Lessons from Building a 140-Employee Cleaning Company, with Sharon L. Cowan

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Introduction

Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host Stephanie from Serene Clean and today’s fantastic guest is Sharon Cowan who has the absolute wealth of knowledge that I cannot wait to get into today. She has been in our industry for literal decades and has seen the full gamut residential commercial and has ran incredibly successful cleaning businesses. And I cannot wait for you guys to meet her if you haven’t met her before and for us to dig into the details of her story. So Sharon, thank you so much for joining us today.

Getting Started in the Cleaning Industry

Stephanie: Absolutely. And I must say as a loud patterned girl myself, I love your top for the listener. She is fabulous. She to print just totally up my alley.

Sharon: Thank you. I mean, this fall, if you don’t have cheetah, it’s that’s what they tell me. So there we are.

Stephanie: Exactly. It’s so true. It’s so true. So Sharon, I’d love to get, you know, just the, you know, where you started, why did you get into the cleaning industry in the first place? And when did you get into the cleaning industry?

Sharon: Yeah, absolutely. We may not go into the wind because that will really age me. No, I’m kidding. I was in corporate America for a long time in the retail merchandising. And before that, right out of college, I taught high school for I only lasted at that for two years because it was not for me. So after the retail, I really wanted to have my own business.

And at that time, and this was in the 90s, the mid 90s. So the trend in businesses was service businesses. At that time, they were exploding everywhere. And the market that I’m in, as a matter of fact, is very heavily invested in service and services to its residents. So I thought, I investigated and I looked around and I thought, this is, I can do this. I can take my business skills that I learned running retail stores and apply that to another business.

So I shopped around and shopped around and found that the people cleaning my house told me that their company was for sale. So I negotiated with the owner. We negotiated for months until we really got the price where I wanted it. They were asking way too much money as most people selling their businesses do. You have to be careful with that. So we negotiated and she had me come in before we did the deal. She had me come in to spend about 10 weeks with her.

The first one of interesting funny stories is the first time she took me out, said, we’re going to a post-construction site. I said, okay, good. So I’m wearing nice slacks and a shirt and I’m coming from fashion merchandising. And so now I am riding in a pickup truck with a big letter on the top and she gives me a hard hat. And I’m, what am I doing? What have I done? I don’t know. And so we did the post-construction and I spent two weeks in her office.

And at that time we didn’t have digital means to get customers. Okay, so was all by phone. So her phone was literally ringing off and they didn’t have the staff, they didn’t have the systems, they didn’t have the operations. And I spent those two weeks and I thought, this is a gold line waiting to happen. There is so much profiteer that’s not happening that could be, and I want a piece of this.

So I started with six employees, which she had one office person and five people. And when I sold it, we had 140 people and we were spanning four counties. So it was quite a growth spurt, but I took to that business all of the business expertise that I learned in retail and working for a large company. I just transferred that over. And of course I had to learn the business. I knew I cleaned my own house once in a while, but I didn’t know how to professionally do it.

One of the pieces of advice I can give the listeners is to attend every convention, every event, every learning opportunity, podcasts like this. Any place where you can increase your learning is going to help you. That was my lifeline. There was no ISSA. There was no ZenMaid, there was no ARCSI. There was nothing with the Building Service Contractors Association, which was all commercial. Nothing for the residential people. In fact, Debbie Sardon and I, my good friend, we did several seminars and workshops together early on because people just weren’t getting the information and they were hungry for it. So that’s how I got my start. It just went from there.

Early Growth and Moving Into Commercial

Stephanie: So first off, yeah, you could say it was a bit of a girl’s spurt, the biggest understatement of the century right there. I mean, when you’re saying that many employees and was that specifically all residential or were you also doing commercial when you

Sharon: No. Okay. So we moved about first year and a half into the business. I started getting calls for commercial because we promoted ourselves as very professional. And, you know, I dress the part, I presented myself professionally and customers like that. So commercial customers love that. So they were very attracted to our company and I started doing more commercial work.

In the early days of the commercial work, didn’t really know how to estimate at all. And I got burned. It’s no wonder they hired me. I wasn’t charging anything. And so I learned fast, quickly. But there was just the difference in working with business to business versus business to the consumer and the homeowner is huge.

And for me, my preference led me to the commercial side. Now, the residential, I wanted to keep and grow because the cash flow. Every business needs cash and you don’t have the same kind of cash flow in commercial. It’s 30 days you wait for your money, usually. So I kept that, but I quickly elevated someone to manage it because I knew I could not grow the company.

And delegating and giving up and letting go of the reins is another huge step for business owners that I, she didn’t always do everything the way I wanted, but I trained her and worked with her. It was fine. She managed the residential. She dealt with the homeowners and she did the estimating, freed me up to become involved in the community, which is also very important, and to grow the commercial side, which was much higher revenue. So it takes 10 residential customers to equal maybe one or two good commercial customers. So I’m dealing with one or two here versus 10. So it just worked for us.

The Big Break and Managing Growth

Stephanie: So true. And I think that it’s so easy to get incredibly overwhelmed by commercial opportunities, even if it’s, oh, this is going to quadruple the size of my business in one fell swoop, but then it’s, oh, figure it. We have to figure this out. I think our biggest commercial account, I believe, is the equivalent of 45 residential average clients. And it’s when you say it that, when we got that bid and we actually got the job, we were all, we got it. We got to figure it out. But but we did figure it out and now I’m the effort that we need to put in there compared to the equivalent of residential it’s it’s a no-brainer. It really is but residential is fantastic for for cash flow until you are established enough, so it sounded you really grew in leaps and bounds once you started getting into the commercial from a revenue perspective

Sharon: Yes, we did. We got some large schools. And one of the wins that I made note of was, I think we were two and a half years into the business at a networking event. Another important piece of your business is to be there, show up. At a networking event, I met a gentleman who worked for a regional bank and introduced, changed cars, blah, blah, blah. He said, oh, I have, I think we’re looking for a new janitorial company and they had 11 branches at the time. So he said, would you be interested? I’m, yes, that’s a hard yes. And so he said, I’ll put you in touch with the right person.

