Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / From Private Equity to Hotel Cleaning: David Grossman's Unexpected Entrepreneurial Journey

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From Private Equity to Hotel Cleaning: David Grossman's Unexpected Entrepreneurial Journey · 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
0:12
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi,
0:17
and today's guest is David Grossman.
0:20
He is the Chief Executive Officer at Renew Systems, a
0:23
company founded in 1991 that specializes in deep cleaning and
0:28
restoration services for the hospitality industry.
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They help major hotels worldwide maintain their carpets, drapes,
0:36
upholstery and more, and are proud partners of brands like
0:39
Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and many others.
0:43
Under David's direction, Renew Systems has expanded to over 30
0:46
offices across North America and beyond, consistently growing its
0:51
range of specialized cleaning solutions.
0:54
David led the initiative to revamp the company's website,
0:57
ensuring customers can easily learn about Renew's offerings.
1:02
He has also shared expert insights through public speaking
1:05
and thought leadership articles, becoming a trusted voice in the
1:09
cleaning and maintenance sector. With a PhD and MA from Harvard
1:14
University and an SCB from Brown University, David has been
1:18
guiding renewed systems since 2010, driving its international
1:22
growth and reputation for quality.
1:24
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1:55
All right, back to our guest today, President and CEO of
1:58
Renew Systems, David Grossman. Thanks for making the time to
2:00
Share your story today. It's great to be here, Anthony.
2:04
I appreciate the opportunity. So before Renew Systems, David,
2:09
your playground was the world of finance.
2:11
Tell us about the kind of work that you were doing then.
2:14
Yeah, I was doing a few things, but primarily what's generally
2:19
known as private equity. So we would invest on behalf of
2:25
some big pots of money that we would invest in other companies
2:29
and take a board seat and try to help them grow.
2:33
So I did that for for a number of years and and prior to that I
2:37
actually was in management consulting.
2:39
So I had the experience of helping guide, give advice to
2:43
companies and then and on the investing side.
2:46
So those are the two primary skill sets that I had, and.
2:50
What was the biggest challenge that you learned from your time
2:52
in finance and how did that sort of translate into some of your
2:56
leadership styles today? Yeah.
2:58
So certainly in the finance area, we we'd look heavily at
3:01
numbers, right. We'd kind of come up with
3:03
projections of companies and that we evaluate and look at
3:07
their history and then come up with projections and that's all
3:09
well and good in theory. Does it always come out in
3:13
practice? Not necessarily, but but some of
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the some of the things that I saw then that I'd liked or I'd
3:22
rather say were issues with companies is that some of the
3:26
companies we looked at were technology companies.
3:28
So they would be very favorable at a time, but they could go
3:32
obsolete very quickly. Probably that life cycle speed
3:35
up even since since the time I left finance and then other
3:40
companies just had to take every dollar that they spent and put
3:44
back in the capital expenditures or had high overhead.
3:47
So even if you had some nice gross margins, you often were
3:51
not able to really grow the business profitably very well.
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And so you were able to see kind of a range of different
3:59
businesses and different sort of outcomes, you know, tech that
4:04
was highly favorable, you could make a lot of money with a
4:06
handful of employees and things at the other end of the
4:09
spectrum. And I think sort of the the
4:12
perception is that private equity, very lucrative, very
4:19
profitable career for someone to be in.
4:22
Help us understand why you got away from the world of finance
4:26
and decided to purchase the Renew Systems.
4:29
How did that come about? Sir, you're absolutely right.
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It can be very lucrative on the private equity side.
4:36
I worked, I did it for several big banks and I was fairly early
4:43
in my career and three times has happened to me we would just get
4:50
going and the group was shut down.
4:54
I was laid off 3 times and as a young recently married
5:00
individual who wife was pregnant one the first time and was
5:04
pregnant and we had young kids the second and third time.
5:08
It was very difficult to to have to devastate, lose lose income
5:13
and try to find something else. And then when I did start over
5:16
again. So that was a very eye opening
5:20
for me and set me down this path of, yes, it's risky to go out on
5:26
your own and try to do something, but it's also risky
5:29
sometimes to be part of a big organization where you could be
5:32
doing great and suddenly things change for reasons well beyond
5:36
your control. So that set me down the path I
5:38
mentioned earlier. I had the consulting background
5:41
kind of helping run or write to say more advised companies.
5:45
And in college I ran a small business and just had a lot of
5:48
fun doing that. So that was always in the back
5:50
of my mind if I could ever get back into that.
5:53
So the stars were aligned after the third time my 33 strikes,
5:58
you're out. Well, that was definitely the,
6:00
the, the what, what hit me. So I started looking for a
6:04
business. I was very careful what I looked
6:05
for. I had a pretty strict criteria.
