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Anago Cleaning: How a Family Business Became a $100M Franchise Machine · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and
0:17
today's guest is Adam Pawlitz. He is the CEO and President of
0:21
Onago Cleaning Systems, a top rated franchise brand that has
0:25
been innovating in commercial cleaning since 1989.
0:30
Based out of Pompano Beach, FL, Onago works with entrepreneurs
0:35
across the US and Canada offering turnkey solutions and a
0:39
recession resistant industry. Their focus on transparency,
0:43
preventive analytics and cutting edge technology aims to elevate
0:47
client experiences while empowering franchises to thrive.
0:52
Adam has been at the forefront of leading on a go through this
0:55
tech driven era. He became CEO in 2018 and has
1:00
since become an official member of the Forbes Business Council,
1:03
sharing insights on franchising and entrepreneurship.
1:07
He also contributes regularly to Entrepreneur Magazine.
1:10
Adam's passion for fostering entrepreneurship has guided
1:13
Onago's mission of providing financial freedom to business
1:17
owners. Through his leadership, the
1:19
company has claimed multiple awards and recognition
1:22
throughout the industry for its steady growth and innovation.
1:26
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2:12
All right, back to our guest today, the CEO of Onago Cleaning
2:15
Systems, Adam Pavlitz. Thanks for making the time to
2:17
Share your story today. Thanks for having me and
2:20
appreciate the introduction. You forgot that I make a mean
2:23
chicken front chase as well. I don't even know what that is.
2:26
Tell me about it. I'm just goofing.
2:29
I, I, I always, you know, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I blush when I
2:33
get the introduction sometimes on these things.
2:35
So. And, and I understand that you
2:38
can juggle, you know, three, you know, 3 firing pins at the same
2:45
time. Yeah, we'll, we'll make sure
2:47
that we redo the intro and include all those extras.
2:50
All right, so let's, let's get a little bit serious, but not too
2:53
serious. So your father founded Onago in
2:56
1989. What was his inspiration for
2:59
doing so? So he, he actually was, was
3:03
always in the building maintenance space.
3:06
He actually started, he actually, well, no, that's, he
3:08
started in restaurant management, which is sort of a
3:11
weird spot back in, you know, showing, showing the age.
3:13
He was at Ponderosa Steakhouse up in Michigan.
3:16
That was where I'm originally from.
3:19
And he, he told me, he told me he was fascinated by how much
3:23
profit they were making, literally doling out the little
3:26
butter chips and knowing how much each unit of a butter chip
3:30
cost. And then he got into, you know,
3:33
some light building maintenance with one of his brothers.
3:36
And then it turned into they actually created a local like
3:39
traditional style cleaning business in Michigan and, and
3:42
operated that for for many years.
3:45
We moved down to South Florida to take care of my grandmother
3:48
and he got into the franchising space with one of our
3:53
competitors, did it for three months and goes, I think I can
3:56
do this better. And and quite literally left the
4:00
job and and founded Antigo not that long after.
4:04
What was it specifically at that time?
4:06
I'm sure it's evolved quite a bit, but what specifically at
4:08
that time did he think he could do better?
4:11
I think it was about the, the back then it was telemarketing.
4:15
So it was, you know, you know, it's B to B business.
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And so it's, it used to be, you know, dialing off the Yellow
4:21
Pages or the white pages and working your way through.
4:24
And, and he had a, he felt like he had a better mousetrap in
4:27
order to attract clients, but he loved the franchise model
4:31
because in traditional cleaning, you know, you're, you're, you're
4:34
selling all day, you're working on, you know, invoicing
4:36
customers, customer service, and then someone's got to go out at
4:40
night and clean. And so it turns into this like
4:42
24 seven thing. And with franchising, you're
4:44
able to separate it. So, so it's, it's one level of
4:48
franchise that does the sales marketing and a different level
4:51
of franchise that does that keeps the building's clean
4:55
customers happy. So it was, it's a very cool
4:57
separation of duties that I think he goes, I think I can do,
5:00
I can sell more clients and I don't got to go out and
5:03
personally clean them like Hallelujah.
5:05
I think I might have found the the Holy Grail.
5:08
So yeah, explain to us sort of this multi tier franchise
5:12
concept because it's different than what we might see and what
5:15
probably most people are familiar with like in the
5:17
restaurant space. Yeah, yeah, I know it is.
5:19
It's it definitely is an odd one.
5:22
So most people are familiar with what we would call like A2 tier
5:26
franchise. So McDonald's corporate offices
5:30
and then the people who own the restaurants.
5:32
Our model is a three tier franchise model.
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So I'm, I'm, I'm the CEO of the corporate office.
5:39
We sell what's called a master franchise.
5:41
Who would own like a large metro area.
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So think your major, you know, major cities around the US and
5:47
Canada, you know, Atlanta, Dallas, you know, Philly,
5:49
whatever. And then within that territory,
5:52
they are acting like it's actually called a sub
5:55
franchisor. So think of it as like a mini
5:57
franchisor in their territory and they're selling unit
6:01
franchises in that territory who perform the services.
6:04
So kind of let me let me flip it upside down to kind of clarify
6:07
everything for your listeners. So if if you think, if I say
6:11
commercial cleaning, the first image that comes into your head
6:14
is going to be the guy with the mop and a bucket or vacuum or
6:17
whatever. And that is the unit franchise
6:20
owner and their team, right? So they with their job is simply
6:24
to do is keep the buildings clean, get the chemicals and the
6:27
equipment, make sure you know how to use everything, keep the
6:30
customers happy. That is it.
6:33
The question is, well, where did he get that customer to begin
6:35
with? And ultimately what we find is
6:39
in the same vein of like how restaurant, the restaurant
6:42
industry, there's a huge difference between being a good
6:45
cook and being a good restaurant owner.
6:49
The business side of restaurant touring is, is extremely
6:52
complicated. Turns out the business side of
6:54
commercial cleaning is a lot more complicated than just
6:57
keeping the buildings clean. And So what our model does is it
7:00
creates A synergy where you have the unit franchise who does all
7:02
of the cleaning and the, and you know, local customer service.
7:07
Then you have the master franchise who does absolutely
7:10
zero cleaning. And all their focus is on is
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they're, they're the sales marketing, they have the sales
7:15
guys, the website, the, the PPC and then they're doing the, the
7:21
back office administration. So it creates this synergy where
7:24
everyone's saving on overhead because the unit franchise, all
7:28
they got to do is clean. They don't have to have
7:29
salespeople or marketing budget. And the master franchise is only
7:33
doing sales and marketing and doesn't have to have cleaners on
7:36
staff. So you get to really laser focus
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on what your strengths are. So let me see if I understand
7:40
this. You are, you know, corporate
7:42
office, you're selling off the different franchise
7:45
opportunities in these master franchise opportunities in
7:49
different territories across the country.
7:51
And then those franchisees, they end up being the sales and
7:56
marketing arm. They're the one going out and
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finding the clients. They're, you know, handling the
8:00
customer service, they're handling the billing, you know,
8:02
all of that sort of, you know, back office stuff.
8:05
And at the same time they're recruiting the front line
8:07
people, the what do you call that third tier, the the mini
8:11
franchisees, the unit franchisees, they're recruiting
8:15
them to be the ones that actually do the cleaning, right.
8:19
OK. And so how many master
8:24
franchisees do you guys have currently?
8:26
We have 48 master franchises across US and Canada.