So we did that, did the bid. I worked on that proposal. It was the biggest thing we had done. It was $300,000. And we, you know, in one account, which is really very scary and not the right thing to do. But I worked on it, worked on it, and we got it. And I mean, it doubled my business at that time after two years, but it was a lot to learn. It was a lot to learn. The staffing, the inspections, and you know what people don’t think about is the payroll costs.

I get a lot of clients who say, I have this opportunity, going to build a bit on this college and it’s all these buildings. And I’m saying, and you probably won’t get paid for 45 to 60 days. And you have to cover all the payroll for that until you get paid thousands and thousands of dollars. So my recommendation is to start small and build your portfolio, build your bank accounts so that you can handle when you get a bigger opportunity. But don’t go from zero to an 11 building facility. It’s not going to happen well.

Cash Flow and Financial Planning

Stephanie: No, a hundred percent. I know a lot of people go the kind of revolving line of credit route. We’ve never done that. We’ve always been in the position you described of we have enough in the bank to cover, to cover that first month because first month to month and a half that you are covering and the larger the account, the more, the more we’re talking. And I remember we had gotten a really large government contract and I made it very clear to, we were the subcontractor and I said to the contractor, if you do not pay by this date, I’m pulling my entire team because I can’t cover the payroll. It was that high stakes and I hated that feeling of feeling that level of desperation around the finances of, it needs to be this way. So there is something incredibly reassuring and relaxing about having that buffer, especially if you’re getting into commerce.

Sharon: Yeah, yeah. And you can get the line of credit, but it has to be paid back. And that’s got to come from somewhere. So it’s really better if you can start slower and a little more reasonable something to manage. And as you know, working at night is very different from working in the daytime. Most of the cleaning staff at night, they’re by themselves or maybe with a partner.

The office is typically closed, so they don’t get an opportunity to interact with whatever goes on in the office. It’s harder to keep those employees engaged. I found the best ones were employees who had a daytime job, and then they wanted something part-time at night, and they would work three or four nights a week, a few hours, and that suited me, and I would staff all day long with that kind of employee.

Quality Control and Client Relationships

Stephanie: Yep, completely concur 100 % that my best commercial cleaners, they’re part time, and they have a second job. because you have to be so much more independent, and because you’re putting a lot of trust in them and not saying you don’t trust your daytime, but it’s, they need to be able to problem solve. And it does feel really high stakes. And I love the one story you said on your intake form about the bank, you know, you calling them up and being, how did it go? And his, I’d love you to tell the listeners that because what that’s touching on is, you know, we, we, that’s happened so many times where it’s, I’ve had late night cleanings the next day. It’s just waiting with bated breath. Hopefully it went okay.

Sharon: Well, yes, and I did that early on too, but I learned my lesson because this was that same bank account that we got, and this was the regional vice president and his office. And so we started, we had the crew there. And I called him the next morning and said, how did the cleaning go last night? And his words to me, and this was a game changer for me, his words to me were, Sharon, it’s your job to know how things went last night. That’s not my job.

And that about took me off my feet and I said, okay. So my policy from that day forward was that someone in management, supervisor or myself had to personally visit a new account the next morning. I had to be there the next morning. Just show up, pop into your contacts office. If they don’t have time to see you, wave, let them know you are there following up and walk the building. If you can’t be there at night, and I didn’t go at night all the time, I had supervisors who that was their job. But it was somebody in management had to be there and had to show up and had to say, I’m, I’m feeling things were very good. I found a couple of things. How do you feel? And and that way they know you’re on top of it. And you’re going to be their partner in taking care of their building.

And that’s all they want. They just want somebody to show up, do a good job. A lot of them don’t want to pay much, but that’s the way it goes.

Building Management Structure

Stephanie: That is such a golden nugget of that first service coming in and checking and being proactive. And it really makes it look you know your stuff. And obviously it’s giving you that opportunity as well to see what happened and have that feedback, but it betrays you as the expert. there’s so many avenues this conversation should go because I have so many questions. As you grew and, know, continued to branch out into the commercial. How did the structure of the business from a management perspective look? Because you’re telling me you had super, obviously you got this huge opportunity right away, right? And so that gave you the overhead to be having management and bringing that on. You know, when the business was at full capacity and full size, I mean, I can’t even fathom managing that many staff, that’s truly incredible to me. So can you talk to me about the structure? What did that look like? How many layers did we have here?

Sharon: So we had a general manager, operations manager. We had a residential manager. We had a commercial manager. And we had a woman who functioned, but not full time, as a post construction. We did a lot of that as well. But we didn’t have that all the time, but she managed, she was a residential supervisor, but managed the post-construction. So, and then the supervisors underneath had responsibility for eight to 10 cleaners or eight to 10 accounts, the cleaners that went with them. For the residential side, which the volume was lower. So we had the residential manager and we had, two, we called them supervisors. They could have been called crew leaders, but they were called supervisors. And they would do the running and check the homes and make sure everybody stayed on their budget of time, had the supplies, and they kept things going. So that’s pretty much what it looked like, you know.

Training and Team Development

Stephanie: Was training handled from both perspectives? Residential, and the reason I’m asking is because there’s so many ways to skin this cat of the structure of the business. I always find it really interesting to talk to anyone who’s made it to a larger size, how did we handle these different aspects? So who did the training on both residential and commercial?

Sharon: So the commercial side, the supervisors were responsible for training on the accounts they managed because they knew them best. On the residential side, we had two trainers and they functioned as they were cleaners primarily, cleaning technicians. Sometimes supervisors trained, not always. It depended on who was best suited to do that. Because I really feel strongly that a trainer has to have people skills first. Then they have to have technique skills. Okay. Someone that cannot motivate and train and inspire should not be training new people. I mean, we even had occasions where we said, no, we can’t have new people around this person. They’ll leave in 30 minutes. You know, we can’t do that. So we have to be very careful about who’s designated as trainers. And it’s always been my philosophy to go with personality, attitude, ability to talk to people and give corrective information to them without making them feel that big. so it’s a people business. We’re a people business. There’s customers or employees. That’s what we’re all about.

