenever it’s happening, they’re probably like, “I need to get to the bathroom,” and so there’s like, it’ll be kind of both. But yeah, as far as like, the I haven’t noticed a pattern of people. Oh, like man, these are always in these these suicide cleanups are always in the guest bedroom or something like that. They’ve kind of been all we’ve all over different rooms.

Stephanie: Yeah. Have you do when it comes to have you had to do jobs outdoors? Like, meaning in a yard?

Alex: Yeah, a few. Yeah, some like somebody. We haven’t. I’m trying to think. Well, so like a bio job that we had to do outside was, it was just a, it wasn’t, didn’t involve a death. It was a lot of, it was a blood cleanup from a stabbing. It there was in the, it had obviously, like it happened in one part of the house and it was, you know, led throughout several rooms, and it actually went out into the garage and then onto the back of one of their cars and then a little bit in the driveway. So, we just sprayed it, sprayed all the areas with our chemicals and power washed the outside areas, and then we’ve had a, we’ve had at least two jobs. There’s actually one of our recurring clients that we’ve had before. They wanted this, like, little shed cleaned out and then literally just torn down, and so we did that. We’ve, and we’ve had a couple other, like, doing somebody’s outdoor shed or something like that. It’s not super common for us to be outdoors, like, doing the job outdoors, but it’s, yeah, it’s happened a few times.

Stephanie: Would you say when it comes to, like, people being killed? I mean, do you think you see mostly gunshot cleanup? Is that typically what you’re dealing with?

Alex: Yeah, yeah, we’ve had a few stabbings, but yeah, I would say that’s probably the most, the most common.

Stephanie: Yeah. I got you. Well, I mean, I’m assuming that most of the ones that you go to are natural causes death, or am I assuming wrong here?

Alex: It’s no, that’s not wrong. I would say it’s not 50-50, but not too far off from it’s like seventy-thirty, seventy percent, or like unattended death or natural cause, where it there wasn’t a murder or anything. We also, I mean, we have more suicide cleanups than, or we’ve so far, we’ve had more suicide cleanups than we’ve had homicide cleanups. So that’s probably that’s the second most common situation that we see when it, when it comes to a bio job and a death, a death situation specifically. So yeah, I would say natural causes and just undiscovered, or, and then second I would say suicide, and then probably homicide after that.

Insects, Killers, and Ghosts

Stephanie: Wow, how often are insects present if a job has been there for a while?

Alex: For bio, or for, yeah, both.

Stephanie: Well, both, I.

Alex: Well, hoarding, a hundred percent. A hundred percent, yeah. For bio, I would say it just, it just depends on how long it’s been since whatever happened happened. So if it’s a thing where, like, it’s been a week and he’s been there for, or they’ve been there for a week dead, I’m going to assume there’s going to be maggots because the flies have gotten to it. But if they’re like, this happened last night, it’s, they’re probably not going to be there. So it may be fifty-fifty, close to that. And you know, we like when there’s not any maggots because they’re gross. Which, it’s funny because I’m like grossed out by maggots, but I’m like not really that grossed out by the fact that what they’re crawling around in. I’m like, if there weren’t maggots here, this wouldn’t be very gross. This would be fine to clean up, which makes no sense.

Stephanie: In the Midwest, we say it’s not the heat, it’s the gosh darn humidity.

Alex: Oh yeah.

Stephanie: It’s not the plot, it’s the gosh darn maggots.

Alex: Yeah.

Stephanie: Seriously. Oh my gosh! Okay, so this is a funny one for my cleaner, Ashley. Has the killer ever shown up to a job site after? Because she says, “Quote, they always come back.” Yeah, they always go back to the scene of the crime.

Alex: Yeah. Not yet. I’m still… Not yet. Well, I’ll be sure to keep my look over my back to make sure. Yeah. Keeping an eye out for him to make their return, but no, not yet.

Stephanie: Exactly.

Alex: Hasn’t happened yet.

Stephanie: Have you seen the movie The Cleaner? I think has Denzel Washington in it. Isn’t that a crime scene? Okay, you should watch it because it’s what you do for me.

