Latest / Cleaning Business Life / Remembering Jeff Campbell: The Man Who Changed How We Clean | Ep. 224

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Remembering Jeff Campbell: The Man Who Changed How We Clean | Ep. 224 · Cleaning Business Life

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone, Shani Miller with Cleaning Business Life.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you heard, but Jeff Campbell, who is the godfather of Speed Cleaning, passed away just this last week.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought I would do a tribute post to him.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And Jeff Campbell really was the man who changed how we all clean.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you have not checked him out on YouTube, I would definitely do so.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I will leave the link for his YouTube channel, Speed Cleaning.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I just wanted to take a few minutes to really acknowledge where who he was and how he impacted the industry.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: He had an enormous influence on my cleaning career and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of us.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So Jeff Campbell was actually the founder of the clean team and creator of Speed Cleaning Method.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he passed away, ironically, on my mom's birthday, August 13th.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was unable to locate a verified birth for Jeff, so I don't know how old he was when he passed.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to repeat or guess on that birthday.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't intended to be an obituary.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just me giving thanks for someone who had a great impact on my cleaning career.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I honestly would not be where I am today without having his influence over me.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so much of Jeff, of what Jeff introduced, has become part of how most of us train.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and it's top to bottom, left to right.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: That was Jeff Campbell.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: His claim to fame, fame, and I believe I have some of his original DVDs somewhere.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely have some of his books, was that he could clean a three-story, I call them gingerbread houses in San Francisco in 45 Minutes Flat.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: He worked with a team of three.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Granted, the workforce was way different in the 80s and 90s.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But before I talk about his work and his impact, I want to be clear about my own connection to Jeff.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't like hang out with him, hang out with him.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know him personally, and I never wanted to imply that we had a relationship that we didn't have.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I did have an opportunity to meet him once at an industry event, and he was so generous with his time.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was just like little mousy Shannon.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Ha ha.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, it was like more like, oh my God, you're you're Jeff Campbell.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we chatted.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: He was very polite with me, took his time, was not rushed.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know how sometimes when you come into someone who's a superstar and they usually brush you off really quick because they want to go off and do whatever they're gonna do.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: He took an extra 20, like something minutes with me just answering my questions.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had watched all of his videos.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But he was he was very kind and very generous with his time.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he was very approachable, and I really appreciated that about him.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: What do I remember most about the conversation?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was mostly, believe it or not, it was it wasn't systems, it was strategy on cleaning on for training and getting the training just right because he works in teams of three and I did not.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I only worked in solos.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in it's important for the industry to remain willing to answer questions.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I still get people who approach me and I answer questions.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: I answer questions all the time on Facebook.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I p God, everybody and their mother has my phone number.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a phone call and they're like, I'm stuck.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can you help me?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, sure, no problem.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: But that brief interaction mattered to me personally.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciated the time, the fact that he took the time at a busy event to answer my questions.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff came from the corporate world.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: In the late 70s, he decided he wanted to have a different life.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So he left corporate, corporate purgatory as someone who was just on the podcast or will be down the queue.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So he started the clean team, a small professional house cleaning company in San Francisco in 1979.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I believe I was in fifth or sixth grade then.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: The company began with a three-person cleaning team.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Once Jeff entered the cleaning industry, he started noticing how inefficial and effective traditional cleaning could be.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: People worked hard, but they often wasted time.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: For example, people walked back and forth instead of wearing an apron and carrying as you go, cleaning the same area more than once, moving randomly around the room, like there's a structure you start on from left to right, from top to bottom.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're in a room, it goes from left to right, from top to bottom, so that you're not zigzagging all over the place.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any of his books, I don't have them here.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I have several of his speed cleaning books.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can get them on Amazon sometimes for like three or four bucks.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than accepting that's just the way that that cleaning was done, Jeff began to study it and he started to test.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then he would test more, and then he would test some gin.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then he would have, you know, oh my god, this totally worked.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna test this now.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: He treated cleaning as something that could be observed, tested, measured, improved, and taught.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Ta-da! Speak cleaning.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: That mindset eventually led to the clean team becoming more than a cleaning company.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: It became a working laboratory for a new way of cleaning.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this literally impacted the industry that we have today.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what did they say?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like$540 billion we're supposed to do or a million dollars.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it keeps changing.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not the financial guru in that.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I hear one number, sometimes I hear another number.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure I'll hear a different number at the place I'm going to before the end of the year.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: The creation of Speed Cleaning, Jeff and his team experimented in real houses under real cleaning conditions.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't a lab, it wasn't a, you know, this is my training center and this is what I think is going to happen.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't hypothetical.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was train as you go type of thing.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Jeff reportedly referred to this process as dirt university.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I am not a graduate of Dirt University, which I find very interesting.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: They study which tools worked best.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there were some tools that were great, and then obviously there were tools that sucked.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: How many of us have bought tools and you're like, I like the commercial on it, but then when I got it and tried it, I'm like, oh, this just blows, right?