Business Skills vs. Cleaning Skills

Stephanie: absolutely. And that’s why I, you know, bringing it back to learning from all industries, that for me has been a big aspect of my, my learning journey in this business is really taking a lot from other, just any service based industry and truly any business, the principles of business, that’s what we need. And obviously, you know, we need to be experts at cleaning and all of that, but the best advice I’ve gotten, the best learning I’ve gotten is from just general business books and sound practices and not just about them. Yeah.

Sharon: Yes. My residential supervisors in particular, we always joked and I always said to them, you are far better cleaners than I am. I am not the best cleaner. I smear windows and I can’t get mirrors cleaned. It’s not what I’m really good at. What I am good at is running a business and making a profit where we need to be, you know? And so I think that as you grow your business and you start not cleaning anymore and you start, it behooves you to learn everything you can about how to organize the business and take your cleaning hat off and put the business owner hat on. And they’re very different, you know, they’re very different.

Recognizing Business vs. Technical Skills

Stephanie: I’m sure you see a lot because I’ve definitely, you know, I do my own consulting and just so many conversations with newer owners. And there are, you know, and sometimes I’ll say it, sometimes I won’t, where in my head I’m, this person’s a great cleaner. They’re gonna need a lot to be a business owner. And I think that, you know, taking it back to the E-myth of just cause you’re a fantastic baker doesn’t mean you have any business owning a bakery and is that something that you see often as well where it’s just, whoa, a lot of transformation is gonna have to happen before you’re truly the owner that you need to be.

Sharon: And I see it at various revenue levels and it’s a little different. see people coming out of, just say the five, and I’m not going to use big numbers, 500,000 and they’re approaching three quarters of a million, trying to grow, trying to go, but they’re still doing things the way they did at 300,000 or 400,000. They’re still tightly controlling and they’re still not learning about their numbers, for one thing. I find it very common that young business owners don’t understand their numbers, understand how they have to price to make a profit. And if they don’t make a profit, don’t do it. You’re here to make a profit. But you can tell kind of right away, you are gonna need to let go if you wanna grow. If you want to stay at a certain level and you’re happy there, great, that’s your choice.

Scaling Challenges and Expansion

Stephanie: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Looking back at your guys’s business growth, you know, we’re talking, think talking about revenue stages and different barriers that we hit at different ones and in the development and changes that we’ve had to go through. Cause I’ve definitely what you just said, I can fully attest to of, okay, these behaviors got me to here. They are not going to get me to here. And I really had, we had to do a lot of, you know, and that’s every single stage we’re at, right? you, know, more money, more problems, it’s just different problems, right? And so is there anything that stands out to you where you really had an aha moment of, this whole thing’s got to get revamped or me sharing, I need to change a lot in order to get where I want to get to.

Sharon: think when we started expanding geographically, I felt we had maxed out our market where we were located. So to get the revenue I wanted, we had to move geographically. That presented an entire different set of problems. For example, one of them, was where do I store my supplies? Where are the employees in that area gonna meet to get new supplies? How are they gonna be connected with their supervisor? How is all that gonna happen? So expanding geographically was, do we get two phone systems? And computer use in businesses really didn’t become solid until the mid-90s.

So, you know, we’re talking late nineties, this is all new. So you have to learn this. So the learning curve and keeping up with technology back then was huge. talked about all the time when we used to write letters to each other or talked on the phone. There was no email. So, we’re seeing some changes in the industry. A lot of changes.

Stephanie: I just can’t do it. Yeah, that’s incredible. So we have three locations and we manage them centrally through our one main office. And, I’m just trying to even wrap my mind around without the softwares and technology in place. I’m, there’s no way, there is no way we could even fathom doing this. And I love that you brought up expanding geographically because that’s something I see a lot of newer owners. seems they… They get the urge to do that much sooner than when they should, where it’s, why, why are you doing this?

Sharon: maximizing where you already are. That’s where you’re make the most money. And then.

Staffing and Float Systems

Stephanie: Exactly. Mm hmm. Yeah. What does I’m curious just because one of the biggest things for us that we’ve really implemented in the past year is really strict, I guess, on call capabilities or float system, if you will, because call out is such a I mean, you know, most of our staff are moms, know, their primary parents, we know this, we this is what we accept. And you know, again, people business. So what does what does that float system or what did that flow system look for you guys? Or how much did you was there a specific number that you had in mind? Or was it just all supervisors at any time could be expected to clean? Is that how you handled it?

Sharon: Yes, that was how we handled it. And it was the responsibility for covering the jobs was theirs. And that’s that’s another piece to let go of as you grow and you start adding to your staff. An owner can’t really spend his or her time worrying about who’s going to do Mrs. Jones tomorrow. Those those days have to be gone. So that gets delegated to the supervisor.

Now it’s the supervisor’s job to make sure they have some floaters, they have some contacts. I was very lucky on the commercial side, not so much on the residential, but the supervisors I had there had a lot of connections in their ethnic community. So they had a lot of family and people that we vetted that were on call, so to speak. So they could get a hold of somebody right away.

We didn’t have that on the residential side. So was more of a struggle. The supervisors kept part-timers on call, someone that would be working maybe two days a week, but that would be available if we called them. And we paid extra for those days. When we were buying, we paid them just come in. So all of your price, not quite, but we paid them extra to come in and it was worth it to us. We got the job done and we got the revenue and we preserved our reputation. That’s huge.

Maintaining Professional Standards

Stephanie: So true. I love that you’re pointing that out is just the one of the biggest differentiating factors between us and individual cleaners, we’re going to get the job done, we can we can really guarantee that. So if you’re not willing to pay for that in some manner, then you’re going to really struggle with that reputation management of

Sharon: Well, yeah, it’s impossible, not impossible, difficult to get it back. You know, once once the word around town is, you know, they don’t show up half the time or they’re always calling, changing my appointment because they don’t have the staff. It’s an indicator that there’s something wrong with the company that they can’t accept. And that may or may not be true. You know, with the labor market today, it’s not not the company’s fault all the time. So.