8:31
OK. And so that's quite a few, but
8:35
you guys are still looking to grow, still lots of territories
8:38
available. Yeah, the, you know, it, it's,
8:41
it's funny because the, the territories that come up, you
8:44
know, it's always based on the quality of the candidate we can
8:47
find. And so, you know, we have
8:48
territories that we've sold that I would have never thought I
8:52
would have sold. And then there's territories,
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you know, like we, we sold, we're, we're in Winnipeg,
8:56
Canada. You have to plug your car in
8:58
like 5 months of the year so the battery doesn't freeze on you
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and Winnipeg, Canada and the owners up there are doing a
9:05
phenomenal job. That's not, you know, there
9:07
wasn't on my bingo card that year when we sold it.
9:11
But then we have a lot of great territories in the Midwest that
9:13
are wide open. Chicago, Indianapolis, Des
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Moines, Kansas City. I don't know why I have this
9:19
weird, like missing, you know, gaping hole in the Midwest, but
9:24
you know, it's, it's it's phenomenal.
9:26
Prime territories are available still in that area.
9:29
And So what is it that you're providing to your master
9:32
franchisees? What are they getting out of the
9:34
opportunity? So to start right, they're
9:38
getting all of our, our, you know, all of our training.
9:40
They actually come to our office for a few weeks to get the full
9:43
in depth training on all our sales processes, customer
9:47
service processes. We're giving them access to all
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our CRMS. We have, you know, full blown
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marketing system and platform that we use that tracks
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everything, bills for everything.
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And then in addition to that, we obviously have national vendor
10:03
relationships, really great rates and prices on everything.
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And then we, we show them how to, you know, essentially be
10:12
business coaches for the unit franchisees that they sell
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within their territory. So it, it very much turns into,
10:18
you know, business in a box almost by the time they're done
10:21
with the initial training and, and have gone through all of
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the, you know, learning of how all the software and everything
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works. And so how long does that
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initial training take? Like let's say that I ink a deal
10:32
with you today, hand over my check.
10:35
How long is it before I'm actually able to hit my feet on
10:39
the ground and start running with this?
10:41
So from, from check to open, it's about, call it 90 days.
10:46
You don't need, you don't need to like renovate a space to like
10:50
a custom space like a restaurant might, right?
10:52
You don't have to put the golden arches in or anything like that.
10:56
You're just renting, you know, some, some office space, but
10:58
mostly it's just it's preliminary set up stuff during
11:01
that period. Get your LLC set up, get an
11:04
office space rented. We actually help you negotiate
11:06
all of that, you know, get computer equipment, get some
11:10
logos on the wall. It's nothing crazy, but it just
11:13
a lot of times the things that take the longest right as you go
11:15
to negotiate an office lease and they go great, and we'll get you
11:18
in December 1st, you know, and, and so, you know, there's just a
11:22
lot of weight in between. But then once, once you come
11:25
here for training and again, it's, I think it's like 10 days.
11:28
That's, that's spread over 2 weeks.
11:31
You go back to your territory and you hit the ground running.
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Like you're running, you know you have appointments you can
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run or if you hired A salesperson or you know in, in
11:38
the earlier phases you can you, you're there running the
11:40
appointments and you're already building your book of business
11:43
as soon as you get home. Do I need an office?
11:47
Can I get this out of my home? Yeah, no, you, you, you want the
11:50
office because you are still meeting with those unit
11:52
franchise prospects and you want to have them to have somewhere.
11:55
And it's it, I think it, I don't know if it looks as legit if
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you're meeting with him at a Starbucks, you know.
12:01
Fair enough. It doesn't have to be big.
12:03
Usually we say it's like thousand 1500 square feet.
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You know, it's just a, you know, like A2 room office.
12:08
That's usually sufficient to start.
12:10
And are you teaching me how to teach my I'm sorry, I forget the
12:15
name again. What do I call them?
12:16
The the mini fridge. Yeah, you can say janitorial
12:19
franchise. The janitorial franchise, are
12:21
you teaching me how to teach them to clean or is it presumed
12:25
that they know how to clean because like, it's not rocket
12:29
science. I don't know, like do you guys
12:31
have special techniques or special equipment or special
12:34
chemicals? All of the above, yes.
12:37
So it is, you're right, it's not, it's not rocket science.
12:41
I would say the initial training that we focus on in in that
12:45
first couple of weeks is really less about the cleaning and more
12:48
about the sales and marketing side of it.
12:51
Because you're right, cleaning is not rocket science.
12:53
Yes, there are ways to do things that are more efficient than
12:56
others and we train on that. You know, one of the jokes I
12:59
always, I always make is how many hands do you use to clean a
13:03
toilet? And the average person says
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like, you know, one, I just kind of, I don't want to touch
13:07
anything when commercial cleaning time is money, right?
13:10
So it's no, we're going to get 2 hands.
13:12
And, and there's a way to do it when you have 15 toilets or
13:15
whatever in a building to clean. Time is money.
13:18
And you don't want to sit there one hand in those things.
13:20
There's a way to do it faster. There's ways to do, you know,
13:23
anything faster. The, the, the, you know,
13:27
there's, there's how chemicals get mixed.
13:30
There's a certain way to do it where you, you know, you're not
13:32
wasting money. A lot of people beyond overuse.
13:35
How much chemical, right. You see your, you go home and
13:37
you spray your kitchen counter and you soak it with Windex or
13:40
something. That's not how it's done in the
13:42
commercial space. So it's it's not rocket science,
13:45
but it's probably not what the average person is used to doing.
13:48
There, there are techniques and, and efficiencies to be found
13:51
there and that's what you're helping to teach people.
13:53
And in the early days, you mentioned, you know, when your
13:56
dad started the company, it was telemarketing that was sort of
13:58
your primary sales mechanism Today, and you reference this,
14:03
you know, a lot of it's got to be, you know, paper click, I
14:06
don't know, maybe there's some search engine optimization or,
14:09
you know, folks, I don't know, you're doing other things like
14:12
Flyers in the mail knocking on people's doors.
14:15
Like what it what's the the sales and marketing coaching
14:19
that you're providing? So it's, it's, it really is a
14:23
huge mix of things. There still is telemarketing.
14:25
It's still, it still works not like it used to, but it still
14:28
works. It's, you know, necessary evil.
14:31
You know, we all get, we all get the, you know, 8,000,000 phone
14:33
calls and everything like that. And, you know, you know,
14:35
decline, decline, but you know, it still works every once in a
14:37
while, at least in the B2B space.
14:40
Yeah, PPC paper click is huge. That's that's definitely a huge
14:44
space of your budget search engine optimization and then you
14:48
have to do a lot of topple funnel, right?
14:49
So creating brand awareness to using YouTube, Facebook,
14:53
Instagram, you know, you never no one's going on Facebook to
14:57
pick their next cleaning company.
14:59
But if but if you haven't heard of me when I do call or you do
15:03
type, it's time for you to type in and you know who's going to
15:05
clean my office next. It's good for you to have known
15:08
my name from one of those ads. Yeah, we and, and then of
15:11
course, the classic stuff, right?
15:13
There's, there's door hangers and Flyers to hand out.
15:16
And, you know, if a salesperson is in a business Plaza, of
15:19
course we say, hey, go, go check out, you know, three or four
15:22
more other offices while you're dropping off a proposal for
15:25
another 1. So it, I mean, it's, it really
15:28
is all of the above that that has to be done.
15:30
What do you think is the single most effective sales technique
15:34
right now? In terms of lead lead creation
15:37
SEO far and away SEOPBCPBC is sort of like, you know, like a
15:44
shot in the arm, like it works while you're spending the money.
15:48
But then as soon as you know, you try, you go, I'm going to
15:50
lower my budget or, and it's a little expensive, you know,
15:54
leads immediately dry up because your weight, you're you're
15:56
spending everything on on those paid leads.
16:02
SEO is like a healthy diet and going to the gym 3 or 4 times a
16:06
week, you know what I mean? It takes time.
16:08
It's not the cheapest thing. Sometimes it's a little bit
16:11
painful, but but you build it up over time.
