Episode 2 - Full Transcript

Episode 2: Common Area Cleaning – The Crystal Clean Difference

Speakers: Charly (Host), Jeff (General Manager)

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Charly: Welcome to the Cleaning with Purpose podcast. So excited to be back here with you, Jeff.

In our last series of podcasts, we talked through Crystal Clean’s difference. We talked through the services. The owner, Dave, shared the history of Crystal Clean. And in this particular episode, what I’d love to do is go deep — and maybe the next few episodes will go deeper as well — per service, so that we get a great understanding of what the Crystal Clean difference is when it’s applied into a service.

Maybe what to expect, how the flow works, the service areas that we provide these services, and maybe a little bit of the magic sauce that we have as far as the way we approach it.

That’ll be fun because most people don’t want to know that much. The other thing that we’re really trying to accomplish here is to be as articulate and descriptive as possible so that when we put this information online, not only do the search engines pick it up, but now we’re feeding what I like to call “feeding the beast” for artificial intelligence or AI.

Making sure that as AI goes through its learning cycles — which happens with Gemini (Google’s property), with ChatGPT (OpenAI’s property), and now xAI (which is essentially Grok, formerly known as Twitter) — all these major players that are going through learning models, we have very articulate answers with depth.

So when they’re prompted — as you may have seen over the last two weeks, ChatGPT has now integrated search into their prompt — they’re really going after that search market. But instead of showing web pages, it generates its own response based on its knowledge base. And what we’re trying to do is really fuel that knowledge base with really great content.

So I’m excited to be on the journey with you, ready to rock it out. You made some delicious coffee for us today.

So to get started, what would be the first service that you want to review? We talked about common area cleaning. Would that be a great place to start?

Jeff: It would. The company starts with common area cleaning. I think Dave realized recurring accounts, common area cleaning throughout Southwest Florida — it’s present here in a way that you have a nice market to appeal to. So he kind of started with that.

Charly: Yeah, and in our previous podcasts, Dave shared that it was way back in the 80s, and it grew back here in Southwest Florida. As we frame for the 80s, it was not what it is today. But here’s what we do know: everything gets dirty. And down here in Florida, you have your windows open. Some businesses do have their windows open during the cooler season. And that brings in all kinds of dust and things like that.

So what we’re really trying to think about is common area cleaning and its continuity. And then we pair that with great service.

And one of the things we shared previously, and we’ll review it now, I would say it’s a degradation in service just because of the way service companies operate. It’s probably one of the biggest complaints you and I have seen.

Jeff: Yeah, and it can happen to any company. You come in and you sell an account, and you have a good relationship, and things start off strong. Then over the course of time, to your point, it degrades. It’s difficult to keep a consistent cleaner and have them pay attention consistently over a period of years. There’s a way to make that happen, but it’s not the easiest thing to do. And so it’s pretty common that we come into that scenario.

Charly: So let’s kind of get right into that, because I feel like — and maybe I’m off — this is one of the superpowers of Crystal Clean. There’s like a formula you guys use, or a magic sauce, we’ll call it, that really helps maintain consistency over the long term. Is that true?

Jeff: Yes.

Charly: You want to go into that?

Jeff: Starting with the cleaning itself, there’s nothing like going into a place that’s dirty to make you appreciate having a place that’s clean. So starting with that, people who want to dummy it down and go, “Come on, it’s sweeping, mopping, cleaning toilets, not a big deal.” Well, the cleaning itself is not rocket science. However, being able to apply it consistently takes a lot of effort. And that’s our goal. We want to make sure that we keep people happy for a very long time. That’s what allows us to have good, recurring common area clients. And we’ve grown other services from that.

But in the common area category, knowing that they’re going to come and go to the same place, they’re going to see what happens in the restrooms or a key spot, or in their lobby areas, in their offices, the clubhouses, the pool decks. These are areas that you’re not going to be able to hide as cobwebs build up and as algae starts to grow, or if you just don’t vacuum consistently.

One of the biggest problems people say is, “Well, they don’t get the trash consistently,” or “I left that piece of paper sit there for four weeks and I watched it. They haven’t swept this floor in a month.” Okay, so we hear those stories a lot.

So how we try to prevent that, of course, is making our cleaners know that they’re actually special. They’re making sure that our clients feel clean and comfortable. All of us maintain our work and our life around work based on how well we clean. So we try to educate.

Bringing in Crystal Clean University has been a big part of it. We want to make sure that they have an expectation coming in. So when we hire people, we want to know, do you want to be part of a cleaning family or are you just looking for a job?

If they want to be part of a cleaning family — and we have a lot of good examples of people that come in and they clean and they do a good job, and the next thing you know, we’re using them more and more and their position grows. And we have a role that’s very key to all this. We call it Lead Tech.