But that’s the perception that is out in the community. you really have to, and sometimes you may make nothing on the job. You may even go in the hole on the job, but you got the customer taken care of. And they can’t say, well, they didn’t show up. They canceled them. You you just don’t want to do that. and I think our industry as a whole is not a glamorous industry. So, it has a reputation in many communities that anybody can do that. So why should I pay that kind of money for that? It’s not held in a lot of high esteem, unfortunately, in some markets. That has changed a lot over the years since the focus has been cleaning for health. And when you’re cleaning more than for shiny faucets, you’re cleaning for health, people see the benefit and they understand the training. But I think they still don’t understand what goes into a professional cleaning company. And so we have to work hard every day to keep that elevated image. You know, we really have to have to work at it hard. So sometimes owners have to make that decision. I’m going to break even on this job just barely, but I’m going to be there. I’m not going to let my customer down.

Residential vs Commercial Operations

Stephanie: I so agree that it’s we’re, really fighting an uphill battle of, of appearances, branding, how general society views what we do. And every time we do something that goes against it, we’re literally hurting our entire, you know, community of cleaners. And it, it’s only good because then we can, we can charge more, we can pay more. everything is better when, when we are able to, to stand by those things. When it, when it comes to your actual operations for residential versus commercial and you you saying that it’s so different. I would love to delve into the key differences that you see because of course all of our listeners are, yes, commercial, they know I do both. They’re, well, you know, he’s, you know, I can do both. And it’s, yes, but you need to be prepared for all of these differences. So I’d love to love to hear your thoughts on what are the biggest differences.

Sharon: Sure, think some of the basics we talked about a little while ago is the pay plan and the fact that you are delayed payments, not right away. That your marketing has to be different. Okay, your marketing can’t have images of homes on any website or any of printed materials or anything you have. It really needs to have office buildings. The customer that you’re trying to attract is not necessarily a detailed customer. They want the job done in and out and charge me fairly. The homeowner on the other hand is much more attuned to the detailed work. So there are differences in the cleaning. I never recommend that residential folks when they start off in commercial, they’ll say, well, my daytime cleaners, they want extra hours. So I’m gonna give them extra hours.

That’s a big mistake because the residential cleaner tends to slower and much more detailed. So to give you an idea, the productivity rate in average home cleaning is maybe six, 700 square feet an hour. In commercial, it’s 2,500. That’s average. Now, medical facilities, you do a little slower. That’s lower, but an average general office, 2,500 square feet an hour. So they can’t be getting every inch. They have to get in and get out and do a good job and be thorough, but they have to move. So it’s very hard for residential to make the crossover to commercial.

Stephanie: Totally agree. Whenever our, if our house cleaners are going into commercial, it’s just, one, they’re overwhelmed because it’s, how, how could I possibly get through this in the allotted time? It’s not possible. Well, yes it is. But you know, just having that different eye, it’s hard for a person to switch on and switch off that.

Quality Control and Customer Service

Sharon: Yeah. And I think that the commercial customer needs a lot of typically for quality control, we do on-site visits every month, at least once a month. New accounts more, I said, the very next day, and then again at a week, and then at 10 days, and then you kind of wean them off to the, you know, they’re quite so much. But the commercial people need to be seen and they need to have a quality check every month. And some companies give that duty to their supervisors. Some have their salesperson, if they have a salesperson, the salesperson does that. In some cases, an operations manager may do that, an owner may do that, depending on the company, but somebody has to be out there. And what I’m finding that I’ve that has me not real happy with the industry right at the moment. And that is our trend as an industry to become more digitally oriented. I know that the industry as a whole has a reputation for kind of being the last ones to do anything new. But. Yeah. So.

Now I am seeing, and it happens in residential much faster than it does in commercial. I don’t see the progress in commercial as much as I do in residential. It’s almost so we’ve lost human touch with the customer that it’s everything is by text or by email or answer or go to your portal or, and I even read in one of the Facebook groups that I follow the other day where there was a big discussion about not calling a customer back to do any follow-up. The people who were chiming in were suggesting that that’s a waste of time, customers don’t like that. But to give thinking and strategy to the people in the group and to new people in particular that no, you don’t want to call a customer back as you might be bothering them. It made me sad. It made me really sad that we are a people business. This is a human interaction, people business. And yes, we use technology to move our business forward, certainly help our workflow. But I would caution against losing sight of the human engagement that you can get with customers. In some cases, you’re the most friendly voice they’re gonna hear all day. And it’s just some employees, we’re the happiest place they’re gonna be. Their life is such a mess that they’re happy to come to work. So we have to keep that in mind with the customers too. Let’s not get so digitally oriented that we don’t have any personal contact with customers.

Maintaining Personal Touch at Scale

Stephanie: I totally agree. And I think that when you’re smaller or you’re just an owner operator, you know, your customers, you know, your kids names, you know, everything about them. And as you scale, of course, that’s gonna change somewhat it because you that you can’t be that close with them. But it’s, how can we how can we scale that kind of those touch points and things that. So it doesn’t feel overwhelming, but also it is it is so important that we still have that that human element and what are the different ways that you guys have or that you’ve incorporated human touch, but at that large of a scale, what does that look when you’re that big?

Sharon: There was a lot of delegation to office staff, to sales staff. So sales person handled a lot of contact with the commercial customers. To supervisors who I felt were overtly friendly and not all of them work. So not all of them were comfortable in that, doing that kind of thing. So I picked it by personality, but they would be assigned the customers that you did yesterday and today, those are yours to call and do a follow-up call, make sure everything was great. That was again, before we had the instant review process and the instant feedback and we didn’t have that at that time. So if we wanted to talk to a customer, we had to call them. And that just brought a lot of satisfaction. And you could also get in front of a lot of problems because and somebody’s upset about something and they’re festering, a lot of times you don’t know, they don’t tell you. But when you make the call, you might be told very strongly about it, but you have a chance to fix it right there. But it was primarily delegated out to other staff members to do that.