Alex: I need to. Yeah. Especially if it’s got Denzel, I’m always in.

Stephanie: Oh, he’s oh killer, right? Okay. Do you believe in ghosts? Number one.

Alex: No.

Stephanie: Okay, because I’m curious if there was any like paranormal experiences on a clean whatsoever, things that were like, this is spooky, even if you don’t believe in this.

Alex: Definitely been. There’s been some of that, yeah, because like you’ll see like, why is this room full of old dolls? Like that kind of thing. Maybe it’s just an old lady who lived there. Like that’s not, it, you know. But there’s been some. It’s like that’s just creepy, you know, whatever it is. But I’ve never been like this house is haunted or anything like that. I’m not. I’m not saying I’m positive that I’m right, but I just I don’t, I don’t. I either don’t believe that it’s real or I just am like I have other things to think about right now.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Alex: I don’t know. I either don’t care, or I, or I don’t believe in it, but I, it’s, it doesn’t, it’s not something that I’ve ever like bothered by.

Family Members at the Job Site

Stephanie: Have family members ever like shown up to the job and like freaked out or anything? Or have you had any like interactions at the job site itself?

Alex: Yeah, a couple times. Nothing that was ever. I mean, there was one job that it was, it was a really big job that we were starting, and we, the guy who owned the house lived out of town, but his he had a an adult son that still lived there with his family. I don’t know, but he was supposed to know that we were coming to start that day. We get there, knock on the door, and he’s like, clearly not thrilled that we’re there, and he’s like, “What’s going on?” He’s like, “Well, he’s like, okay, well, y’all can like work on that area over there. We’re not ready for this for y’all to come in here yet.” I was like, “Well, we were instructed by your dad to like, you know, to do it this way, and I didn’t, I don’t, I wouldn’t say this, but it’s like he’s paying the bill, so I’m going to be doing what he says over you, but, and he was, he wasn’t being hostile, but he was clearly, like I said, not, not super happy that we were there, and so I had to call the, call the dad who hired us, and he’s like, and I’m sure there was a history here, but he was like, okay, just wait right there. I’m going to call the police and tell them to come over.”

Stephanie: Oh my, so cops, yeah.

Alex: Two cops come, and we’re just waiting there, and I’m like, listen, I’m this has nothing to do with me. I’m just here to like, because this is my job, and it ends up being like, he, you know, we just rescheduled the start date, and we ended up, you know, completing the job, and it was a big job for us, but yeah, I think I’ve had one more where a family member was helping was helping us kind of, you know, get do the cleanout, and the their family member who had been living there and trashed the house came while we were. He wasn’t happy, but never directed anything towards us. So yeah, there there hasn’t been anything where I’ve had to deal with, you know, have have yeah have have an altercation or a confrontation with anybody in that way. I just kind of because I’m I don’t really I like stranger confrontation whenever I can be like you know somebody does something rude in the you know in public and you I can be like hey to a stranger like you know kind of get to go off a little bit, but when it comes to this, it’s like, I’m not interested in doing that with somebody who I’m doing the job, because I don’t want them to sabotage our work in any way, whether that’s like payment or making it more difficult for us or leaving, you know, leaving us a bad review or some, even if it’s unjustified. So, any, any type of situation like that, I’m like, I want, I want to be as easygoing and, while we’re still doing the job, and I’m not that when we’re finished, I’m going to be rude. I’m just, I don’t have to care about them anymore after that. Like, I don’t have to care about you know their whatever once we’re finished if they’re unhappy and they’re wrong. Like, okay, that’s whatever. But like, while we’re actively, you know, doing the job, I don’t want to, I don’t want to make anybody too mad at us.

Disposing of Biohazard Waste

Stephanie: That makes sense. When it comes to disposing of like all of the, you know, the leftovers, if you will, where do you put them? You just chuck everything into a dumpster? Is there a specific way we’re supposed to dispose of? I mean, I’m not cleaning up bodies, but you know what I mean.