16:15
And if you can get into one of those top, you know, 1234, maybe
16:18
even 5 slots, when someone's searching the keywords you want,
16:22
you know you're going to be found and it's going to create
16:24
tons of revenue. So do each of the individual
16:27
master franchisees have their own dedicated domain or is it
16:31
like a sub domain of Anico? So it's a sub domain, but if you
16:36
were interacting from wherever USA, it's designed where it
16:42
feels like you're on their local, you know, Southern
16:46
California site or their Utah site or whatever.
16:52
And, and it's pages all about Utah and Provo and Salt Lake
16:55
City. And so it's, it's, it's hyper
16:58
localized, but it is, it is part of our larger domain strategy.
17:03
Guys are leaning on technology quite a bit, at least in the
17:07
marketing aspect of things. Is this tech show up in other
17:11
aspects of your business as well?
17:13
So we're, we're, I would consider us the, the technology
17:17
leader in the space. We have proprietary technology
17:21
that we created. It's called clean calm now.
17:24
And while we're the tech leader in the space, we're kind of lame
17:26
at naming conventions. So you're going to hear, you're
17:29
going to hear, you know, clean communication, clean, calm.
17:34
But the an apologies. I, I sit next to the busiest
17:38
fire station in Pompano Beach. And so it's if I'm on a, if I'm
17:42
on a call, it's going to go. They're going to help some
17:45
people. Go go fast.
17:47
Go get them. Go help them.
17:48
When we moved in, we would like literally brought them cookies.
17:51
We're like, hi, just in case anything happens.
17:53
We want to know you. You know that we care about you
17:54
and you're we're your friends, but with with clean calm.
17:59
So what we did with clean calm is we realized that in in
18:04
cleaning, there are there are only two experiences you can
18:09
have, unlike other industries where you can have three.
18:13
So in a restaurant example, you can have one of three
18:17
experience, you can have a delight experience, great food,
18:20
great service. We should go back.
18:22
This is amazing, terrible, a bad experience, right?
18:25
Waiter was a jerk. Food was cold.
18:27
We're never going there. And we're going to put up one
18:29
star review on Yelp about it or that sort of middle of the road.
18:36
It was unremarkable. You know, whatever experience
18:40
with cleaning, we don't have the delight experience.
18:44
Nobody gets to their office in the morning goes, Oh my
18:47
goodness, this place is so clean.
18:49
I'm going to get my janitor a birthday present.
18:51
It just, it doesn't happen, right?
18:53
You either get to work and you go, well, I got to get to work
18:56
and you don't think about it. And you sit at your computer and
18:58
you go or you get to work and you go, why is my trash can
19:02
still full or why is it smell over in the bathroom or you
19:05
know, whatever, you know it. So you have this sort of, you
19:08
know, you, you have this neutral experience or, or a bad
19:11
experience. When you're doing your job well,
19:14
nobody notices you. Exactly, exactly.
19:17
And so you know, the, the old adage, you know, about, you
19:20
know, you know, have, you know, a bad experience is the best
19:22
opportunity to make a friend, right?
19:24
You hear that with like, you know, you know, if you get a bad
19:27
Google review, make sure you answer it quickly and address
19:30
their issues and maybe they'll give you a good review.
19:33
We, we realize that, that, you know, if we're only going to
19:36
hear bad news and never good news, then we need to capitalize
19:40
on that. And So what clean Com does is it
19:43
allows the the customer to take out their phone, take a picture
19:47
of whatever the dirt is, whatever the room is, whatever
19:51
you know, whatever is not quite to their liking, Take a picture
19:54
of it, mark what room it's in, leave us a message.
19:57
It sends it to the the janitorial franchise owner that
20:01
that manages their building. They have a 2 hour mandatory
20:07
response time. So you will be responded to
20:09
within two hours. And then it has built in Google
20:13
Translate. So it's, you know, you can type
20:15
in your native language, they can type in their native
20:17
language. It's all private, right?
20:19
You're not exchanging cell phone numbers.
20:20
It's all kind of encapsulated in our platform.
20:24
And then it has preventive analytics built in on the back
20:26
end on our side. So if say we see that this
20:30
particular franchise has had three complaints on bathrooms in
20:34
the last couple of months, the master franchise in that
20:37
territory can, can pull him in and say, hey, man, let's, let's
20:40
actually do a retraining on, on, on the proper procedures to
20:43
ensure you're catching everything so that we minimize
20:46
future complaints for you. So basically once you've, once
20:48
you've switched to Anego, you know, you're, you're, you're,
20:52
you're, you're, you're, you're good to know that, you know,
20:54
whether whether it's that franchise or that service or
20:56
that retraining, you're not going to have the same complaint
20:59
for long. So that platform that you just
21:02
described there clean com right, with the great branding on it.
21:07
How does the the office person know to use that platform as the
21:15
way to communicate that something is dirty or is it is
21:19
it your your client? They're the one that would
21:22
'cause like I'm in an office building here and they contract
21:25
their cleaning out to somebody. I wouldn't know, you know, how
21:28
to get in touch with the cleaning people.
21:30
So is it like the the building managers that would be the ones
21:34
that would communicate that? Right.
21:36
It, it, it's whoever the building manager or the whoever,
21:39
that whoever signs the contract would then, you know, designate,
21:42
hey, these are the people I want to be able to report.
21:45
Yeah, if you, if you turned it into something where every
21:47
single person could report, it would just be chaos, right?
21:51
Like this room is like this and that room's like that.
21:53
And everybody has their different standard of clean.
21:56
But ultimately it's like, OK, who, who do you want to be the
21:59
person? And usually, right.
22:00
It's like an office manager or a building manager.
22:03
That would be the person that you would normally go to, except
22:07
normally that building manager or office manager, the way they
22:10
would report your issue, what would they do?
22:12
They'd make a phone call, maybe leave a message of the old
22:15
school ways, right? They have like a binder and you
22:17
leave a note in the binder. And then it's like, hey, do you
22:20
speak Spanish? Because I don't speak Spanish.
22:22
Can you leave a note for me? Because I want them to take out
22:24
this trash. And so it just turns into this
22:26
like very archaic kind of massive communication that could
22:31
easily be streamlined. And so that's what we did.
22:34
We streamlined it. That's pretty cool.
22:36
Any other ways that you guys are leveraging tech?
22:40
So I mean it it it all builds off of there.
22:42
So now you know, we're we, we took that a step further.
22:46
So what's in development is an e-learning platform so that now
22:50
we can leverage a little bit of AI along with those issues, you
22:54
know, issue reporting. So if someone say, you know,
22:57
same scenario, the three, three issues in the restrooms, it
23:00
automatically queues our learning platform.
23:03
They have to watch a video on how to properly service the
23:05
restrooms, take a quiz to be recertified and then it notifies
23:09
the client like, Hey, your French is he is, you know, been
23:11
recertified and we'll address your issues.
23:15
And then I've invested way more than I'd like to admit on a new
23:19
CRM that we're in beta tests right now and about to launch at
23:23
the beginning of the year in in franchising.
23:27
What you find is, you know, we're a 37 year old franchise
23:30
model. The older the franchise model, a
23:34
lot of times, you know, the software was done in a vacuum.
23:38
So it's hey, we need to get more customers.
23:40
We need some software for it. Well, now we know, now we got to
23:42
build those customers. OK, let's go get some software
23:45
to do that. And there's like multiple
23:47
systems that don't speak and it creates this like double triple
23:50
entry scenario that just ends up being such a such a time suck.
23:55
So we created what we're calling the Antigo Clean Suite.
23:59
And what that does is it's a fully integrated literally from
24:03
like lead to, you know, meeting with the client to proposal
24:08
sold, any follow-ups, sale, selling of the unit franchise,
24:13
brokering the the cleaning contract to the unit franchise
24:16
so they can go clean, bill the customer, collect the money and
24:19
remit the balance to the unit franchise. 0 Double entry, zero
24:25
printed paper unless requested by customer.