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Which products produced the best results and which movements were unnecessary?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: They looked at sequencing, you know, like having a smaller squirt bottle instead of a larger 32-ounce bottle, where then that causes you to have trigger finger, right?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: When you're constantly spraying with the spray, versus if you were to use less chemicals and get your microfiber wet and just use a water with a little bit of chemical or no water at all, hence the reason for the invention of Norwex.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: They looked at sequencing.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Where should a cleaner begin?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's how the left to right, top to bottom came out.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Which direction should they move?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: What should they carry?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: What causes unnecessary backtracking?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: What can a cleaner improve speed without lowering quality?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: The system that developed became known as speed cleaning.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that began as the clean team's training, employee training manual.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, that became Jeff's book, Speed Cleaning, published in the 80s.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, I have those books.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could uh pull one out for you really quick, but I don't see them.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't just simply a collection of household tips, you know, like Mary Allen's Clean House or Haley's hints or Haley's cleaning hints, which I think Haley did several books.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Where else is there?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's several of them up there on my bookcase.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was a repeatable step-by-step system based on work performed in real humps.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff wasn't telling people to hurry, he was teaching them to eliminate wasted effort, right?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a tremendous difference between rushing through a house and working efficiently.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Jeff understood the distinctions between both of those.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Speed cleaning taught cleaners to work systematically instead of randomly, right?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: System.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Carrying tools and products you need so you don't continually return to the supply area.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're catty if you carry one.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Clean in a consistent order.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, doing the bathroom sinks before the toilet, doing the bathroom sink and the shower before the toilet.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Minor details.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Finishing one task or area before unnecessary retracing your steps.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Using the right product and the right tool for the surface.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I just saw a post the other day of someone who took, it was a brand new matted tile shower, and someone had taken toilet ball cleaner and just it took the finish.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was gray.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Took the finish right off of the shower floor.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, reduce unnecessary bending, reaching, walking, repetitive motion.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Protect the quality of the clean while improving the time it takes to produce.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: So once you learn how to speak clean, it legitimately can shave an a half hour to 45 minutes or even an hour off of your cleaning time if you know what you're doing.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: How much time did I waste during my early cleaning years because no one taught me a system?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think I just was a unicorn.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: I could clean faster than anybody else.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I came from a Merrymage background.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So who knows if Merrimaids took that same system for themselves and made it their own?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just experimented on my own and that's how, and then I ran into Jeff Campbell and the speed cleaning.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, this makes so much sense, right?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Which movements did I repeat hundreds of times before realizing there was a more efficient way?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Larger rooms, right?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: So typically if you're by the hour, you're doing small sections of the home, or if they're during COVID, we did a lot of that because we're moving people around.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: But once you get speed cleaning, you're doing large swaths of areas.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing like maybe a kitchen, a bathroom, and a dining room, and then you're, you know, you're finishing up, and then you're going and you're kind of repeating the same process as your area expands.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you're doing layer by layer by layer.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: So level one, level two, level three.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And my own pace started to pick up.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then I really, because I by then I was charging flat rate, I was like, I've just made an extra 45 or 50 bucks off this job just because I became faster because I was charging flat rate versus hourly rate.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Jeff Campbell's influence is everywhere.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everywhere.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's in a lot of the cleaning implements that people use, how we do products.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone ever goes to the ISSA show, you'll see the little pods that they put into spray bottles.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's portioned easily, and all you have to do is provide water.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So cleaning top to bottom, left right is consistent as a consistent route.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Wearing an apron or carrying supplies.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're mopping the floor, if you put your mop heads on your shoulder or shove them in your apron, you don't have to constantly go back to the mop bucket because you're not dipping all the time.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're slapping one down, going 100 by 100 square foot, and then you're slapping another one down.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's actually how you clean faster.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Using color-coded cloths or task-specific tools, avoiding unnecessary trips back to the cleaning caddy, following a standardized checklist.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Ta-da! We didn't have one before Jeff Campbell.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Training every employee to complete the work in the same general order.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I reference this, I'm not the only one who does McDonald's, right?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: In the old school method of McDonald's, the the ideology behind it was that every single person in McDonald's could work every other's position in the back of the house because they were all cross-trained, right?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone called out sick, then it was easier.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: So training and being consistent makes everything easier.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's why when you hear me say the McDonald's method, that's what I'm referring to.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Many cleaners use the same version of these principles every day without realizing how much Jeff Campbell helped popularize them.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: He he was the godfather of cleaning.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, I'm not worthy.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that being maybe one of the strongest signs of his influence, besides the videos and the gene outfits and, you know, the cleaners doing their thing and him talking in the kitchen, usually.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: There was a couple uh videos of him in the bathroom, and I was like horrified.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, so you're not drying the whole shower or the tub?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, no.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just the top of the faucets.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking for hair, but you're not, you're not drying the whole thing.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: The glass if you have a shower.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when a system becomes part of how the entire industry thinks, people eventually forget that there was a time before that system existed.