So if they do really well and we can use them as a Lead Tech, a Lead Tech will oversee several jobs, making sure that they’re staffed and trained, make sure the supplies that they need are there. Or through the course of a year, you will have moments where you go, “We have to spend more time on this account. It’s been three or four months. Things are building up.”

Because as you know, when you go into a project, you can’t just put money to it and go, “Well, if you pay us this much, we’ll keep it clean and that gives us tons of hours.” It doesn’t work that way. You have to be very cautious to make sure that you’re coming in and being competitive, but still able to keep it clean. So the Lead Tech is key to this. They will help the person when it’s time to go, “Okay, we’re going to spend a little more time on this.” And that’s put into our proposals.

Which is another nice thing to talk about because most people don’t compare apples to apples. When they see a proposal that’s a lot less to one that’s maybe a little bit more, they go, “Well, it’s cleaning. We’ll take the one that’s less.” And often where it bites them is this scenario of keeping them trained, keeping them motivated, having someone actually assist them and spend more time when you need to spend more time. We’re prepared for all that.

And I think a lot of our competitors let that go and go, “How can we pare this down and quote it as inexpensive as possible?” And we just don’t think that’s the best methodology. Working with the cleaners directly, training them, helping them with the Lead Tech is one of those secret sauces, if you will.

Charly: Thank you for sharing. One of the big things you just shared — and I think this is a critical ingredient to the secret here — is the idea of having somebody come in, the Lead Tech in this case, to do accountability checks. And that has an extra cost to it, as you think about doing it. Maybe a day laborer or a person who’s in there doing the work. And then there’s an extra layer here of accountability that keeps the consistency. And I think that’s a key ingredient.

One thing I heard you say was something about a university. And we talked about this in our previous podcast, where we have a growth-minded, ambition-oriented kind of culture. And one of the things that you just shared is this university. What the goal of the university is, is to really continually educate, keep people on track, bring in new technologies, test them, measure them, see if they work. So there’s a constant growth path with Crystal Clean.

Can you go into a little bit more what the university does to help with that?

Jeff: Yeah. You know, it started off — we like to come up with nice names that mean something to people — and they go, “Crystal Clean University — CCU.” So it sounded good. We’re like, what are we going to do with that? So how about onboarding? We’ll start with that.

People come in and we can bring all of our cleaners in. Ultimately, let’s start with a series of videos. So we have a series of videos and that turns into, well, let’s get really specific videos because like I said, sometimes it’s common area cleaning or maybe let’s say we swing to the other end, it’s medical office cleaning. And there’s some really key things that the cleaner needs to know about this.

So we started making videos and we probably have, you know, 20 videos now that cover a span of different topics as it relates to cleaning — from the very basics: why we use color-coded rags and a multi-purpose cleaner versus glass cleaners, stainless cleaners, floor cleaners, degreasers. They need to understand all this. And of course, even beyond that, legally, they have to understand why we need to make sure that we have proper paperwork to go along with that. So when we have cleaning closets, we make sure that we have a breakdown of the chemicals and what they are and on and on.

So the videos have kind of grown, and that’s Crystal Clean University in a nutshell. But it’s an evolution. It will continue to grow.

Charly: Two parts to the best of businesses, in my mind — me being in the entrepreneurial space since the early 80s. Back then I was selling woodcrafts at craft shows that I made with my grandpa, going, “Wait a minute, I can make money creating stuff and giving it to others?”

That’s one of the points that I want to make: every great business or entrepreneur is all about great relationships. And it’s not just great relationships with the customer or client, it’s great relationships with the team. So it’s top-down, I would always say, to have great relationships as far as the culture goes.

The second area is great systems. When I built my internet business in the mid to late 90s and we sold it in 2000, that was a huge part of it. How did we go from 100 subscribers to 1,000 and then break the 1,000 to get to 10,000? And we couldn’t have done it if we didn’t have great systems.

So I’m kind of pulling what you’re sharing here. It’s part of this process of the university — assuring that people understand the power of relationships, and it starts with you and the team, and then also from the team to the customer. And then as part of the process, the systems, processes — we’ve got that dialed in. And we help them understand the emotional connection and depth of why those systems are important and why we need to live into a lot of the values we’ve talked about: care, compassion, empathy, unconditional love as part of our vibe, and just who we are.

And that says a lot about how you guys hire too. Because we’re real clear about this. We can feel if they’re a good fit through the lens of their value structure. And then, are they good at tactics — the systems part?

Is there anything you want to say about great relationships and great systems living into that?

Jeff: Well, I mean, I agree with everything you said. And we try really hard to make sure. And it gets easier and easier to find people who fit the core values is what we talk about a lot. And it’s one thing to come in and say that they’ve cleaned before and they have some experience. But we want the right personality. Because we can train the rest in pretty readily.