24:28
That's really cool. Yeah, I I'm really excited about
24:31
that one. I wouldn't have thought, excuse
24:34
me, that a no offense that a cleaning company would be, I
24:38
don't know, this cutting edge when it comes to tech.
24:42
Are you, is this common or are you guys a bit more of a
24:45
disruptor in this space? I'm a huge nerd.
24:51
It's, it is, it's not common, but you know that that's, that's
24:56
honestly, that's what's excited me, you know, over my tenure a
24:59
day and ago is, is how can we, you know, it, it's, it's not,
25:03
it's not rocket science, but there's definitely a way.
25:05
If you say, OK, let me go all the way down to, you know, the
25:09
base, you know, the base tasks that have to be done.
25:12
There are a lot of ways in this industry to make the wheel
25:14
rounder or at least smooth out the wheel.
25:17
And so that's what we're trying to do.
25:20
Let's talk about your tenure there because initially you
25:24
didn't plan to join the family business.
25:27
You worked in corporate finance, you did investment banking, you
25:32
were at IBM for a number for a period of time.
25:36
Can you walk me through that experience and how it influenced
25:42
your decision to join the family business?
25:46
Yeah. So, yeah, you, you hit the nail
25:48
on the head. I, I had zero desire to join the
25:51
family business. My background was in finance.
25:55
I did some investment banking. I was at IBM, I was in corporate
25:58
finance. I was, I was, I was there during
26:04
2008, 2009. And it was there were they
26:08
R.E.M. was doing a big round of layoffs.
26:10
I wasn't, I wasn't one of the people laid off.
26:12
I was one of the analysts. And I was given employee numbers
26:15
and exit packages and salary packages.
26:18
I didn't know who it was. And I was giving the analysis on
26:21
who was getting the golden parachutes and who was not
26:24
getting parachutes. And I'm mid 20s at this point.
26:28
And you go, man, like you know, it just left a sick feeling in
26:33
my stomach. And you go like I could easily
26:37
have been, you know, you know, I'm 41 now.
26:39
I could easily have been the 41 year old at IBM and some 25 year
26:42
old kids deciding my fate. And you go, I just, it didn't
26:47
sit well with me. I happen to be down for the
26:49
holidays and my dad goes, hey, I think I got the tiger by the
26:53
tail with this whole anego thing.
26:55
You got to come check it out. And it was about six months
26:57
later that I ended up joining. OK.
27:00
It's just been up and to the right ever since then.
27:02
Or I mean, it was maybe a few hiccups along the way.
27:05
Yeah, lots of lots of bumps. Initially, right, he, he, my, my
27:09
training program literally was his exact words, 'cause he was
27:12
a, he was a, you know, old timey how he spoke.
27:14
He would say, you've left your highfalutin finance job and your
27:18
first job at Antigo, you're going to be a telemarketer.
27:20
I was a telemarketer by day and a franchisees assistant cleaning
27:24
a daycare at night. So for, you know, I leave, I
27:28
leave corporate finance and I'm, you know, emptying 55 gallon
27:32
drum garbage bags full with diapers.
27:36
So it was, you know, it was, I did, but I did everything.
27:39
I mean, that was the point, right?
27:40
So I did, I cleaned, I telemarketed, I did the outside
27:43
sales, I did customer service, a little bit of accounting, but my
27:48
background was financed. So I didn't really need to get
27:50
into that too far. But I did literally everything
27:53
before I even moved to the corporate office because I had
27:58
to know it, you know, so if I'm going to give people advice on
28:00
how to run their business and they've been doing it for 10-15
28:04
years and I've been doing it for two, who the heck am I and why
28:08
do I know anything? And, and so that's, that's the
28:10
approach we took. And it was great.
28:12
I, I, you know, you know, we, we actually require, when we have,
28:15
when we sell a new master franchise, even though they're
28:17
the sales guy, we actually, as part of the training, we, we
28:21
actually take them out a few nights.
28:23
We make them clean our office, take out all the trash, strip
28:26
and wax the floor. Just because you need to see
28:30
how, how much work it takes, how hard it is, because if you know
28:33
how to do it, then you know how to price it appropriately as
28:37
well. Interesting.
28:40
Now another one of those hiccups, I understand big hiccup
28:43
was COVID. Big, big challenge for you guys.
28:47
You found yourself speaking to your entire network, your entire
28:52
system at least twice a week and a lot of strain, a lot of stress
28:56
during that period of time. After the pandemic, you found
28:59
yourself at a crossroads. Do I step back, you know, kind
29:04
of burned out at this point, or do I double down?
29:08
What drove you to the ladder to invest heavily in the business
29:12
and how is that paid off for you?
29:15
Yeah, that was. That was quite, a, quite a time
29:19
we, we went from, you know, again, commercial cleaning pre
29:22
COVID was something where it was very much like an afterthought.
29:27
It was a budget item to minimize.
29:29
And then during COVID you'd turn around and all of a sudden we
29:32
had to become disinfection experts.
29:33
Quite literally in about 8 weeks, you know, had had to
29:37
learn, learn how it all works, learn the equipment, learn the
29:40
chemicals, put together a full blown operating manual on it and
29:45
then a marketing program behind it to be able to make sure
29:47
people were still working. And, and you know, the hospitals
29:51
and schools and whatever that remained open that they were
29:54
able to get the cleaning that they needed.
29:56
And so coming out of that and talking with everybody when I
29:59
would get home and, and mind you, this is, I was, I was, I
30:02
was, you know, a genius for this because I sold my house
30:05
literally right before COVID and I'm renovating the house that
30:08
I'm, I'm moving into. I, I moved in temporarily with
30:12
my mother-in-law, my wife and my then 18 month old.
30:16
And, and, you know, I wouldn't get home until, you know, nine,
30:20
10:00 at night, 'cause I, I was the only one who was going to
30:24
the office. My, my mother-in-law, she
30:25
doesn't even have like a, you know, an office area.
30:27
So I was like, I, I was going to the office by myself just in
30:29
like T-shirt and basketball shorts.
30:31
I get home nine 10:00 at night, you know, be fried and get up
30:37
the next day and start again. And it was, it was, it was
30:42
rewarding, but it was exhausting.
30:44
And so you come out of that and you go, all right, what do I,
30:47
you know, what do I want to do with my life?
30:49
Is this, is this what I want to do?
30:53
And, and honestly, I mean, and I've told our franchisees this
30:55
even, you know, I, I had the two options in front of me of either
30:59
a, you know, you know, the, the business makes good money.
31:02
I can make a good living. I could hire someone to manage
31:05
the day-to-day for me and, you know, and ride off into the
31:09
sunset or, you know, and I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.
31:13
I go, I go or, you know, I can really see how I can take this
31:17
thing to the next level. And, you know, and, and, you
31:21
know, maybe it's just how I'm wired.
31:23
My wife says, you know, if I ever, you know, I, I would never
31:25
be able to retire because I just, I'm always, I have AI,
31:29
have AI think what she says. I have a hard time just being I
31:32
have, I'm very good at doing though.
31:36
And so, so for me, I look at it and I go, man, I really see a
31:38
path forward on this thing. And so we created a, at the time
31:43
it was a 5 prong plan. We were billing as a system
31:46
somewhere in the neighborhood of like mid 60,000,000 in system
31:50
wide revenue. And I said, I want to be $100
31:52
million brand and I want to do it in two years.
31:56
And we did it in 19 months. And, and, and then you really
32:00
start going like, wow, like what, what can I do from here?