Stephanie: That makes perfect sense. totally agree. It’s for us the first time clean, I’m, that’s the Super Bowl. Nobody sees the bill until we make sure that we nailed it.

Learning from Other Industries

Sharon: Yeah, that’s absolutely the best way to do it. can’t, yeah. There’s nothing worse than getting a bill for something when you’re unhappy and no one has, you and I have a perfect example of that. I bought a new car last summer and it’s not in the cleaning business, but it’s been, you know, I think cars are expensive. So I bought this car, my husband and I, and not one. Not one follow-up phone call from that salesperson. I really expected it. I have gotten that over the years when you buy a real car. They call you, how’s it going? Do you love your car? And nothing. It will make you think twice about going back to that dealership because she could have really developed a rapport with me and I could have sent her a lot of people. But she didn’t care. that.

Stephanie: Well, what you’re saying right now is highlighting the importance of really analyzing our own day-to-day experiences with other comp, whenever we’re purchasing anything, when I’m, you know, I love Chick-fil-A and you know why I love Chick-fil-A, it’s not just the food, right? It’s everything about it. Everything about it is literally perfect. You know, because they focus so heavily on it. it’s, what can I every time I leave Chick-fil-A, I know what I’m getting. I know exactly the friendly attitude. I know how fast it’s going to be everything about it. I know what I’m going to get and I’m satisfied every time. So it’s, what can we take from these experiences or for you that opposite of you just made a huge purchasing decision and it was a total ghost town after it. That, that makes you even if you your car, but

Sharon: Yes. Yes. Yeah, I mean, but I agree with you 100 % about Chuck Fillet. try to study every time I go in there, I’m studying what are they saying and how are they behaving? And I would to get inside their training program. That’s what I would to do. I would to see that.

Stephanie: Yeah, you should just apply and go through it.

Sharon: Yeah, I could wear a little bag. Yeah, I could do it. And their selection, what are they doing to attract the caliber of people they get? I mean, it’s fast food.

Building Company Culture

Stephanie: Yeah, how are they getting such just happy, you know, and that, because that’s what everybody knows them for is everybody’s happy. They’re polite. They seem they genuinely enjoy their work. And this is, yeah, it’s fast food. you know, we could say the same thing about cleaning, right? how can we attract people who genuinely enjoy this? And it’s not just, yeah, pays the bills kind of thing. And what can we do to impart that? And I mean, I know for me, that the answer to that a lot of is culture and what can we do in the culture to give them meaning? Is there any, when you think back to again, aha moments of building culture and just, is it just really being attentive to this is a person in front of me and this is an employee or what would you say for you?

Sharon: Yeah, I think it has, as I mentioned before, it has to be a happy place. People have to smile and that starts with the owner. They have to smile, they have to be happy, they have to enjoy. Pat’s on the back all the time. Again, some of these people never have had a kind word to them. I gave out certificates for attendance at one of my employee appreciation brunches that we had.

I had a couple that were crying. This was in a frame, a paper certificate in a frame. They never got anything like that in their lives. And they were going to tell their whole family. So doing those little things that we often overlook and we take for granted, doing that. And then I think the other piece, I feel strongly that the other piece is eliminating the toxic people that are in your workplace.

They will destroy everything that you’ve taken years and months and hard work to build. It can be gone in a week with the wrong person. So, you know, the old saying about hiring slowly and firing fast is absolutely true. You cannot think they’re going to get any better. Give them a chance, train them. But people usually don’t change their personalities. So if they’re unhappy and mean and nasty and have an attitude, then you can’t waste your time on them.

Dealing with Toxic Employees

Stephanie: Yep, 100%. And you’re so right on the poisoning of some of the most nightmare employees that we had, one, you know, something I’ve said, I’m a very extroverted person, obviously. And so I’m attracted to that and other people. But that means they’re very good at manipulating typically, if they’re going to be that kind of person, so they can put on the show, they interview beautifully, they say all the right things. And then they get in the field, and they get with other techs. And that’s when the truth comes out and for us, one of the best experiences I guess you could say is we had a really rough person come in not knowing them and that was the case until they got with Tex and finally, she had her explosion, she freaked out, obviously we fired her and then every single tech that had been with her said, yeah, I thought she was just having a bad day and we don’t wanna tattle or feel we were snitching. We just wanted to give her that grace because that’s my great employees who are very gracious. And so for us, that problem situation caused us to say, okay, we need to touch base with every single person who interacts with a new staff member. No exceptions, because those little red flags, if five people saw the same little red flag, now all of a sudden it’s a big red flag.

Sharon: Yeah, yeah. And the people that were there originally have to feel comfortable, the open door. They can talk about that and they’re not going to get the person in trouble. But the company, you to think of the company and the company needs to know when there’s someone that is causing issues. Because nothing can turn a good person bad a toxic person and nothing’s done with the toxic person.

Stephanie: Yes. Yep. Nothing will kill your business more than, than your great employees seeing you ignore the problems and allowing them not, not dealing with it. they’re not going to risk, that’s the best way to kill respect as a leader of, you’re not going to deal with this. Why should I be a rock star then? You know, and that’s what makes them leave oftentimes. Do you have any really people trying to burn the place down kind of situations that really stick out to you, where you’re, whoa, that was wild and what you learned from it.

Sharon: I had a salesperson once. She was kind of flaky, but she sold pretty well. She sold commercial and she had a little corner in the office and a desk in her chair. the chair that she had was a company chair, but the operations manager said that could be her chair. That was her chair. So we came to a decision for her to leave the company. And she said, I’m going to take my chair with me. I don’t think so. That’s our chair. That belongs to the Well, Donna said, Donna said it was my chair. So we argued about it and she left. She came back about an hour later with her mother to get the Yes, with her mother to get the chair. And it ended up where there was a tug of war with the mother and my office person. I said, let her have the chair. Okay? We don’t need a chair. my God. So she was scary. She was there, but to come back with her mother demanding the chair.