So making them feel important. We want the cleaners to feel like they’re part of a family and feel important in what they do. And we want the clients then to feel that connectivity as they see our cleaners out doing a good job and in uniform and hopefully smiling and saying hello. Lead tech that comes and goes — they get to know them a little bit as they maybe are delivering supplies. And then, of course, we have other outreach programs throughout the management team to make sure we’re touching base with our clients and, “Hey, how is it going?”

So if they feel all those things that you just spoke to, then it’s mission accomplished. Usually we can keep them around for a long time, and we have many clients that have been with us for years.

Charly: So there’s an underpinning here of a third area that you shared, which is one of the values of the Crystal Clean culture, as we talked about in previous podcasts: great communication paired with great consistency.

So we’re really painting a frame here in this episode about the underpinnings of what, in my mind, Crystal Clean or any exceptional business is about: great systems, great relationships, great communication, consistency. Any thoughts or insights?

Jeff: Cleaning through consistency and communication. It’s the three C’s.

Charly: Love it. So good.

So as we think about common area cleaning, and common questions people may have. So one of the things you shared with me before recording today was you’re doing different proposals and quotes. And what I’d love to do for a little bit of time here is really understand what are some of the common questions, maybe objections people have when they’re considering you and they’re getting multiple quotes. Is there anything along those lines that you want to share?

Jeff: So not too many people write a formal request for proposal in the cleaning business, but there are some. And the consistencies, I think, whether it’s a formal request or they’re just calling us up — they went on Google and they found us because we have a guy that runs our SEO program really well for us, and we usually show up. So we get a lot of calls like that.

And they’re comparing and contrasting by virtue of, “Let’s see what a cleaning company will say about how much time they have to spend here and see what the cost is going to be.” And everyone has a scope of work. They may give us a scope of work or, of course, we have prepared scope of work.

And I try to explain to the clients, I will certainly compare and I’ll look at their scope of work versus ours. But in the body of the proposal, I want to make sure that I stick with a scope of work that is realistic — something that we will do. So sometimes they come in with a task list that maybe is a little too extensive. And I understand why. It’s easy to go, “I want this and this and this and this.” Because endlessly, you can go top to bottom.

And sometimes there’s specialty services too. I mean, in reality, if we’re going to clean off algae, it’s a different service. So we’ll talk about that separately. Or floor work, window work — these are separate services. So the scope of work conversation always comes to play.

So we try to also help them appreciate, back to the comparisons between companies, or we often say apples to apples, to make sure that they get a feel for why we might be different. And it’s not that we are absolutely competitive. We know our marketplace. But if you’re only looking for the lowest number, you’ll always find somebody who will give you something that will make you go, “Wow, that’s less and they’re going to clean my place. Good. I’ll go with that.”

So we have a lot of conversations about why you might consider a family-owned and operated company that cares and that’s willing to have those things that we talked about — having good consistent cleaning and communication and really checking on an account and helping an account with a Lead Tech with local cleaners that work for us. These things are really the big dynamic between what they might get from some of our competitors that show up to bid.

Charly: The thing I love about what you’re sharing here — another one of the I would classify as your superpowers — is you’re helping them look around corners they may not see, kind of figuratively, in the sense that, “Hey, here’s the scope of work. This is in reality, but also these are different areas that require their own specialized service. And let’s talk about the differential there to assure that we’re living into the very best consistently over the long time. And we have clear expectations and clear outcomes.” Which I think is another piece of this puzzle — the expectations and outcomes part of this.

So is there anything you feel people should know if they’re going to hire Crystal Clean for common area cleaning? Or anything that you think people should be asking — sort of a checklist of things: make sure you ask this, make sure you think about that?

Jeff: The biggest single thing does go back to communication. And most of our clients and people that want to work with us — and we want to work with them — understand this. We have this conversation up front that what’s really going to make a difference is because we’re — let’s say we’re starting a new project — we can’t possibly know everything there is to know about it. And it’s really going to take probably a couple weeks or on larger projects maybe a month or two to get familiar with the lay of the land and get good at the process of cleaning. And we may have over or underbid it even originally because you will always have a learning curve.

So communication becomes the key factor. And if they agree with me that we can talk about it a month later, a quarter later, and of course we’ll stay in touch through the course of time like that, we can discuss where we are. If we’re having any type of a problem, we’ll address it and we’ll fix it. Or just change something a little bit as we go to make it better by virtue of communicating together as reasonable adults — which we all can do, right? It’s not that tough. But that’s the biggest single thing. We have that conversation and look each other in the eye and they’re like, “Yeah, that sounds good. That’s what I want.” We’re going to grow this out, unroll it together and make it work. That’s where things really kick off good.