Alex: Yeah, we always treat any, anything that has any bio on it. So once it’s treated, it can just be bagged up and disposed of in a dumpster or like the landfill. And if it can’t be bagged, just make sure we treat it like as much as we, you know, fully. And then we like, if it’s a mattress, we’ll use mattress bags. I guess, I guess that wasn’t well. So we will treat it and we’ll put it in a mattress bag and usually put two because they’re usually not big enough. Like, you have to put one one way and then the other the other way so that it’ll contain itself a little bit. But then I’ve had times where we’ll take it to the landfill and they’re like, they tell you where to take it, and then they’re like, you can’t have any plastic in this in this area. And so we had to take it out, and they’re like, somebody there was one specific time, and like, the guy sitting on his like bulldozer or whatever that they used to move, the he’s like, sees me in my, see, actually, it was whenever the previous owner, I was working for him, and he’s like, yeah, we can’t have any plastic here, you have to take that out, and we’re like, oh, and it was like an open area, so it’s like windy, and so I guess that brought the smell because we started to pull it, the mattress bag off it, and my guy who was with me, he’s like, gagging, and I’m like, I can just pull it over, you’re good, just like step away, but the guy sitting on the dumpster who works at the landfill is like, somebody died on that, and we’re like, yeah, yeah, but it’s been treated and it’s it’s okay and stuff like that. But he was just watching. He’s like, “Wait, I usually don’t see bloody trash come to come to this area.” So, yeah, if we’ve treated it and we just bag it and make sure that it’s, you know, secure, and then we’re able to throw it away after that. We’re not going to put it like in their rolling trash can on the side, but like, like a dumpster that we have access to, or you know, or the landfill. Like I said.

Stephanie: Okay, I gotcha, I gotcha.

How the Work Has Changed Alex

Stephanie: Overall, I mean, how has this job changed you? Has it changed your perspective? Has it made you more cynical? Has it made you make sure you’re always nice to your wife? I don’t know, like, what is this job to make sure? Like, well, how has this changed you?

Alex: I would say the first thing that comes to mind, like, I didn’t have really any business experience or background. Like, I didn’t major in business, I didn’t work in like a corporate job where I, you know, or in any sort of industry that really like taught you a lot about, so that’s what it’s changed about just about me the most. I would say I’m no expert in that, in that area. I’m still, I still need a lot of help, and I’m glad I have people that I know will help me. I’m still learning a lot about that and trying to figure out the best ways to do a lot of things, but I’ve compared to where I started when it comes to just business knowledge and savvy. I’m, I’ve learned a lot, and you know, figured out a lot of a lot of things just from trial and error. So that’s probably the biggest, just because I like, I said, I was starting at pretty much zero when it comes to that stuff. Other than that, it not, it hasn’t made me more cynical. I don’t think I don’t, I don’t know, I’m sure there’s that maybe that would be a good answer to ask my wife or a good question to ask my wife because she might have a better perspective than I’m, maybe too close to it.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. Has she ever gone to a job, or would she ever go to a job with you?

Alex: She would. She has been to, she’s been to one. I don’t, earlier, I mentioned like when we were talking about deep cleaning, like contracting people out. I said we’ve done, we’ve done it for one particular job. She helped come, she came and helped do like the, I always call it maid service type cleaning. What’s a better term that I could use for people, because I don’t want to say house cleaning because they’re like, “Wait, isn’t that what y’all are doing in this instance?”

Stephanie: It feels, yeah, it feels like deep clean would be appropriate. Meaning, like I would say more typical cleaning service, like, like typical is what I would probably use because, yeah, we don’t use the word maid. I know a lot of cleaning companies do. We just say residential cleaning, yeah.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, and like I, if I was talking to, you know, just my friend, I’ll say like the cleaning ladies, which I don’t mean that in any sort of negative way. That’s just they’re a group of ladies and they are cleaning. Like, that’s all I mean. But it’s like, I don’t want to, when I’m doing a having a business interaction, I don’t want to be like, yeah, we can bring some cleaning ladies to the house. Even they might not even care, but I just, I always say maid service type cleaning, and I’m like, there’s got to be a better phrase for it or a better term for it.

Stephanie: But yeah, because it’s like, in our context, it’s like, of course, nobody’s thinking that anything that you do would be included. But with the way you do the work, it may be assumed that what I do is included in your package. So I understand where you have to differentiate.