Stephanie: Yeah, bring the mom into it. We know things mean business. Do you guys have any, for us, honestly, we have a really pretty strict policy on no partners, no married couples because we’ve had such a horrific success rate with, I mean, it has gone poorly every single time for us. And maybe that’s not logical, but sometimes this happens for us where we’re, no more of that. Cause it opened up so many, do you guys have, or did you have any we will not do this or even with accounts commercial accounts for us, have some that we just are not successful with this particular type of commercial account. So we don’t bid them anymore. Do you guys, do you have any of those?

Business Boundaries and Account Types

Sharon: Yeah, it’s if you know them. As far as accounts, we didn’t do restaurants. We didn’t, yeah, no thank you. And we didn’t do hair salons because the hair, know, people don’t think about that, but the hair is on everything. So it’s in all of your cleaning rags, your cleaning cloths, all have to be washed separately every time you do this because you can’t wash them with the other cleaning cloths. You’ll have hair all over everything. And then when we did a strip and refinish on the floor, and of course there’s hair that gets waxed over because you can’t see it all. So a couple of those, and I said, no, no more. And they don’t pay well. Car dealerships don’t necessarily pay well, so we stayed away from those. But restaurants was the big one.

Those were very tedious. Didn’t pay and they wanted you there after hours. what late? You couldn’t get in till way late. And I did have a policy that I would rather have put more people on a job where they were out on the road fewer hours. So they were all, everybody was pretty much done and on their way home by 10 o’clock at night. I didn’t do any overnight. I didn’t do any lock-in where they’re locked into the building until seven in the morning. I do any of that. No bars. Bars were disgusting. no bars. But I believe in getting more people on the account. Get in, get out, and you’re all home early.

Stephanie: Yeah, I totally agree that we same same concept, nothing super late at night. So even though we have a lot of commercial, well, first off, some of our a lot of our commercial can be done during the day, they’re pretty flexible. But we do a lot of blue collar manufacturing facilities just because of where where my business is. That is the our bread and butter is big factories. And they’re, yeah, come during the day, it’s safer, you know, whatever. But totally agree on the the avoiding late night because that’s just asking for a host of problems because if something does on how are you how are you going to handle that and I love that you are commenting on kind of the types of accounts that don’t pay well and Yeah, car dealerships there. There’s so much floors one. We do have a couple and they all need price increases actually right now so they probably are gonna drop

So when it comes to the opposite, is there any that really stood out as, these are pretty lucrative, this specific industry.

High-Value Commercial Accounts

Sharon: think you have to look at who the customer is of the building. So if it is a high-end customer and high-end clientele, their demands for high-end cleaning are going to be greater. financial institutions, banks, wealth management companies, plastic surgeons, they were great. Plastic surgeons were great because it’s got to be pristine for their customer. They were really I would say those were the top three that I did. Bank, if you can get some inroads with regional banks and not the Bank of America or the Wells Fargo, those are all national accounts and there’s some contracted all over. So, but if you can get with the local 10 branch, five branch, 15 branch, the company that I told you about the bank started with 11.

Okay, I sold my business and that was 20 plus years ago. The company that I sold, my cleaning company still has that account today and there are 67 branches. So the lifetime value of that customer and taking care of them well and doing a great job for them for all these years. Yeah. So start small and really build on that. do that well, and then add the next piece and do that well and keep going. you know, if you’re going to jump into the college campus, I mentioned, and that’s your first commercial account. It’s going off the cliff without a bungee cord. You know, you’re just, it can put you literally out of business. It’ll drain all the profit from your residential and that you want to be careful of. You want to protect what you’ve built in the residential and slowly profitably add the commercial. But don’t risk either one.

Strategic Growth Advice

Stephanie: Yeah, that is really sound advice. you know, and I think back to our first commercial con, because I had intended only to do residential and then, know, a big commercial account called and it was a hundred thousand square foot facility and I bid it and I overbid it because I didn’t know how to do any pricing. And they said, well, what would it be just for the front offices? And we’re talking an hour of work a night and we got it. And so though it was, and then over the years of the relationship, they added more of the facility on. And so though it was this big account for me, and it literally, I mean, was so much money to me in comparison to what I had been doing, I’m so grateful that that’s how that happened because it allowed me to dip my toe in, we can do this, we can do the front offices, and learn because I didn’t know anything at all, and then add as we prove ourselves. Because yeah, if you’re gonna disappointed that you got you got one shot basically to nail it with that a giant amount and they expect a lot.

Sharon: You do it. Yeah, you do it. And when you lose one of those, it is different from losing a residential. And yes, there’s a lifetime value to the residential. But when you’re talking about thousands of dollars and you lose because you’re in over your head and you couldn’t handle it, and you’ve destroyed your reputation for a bit, you know, it’s very costly. So it’s go after it, but tread lightly. Just be sure that you factor in all the things you don’t know in the size.

Sales and Marketing for Commercial

Stephanie: just being patient of, listen, if this one doesn’t, I know this, seems very, I know for me that I get a very strong sense of urgency when an opportunity that comes to me and it feels, well, it’s meant to be, I should go after this or whatever. Cause I have had some really great experiences with that, but it really stepping back, does this make sense to pursue considering where we’re at right now? do we have the capacity and bandwidth? And for you, it came to Procure, obviously you’re saying you had a salesperson and residential and commercial are very different with how we pursue. So what were your guys’ main avenues for pursuit of commercial accounts?

Sharon: I would say that at that point in time, it was networking. And I still contend that it is today, it is, people in the business community do business with people they know and they and they trust. And that’s standard in any sales. But in being active in the chamber was paramount to my success. And that’s where I met the gentleman at a business after hours from the bank.

I then became a board member of the chamber. So I spent two or three years doing that. That was very helpful because I met all the key people in town, all the heavy hitters and the big plaintiffs. So that was very helpful. I do recommend that. Funny story about that. And that was my early years with the bank banking customer and I was on the board of directors and this gentleman who said to me to I should know what’s going on on my account, he was on the board as well. So all these big players, my company was cleaning the chamber offices. Okay, we had that account. So I get a call from the police one Monday morning and said, could you come down and talk to us? said, sure, I’ll be glad to whatever what’s going on. Is it nothing? No one’s hurt. So just come. Okay, so evidently, my cleaner, who was cleaning the chamber, stole all of the hard drives from every computer in the building. So they all came into work on Monday morning and fired up and nothing. They were blank. And they had video in the building. So they saw him do it.