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: It has been institutionalized in every cleaning company.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And really, these ideas don't only affect how quickly someone cleans a bathroom or moves through a kitchen, they affect the entire cleaning business.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: So once you're cleaner and you have more efficient cleaners, you're able to make more money off of your cleaning techs.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: The cleaning method actually became a business system, one of the systems for training and for how we do things as cleaning techs, as cleaning business owners, we all talk about the same things.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a repeatable cleaning method that the employee that made employee training way easier because one business would go, okay, well, you need to do it this way, and then you would work at another business, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do it this way.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then you work for a third business, and you're like, well, no, we don't want either one of those.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: We want you to go this way, right?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So just and and or you, if you've got a cleaning business, they would just be like, just clean the house.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just worry about that later.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's the merrymaid's method.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that creates consistency from employee to employee from house to house.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you're getting, you're selling a product, right?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, system also gives the owner something they can observe and correct, right?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if everyone follows top to bottom, left to right, then you're not worried about it.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: If the result isn't right, then you can identify where the process broke down.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Without a system, every employee develops their own method.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: It can be challenging when you have a cleaner and they come in and they have other habits, right?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of systems that are in here.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: When you perform this work professionally for years, these movements add up.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Efficiency is not only about saving minutes, it's also help preserve the person doing the work because we all know that cleaning techs have a shelf life.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to kind of think with Jeff's influence into the industry, where have better systems improved profitability in my own company?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have top-performing cleaning techs who know the top to bottom left, right, and the 10, the 10 steps for speed cleaning, you're gonna make more money off your cleaning techs, right?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So then you're gonna make more money and when you're gonna have more profit, and then maybe you're gonna have profit share, and maybe your cleaning techs will stay around for 10 years or longer.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have a couple of them that have been with me a long time.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: It goes by liquidy fast.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and cleaning habits have helped protect my body during the 16 years in the industry as well, because I'm not spraying with a spray bottle.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if I was still cleaning, right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not using a spray bottle or I'm not using the extra port of vac attachment.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm you I'm everything is done easily.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not putting a lot of effort in.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Learning the tools that are out there that won't cause damage to get the job done is so essential for you to perform at top-notch speed.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And when you teach efficiency without making employees feel rush or disposable, that makes all the difference as well.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to invest in them so that they stay around.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a difference too.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have checklists now inside of Jobber.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: There, I believe there's a checklist inside of Zinmade.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I've spent 16 years in this industry, and I have cleaned houses, trained employees, managed teams, dealt with quality problems, and built now.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is cleaning cleaning company number four, for those of you who don't know.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And from that perspective, you can tell, I can tell you that systems work.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I have Jeff Campbell to think for that, right?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: He had such an influence on so many people, even the great Debbie Sardone, those systems affected her business too, right?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if it's affecting Debbie Sardone's business and then it's affecting other big people in the industry, Jeff Campbell had a huge impact on the cleaning industry himself.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And his work demonstrated that professional cleaning could be standardized and taught, not just go clean the house and let's just hope for the best, right?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's the foundation of building a cleaning business that can eventually operate beyond its owner, right?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: It can be an absentee owner.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't tell you how many times I've in the last week alone, I've spoken to people who have remote locations or five remote locations, or I spoke to one person who has 15, and it's gonna open up two more before the end of the year.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you just never know where the cleaning industry is gonna go.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And long before there were systems and processes became the common language, Jeff Campbell was applying those principles to his residential cleaning company in San Francisco.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know if he still owns the clean team cleaning business or or not.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't check that out.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm sure there's a legacy there.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if there, the if the clean team is there and you guys know it's there, send me a photograph.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I totally want to see a picture of the location in San Francisco.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to see that.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And legacy is not always building with someone's name on it.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes legacy is a method, and he definitely left a legacy in the house cleaning industry.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's a book, a training manual, a tool, or an idea that changes how people perform their work.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Jeff created something that continued helping people long after he stopped cleaning houses himself and his little jean outfits.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have a couple photos of the 90s and I wore jeans too.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: The clean team and the speed cleaning system continued under new ownership after Jeff retired in 2011.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: His ideas are still being taught, discussed, adapted, used decades after the original system was created, way back in the 70s, late 7980s.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere today, a cleaner is carrying the right tools following a consistent routine and finishing at home with less wasted movement because of the principles that Jeff Campbell helped influence and introduce into our industry.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: That cleaner may never know his name, but the influence is still there.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what a great opportunity for Jeff Campbell to have been as impressionable as he was to me and to the millions of us who watched all of his videos on YouTube.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to take a moment to recognize all of the great things that Jeff Campbell did because he helped create professional cleaning as legitimate, skilled work.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: He approached it as a work worthy of study, worthy of experimentation, worthy of better tools, better training, and better systems.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And most importantly, um work worthy of respect.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, we're gonna miss you.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: He did not merely teach people to clean faster, he helped teach an industry think about differently the impact that the house cleaning industry has on America today.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I remain grateful that I had the opportunity to cross the paths with him, even briefly, and that he was generous enough to answer all my crazy questions.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff Campbell, you hope I'm best.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning in.