6:09
So it took me a few years to find something.
6:12
But ultimately I found this company, which is now called
6:15
Renew Systems, which was, seemed to be a good business, just had
6:20
gotten sleepy and it met a lot of the criteria that I was
6:23
looking for and ultimately was able to, to, to, to purchase it.
6:28
Going in big on my own going really putting a significant
6:33
amount of my net worth as well as taking out a loan.
6:37
So I was in in pretty deep, which helped motivate me to try
6:42
to help it succeed once I purchased it.
6:46
So let's go back and kind of unpack a few things here.
6:50
You mentioned that you started a small business in college and
6:52
had a lot of fun with it. What was that business?
6:55
That was actually the university newspaper.
6:56
We were a separate company that we had to, you know, sell
7:01
advertisements. That was the days where you
7:02
could actually sell advertisements and newspapers
7:05
and sell subscriptions. But we didn't receive any
7:08
outside money. We just had to make it on our
7:10
own. So I just had a lot of fun doing
7:12
that. And you know, building a team
7:16
and seeing us grow was just was, was just thrilling.
7:21
Was this at Harvard? At Brown?
7:23
Where was this? This is at Brown.
7:24
Yes, At Brown, OK. And so this was the student
7:27
newspaper that didn't exist before.
7:29
Or just like I? Did it did exist And I joined it
7:32
early and took over early and did it for extended period of
7:36
time while I was there and then turned it over after I left And
7:41
just, yeah, we grew nicely. And just part of the real reason
7:49
we did it was the people that we brought in and and motivated
7:53
them and just had a lot of fun doing that.
7:54
And some of these lessons were things that I always had in the
7:58
back of my mind, which I've been able to deploy on a more
8:01
meaningful basis with Renew. Like what?
8:05
How are you bringing people in? How are you finding the right
8:07
folks? How are you motivating them?
8:10
Yeah. The, the, one of the things I
8:12
learned between that and then frankly at when, when I was
8:16
later as a consultant and an investor is that we would really
8:24
to try to have a small team, a small team of high quality
8:29
people that would be compensated well, although compensation
8:34
hopefully is not the only criteria that they look at where
8:38
they're really empowered. And that's what we did is we,
8:41
we, and then that's been a key philosophy that we've taken to
8:45
renew where can we have got a small team that really is very
8:50
outwardly focused to our customers and in our case also
8:53
our franchisees, we spend very little time internally meeting.
8:57
Everyone's empowered to talk externally, in fact encouraged
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and, and, and has the ability to interact with all, all, all of
9:07
our external shareholder, the stakeholders again, customers,
9:10
employees and partners. And, and I find that sometimes
9:14
it is as you grow, you get too inwardly focused.
9:19
And that's really been the just a bias in the back of my mind
9:22
to, to, to really try to keep the small business flair even as
9:27
we've grown renew. And I think a lot of that is
9:31
just finding good quality employees, treating them well.
9:34
And when you treat them well, you, you know your customers are
9:37
going to be in good hands. So now I want to dive a little
9:41
bit more into the three layoffs. You touched on it a little bit.
9:46
It was really hard. Your wife was pregnant, you had
9:48
kids, you know, little kids each time that it happened.
9:51
But I want to kind of pull back the curtain a little bit more
9:54
and like really go into that because a lot of people
9:57
listening have been through this.
9:59
And if you haven't, like if you're without work for a period
10:02
of time, it's really stressful. If you're without work and
10:05
you've got a family, like, you know, just kind of pile on the
10:08
the layers of stress there. How were you coping and getting
10:12
through these times? Yeah, it, it wasn't easy.
10:18
Fortunately, each time got a little bit easier, but it was,
10:20
it was difficult. And you know, it's like you stop
10:23
and suddenly you're running hard and suddenly you're let go.
10:28
I was literally about to head to the airport for for a board
10:31
meeting the first time it happened.
10:32
And first you don't recognize it's happening.
10:36
But then once you do, you realize, oh boy, it doesn't help
10:40
them out. So let's just focus on the
10:43
future and just put my head down and started networking as much
10:48
as I could. I was fortunate to get a few,
10:51
couple little consulting projects here and there, but I
10:57
think a lot of it is just the, the attitude that you have.
11:01
And, and then that just forced me to double down on my efforts
11:05
to try to find something. And I, I, I, I think it also
11:12
teaches you that the, the power, the need to network, the need to
11:18
treat people well, because you never know when that's going to
11:21
come back to, to help you, which it did in my cases.
11:24
So that and perseverance and keeping a positive attitude was
11:29
very helpful. At the end of the day, you know,
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I, I went back into relatively close to my career the first two
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times it happened. The third time, that's when I
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realized this isn't working and I I just need to take more
11:42
control over my own destiny. What was happening each of those
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three, Were they just all completely different things or
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is this just sort of normal pattern for the industry that
11:52
you were playing in where they did?