So the police wanted to know what I wanted to do, knew about him and blah, blah, why he went to jail, all of that. Anyway, next board meeting comes up and here is, we’re going over the profit and loss statement. And there’s a big line item about computer repair, $5,000. And the director of the chamber happened to be a woman that was very professional and very kind. And she could have, throwing me under the bus big time. But she didn’t. She said, well, we had some crashes and we needed to get them fixed. We had crashing all over. So she really covered for me. Thank God. My biggest customer is right there on the board. And that’s all the banker needs to know is your employee stole. Great. So I was forever indebted to her walk on water for her because she really saved my reputation.

Handling Employee Issues

Stephanie: a hundred percent. that, that type of thing. And, and I’m so glad you shared that story because a lot of people would hear that and say, see, this is why you can’t have employees. And it’s, no, at the end of the day, people are gonna people they’re gonna do things totally unexpected. Even if said, I just, had my first kind of really not first, but one of the harder theft situations happen in the past couple months for me. And it was with a staff member who’d been with me for four months or four months. Four years, four years, very established staff member and just the shock of it all, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to say, well, better shut down.

Sharon: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can go along and not have employees if you don’t want to grow. I mean, if you want to just keep on doing this till your body breaks down, you know, you’re 45 years old and you can’t walk. That’s fine. This is hard work. It’s really hard work. People don’t really realize that till they’ve done it. It’s really hard work.

Physical Demands of the Industry

Stephanie: it’s so difficult. And when I see people who have cleaned for 40 years and they’re posting in the groups and they’re, yeah, think I’m ready to hire. I’m, I cleaned for two weeks and I was, I’m hiring. I just, I can’t fathom doing it for that long and props to any listeners who are listening. And I have done that physically because that is absolutely incredible.

Sharon: Yeah, and I will say this, I give props to anybody who survives a residential cleaning business. I think all the segments, carpet cleaning, window cleaning, janitorial, residential, is hands down the hardest segment of our industry to do. It’s the hardest to please people to get employees to manage, it’s very difficult. And my hat’s off to people that only do that or that do that a lot for many years.

Stephanie: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it’s, there’s such a demand, you know, even when you, when you first bought your business and it was, Whoa, there’s so much money here. And that’s, that’s the hard part because it’s, yeah, there is such a demand, but it is so hard to do this thing well and to deal with the constant turnover and the fact that, okay, if you’re not doing the cleaning, that means your employees are and their bodies are now taking the brunt of it. And so helping, helping manage that of, okay, you know, full-time cleaning. I frankly much prefer all part-timers if I could because it’s so physically demanding.

Sharon: Yeah. Yeah, I was just working with the customer the other day. was doing a fairly large post-construction cleanup job. the general contractor said, he told him he wanted the cleaning crew there from seven to five every day. When it’s going to be a seven to eight day job and there’s going to need to be about 15 people on this job. And I told my client, said, you need to go back to him and say, there is no way people can do construction cleaning for eight hours, nine hours, that will take lunch, but they can’t do it for that. Six is the cutoff for me. Six was always the cutoff for me. They’re done. You send them to a house at 4.30 in the afternoon to clean. I, as a homeowner, I don’t want them coming to my house then. I know they’re tired. They want to go home. And and I’ve seen many business owners who keep their people out till six o’clock at night. They’re still cleaning from the day. They’ve been doing it all day. So you have to be conscious of that. It’s really hard work.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. You don’t want to run people into the ground. And sometimes you have to be kind of the voice of reason. Cause I’ve had cleaners say, yeah, I want to have more hours. Give me more, give me more. We do it two weeks later. They’re either quitting completely or changing their mind, going right back to it, to their previous stuff. It’s, people think that they think that they can do this more than they can. And it’s just of a recipe for disaster physically and mentally burnout as well. I love that you’re so cognizant of that. yeah, what is, so when you sold, I gosh, that’s, I did have to get my business evaluated previously and that was quite the process and I had no idea how extensive that was. So for you, when you, one, why did you decide to sell your business?

The Decision to Sell

Sharon: Well, it was, it was peaking at the time and I had a new grandchild. And so I knew that and my accountant had told me, I was never in it to be in it lifelong. And here I am still in it, but it’s kind of my passion, you know, it’s in my blood. So, I really wanted to spend time with the grandchild. And my accountant always told me, when you peak is the time to sell. Don’t wait till you’re tired and you’re burned out and things go down, down, down. And so I made the decision and I was getting a lot of calls from other owners that I had met at the old ARCSI and the convention for help. They wanted me to help them with the business. So I was already doing some coaching.

I sold it to a gentleman who happened to say back in the Yellow Page days, he was looking to move to Florida and he was looking for a business to buy. He had been in the janitorial company business in New York. And so he saw my Yellow Page ad that had the emblem for BSC AI, the building service contractors association. And that struck a chord with him.

So he called and he wanted to come to work for me. And I said, with all of your experience, he had 25 years and big businesses. And he said, I can’t afford you, but I may consider selling. And he said, I’m in, talk to me about it. Let’s talk. So we negotiated and it was very easy because there was no training to do. He already knew the business.

And so we just sort of fell into it and, you know, that was it. He asked me to stay on for six months to a year as an independent contractor to do sales for him because he knew I was really embedded in the community and people knew me. And so I did. You I did, you know, part time, but I did, I was working on the consulting business and then selling for him. then throughout the year, I had too much other business to do, so I stopped that.

Business Valuation Insights

Stephanie: Yeah. So at the beginning of our conversation, we talked, you had mentioned the fact that a lot of owners try to sell for way more than it’s worth is specifically, is that because they are mostly residential? Do you, I’ve always felt if I were to buy a cleaning business, cause an opportunity did kind of come up recently where it was in talks and they were, they had 60 commercial accounts. And I was, now we’re, now we’re talking. This is more attractive to me. Right. And so, why do you think that people so incorrectly see what is it that is not as valuable as they think? it residential client list? I’m, well, yeah, but I could get that. You know, that’s been on my mind.