Alex: So yeah, yeah, and people ask like, you know, does this, does this include? So like, yeah, are you going to do? They’ll just ask, what kind of cleaning do y’all do after? And I’m like, well, we don’t do maid service type cleaning.

Stephanie: Yes, that’s probably the best way to phrase it, honestly, so people immediately understand what you mean by that.

Alex: Yeah.

Pricing Jobs With Multiple Bodies

Stephanie: Okay. Is there any like, what’s this? Okay. This is this is another one that’s kind of weird. When you are pricing, if there is multiple bodies involved, do you increase the price or do you just go off of what you see on the job? Because you’re like, this is as dirty as you know, like, like, have you have like maybe like a cult like killed themselves? Maybe they drank Kool-Aid?

Alex: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I should have said this when we were talking about pricing and stuff, and like, insurance, building insurance, and all that. So for bio jobs, we are, we have a calculator that we, an invoice calculator that we use. It’s like, we fill in how long did this take us? How many people did we use? All the supplies, a bunch of different things. So that’s what I go. I don’t. There’s. It’s very rare that I just give an estimate for a bio job the same way that I would a hoarding job, because I have that calculator. So to answer your question, yes, it would be a higher price if there was, if there were multiple bodies, but that’s mainly because it would take us longer. So that’s the, and it would result in more bio bags. That’s how we kind of go by that, treating, bagging things up, disposing. It’s all kind of one charge per bag. So there’s going to be more things to treat and have to get rid of and throw away. There’s going to be, I mean, potentially more floor that we have to pull up. You know, just all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it would, it would be more, but just that’s just because it’s, it would be more work.

Stephanie: Sure. What I mean, what is the max bodies that you’ve had to clean up after on a job?

Alex: Two.

Stephanie: Okay.

Alex: It was a murder-suicide situation.

Stephanie: That’s what I was assuming it would be.

Alex: Yeah. I know that, like, like, I, our founder, Matt, he used to, he, had franchises with under a different company years ago when he was, when he was, you know, younger, before he was doing this, or before he started T.A.C.T., and I know that he was called to help on, you remember, like, the Las Vegas shooting years ago, like, at that concert, he was there, was, there were several, like, bio companies from different areas of the country, and that were, and, but he was one that went up there and did that, so that was obviously multiple, multiple bodies there.

The Grossest Jobs

Stephanie: Oh, horrific! That’s, yeah, that’s just terrible. You said, you know, the, job where the suicide was in a storage room was the most finicky because there was, there was, I’m assuming blood droplets. You had to go through everything. When it came to like worst job you’ve ever been to, that’s not like a hoarder, but like a cleanup of a body. What would you say that was?

Alex: Like, worst as far as like, gross, gnarly?

Stephanie: Yeah, gross.

Alex: Probably me being desensitized to it, like we were talking about earlier. It makes it to where they don’t really stand out as much anymore.

Stephanie: Sure.

Alex: But if I sat down and looked through, I would probably, there’s, there’s been some gross ones for sure. To me, to me, hoarding jobs are grosser.

Stephanie: Yeah, no, I believe you.

Alex: You know, all things being in a vacuum, I would rather do a bio cleanup than a hoarding cleanup. It’s that, it just, it’s not, it’s grosser to me. I don’t know. It’s, there’s always usually so much dust, and then like I can, I can tell whenever it’s been super dusty and I’ve been breathing, breathing it in because I’ll get home afterwards and I’m like, “I, this, I can feel it in my, in my lungs and my nose.” Or like you blow your nose and it’s like, “Oh gosh.” Yeah, but there’s always like old food and you know, pets and you know all the gross things that pets and it’s but it’s like, it’s all those things that have been accumulating for who knows how long, and so it’s just gross, and it just also, I guess, the aspect of like somebody’s living here, like that’s not good.