32:06
And so stupid me, I stuck my neck out again a couple years
32:09
ago and I said, and now we're going to be a $300 million brand
32:12
by the end of 2028. And we added multiple layers to
32:16
the plan and major investments in technology.
32:20
I've hired 3 C-Suite people since then and, and a few VP and
32:24
director level people and just going, you know, going all in on
32:29
it because I think the opportunity is just absolutely
32:32
massive. I'm going to guess you know to.
32:34
Get that growth. Obviously it really helps to
32:36
differentiate you yourself from the other cleaning franchises
32:40
out there by having this text stack that you've been
32:42
describing. But now you got to go out and
32:44
you know, to get that revenue number, you really have to sell
32:47
more master franchises. Is part of that C-Suite
32:51
dedicated to the marketing and sales side of things or, or how
32:54
are you guys going to expand your reach?
32:58
So, yeah, there's, there's 2IN in terms of the sales side,
33:01
there's a lot of pieces to it. But in terms of just direct
33:03
sales side two of the key components, 1 is yeah,
33:08
absolutely. The more, the more flags there
33:10
are on the map, obviously the more areas of of the country
33:14
that are generating revenue that otherwise would not be.
33:16
So, So yes, absolutely have to be adding more master
33:20
franchises. And then the second piece is so
33:23
in, in our space, your, you know, your average client is,
33:28
you know, think, think very local, right?
33:30
Your average client for an anego franchise is going to be your
33:34
local doctor's office, your local, you know, insurance
33:37
agents, your local schools and it.
33:41
And, and to get from, you know, 100 million to 300 million, it
33:45
takes a lot of little schools and doctor's offices to get
33:49
there. And so we said, how do we, how
33:51
do we get there with, you know, bigger, bigger steps?
33:55
And so one of one of the, our, our chief strategy officer, his,
33:59
his whole charge is going after regional and national accounts.
34:03
So now you know, you know, working out, you know, going
34:06
after, you know, some of the big players.
34:08
So when the, you know, the Amazon data center needs
34:12
cleaning or the UPS shipping facility needs cleaning, making
34:17
sure we're part of those RFPs and landing those bids.
34:21
And that's doing exceptional. I mean it's it went from a non
34:24
existent business 3. Years.
34:27
Well, not even. Three years ago to this year,
34:31
it'll probably be doing, call it 16 million or so.
34:37
And that's, and that's on a, you know, on a hockey stick curve
34:39
because it was like 2 million the first year to 16.
34:42
And that, you know, I mean, like so that that's an area that was
34:45
untapped for us. And so it's, it's seeing all of
34:51
it's adding more markets and then ultimately, you know, going
34:54
after verticals that we won't, we otherwise had never tapped
34:57
before. And so it's like a, you know, 22
35:00
avenues that we're approaching to really try to kick start this
35:03
thing and, and get there. And we're we'll finish this year
35:06
about halfway there. Wow, so.
35:08
It's not just about, as you put it, more flags, more franchise,
35:12
master franchise. That's part of it.
35:14
But also how can you help build up each of those master
35:18
franchisees by going after some of these national accounts and
35:21
helping to coach them and helping to find them
35:24
opportunities in areas that didn't exist before.
35:27
So, so let's talk for a second about what you're looking for in
35:30
a master franchise, whether that's prior work experience or
35:35
personality traits. So I mean it is.
35:39
Very much a, you know, a sales and marketing type business.
35:44
So, so, you know, from a business, you know, work
35:47
experience, I think we're looking for someone who's, who's
35:51
either run, you know, or, or been a senior executive in, you
35:56
know, usually some sort of sales or marketing organization
35:59
understands, whether it be retail or, or restaurants, it
36:03
doesn't, it doesn't matter. We're agnostic to the industry,
36:05
but someone who understands that at the end of the day, this
36:09
whole thing gets fueled by how much paper you put on the street
36:12
and paper on the street is derived from how many leads
36:14
you're, you're, you know, you're trying to get.
36:17
So I would say on the, on that side, it's, it's someone who's a
36:20
senior level executive, VP, director, CEO, whatever it may
36:23
be. And if you have some sort of
36:26
sales in your background, all the better from a, from a
36:31
personality trait. It's, it really is it, it's
36:35
someone who's hungry, you know, it's, it's extremely driven.
36:38
The, the old, the old African proverb right where it's the
36:41
every morning the lion wakes up and has to outrun the slowest
36:45
gazelle or he doesn't eat and the gazelle wakes up and he has
36:48
to outrun the fastest lion or he gets eaten.
36:51
But everybody wakes up running that that is the personality we
36:55
want in a master franchise, someone who, you know, this is
36:58
not a if you build it, they will come, you know, kind of
37:01
franchise. This is a get up every morning
37:03
and go, OK, what can I you know, what can I go after?
37:07
Let's meet with the sales team. What's how's everyone's leads
37:09
doing? What do we got?
37:10
How can I help you? Let's get going.
37:12
Let's get driving that. That type of personality really
37:16
does well. Radical.
37:18
Transparency. Important philosophy for you.
37:21
Why Adam? So I think I.
37:24
Think in our industry, you, you have, you know, most commercial
37:28
cleaning is done at night. And So what ends up happening is
37:31
there's this disconnect between what the customer perceives and
37:36
what is actually happening at night.
37:38
And that can be to the good or the bad, right?
37:40
I'm sure there's been times where, you know, someone is, you
37:43
know, not doing a good job cleaning and, and, and, and the
37:47
customer doesn't see it and they get away with it.
37:50
And on the other hand, you have times where the customer's
37:52
seeing something that you know, to them is a big deal, but to
37:56
the person who's cleaning, it's like it's a paper clip on the
37:58
floor. Get over it.
37:59
And I mean, there's, there's always this disconnect.
38:03
And So what we felt was important was if we were able to
38:07
present to the customer what we feel is doing well and what we
38:13
feel is has room for an improvement.
38:15
And So what we're working on right now in our tech stack is
38:17
called the customer health portal.
38:20
And so it's, you're able as a customer, once this is all
38:23
launched to login, see what your health grade is like a letter
38:28
grade kind of rating and maybe you're AB plus and not an A.
38:32
And we're going to tell you what areas your franchise owner and
38:36
their team need improvement on what we're doing to help get
38:39
them better at it, give you, you know, options if you don't, if
38:42
there's something you want to change or something like that.
38:44
And just being upfront with it. Because if you're, if you're
38:47
trying to build a long term relationship with a customer and
38:50
keep them for 5/10/15 years versus I think the industry
38:54
average is like 2 years or something like that.
38:58
You know, you, you, you're not going to build a, you're not
39:01
going to build a 10 year relationship off BS ING each
39:04
other. You're going to build it off
39:06
just being upfront and honest of like, here's who we are, here's
39:08
where occasionally we're going to fall short, but here's what
39:11
we're going to do to rectify that.
39:14
And. Adam, I know that you're real
39:15
big on fostering entrepreneurship, right?
39:19
You want to provide your master franchisees with financial
39:23
freedom. It always helps if there's a
39:26
specific story to share or it helps to illustrate how that's
39:30
actually played out for somebody in real life.
39:35
Yeah, yeah, the. You know, I, I think, I think a
39:40
couple of things. I think on the master franchise
39:43
level, I mean, we have, we have great stories, right?
39:45
And you find people who are who, you know, come from all walks of
39:50
life. They they the the best stories
39:54
on those are usually ones were like, you know, someone was laid
39:56
off and hey, you know, I'm laid off.
39:59
I'm 47 years old, 57 years old. What do I do with the skill set
40:03
that I have and where do I go? And you find out that like you
40:07
don't have to know anything about cleaning to run a master
40:10
franchise. You just know, need to know how
40:11
to lead a business and coach people and manage and on the
40:15
unit level franchise. These are my favorite far and
40:18
away because. You get the story of someone who
40:21
starts, you know, a lot of times our most common franchise at the
40:24
janitorial level that's sold is like a couple $1000 a month in
40:28
revenue is all they're looking for.