11:53
I don't know. Somebody just sort of decides on
11:55
a whim. Yeah, it's fairly it, it, it
11:58
does happen fairly often. The I was working at big banks,
12:03
a Canadian bank once and they decided, hey, this is just too
12:06
much risk for what we want to do.
12:08
And that so, so that was one example, but it's not uncommon
12:13
on Wall Street. Was it my particular
12:16
performance? They all said it wasn't.
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And in all cases, it wasn't just me let go.
12:20
But regardless if it was or wasn't my performance, I just
12:23
had to face reality that when you're working for a big company
12:27
or whether it's on Wall Street or otherwise, sometimes you can
12:32
be performing well and you just get unlucky.
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So it didn't help for me to dwell on why I was let go.
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I mean, I tried to analyzed it was I did I do something wrong?
12:44
Could I learn something from it for for the future?
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But beyond that, it really is, hey, let's look for the future
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and I got some nice experiences and let me try to leverage that
12:56
to something else. So you mentioned, you know, the
13:01
importance of networking and a lot of people hear the word
13:04
networking and it feels like a little dirty and a little slimy
13:07
because of some of the experiences that they've had in
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the past. I'll certainly raise my hand for
13:12
that. You know, felt like, you know,
13:13
going to these mixer events when I was a, a young professional
13:18
and everybody's handing out business cards and they're
13:21
asking what you're, what you do, but really they're just waiting
13:24
for an opportunity to talk about what they do and can you, you,
13:27
you know, and it just, so how do you approach it?
13:30
Like what's a more genuine and and useful and and and real way
13:34
to to pull that off? Yeah, yes, The Dirty word.
13:41
Yeah, I guess that's A and sometimes that's, that's an
13:45
appropriate way of looking at it.
13:47
I think that in my view, I some, I try to, I'm not always good at
13:54
this, but I try to be helpful. Maybe really see if I can help
14:00
somebody and form the goodwill with them, maybe make an
14:06
introduction for them somewhere else or what.
14:08
Give them 15 minutes on the phone giving my $0.02 on a
14:11
situation, even if it's not going to at that time directly
14:15
benefit me. You're creating goodwill and not
14:19
too many people do that. So you would be remembered in
14:23
that case more likely. And they're likely to someone
14:28
that may come around to benefit you at some point.
14:30
So I think it's trying to stand out by really just helping them,
14:35
offering to help them the other side.
14:38
And, and, and, and that's just the way I've done it.
14:41
Sometimes that benefits you, sometimes it doesn't, but it's
14:44
still just the way that I like to treat people.
14:47
I like that. You know, I had a guest on
14:49
recently, Brad Feld, who's releasing a book or maybe it's
14:52
out by now called Give 1st. And it's it's very much this
14:56
idea of what you've just described here.
14:58
It's, you know, giving, knowing that it's some point somewhere
15:03
you're going to get something, but it might not be directly
15:05
from that person. It might not have anything to do
15:07
with that interchange, but sort of giving first without sort of,
15:13
you know, going, you know, starting with your, your hat out
15:16
like kind of a thing. And I think that's exactly what
15:18
you're describing here. And I, I think it's AI think
15:20
it's a nice way to approach life is, you know, where can I add
15:23
value to this person? How can I, how can I be of
15:27
service in in this instance? Right.
15:30
So I want to hear about because you said you, you know, when you
15:34
got laid off that third time that you were like, OK, this
15:39
isn't working. I got to, I got to find my own
15:41
thing. And there's risk in that.
15:43
And you spent years looking, what was it when you saw Renew
15:47
Systems or, or whatever it was called at the time, what was it
15:50
that you saw in that, that you were like, oh, yeah, this has
15:53
got legs. This is the kind of thing I've
15:54
been looking for. Yeah.
15:56
And, and fortunately I was able to, to, to do a little bit of
15:59
consulting in the interim, which helped and, and gave me the, a
16:04
help, give me the opportunity to the time to find something.
16:07
What it, what it was, is that you'd again, dating back to the
16:11
times when I was in finance about the characteristics of a
16:15
business I was looking for. I'd done some technology
16:18
investing. So I have some and I was a
16:20
computer science major in college.
16:22
So I have some technology background, but I didn't want to
16:25
take that risk. All right, that technology could
16:28
go obsolete and then and, and put us on a very short fuse
16:34
same. Similarly, I didn't want to take
16:37
a risk of having to raise more money frequently or or so I
16:41
wanted a business that I could not only afford at the time, but
16:47
didn't require ongoing capital for growth or for expansion and
16:51
so forth. So I, the bottom line is I
16:54
wanted to find a business that, not that I'm an egomaniac, but I
17:00
could control as many of the variables to success as
17:03
possible. So that's really just execution
17:06
in my mind is putting your head down and getting to work,
17:08
hopefully having a couple or more, you know, good team to
17:11
help you on that and, and do that.