Sharon: pay a lot for that, unfortunately, because again, it’s hard work. Residential owners work every bit as hard as commercial owners, if not harder. So, their customer base can be replaced unless they’re upwards of six, seven, 800 recurring customers. If you have 50 or 100, anybody can, not anybody, it’s hard work, but it’s easier to replace those you can get those. Commercial is driven by contracts. So there are contracts. Now the contracts can be broken. Doesn’t mean you can usually have a 30 day out. They can be broken, but it’s much less likely for that to happen. When I sold my business, I took the new owner around to all of my key commercial accounts and I introduced him and talked about his background and they felt very comfortable knowing his background.

So that was fine. The residentials at that point in time were not in contact with me. They didn’t know me. So it didn’t really matter who owned the business. the rates weren’t gonna go up and their favorite cleaner was still gonna be there.

Stephanie: Yep. That’s all they care about really. Yeah. What was the, when I go to your cleaners, was there any turnover specifically because ownership switched hands?

Sharon: I can think of one, it was a supervisor. I can think of one. No, because he had managed people well enough to know how to handle it. And we broke it to the management staff first and had a celebration party, good luck wishes and all that for both of us. And the fact that I was gonna be there, I only went in a couple of days a week when I felt it and are winning that appointment we called on customers. So they still saw me. It worked out. It was a very smooth transition. I was very fortunate.

Selling Your Business

Stephanie: It sounds it just kind of was perfect timing. It really aligned with what was going on in your life and probably just really felt right.

Sharon: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I would always, if I were going to a business broker, I would definitely want one that had sold a service business. That should be an experience that they have had so that they’re more comfortable with how service businesses react and looking for buyers.

Stephanie: So you would advise if somebody is interested in selling that’s listening, would you advise them to go to a broker and obviously ask for that specific kind of expertise?

Sharon: Yes, I would. Is there going to have avenues? I you can try to sell it yourself and publish ads in trade publications is a good place. Business journals are another good place to put ads. Biz Buy and Sell is another place. You know, there are other outlets you can try first before the broker. But you would definitely need an attorney don’t use a broker and you probably should have an attorney anyway to look over the number.

Stephanie: Yeah. Right. Yeah. It’s definitely something to get an expert in for sure. So nowadays, obviously you have your coaching program, you have your podcast. So what is your, what does your life look like now? And I would love to hear kind of how you approach coaching. Obviously everybody is different and we have our different styles and methods. what if you were to describe and you know, your, your elevator pitch of what is your style of coaching?

Current Coaching Business

Sharon: Sure. I would say it is very personalized. It’s a very customized one-on-one. I don’t do group coaching at all. And I don’t have canned programs. I have some video training programs on my website, post-construction, Knowing Your Financials, which is really a hot button for me, on someone marketing. But I have those that are separate and their PowerPoints narrated, you know, that learning. For the coaching, I really customize everybody’s proposal. We do a discovery call and I find out what is they sense. And then I have my own notes as to what I sense that they could use. And then I put a plan together, a coaching plan with approximately how long it will take. And I give them a choice of a couple of different packages, different pricing. I work with them financially so that it’s more affordable to them. I wouldn’t say necessarily that it’s affordable in that it’s inexpensive and it’s not the most expensive. It’s kind of in the middle pricing wise. And we go from there. We set up our calls. We do zoom calls.

I only did those usually once a week. I was a teacher back out of college, so I have a lot of handouts. I’m big on templates to fill out checklists and all that stuff. Adult learning is easier that way.

Stephanie: Oh, absolutely. 100 % and just love that you really make it a personalized approach and your podcast, how often are new episodes going out over there?

Sharon: We’re, our episodes are out every week and they’re being managed by a company called the profitable cleaner. James Harper is in that. is again, more commercially oriented, but some really good business tips. we give a lot at the end of the year with end of year planning for everybody. We give a lot with turning customer complaints into raving customers that kind of quality issues, some marketing things, but some general business things that are really good too.

Closing Thoughts

Stephanie: Love that, we’ll definitely be linking that in the description below guys and definitely give them a listen, especially if you are interested in commercial and I know I’m gonna be listening because I’m always looking to learn more about how can we scale. definitely, yeah, profit in commercial is an interesting conversation and that kind of brings me to, I know that this is gonna go live after your Made Summit talk, but your Made Summit talk is actually going live tomorrow, I know.

Sharon: Tomorrow I knew, yeah, knew and talking about.

Stephanie: Mine must be mine’s right after yours then so tomorrow. Yes. Yeah. So I, I know that they’ll be posting that whenever this particular episode goes live, they’ll be putting our talks on the Zen made YouTube channel. So guys, if you did miss the made summit completely, which not sure how that’s possible, because you’ve been living under a wrap up. But if you missed it, there will be replays eventually on YouTube. But course, go listen to Sharon will link all of her information. And if you’re interested in our coaching, reach out, do a discovery call, you know, it never hurts to see if you drive and the beautiful thing is, we all we all feel we all connect with different types of people. Some people may not drive at all with me. But yeah, I’m so happy one to finally have met you. I followed you online for quite some time and you are truly an inspiration. completely aspire to even get to a fraction of your of business success is is would be a dream. So thank thank you for your time.

Sharon: Thank you. That’s very sweet. you know, you are moving upward all the time. You’re quite a force also.

Stephanie: Thank you, Sharon. Well, it’s lovely to speak to such an inspirational woman and leader, and I look forward to another conversation in the future with you.

Sharon: love it. All right.

Stephanie: Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for watching. Hit that like, hit that subscribe, leave sharing some love down in the comments and we’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye guys.

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• ZenMaid
• The Profitable Cleaner Podcast
• ISSA
• ARCSI
• Building Service Contractors Association
• Cleaning for a Reason
• Chick-fil-A
• Biz Buy Sell