40:29
It's a side hustle. It's how they start to keep
40:32
their day job. They're looking for some extra
40:34
cash. And then you find out you get a
40:36
phone call or an e-mail of, hey, just wanted to let you know, I
40:40
was able to, you know, put the down payment on that house
40:43
because of this anego thing. I was able to put my daughter
40:46
through college because of this, you know, this whole, this
40:48
little side hustle that turned into quite a business.
40:52
And then my favorite is, is a, is a lady out of the
40:55
Philadelphia area. We just sent her about a year
40:58
ago, we just sent her a plaque. Her janitorial franchise did
41:01
$1,000,000 in revenue. She started with a $4000 a month
41:07
revenue package. She did $1,000,000.
41:09
Like talk about living the American dream.
41:12
You know, I just wanted to make a couple extra bucks, you know,
41:15
pay for a house or something like that.
41:17
And now I think she employs, you know, 20 something people.
41:20
I think two of her kids work for her.
41:23
You know, I mean, it it's it's that's those are the stories
41:26
where you're like, wow, like, OK, that This is why we get out
41:28
of bed every day. That's impressive.
41:31
We were talking quite a bit about your technology, but did
41:36
we talk specifically about preventive analytics or did we
41:39
kind of talk around that a little bit?
41:41
So it's it's sort of what's. Built into the clean, calm
41:44
platform where you know, it's able to sense when you know, the
41:47
reporting of someone has has had multiple issues in it, yeah,
41:51
then we're able to address that proactively rather than waiting
41:55
for a client to cancel because they've, they're fed up with
41:57
the, you know, same bad service. I know that sustainable eco
42:03
friendly practices are important to you Adam.
42:06
What's an? Example.
42:08
Of how you've introduced that and how do you balance that push
42:12
for green solutions with the demands for, you know, large
42:16
scale commercial cleaning at an affordable rate?
42:19
So I I mean I think. Everything is going that way in
42:22
general. And so it's, it's more incumbent
42:25
upon us to to ensure that, you know, the chemicals and
42:28
equipment are sustainable to begin with.
42:31
Purely from like, let's let let's look at it from a selfish
42:34
perspective. It's better for me to have
42:37
sustainable equipment and chemicals because ultimately
42:41
over the long term, if I can use things multiple times, it's
42:44
going to cost my franchisees less.
42:46
And so if I can make my franchisees more money and kill,
42:50
keep the buildings just as clean as we always could.
42:53
And you know, ultimately keep, you know, keep more chemicals
42:56
out of the air and out of the, you know, and harsh chemicals
42:59
off of people's skin that they touch with everyday.
43:01
I mean, it's win, win, win. So it for us, it's, it's just
43:04
something that we build into our practices from from day one.
43:07
And it's not, you know, if a customer says, Hey, we want you
43:10
to use this exact and we want you to bleach on this particular
43:14
thing, like we'll use it. But that's not if you don't ask
43:17
for, you know, any kind of harsh chemical, we're using green
43:19
chemicals from the beginning. What's an example of a?
43:22
Green chemical like how would you replace a a bleach so.
43:27
In a in that case, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't think of
43:29
the name of the exact chemical off the top of my head, but it
43:31
is that it's just different. It's just different things that
43:33
are less harsh. You know, obviously the, the,
43:37
the fumes on bleach isn't good for you.
43:40
It's caustic to the surface. And so there's things that can
43:43
that can clean just as intensely, but aren't going to
43:46
leave the residue, have the the ammonia kind of in the air for
43:51
people to breathe. And so it's just easier on the
43:53
on the on the surface and on the air.
43:56
Got you. OK.
43:58
And we mentioned it in the intro that you're a member of the
44:02
Forbes Business Council and you contribute to Entrepreneur
44:06
Magazine, so you're giving advice to other leaders through
44:10
that work. What's one piece of
44:13
unconventional wisdom that has helped to guide your success at
44:18
Inego? That's a good question.
44:23
One of the, one of the things that I've really been focused on
44:26
lately is, and I don't, I don't have a sound bite way to say it
44:31
for you, but but it really is get out of your own way.
44:36
One, one thing that I think we all learn as we're climbing the
44:39
corporate ladder, right? You, you go from, you know, the
44:42
entry level employee to the mid level person to, you know,
44:46
manager or whatever. And, and the reason you, you,
44:49
you get promoted is because you're doing things.
44:51
You're, you're learning the, the system of whatever business
44:54
you're in and you, you're doing it your way.
44:57
And, and so now more and more decisions come to you 'cause
45:00
they like how your way works out.
45:02
And so you get promoted and you get more people under you and
45:05
you keep doing it your way. And then you find out as CEO,
45:10
you've just become the bottleneck because quite
45:12
literally everything is being funneled through you.
45:16
And that's a hard lesson to go, OK, I've been doing this for,
45:19
you know, for at the time when I was made CEOs 2018.
45:23
So I've been with Antigo for nine years and my way worked
45:28
and, and so now to go, wait a minute, I need to be able to
45:31
hire people who are smarter than me and get out of the way.
45:36
I actually, you know, like I said, I hired ACOOA chief
45:39
marketing officer, a chief strategy officer and IT
45:42
director. I mean, I, I went hog wild and
45:47
there's been nothing better for my own, frankly, first, for my
45:50
own sanity, right? Just because it was like, you
45:52
know, the, you know, burnout speed I was going at and second,
45:56
because now it allows me really like I have, I, I do time
46:00
blocking. I have somebody, a buddy of mine
46:01
taught me that where I have a couple hours in the morning.
46:03
I, you, if you want a meeting with me, I don't take meetings
46:06
before 10 AM period. My, you know, from from 8:00 to
46:10
10:00, call it, that's my time where I'm, I, I literally block
46:13
it off. I read it in a book.
46:14
It's called high value activity. It just says HVA on my calendar.
46:19
And so I, I, and that's my time where maybe I'm reading the
46:22
latest trade publication on the industry.
46:25
Maybe I'm watching my, a podcast of somebody.
46:27
Maybe I'm researching something that intrigued me or, you know,
46:31
looking at some conference that I had thought about and that's
46:34
really where the ideas come from so that we can ultimately cast
46:37
the vision and decide the direction for the brand is
46:40
taking that that that, you know, quote UN quote, quiet time to
46:44
really think about like where are we headed and why?
46:48
And if you're and if all the decisions flow through you and
46:51
you know, all roads lead to Rome, you know, there's just no
46:54
time for that. And and then you find out you
46:56
kneecapped your own business. You.
46:59
Mentioned podcasts Do you have a favorite that you like to listen
47:02
to? Or maybe a favorite book that
47:04
our listeners might get benefit from?
47:09
Man, I am, I am all over the map with that.
47:11
I, I listen to everything. I mean, I, I go, you know, I, I
47:14
just some business podcasts. I, I, I don't, I it's used on
47:17
shuffle, frankly, on my on my Spotify business books that were
47:22
were huge for me. I have I can definitely say to
47:25
that were massively impactful for me.
47:29
One was called leaders eat Last by Simon Sinek.
47:33
Love all his works, read, read all of his books, but leaders
47:36
eat last was was powerful to me because what he's essentially
47:42
saying is if you look at in terms of your own company,
47:45
right, your own organization, and you go, look, we all have,
47:48
we all go out of here and we go into our normal the rest of our
47:51
lives, right? We have our families and our and
47:53
our kids and and we all have our own, you know, personal things
47:57
going on. And you know, some of those are
47:59
good and some of those aren't so good.
48:01
Then you go, OK, as a corporate organization, if there are more
48:05
things that I can take care of for someone who works for me,
48:10
that when they're dealing with it outside of work, then when
48:13
they are at work, they just can focus on work.