17:13
And so I knew nothing about what Renew does, which is a
17:17
specialized cleaning company to the hospitality industry.
17:21
Yeah, I'd stayed in a bunch of hotels before, but I certainly
17:25
didn't know cleaning. My wife will tell you, I still
17:27
don't know cleaning and, and you know, coming from a very
17:32
academic background, basically I'm the only, until very
17:37
recently, the only one in my company that has a serious
17:40
academic background, most very blue collar.
17:44
But I knew that was fine. I, I knew I could relate to to
17:48
lots of different types of people.
17:50
So it was really just execution and I'm happy to bet on myself
17:54
any day of the week. And and that's really what I
17:57
came down to is that that doesn't mean that for sure we're
18:01
going to succeed, but it means we got a better chance of
18:04
succeeding. So that so I was looking for a
18:07
business in this case, I got lucky.
18:10
It did take me a while, but I think I got lucky in that the
18:16
the businesses is a very non sexy business that's below the
18:21
radar screen. And it really just comes heavily
18:24
down to the execution side, the focus side and customer service
18:31
is is it? And that's while it may sound
18:35
simple, the many companies out there that are competitors or
18:40
were competitors just are not that successful at it.
18:44
It's it's again, it is sound simple, but the IT was shocking
18:49
to me that while it sounds simple, it just isn't.
18:54
A lot of companies just fail. It just simple execution and
18:57
simple. Customer service, they don't
18:58
know how to clean properly and they have to come back and do it
19:02
twice. Or is it the sales process that
19:04
they don't have down? The sale, you know, they'll get
19:07
a phone call and you know, take two weeks to call back.
19:10
I just mind boggling. That's, that's a lot of it.
19:13
And and yes, sometimes it's a service issue.
19:16
We your team's not well trained, your team's not well motivated
19:21
to do a good job and we work hard at that.
19:24
But I think a lot of it is also how you interact with the
19:28
customer. We're not here.
19:30
Maybe it's similar to that, to the networking approach that we
19:33
talked about. We're kind of building
19:36
relationships for the long term. That's what we do with our
19:39
customers. We tell them and we often do.
19:42
We'll go out and do little education seminars for their
19:45
team. Even if it's not going to put
19:46
money in our pocket at that point.
19:49
We do things like that to really help them and build the build
19:53
the sense that we're here, a trusted partner, we're here to
19:57
help you. We don't need to sell you this
20:00
cleaning. You really don't need cleaning.
20:02
6 * a year you can get away with it. 3 * a year that's really
20:07
your, what we think is in your best interest and customers
20:10
really respect that. And they, they and, and that
20:13
goes a long way. And you know, the, we tell them
20:16
every time we go in there is that we may fall short one time.
20:20
We may not do a great job on this one area of cleaning,
20:24
regardless if it's our fault or not, we'll make it right.
20:27
We come out, we the net, you know, within 24 hours and fix
20:31
it. So we're a company that runs at
20:32
problems. We don't run away from them.
20:34
And that and that goes a long way with our customers to to, to
20:39
building that rapport with them. So you guys are not doing the
20:44
day-to-day cleaning, right? Right.
20:46
Check out of a hotel and they come in, they clean the bathroom
20:49
and they change the sheets. That's not what you're doing.
20:51
You're coming in a few times a year to do more of a deep clean.
20:54
Is that in the rooms? Is that the lobbies?
20:57
Like what do you? Cover yeah, you characterize
21:00
that right. We, we, Anthony, we, we do a
21:03
wide range of services. So we started out just doing
21:07
carpets in the hallways, in the guest rooms and we've added a
21:11
number of services over the years.
21:13
So we can handle almost any part of a hotel, almost any surface,
21:18
whether it's coming in a few times a year like you say, to do
21:23
the carpets in the hallways or the drapes and furniture in the
21:27
guest room or the tile and grout in the bathroom or maybe in the
21:30
lobby. We're doing marble or or some
21:32
other, some natural stone. And we've added a number of
21:36
other speciality needs because being very close to our
21:39
customers, being very focused on the hospitality industry, we've
21:43
gotten to know them well and answer any issues they have.
21:46
So things like we can do odors when it gets cooks in a room,
21:52
some of the kitchens that are in the room or, or brings a pet in
21:55
a room or, or smoking. Or we can handle the kitchen up
21:59
deep cleaning in the, in the, in the main kitchens there
22:02
chandeliers, escalators, you name it, power washing.