Stephanie: I understand that, yeah, especially when we’re talking about like feces and urine and just like that the stench of it. I would imagine obviously death smells horrific, but yeah, hoarder, hoarder situations. I remember one we did where there was a lot of we’ve done a handful, I guess. And so this was just a clean out. An apartment complex owner hired us to clean it out. So I went to the job, and I had just had COVID, and I was fine. I had it very minorly, but I did lose my smell. And we walk in, and my other cleaner, name is Jessica, she immediately starts dry heaving and has to like walk out because of the cat, like piss, the cat poop. Like, it was the smell was so horrific, but I couldn’t smell anything. So like I started hauling out like overflowing litter boxes. Like, what’s your problem, Jessica? I’m fine. So it did come in handy.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, seriously. You had a superpower for that job.

Stephanie: I know. It felt. It felt good for the, for that job. But, yeah.

Advice for Getting Started

Stephanie: So, if anybody’s listening, they’re like, you know what? I’m still, I’m not. I. I’m still intrigued. I wanna. I wanna look into this more. Pursue it more. Like, looking back, like, what is there a certain piece of advice that you would give, either on either side, the buyer or the hoarder, where you’re like, I really made a lot of mistakes around that, and I would tell somebody to do it differently.

Alex: Yeah. I mean, it is hard, especially when you’re first getting started. It’s hard to price hoarding jobs, especially. I mean, because you’re, you’re, you don’t know. You might not have a starting point really. You just kind of have to see what your I mean, obviously, you have to do this every time, but you have to see what your expenses are and then kind of where you want to be. Because there’s been times where, especially early on, where I’ve, you know, tried to figure up a price for an estimate, and then I’ve thought like, this. Surely these people are going to get this email and be like, “That’s no, we’re not going to pay that much.” But just because it, you just have to be aware that it’s like, it’s expensive work. And I, early on, I was surprised when people would, would accept bids that we, that we were giving. Not every time.

Stephanie: But your frame of reference for prices, like…

Alex: Yeah, exactly. And so you’re like, well, this feels crazy, but it’s like based on my, what my calculations here, this is kind of where we have to be at. And then I was sometimes surprised that people were like, and every once in a while, still, I’ll be like, just this is, I’m, I’ll admit, I’m reading a book or judging a book by its cover. A lot of, whenever this happens, still, but like, I’ll, I’ll go to estimate. I’ll be like, I just, I don’t see that this is gonna, they’re that this is gonna work out, just because, just because of what it’s gonna have to cost. And then they’ll be like, that looks good to us, and I’m like, oh sweet. But yeah, I would, the pricing definitely can be difficult to figure out at first, and I would say, and I would say, be open to adjusting it or negotiating, because I mean, I would rather have, I would rather have somebody, a prospective client, try to negotiate, or, yeah, try to negotiate with me, then just not respond or say no, I mean, because then I’m, and I will say like, if you. Because there’s times that we can adjust. And if somebody just says, “Hey, this is too much,” like thanks for your time. I always, and a lot of times they don’t respond whenever I say this, but I’m like, if you don’t mind me asking, like what kind of range were you looking to be in? Because either maybe we can change a couple things and meet that price, or we can maybe we can do one or two less things to lower the bill and be there. Or sometimes, I mean, I’ll just be honest. I’ll be like, I’d rather have the job than not. And so I’ll forfeit however much you know that my bid was comparatively. But yeah, because, and then if they tell you, then you kind of have, you’re gaining more knowledge as far as like this. Maybe this is what people expect, and so I need to figure up, figure out if I can kind of be in that range. Or maybe this tells me, okay, I’m too high. I’m pricing too high. I need to figure out, or man, I could be making more money. I need to be pricing this higher. And I always ask for if they, if somebody tells me that they have received other bids, I want to, I want to know. And if they don’t tell me, that’s fine. But I want to know because I wouldn’t like, I want to know what my competition’s prices are. I want to know, like again, like I said, if I’m too high or too low. So yeah, I mean those things. The more you do it, the more experience, the easier it is, and the easier it is to figure up. In my experience, at least.

Competition and Staying Local

Stephanie: Do you have a lot of competition? I’m curious, like just what the in your in your city? Do you, is there a decent amount of competition?

