Midnight Adventures in Business Ownership

This article was originally published in the Association of Residential Cleaning Services International's newsletter but it is the most mentioned of all my articles so I am reprinting it here.

Normally these articles are written to educate but this week this article is a combination of entertainment and venting. I just had a very bad day, or rather night. It all fell apart. Most people that write about their business seem like we have all the answers and you probably imagine our businesses run like some perfect machine. Hopefully you can see in this article that we, or at least I, by no means have a perfect company and maybe laugh a little at my expense. It also shows how important it is to do what ever it takes to keep the client happy.  Sometimes you just have to tell someone that will understand the crazy things we do for our business.

I have a new commercial account for about a month, an ice cream parlor about 5 minutes from my office. We have to clean it after 8 PM and before 7 AM. The job is small at only 2 hours a night but it is 5 nights a week for about $12,000 a year. A nice account. The person who had been cleaning it is leaving because she moved further away. She gave her notice two weeks ago and we have had no problems. Last night was her last night and she was to meet the new guy, train him, and hand over the keys. It should be cake walk as all she had to do was supervise the new guy and get paid the same as when she did the work. They were supposed to meet at 8:30 PM.

I get text at 8:30 that she is running late but is on the way and will be there by 9:00 PM so I go to bed. At 10:45 I get text that she never showed up and the new guy went home and called another employee who sends the text me. I have a back up person, but of course she is out sick this week, so I get the clean the place. No big deal. I will just get up at 4:00 AM and do the work from 5:00 – 7:00 AM. But I cannot sleep. I am mad and I find myself worrying that maybe it will run late and not be done by 7:00 AM when my BNI networking group will meet at this restaurant. So not only will I lose the customer, my networking group will see what terrible job we did.

So I give up and decide to clean it so I can go to bed when I am done. At midnight I am trying to sneak out of the house and I find my wife is up. She was too wired from Roller Derby practice to sleep and I do not want to tell her what is up because I do not want to be told at midnight how she told me not to take the account, which she did, and that I ignored her, which I did. Im already in a very bad mood and being told how right she was at this time will not be good for our marriage.  So I make idle chatter with her about how great derby practice was when in truth I am not hearing a word she is saying.  I wait for her to go to bed at 12:30 and then drive to the office which takes about 30 minutes.

Now it really gets fun. I lost my keys at home (because I lose things all the time and the women in my life, my wife Becky and GM Rachel make sure I remember things) and I was using my backup set. I get to the office at 1:00 AM, and of course my key does not work. Turns out it is a key to the office next door where we used to be until we moved to the larger space. My back up keys have the old office keys. I remember that both offices have attic access in the bathroom so I go into the empty office and pull myself into the attic. I discover three things.

1. The personal training is paying off because I can pull myself into an attic with no ladder. About the only good news of the night.
2. The attics of the two offices do not in fact connect.
3. Climbing around in an attic at 1:00 AM, using a cell phone as a flash light, in a building you do not own is an incredibly stupid thing to do. I can only imagine what would have happened if I fell or hurt myself in an office no one uses and no one knew I was in.

So I get down and manage not to kill myself. It is now 2:00 AM and I am debating the merits of cutting a whole through the drywall with my keys McGiver style into my office and paying the landlord to fix it. Then I remember the mail slot in my front door. I spend about another 15 minutes trying to turn the knob with my arm in the mail slot. I pray no police officers drive by. I can touch the knob but not turn it and I am tearing my arm up.

Then I notice, there are screws on the outside of the mail slot. So I drive to Walmart at 2:45 AM and I buy a screw driver. I drive back, take the mail slot cover off, and now I can turn the knob. I get in and fix the mail slot. I get the back up key to the ice cream parlor and drive there. It is now 3:00 AM. I clean the parlor and since I am so worn out it takes until 5:30 AM. I go back to the office and nap on the couch until 7:00 AM when the first employee comes in, then I start my day on 2 hours of sleep and no shower after cleaning a greasy dive.

Account saved. Now I need to figure out how I am getting the keys back from the now very former employee. I also need to change the mail slot since I now know it easy to break in and there is not very good police patrols in my area. After all I spent nearly two hours breaking into the business and no one noticed. Finally, I have to find a way explain what happened to my wife in a way that will not result in bodily injury because she can take me in fight, roller derby remember, and she proof reads my articles for me every week. Isn't owning a business great?

My company - background

I have realized by some of the questions sent to me that I may need to give you some background on my company, or rather companies. I spent 12 years at Procter & Gamble so I am a strong believer in different brands with different management for different customers. At P&G many brands like Tide, Cheer, Gain, and Deft are all owned by the same company but each brand has a team assigned to it and they are rewarded for the results of their brands. I have sort of done the same thing here.

My Maid Service is my biggest company and the parent company. Back to my P&G example, this is my Tide. My Maid Service has been in business for 14 years but I bought it in November 2007 so we are going on 4.5 years now. My Maid Service is 100% owned by my brother and I and we are not a franchise. We have tripled the company in the last 4 years. http://www.mymaidservice.net/ is the Cincinnati website. 3 years ago my brother, Shawn, opened My Maid Service Dallas. His office is now almost as large as the Cincinnati office and he will probably pass us this year in terms of revenue from maid service clients (he has no commercial division yet). http://www.mymaidservice.com/ is the Dallas website. Both offices use solo cleaners, paid on commission, driving their personal vehicles. I have a General Manager in charge of My Maid Service Cincinnati named Rachel. Shawn runs the Dallas himself.

ACS Cleaning Services is my commercial cleaning company and it only operates in Cincinnati right now. I also bought ACS but less than 2 years ago and we have grown the business to be 4 times larger than when we bought it. David is the General Manager for ACS Cleaning Services. ACS is not as high margin as My Maid Service but it is the fastest growing part right now. Back to my P&G Example, ACS Cleaning is my Gain. http://www.acscleaningcinci.com/ It is going to be an interesting year for ACS. In Commercial Cleaning you kind of work your way up the food chain from smaller accounts to mid teir and then finally the big ones.  In the last 2 months we have been invited to big on two very large projects.  I am both excited and terrified to win these.

I will be launching a new company in June to do chemical free cleaning. Carole is the general manager for this company and she is doing all the work to launch it and she is running some test teams to work out the systems and to test the marketing and pricing. This will be a premium priced company. We expect it to be smaller than My Maid Service but with better margins. This company will use company cars, teams, and the employees will be paid hourly. In my P&G example, this is my Dreft. A smaller brand that will never be huge but can earn very nice margins.

I meet with all my general managers once a week to talk about their key measures, progress on projects, and where they may need help.

Finally I am a partner with 3 other cleaning service owners of the Institute for Service Excellence. This is a school for other cleaning companies and it is the first school certified by the Clean Trust to teach the new Home Cleaning Technician program. This school will be the topic of other articles in the future but I want to be up front that I own part of it since most of what I will be doing and writing on next week will be related to the school. The website for the school is http://www.isetoday.com/ There is no P&G example for this one.