22:07
We can do some external windows. We keep adding services as our
22:11
customers identify or, or mention it a need.
22:16
And then we see if we can come up with a solution and then
22:19
train, train ourselves and train our, the rest of our team.
22:23
So we're, we're very focused. I mean just a few things that we
22:25
don't do because we don't think we can do them well and and we
22:29
tell our customers that, but, but it's just a wide range of
22:32
services and I think a lot of our success has been because of
22:34
our focus. So your clients, the these
22:38
hotels, they have their own cleaning staff, right?
22:41
Because they're doing it on a daily basis.
22:43
What is it that you can do that their staff can't?
22:48
Yeah, yeah, it's an important question.
22:51
We, there's a, there's a few reasons why we're used, one of
22:56
which is that hotels do have their own staff, but not their
23:01
own staff that does this type of work.
23:02
It's kind of more off the since it's not everyday work, it's
23:05
more typically off the corner of the desk, so to speak, where
23:09
they'll have a few people when they have time do some of the
23:13
cleaning. But often, and I don't say this
23:16
at all disrespectfully to our customers because operating
23:20
hotel is just going to be one of the most challenging tasks out
23:23
there. But often the people that are
23:26
doing this just don't have the right training, don't have the
23:29
right equipment, the chemicals at it.
23:33
And so when they do have the chance to to do it, they're just
23:37
sometimes not getting the results.
23:39
They just don't have experience, they're not working with the
23:41
same equipment or the same cleaning materials, and they
23:45
just don't know how to use them. That's right, they don't how to
23:47
use it and frankly they're just not as efficient.
23:50
You know, we've measured ourselves we're because we've
23:52
done been doing this for almost 35 years.
23:54
We've we can clean at least three if not five times as much
23:59
per day per one of our technicians.
24:01
So, so when we can turn the rooms over quickly, the hotels
24:04
appreciated and I think having the knowledge of hotels is very
24:07
important. So all of our chemicals, our
24:09
equipment, our processes are designed for the needs of our
24:13
hotels, which are very demanding.
24:15
And I don't, and they should be because they're open 24/7.
24:19
People spend a lot of money to go into the hotels and they want
24:23
them clean. So we, you know, our, our
24:25
equipment is generally just as a quick example, we use just small
24:31
portable units which work very well.
24:33
They're much less intrusive. We don't have long, primarily we
24:37
don't use that long hoses that run throughout a hotel because
24:40
you can imagine hotels don't want to have that.
24:43
And, and we can get in and out of rooms quickly by, you know,
24:47
example, cleaning drapes. Typically they would take them
24:50
down, send them out to a dry cleaner, can't rent the room out
24:53
for 24 hours and then install again.
24:55
So, so we developed a process. We can clean them while they're
24:58
hanging on the rod. It's, you know, 20 minutes.
25:01
They can rent the room out that day and they work very well.
25:03
So that's only your customers. Yeah, we, we, we think so.
25:07
And our customers seem to think so.
25:09
So that's just those are just a couple of examples.
25:12
You know, and as you're talking, David, it reminds me, you know,
25:16
my wife and I, we're perfectly capable of cleaning our own
25:18
home. And we do it on a day-to-day
25:20
basis. And then once every two weeks,
25:23
we have a couple of professionals come in and they
25:26
do a deeper clean and they're in there for, I don't know, the two
25:30
of them maybe two or three hours.
25:32
And from top to bottom, our house never looks better during,
25:35
you know, the those two weeks. And how are they able to do it
25:39
so much faster? This is what they're experts in.
25:42
They know how to move quickly. They know how to move
25:44
efficiently. And so I think it's, it's a
25:46
similar kind of thing with, you know, what you're describing
25:48
with your team. But what I'm curious about is
25:50
why specifically hospitality, if you guys have this equipment, if
25:54
you have, you know, these specializations, would it make
25:58
sense to offer these to more businesses or to private
26:01
residences? Yeah.
26:02
Yeah, when we started in 1991, pre dating me, our founder was
26:07
very young, 21 at the time, He taught himself how to clean
26:12
carpets for homes, for restaurants, kind of general
26:15
cleaning company, but just saw how competitive it is to be a
26:19
generalist. It's only gotten more so over
26:21
those 30 plus years. So he thought, hey, how do I get
26:25
an edge? And soon thereafter picked up a
26:28
new customer, a small hotel. And so you know, the light bulb
26:32
going off. And ever since then we've been
26:34
highly focused. In our case, it's the
26:36
hospitality industry. Could it have been something
26:39
else, could have been healthcare?
26:40
Yeah, possibly. But just sort of worked out that
26:42
way. And we've just by taking a deep
26:45
dive in it, we've just gotten very good at it.
26:48
So the, the, the, the long answer to your question is we
26:53
can service lots of different types of customers.