Charly: One thing I want to bring to light here based on what you just shared is the fact that you’re known to go out on site within 24–48 hours of a call to almost do a walkthrough, a meet and greet, to get an understanding at a reality level what the project looks like. And we talked about this in one of our previous podcasts about how, yeah, we answer the phone and we actually do something with it as opposed to let it go to voicemail. Maybe we’ll get to you in a couple of days or maybe we won’t — which seems to be a common theme down here. It seems too simple, but we hear that a lot.

Jeff: Yeah. We try to be responsive. So we have a person answering the phone all week. We will take calls when we can and we return calls. We get leads in from the website. Usually reply as soon as we’re sitting back at the computer. Same day is normal. Might be the next day. But often we do hear people go, “Well, I tried this company, that company, and nobody’s gotten back to me.”

Same thing with the proposal process. When they say, “No, I want to make this decision quick. I’d really like to have it. Today’s Thursday. If they’re like, I really kind of need it by tomorrow or Monday,” more times than not, we’ll make it happen. And I’m amazed when they’re like, “Well, so-and-so never got back to me anyway,” or “We’re waiting on more proposals to come in.” Often they wait on others. I meet the timeline, and they’re like, “Well, I have to wait for three more to come in.” And that’s not unusual.

So it seems like a simple thing, but we’re pretty proud of the fact that we’re up front trying to show you that we’re pretty client-centric and client-focused.

Charly: That’s amazing. I just want to commend you for that because it is, I call it, business fundamentals, right? But they are not lived into. And it’s really easy for a lot of companies that I’ve seen to get complacent, especially when we have an overabundance of calls that typically happen for some of the service-oriented industries around or after a hurricane. They’ll be like, “I need this cleaned out ASAP,” and all that kind of stuff. And then there’s just too many calls coming in. They don’t know how to handle it.

I’m pretty proud of our post-hurricane cleanup here recently. If I could share.

Jeff: Please.

Charly: So we put together a task force right away and said, okay, we have key clients at especially Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, and they just came back to life, right? So coming off Ian, rebuilds, remodels. Now we have two hurricanes come through — in fact, a tropical storm and two hurricanes this season. And so they see more sand and more debris and more damage — and unfortunately not nearly as bad. So this time it really was kind of in the cleanup model. Like, “Hey, can you help us with?” And we put together a task force here, put together a spreadsheet, and we knocked it out. It couldn’t have been two weeks. We had everything done for all of our clients that asked us. And like I said, it was pretty cool to see, actually. Day by day, we just started sending people and made it happen. And we got a lot of praise from existing clients. They really appreciated it, and it was just nice to see.

Jeff: So I’m going to go into detail about that for people that don’t realize. The hurricanes didn’t actually — aside from Ian — the eyewall actually came over Fort Myers and Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, Captiva at Cat 4 levels, which was very devastating. But the hurricanes and the tropical storm this season were offshore, but the winds and the surges put these things under water and sand. A lot of sand got pushed up. It was like you and me being from the Midwest. It was the snow days we had in the 70s. If you were on Sanibel, you had sand in your garage, the premises, and with that sand comes a lot of bacteria and germs and so forth.

So what we’re really trying to do is assure we get that stuff out and then help things dry out so that specifically mold and mildew don’t set in, but even more specifically black mold, which is incredibly toxic.

The facet that a lot of people don’t think about too much — I write it in the scope of work quite a bit — sanitize and disinfect. And a lot of times people don’t pick up on why I repeat that. It’s really important to go, “We’re going to come in and clean it or sanitize it, but we’re also going to disinfect and kill those germs.” So we have products really at every level to make sure that whatever we touch ends up sanitized and disinfected.

I think that’s a really critical area we should go deeper with because here’s what we know: we’re in Southwest Florida. We have continual humidity most of the year and it doesn’t take much for the humidity in a closed environment to create mildew and mold. And a lot of the houses — there’s quite a few companies I’ve worked with, and we actually had one for a while — it’s a house sitting service. We’re very clear to assure that the temperature was set maybe at 80 degrees Fahrenheit, but the humidity levels never got above 60, 62 to accommodate for that.

So when we don’t have power for an enduring period of time post-hurricane, but we’re still within the, we’ll call it the hot part of the year down here with the permeating humidity, we have to be incredibly clear for the sanitize and disinfect part to assure that we’re getting that stuff out of there quickly. A lot of people that are from other areas of the world don’t realize that this is a huge deal. There’s a constant battle, so to speak, with keeping humidity low — well, relatively low — in a place so that we can keep things from growing mold, mildew, and so on.

Maybe it’s one of the reasons the cleaning company does so well in Southwest Florida because it is nonstop.

Jeff: You’re