48:16
And they're not stressed about like, do I have, you know, can I
48:19
pay this bill or do I have the proper health insurance or, you
48:22
know, am I saving enough to retire?
48:25
And so it's investing in our people to make it to where like
48:28
the just the less they have to worry about outside of work, the
48:31
more when they're here, it's like, I can just focus on work.
48:34
That that was a huge one for me. And then the second one was
48:37
called who, It's by Jeff Smart, WHO not World Health
48:43
Organization. I say I haven't heard of this
48:44
one before. Who?
48:46
Who is great? Who is so everyone's probably
48:48
heard of who not how where it talks about, you know, bringing
48:51
on the right people and putting them on the right seat on the
48:53
bus and and that's how you drive an organization forward.
48:56
What who does is it actually gives a, a essentially like a
49:01
blueprint on like, OK, you're looking for this role.
49:05
Here's how for any role. Here's how you put the job
49:09
description together. Here's how you put the job ad
49:12
together. Here is the questions you should
49:14
ask at the various phases of interviewing.
49:19
And you know, before that book, it's funny because it was I, I,
49:22
I learned that book. It was actually from the pastor
49:24
at my church. He was they he was they're like
49:27
the top ten fastest growing churches in America.
49:31
And he when he hires people, they're all been home runs and
49:34
I'm going like, how do you do it?
49:35
And I go, no, granted, you know, you have a different mission
49:38
than me cleaning toilets here. So maybe people are a little bit
49:41
more impassioned for for you. But how do you do it?
49:44
He tells me the book Shame on me.
49:47
I put it in my Amazon cart and left it there for like 6 months.
49:51
But I, but I finally read the book and this was my new, this
49:53
is right when like the iPhone came out with the thing where
49:57
like the, the OCR text reader. So you could like snap a picture
50:00
of a book and then it would grab the text.
50:02
And so I'm reading it and literally every page I'm like,
50:05
oh, that's good. Turn the page.
50:07
Oh, that's good too. Like just you know, so I, I
50:09
created like my own CHEAT SHEET and I to this day I read that 5
50:14
five years ago ish. To this day, I use that
50:17
interview process for every single interview that I'm
50:20
personally a part of. Give us a nugget from it.
50:23
Give us 1 nugget so so one. Of the things it does is it
50:27
talks about essentially like, you know, people, people want
50:30
it. You know, when you, when you're
50:30
trying to fill a position, you want to fill it now.
50:33
And so you end up interviewing a few people and maybe you do
50:35
have, you know, you, you, you interview 5 people and what do
50:38
you do? You kind of go like that one
50:41
feels good and there's no rhyme or reason for it other than like
50:45
you got a good gut feeling on it.
50:47
And how many of us, you know, have gotten, you know, and now
50:50
and I'll imagine, right, you were dating like that, right?
50:53
And you go, you go on five dates and you know, that's the one I'm
50:55
going to marry, you know, like, no way.
50:57
There's no way to do that. What you know.
50:59
So you go, OK, first, I would rather take significantly longer
51:04
in the interview process and really get to know a person
51:08
because it is a marriage. When you when someone comes to
51:10
work for you, you want them to be, you know, working.
51:13
You know, nobody stays at one career forever.
51:14
Very often though, we have had two people now at Anigo that
51:18
have been at, we just celebrated a guy who'd been there for the
51:20
30 years. Wow.
51:22
But for, I mean, that's a that's a rarity.
51:24
You know what I mean? Most people stay for, you know,
51:26
five years or something like that.
51:28
And but but that's a marriage, right?
51:30
It's five years. And that's, I guess that's might
51:32
be as long as marriages last these days.
51:34
But I hate to say that. Hopefully not Hopefully.
51:38
Not but you go, I'm going. To be with this person for five
51:40
years, I better make sure I like them.
51:43
I like their work ethic, I like how they think.
51:45
And so you, you spend a lot more time on the interview process
51:48
for these folks then. And I tell them that in advance,
51:51
Hey, my interview process takes a lot longer.
51:53
You're going to meet with a lot of different people.
51:55
You know, it's not just a one and done.
51:57
And so my my process probably takes four or five interviews
52:02
versus 1 due to that book. Four or five interviews, I don't
52:08
know that this would be possible in your situation, but something
52:11
that I've employed over the years is, yeah, I kind of narrow
52:15
it down to a handful of folks that look like they have the
52:17
skills and the personality from, you know what I can tell.
52:22
And then I'll actually hire each of them to do a smaller task.
52:27
I'll pay them for it because I want to see what the the quality
52:31
and the output of their work is if they come back with any
52:35
questions if they're late on it. Have you ever tried anything
52:38
like that? I don't know if it if it would
52:40
be easy to do for the types of positions that you're filling.
52:43
Some some of. Them I have, you know, we've,
52:47
we've when we hired someone for social media years ago, it was
52:51
like, hey, look at our existing social media and put together
52:55
like, you know, a handful of posts and, and some imagery and
53:00
what would you put together and when would you schedule them for
53:03
and what would you say on each post?
53:04
And we wanted to see how they think I've been hiring, you
53:08
know, like I said, for more, you know, senior leadership.
53:11
And so it's like hard to, you know, you know, hey, you're,
53:14
you're not my chief marketing officer yet, but put together
53:16
next year's strategy for marketing like it's, it's hard
53:20
to get 'cause otherwise it's just smaller tasks that you
53:22
can't really, you know, really based on it.
53:24
What, what I find valuable. Another one, I'm 100% I do every
53:30
single employee. I do reference checks, every
53:33
single one and I tell them that and I go and I don't want your
53:36
friend, I don't want a Co worker.
53:38
I want your boss, whoever your boss was at each of these
53:40
positions. And my intention fully is to
53:43
call them and ask them for, you know, get some information and
53:48
and you find out. I think what you find out is
53:51
pattern and practice. That's what the value of the
53:54
strategy is, because now you're, you're going through their
53:56
entire resume from every single job they've had that they put on
54:00
the resume takes a while, takes sometimes, you know, it's one of
54:03
the rounds of the interviews is like 2 hours and I and you ask
54:06
the same series of questions on each one.
54:10
And then ultimately you kind of build a, you know, a pattern on
54:14
this person. Were they were they always
54:17
really successful? And then and then someone who
54:20
they used to work with pulled them to their next job because
54:23
they're like, oh, I got to have Anthony on my team.
54:25
He's the best. And they get pulled to the next
54:27
job or you know, you hear someone gets laid off and
54:31
that's, I mean, it's look, it happens to the best of us.
54:33
It's unfortunate. Then you find out that their
54:36
last four jobs they were laid off from and you go, maybe they
54:40
weren't, they probably weren't a top performer if they got laid
54:43
off 4 times in a row. And so it just allows you to
54:46
establish a little bit more depth about a person when you go
54:52
through the full career history and then ask the, you know, the
54:55
old bosses, how did they do? What did they have any things
54:58
back then that they could improve on?
55:00
And and if everyone tells them, you know, oh, they're great.
55:03
Or, you know, hey, there were 9. I don't give 10s because
55:05
nobody's perfect. Cool.
55:07
But if everyone's going, yeah, he was a six.
55:10
And you go, OK, it's not the kind of organization.
55:14
That you're building, you don't want sixes.
55:16
Yeah, exactly. That's what.
55:18
The kids say I just learned that 6-7.
55:19
I don't even know what it means but.
55:23
I'm like OK. And I'm laughing because.
55:25
I have kids in the same age bracket and I also don't know
55:29
what it means but 6-7 is a strange.
55:32
Part of. Their vernacular today, yeah.
55:36
Yeah. And there's a small subset of
55:37
the listeners that'll get that, too.