26:55
We can and, and we do service some outside of hotels, but we
27:01
like the fact that we focus. We've created a lot of, I
27:05
wouldn't say barriers to entry, but we've created some barriers
27:08
to competition because of our of our focus and the expertise and
27:14
the relationships that we've developed over the years.
27:16
So that's what we do. We do service some other types
27:20
of customers that are, you know, somewhat similar oriented to
27:23
hotels, you know, healthcare, some education, some stadiums,
27:28
things like that. But our focus and we find it's
27:31
important to have a focus. Our focus is on the hospitality
27:35
industry, which we know very well and we've gotten good, as I
27:39
mentioned a good reputation there.
27:42
So we don't, we don't want to be a generalist.
27:46
It's a tough business and we think it'll by taking our eye
27:49
off the ball of what we know well and what's working for us
27:53
probably won't be great yet. Yes.
27:55
Is there a risk with focusing on one area?
27:57
Yes, but it's a pretty broad area hotels and and us having so
28:02
many different services and, and in a number of geographies.
28:05
It means that there was talk as an example that hotels, you
28:09
know, 5-6, seven years ago, we're going to really start
28:13
replacing carpets with tile or hard surfaces.
28:16
And that's happened a little bit, but we can also clean the
28:18
tile, we can clean the carpet. So there's a lot of different
28:22
services we have. Sometimes a hotel doesn't need
28:24
their carpets clean, they want their marble.
28:26
So we start there, we do a good job, they like us.
28:29
Then the next time they did, they need their kitchens
28:32
cleaned, we'll start that. So having so many services also
28:35
help. There are many of them are door
28:37
open or it's a way of expanding. Once we start to serve serve
28:42
customers with one service they like us, we get a second one.
28:46
Yeah. You mentioned relationships and
28:48
that's a big deal. Your relationships with the
28:51
hotels is what, you know, kind of gets your foot in the door,
28:54
kind of keeps you there. How were these relationships
28:58
established? Is it sort of each franchise
29:00
locally kind of goes out and you know, forms relationship with
29:04
the local hotel operator or is it that you've got, you know,
29:08
some sort of a, a national or a global relationship with some of
29:12
the big brands? Yeah.
29:13
It's, it's more the latter where we have established, we've been
29:18
in the fortunate position to establish some nice long term
29:21
relationships with these big hotel brands and that's really
29:26
helped us then feed business down through the locations where
29:31
we're at. I mean we cover a lot of the US
29:33
we still have some nice cities available and we're now
29:36
expanding internationally. We're in five countries, so
29:40
we're looking to continue to expand internationally with good
29:43
franchise partners who we find and train and support quite a
29:47
bit. And the more and it's somewhat,
29:50
you know, the flywheel so to speak, is something that I've
29:53
always tried to find where the more locations that we are say
29:59
the more Hilton hotels that we can service, the more valuable
30:04
our brand is and the more, the more our franchisees benefit
30:09
from that. So if we can help our big
30:12
customers in more locations, then it just increases the value
30:16
of, of the entire brand. So, so that's why we're looking.
30:19
One of the reasons we're looking to continue to expand
30:22
geographically is it increases our value throughout the entire
30:26
company. So let's talk a little bit more
30:28
about the franchise opportunity. What is it that you're looking
30:32
for in a franchise, whether it's, I don't know, previous
30:36
business experience, personality, what what have you
30:40
found makes kind of a good fit? It's something obviously we, we
30:44
focus a lot on and try to get better every time we bring
30:47
somebody in. And occasionally we, we, we
30:50
don't succeed. We were, we bring in someone.
30:52
It just doesn't work out the way we all hoped.
30:54
And it's unfortunate when it does, but we just, it's just
30:58
part of the, it's just that we just have to expect that those
31:01
are going to happen. I think we're getting better at
31:03
it. But what we found is, yes,
31:06
there's a certain skill set of people that can manage a small
31:10
team of, of blue collar workers, yet in our case, interact with
31:14
white collar hotel managers and we teach them all how to do this
31:19
because we're not looking for someone who's done this.
31:22
We're looking for people that we think have the right skill set
31:25
and importantly, mindset the right that will fit with our
31:29
culture, which is a very collaborative with our
31:32
franchise. Very, we run the business really
31:35
as a servant a model where we're really here to help our
31:38
franchisees succeed. So it's very collaborative or
31:41
very responsive to them and, and and encourage our franchisees to
31:47
help each other and we're doing, we're doing a good job of that
31:50
as well. So it's it's a skill set just
31:53
kind of highlighted at the high level the skills that we're
31:55
looking for being able to manage a small team, but really focus
32:00
on more relationship based sales and doing that with our support.