Alex: Not a ton. There’s some. Most of the rest, most of the restoration companies, they either exclusively do, or they heavily focus on like mold, fire damage, water damage, and then maybe they’re maybe they will do some bio jobs, or maybe that’s a service that they technically offer, but they’re busy with other things, or you know. But as far as you know, the two things that we focus on, there’s some, but not not a ton, and there’s even less local competition. Like, local, I know we’re a franchise, but like our business number goes straight to my cell phone. It’s a 501 area code. Like, I’m going to be picking up the phone, and like, I, you know, you tell me where you live, like what street it’s on. I’m like, okay, yeah, I live 12 minutes from there. I know exactly where that… Like, and sometimes a lot of times that doesn’t matter. People just want, especially in those situations, they’re not thinking about that. But we’ve definitely gotten jobs because of that. Like, I know for a fact we’ve gotten jobs over other companies because like somebody will say, I want to go with, I like, I want to go with the local business if I can. So, like, they’ll, they’ll tell me the bid that they got from the other company, and I’ll, you know, try to do my best to at least match it. So, yeah, that’s and that’s something that we definitely we try to focus on as when, like, we’re marketing and selling our business. You know, the local aspect, like, because I think people prefer people would rather I and at least I shouldn’t speak for everybody. I would rather know that if I’m calling a business, there they are going to answer and not a call center, and they’re not going to send a team out that, like I’m not, those businesses are, they are. I’m sure they do good work and are successful, but if I had, if I had my, if I had the choice of, you know, I’m going to get the job done equally well from either one of these, I would rather go to somebody that I’m like, okay, well, I know I’m going to get, I’m going to get to talk directly to him, and that’s, there’s no, I’m not going to have to jump through any hoops whatsoever to be able to get a hold of them directly, so that’s kind of something we try to focus on.

Stephanie: Totally agree, and that at the end of the day, business is business, regardless of what services we’re providing, and so marketing and sales, all of it is a skill to be built.

Where to Find T.A.C.T. Central Arkansas

Stephanie: But Alex, this has been incredible. I mean, we are almost at two hours, so thank you. I mean, I have monopolized your time far past what I requested, so I thank you.

Alex: It was the biggest thing on my schedule today for sure.

Stephanie: Heck yeah, me too, me too. So this has been amazing. I’m sure our listeners are going to put questions down below, and like, Stephanie, why didn’t you ask this? Blah blah blah. But if you’re willing to share any social media or website where people can find you, maybe they’re interested in the franchise itself.

Alex: Yeah, so I mean, our website is just tactcentralarkansas.com, T-A-C-T Central Arkansas spelled out. Dot com. That’s our name on Facebook, also. If you, I don’t know why anybody would, but our email is info@tactcentralarkansas.com. If you have random questions you want to ask or whatever, I don’t know. Yeah, you can email at that. But yeah, those are those are the best ways to find us. And I think if you just Google T.A.C.T. franchises, if you want more information about that, I can’t remember the exact URL, but it will definitely come up, and you can look at the overall company.

Stephanie: And see, you know, do you have before and after photos, like, on your website? And, like, I mean, what are you showing before and after?

Alex: Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of, we can’t just always post all the, just because, you know, yeah, I know people don’t want to see those. People don’t always want to see those. But yeah, there’s some, the more mild ones, that just kind of show, “Hey, we did a good job.”

Stephanie: Well, because I was like, “Yeah, before and afters are such a marketing tool for us,” and I’m like, “Well, you can’t really post that, that’d be horrific.” So, oh, okay, well, this has been amazing, Alex, thank you so much. I know our listeners are gonna love this, and I’m I’m so excited for this one to go live.

Alex: Well, good, thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it, and you helped facilitate, you did a good job of facilitating by, you know, asking me questions, because I’m not gonna lie, I was like, “I hope I have enough to say to where she’s not like, ‘hey, you know, are you gonna'” tell me anything? So yeah, thank you for that too.

Stephanie: You are so welcome. Everybody, please leave Alex some love down in the comments. Hit that like, hit that subscribe. Of course, if you guys have a niche cleaning aspect that you would like to see, I’m always open to suggestions of more topics because it’s really fun to talk to more out there services. So, thanks for listening, guys. We’ll see you on the next episode. Bye.