55:39
Yeah. All right, Adam, time for the
55:43
big, serious challenge in your life that you've overcome.
55:46
What was that? How'd you get through it?
55:47
What'd you learn? So in my in my time.
55:53
At Anago, one of the big challenges was we had one of
55:59
the, the, it was actually the Philadelphia market.
56:02
The former owner he was dealing with, he had an, an early onset
56:08
dementia and and so just things were starting to go sour in his
56:14
market. And Long story short, I mean, it
56:18
just things, things went, went sour fast.
56:20
And I don't, I don't take, you know, I don't like to, to
56:24
terminate franchise agreements or anything like that.
56:26
And, and it literally in our system, you know, I tell people
56:30
like, you know, really the only, one of the only things you can
56:32
do to get, you know, to lose your franchises, don't pay your
56:36
franchisees. You know, if you, if you screw
56:38
over the little guy, we're not cool.
56:40
Just, you know, just that simple.
56:42
And I, I don't want to say he's screwed anybody over anyway, but
56:44
it just went sour fast. And it wasn't, you know, I don't
56:46
necessarily think it was his fault, but it was all of a
56:49
sudden we were thrust into a, you know, multi $1,000,000
56:53
market in a state where everything was sort of, you
56:57
know, a hot mess. Attorneys were involved.
57:00
We had to fly in, take everything over.
57:04
And it got to a point where, I mean, I was God, I wasn't
57:09
sleeping during that period. And I was, you know, I was
57:11
losing weight, not sleeping, not eating.
57:13
And, and it got to this place where, you know, there was,
57:20
there was, there wasn't any money.
57:21
The money that was collected for the franchisees was gone.
57:24
And we had to make the decision of do we pay these franchisees
57:27
out of pocket? And I and I made the call, I
57:31
said, all right, we're going to do it and we can't we couldn't
57:32
afford it. We had to use a line of credit
57:34
to do it at the time it was we got to get these people paid.
57:37
We got to get this figured out and, and, and, and I mean, if I
57:43
can't tell you how many things we're just going sour in that
57:45
market and you and it and right. And you're having to separate
57:48
right, like, like the man from the disease and you're going
57:52
like as an individual. This, this guy was a good person
57:55
and, and really, you know, was in the business for, for, you
57:58
know, over a decade. But then, but this, this disease
58:03
is absolutely devastating. And we can hate the disease and,
58:07
and still love the individual. You know, kind of, it's almost
58:09
like the, what is it? Love the Sinner, hate the sin
58:12
kind of a thing. And so just having to walk that
58:15
tightrope and then ultimately get these folks paid and then
58:20
figuring out now where the hell are we going to get the money to
58:22
make sure we can pay that back? Because it was, it wasn't, you
58:25
know, it wasn't coming from anywhere.
58:27
Ultimately it worked out and I ended up reselling it about a
58:32
year later. And that is actually now the
58:35
largest market in the system and has grown probably 6X since that
58:42
resale. So it's so it was one of those
58:44
things where I think, I think, you know, my lesson was
58:49
sometimes the right move feels extremely hard and the wrong
58:55
thing to do feels extremely easy to do.
58:59
Still do the right thing, no matter you know, it's never
59:03
going to cost you more than than doing the wrong thing.
59:08
Even if it feels like in the short term, you know, it's a,
59:11
it's the faster decision. Do the right you could have very
59:13
easily. Rationalized not paying those
59:16
janitorial franchisees right? The agreement that was had was
59:21
not directly between you and them.
59:25
These are the little guys. These are the guys that you know
59:27
that they need the money especially wasn't like you were
59:30
sitting on a pile of cash though, Adam.
59:32
And like you said, you had to take out a line of credit.
59:35
I mean, you weren't just going into your pocket.
59:37
You were going into debt to to pay these folks.
59:41
But having that long term vision.
59:43
And I'm going to use the word heart, that heart to do the
59:48
right thing, that moral compass. I I think it's great now that
59:53
there's some distance between that because you can look back
59:56
and say, you know, I was able to resell that in a year.
59:58
And now it's the largest market. It's 6X.
1:00:01
And so that's so helpful for people to hear that.
1:00:05
What's really hard to do the like, using your words?
1:00:08
It was so hard to do the right thing in the moment, But looking
1:00:11
in the rearview mirror, it's paid dividends and then some,
1:00:15
yeah. You know, I think that's
1:00:17
phenomenal. I've just got one more question
1:00:20
for you, Adam. But before I ask it, I want to
1:00:22
do three things. First of all, if anyone wants to
1:00:26
get in touch with Adam directly, you can visit his LinkedIn page
1:00:30
and we'll have a link in the show notes.
1:00:32
But Adam Pavlitz, his last name is spelled POVLITZ.
1:00:37
And then look for Onago cleaning, ANAGO Cleaning and
1:00:42
also you can go directly to their website,
1:00:44
onagocleaning.com, ANAGO cleaning.com, onagocleaning.com.
1:00:50
And I'm guessing that they can find information about the
1:00:52
franchise opportunity there as well, Is that correct?
1:00:55
Exactly. OK.
1:00:56
Also as a. Reminder, if you want to get
1:00:58
more employees access to benefits that won't hurt them
1:01:01
financially and carries a financial upside for the
1:01:03
company, reach out to us@backbenefits.com.
1:01:07
Finally, it'll take just a moment to leave us a comment or
1:01:10
review on your favorite podcast app.
1:01:12
You will hold a special plate in my heart, in my heart forever.
1:01:15
Thank you. And so last question for you,
1:01:18
Adam, you and I reconnect one for your from today and you're
1:01:21
celebrating something big. What's that big thing you hope
1:01:24
to be celebrating one year from now?
1:01:25
Aw. Man, you know, I, I, I really
1:01:33
hope that the some of the some of the software that we're
1:01:37
talking about that, that I've, you know, you saw me get all
1:01:40
geeked up and probably a little red and going like yeah, about
1:01:44
the the the Antigo clean suite software.
1:01:46
We've this has been three years in development and so it's it's
1:01:51
finally coming to a head and to be able to I feel like it's
1:01:56
going to be like a rocket launch, right.
1:01:57
Once we're able to move everyone to this platform, it's tested,
1:02:01
it's tried, it's true. I mean, I think that there's,
1:02:04
there's what do, what do you call them where it's like the,
1:02:07
the, you know, like the, I guess it's like a bottleneck to some
1:02:10
degree where you go, OK, if I can get this thing done, it
1:02:14
opens up these 1020 different things.
1:02:16
We have so many things that in terms of the automations and
1:02:19
the, and the, the CRM data that are going to make everything
1:02:23
that much more powerful. And it's all just, you know,
1:02:26
getting funnelled through this one as soon as this thing
1:02:28
launches. So I'm, I'm hoping to say it's
1:02:31
live, we're on it. It's amazing.
1:02:34
I think it's going to be game changing and and then it'll be,
1:02:39
and now we're finally in like just like ongoing development
1:02:42
versus like the full transition and launch and all that
1:02:46
craziness, which is just pure chaos right now.
1:02:50
They they regret, they regret putting me on copy on one of the
1:02:53
distros for the technology because I always have them.
1:02:56
Like, what about this though? And like, can we make it do
1:02:58
that? And what if it did this and
1:03:00
this, you know? So, yeah, but I wanted to, you
1:03:05
know, I wanted to be amazing. I'm excited.
1:03:06
So I, I think, you know, if that, if that's where we get
1:03:09
next year, then it, it would have been a year.
1:03:13
That's awesome. Well, Adam from Onago Cleaning,
1:03:16
I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time
1:03:19
and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.
1:03:21
My pleasure. Thank you for.
1:03:22
Having me folks, that's a wrap on another.
1:03:25
Episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:03:27
Thanks for learning with us today.