32:05
We open up a lot of doors with these relationships that we have
32:09
in our marketing resources. So I think that's, that's at a
32:13
high level the types of folks are looking for internationally
32:16
we're kind of we tend to look for bigger teams, maybe
32:19
companies that are in facility services or in cleaning or
32:23
something in the hospitality industry they and then because
32:28
they typically have even bigger territories.
32:30
So those are people that were tending to look for
32:33
internationally. Where are you internationally
32:36
right now? Right now we are in, aside from
32:40
the States, we're in Canada, we're in, we're in Paris, France
32:44
or in Madrid. We recently opened we're in the
32:47
Middle East in two places. We're in, we're in Qatar and
32:50
we're we have an agreement that we're in the process of
32:54
finalizing to enter the Emirates as well.
32:58
So we want to continue to expand Europe.
33:02
You can pretty much identify the largest cities is mostly where
33:05
we want to be, the particular Western Europe I should say and
33:09
a little bit of Central Europe and then the Middle East.
33:11
There's a few more locations there and then Asia and
33:14
Australia there's about a six or eight locations that we'd like
33:18
to be and, and, and that'll grow over time because it's really
33:22
where there are big customers are and and the high end hotels
33:26
are and the travel industry is growing very nicely and and
33:31
hotel quality is increasingly important and that that's really
33:35
what we're looking for. So if somebody wants to find out
33:39
more information, whether it's domestic or international,
33:42
where's the best place for them to go?
33:44
And go to our website and I'll get contacted for they can learn
33:48
more and then they can contact me that way as well.
33:51
And our website is the name of our company, which is
33:54
renewsystems.com and that's spelled RENUERENUE Systems with
34:02
an SI. Like it, you know, one of the
34:05
interesting things you were talking about was you guys
34:07
developed a system that didn't require the curtains to be
34:10
removed and taken to a dry cleaner.
34:12
You can knock it out in 20 minutes.
34:14
They can rent that room out that day, you know, which is a a huge
34:19
money boost for the the hotel. Anything else cool like that
34:23
that you guys have been able to introduce specifically to the
34:27
hotel space that, you know, maybe some of your competitors
34:30
haven't been able to? Yeah, the.
34:33
And just having this wide range of services is very unusual
34:36
because a hotel typically will have a company, maybe if they're
34:41
not using us, they may be approached by a company that can
34:44
just do the soft surfaces like carpets or upholstery, drapes or
34:48
the hard surfaces, tile and marble.
34:51
Very few can do both and things in between like odors and
34:54
stains. 1 So we, we, I'll give you 2 quick examples.
35:01
We inadvertently were copied on an e-mail by one of our
35:07
customers who said about moving, replacing their mattresses.
35:12
And so we called them and said, you know, not sure this is for
35:14
us. And they said, hey, but maybe
35:16
you can help us. So that led down the path of
35:20
when hotels replace their mattresses every anywhere
35:24
between three and eight years, they it's a big project and they
35:30
don't know how to remove their new what their old ones and
35:32
install the new one. So we've developed a service
35:36
where we can meet the new mattresses off the 18 wheel
35:40
trucks, install them in the guest rooms, remove the old ones
35:44
and in most cases we can actually recycle them and give
35:48
them a certificate showing how much we save from the landfill.
35:51
And that's a big project. Yes, it's not as cleaning per
35:55
SE, but it's another way of helping our hotels.
35:57
And we've now leveraged that now.
35:59
Now we've expanded that mattresses, box frames, bed
36:02
frames, even televisions, mini bars, so small appliances we can
36:07
handle as well. So that was one example and and
36:10
one other. The second example is we were
36:15
talking to hotel and they said we've got this laundry chute
36:18
that's just causing problems. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's
36:21
ripping our, our, our linens we're putting in there.
36:25
And, and, and so we said, all right, well, why don't we
36:28
investigate? And we, we, we, we, we did some
36:32
research and we said, Hey, you know what, what they probably
36:34
need to do is just clean them more often.
36:36
And, and they were also having odors and things like that.
36:40
So we said, all right, let's start to clean them and let's go
36:43
by by by the machine to clean these these these laundry
36:47
chutes, which subsequently can be used for trash chutes too.
36:51
And it just didn't exist. So we had to invent.
36:53
We've got a great engineering team and put together the
36:56
equipment that we now use to clean laundry and trash chutes.
37:03
And not only does it make it get rid of odors that are in there,
37:08
but we found that in this case, the, the shit they don't, they
37:11
don't RIP. And there's just been a lot of
37:14
savings on that. And, and we can now even do
37:17
inspections of them. We've been able to, so we can
37:20
take care of a little camera and run it down there and show them
37:23
if they need any help or not. So it's that that took that was
37:27
a lot bigger project than we thought it would be, but it's
37:29
kind of a neat service that very few people offer.
37:33
I love this because as entrepreneurs, you're always
37:36
thinking about how do I grow my business, right, more customers.
37:40
But you know, often times it's just listening to the customers
37:43
that you have now and what are their pain points.
37:46
And it's like, well, I don't know, we never used to replace
37:49
mattresses for companies before, but maybe there's a place for us
37:52
to figure this out. And you know, we never dealt
37:55
with laundry chutes or trash chutes before.
37:58
But hey, we're in the hotel, we're providing a service.
38:01
We've got the relationship already.
38:02
Let's see if our engineering team can figure something out.
38:05
I'll tell you. The other thing is I want to
38:07
find out which specific hotels you guys are servicing because
38:10
that those are the places I want to stay.
38:12
I'm looking at your website here and you've got a little video
38:16
going. And I'm like, oh, good.
38:18
Like they actually do. Like they're cleaning the
38:19
mattresses, they're cleaning the couches.
38:21
Because sometimes I go in a hotel and I'm not sure like what
38:25
what happened in here before, you know, what level of cleaning
38:28
has been done. And I can see from what you guys
38:31
are doing that it's it's a pretty deep clean.
38:33
So I'd feel more comfortable staying at your places is what
38:37
I'm saying. Yeah.
38:37
That's I appreciate that. And and and sometimes the hotels
38:42
are surprised by their own property.
38:46
So just two quick examples. Often if you go into hotel and
38:51
ever since I got in this business, I don't look up, I
38:53
look down and look at the floors and, and sometimes example the
38:58
Thailand grout, the grout so dark, it's black that the hotel
39:01
and it's been that way for so long that the hotel is convinced
39:04
that's the natural color of the, of the grout.
39:06
But that's not it. But that's often not the case.
39:11
The, the but, but what we do and this is actually a big selling
39:14
point that we do is, is that sometimes we'll offer to do a
39:18
demonstration so they can, we'll clean one guest room carpets as
39:21
an example, just so they can see the quality of the work that we
39:24
do. They can watch the videos that
39:26
you're seeing, but they often want to see it on their own
39:29
property and that's fine. So we'll do that and then we
39:32
will take, we'll open up to our machine and just take a sample
39:36
of the water of the dirt, that of the water that we extracted
39:39
from their carpet and put that in a see through container.
39:45
And so many times it looks like a motor oil, you just cannot
39:51
even see through it. And the hotel is just like
39:53
shocked. How could you extracted that
39:54
much dirt from my carpets when they don't even look that bad?
39:59
Oh, what a great selling point, right?
40:01
You don't even have to say anything.
40:03
You just hold that up and it does the talking for you.
40:07
You know, we mentioned in the intro about.
40:10
The work that you did to revamp the company's website, why was
40:14
that such a a big deal? What were you trying to
40:16
accomplish there? Yeah, we, we, we, we actually
40:21
even before we did that because we did at the same time we did
40:25
that, but then we subsequently did the website is we actually
40:27
changed the name. That was one of the early things
40:30
I did just because our name, we'd outgrown our name.
40:34
And so we changed our name. What was the old, new systems?
40:39
It was called National Appeal. OK, it was started the
40:43
originally was Appeal Carpet, then started growing nationally
40:46
and put National Appeal. But a lot of people were
40:48
confused. They thought maybe we're a
40:49
fundraising charitable organization.
40:52
And so so we changed our name. We did a little research and you
40:56
know, even back then 2010, it was hard to find a good website.
41:00
But we found something we liked and renew and renew and we added
41:03
the word systems because it really is systems.
41:06
It's not a simple business. It's finding the systems that
41:10
we've developed over and now 30 years that really work well,
41:14
whether systems how to do this type of cleaning or how to do
41:17
this type of marketing. So that we really wanted to have
41:21
the name systems in there. So renew is as in renew your,
41:24
your, your venue systems is really where we came up with
41:27
this. And we, that was a good
41:29
opportunity to change our, our website, but we did it.
41:33
I think what you're referring to more recently is that as we've
41:36
grown the number of services we wanted to display them.
41:40
So that was a lot of it is that and we're seeing people becoming
41:44
more and more visual. So we've, we've really minimized
41:48
the amount of text, put a lot of bullet points, put a lot of, as
41:53
you said, videos. We're putting more videos in
41:55
there and, and a lot of visuals because people really want to
41:58
see those, they, they jump out right away as opposed to reading
42:02
lots of text. And, and then showcases some of
42:05
our interesting projects showcasing a lot of the
42:08
different services we do because they they get captured on SEO
42:15
when we talk about different services.
42:17
And, and it just broadens our our appeal, use that word again,
42:22
appeal broadens our appeal, but also just separates us from our
42:27
competitors. And lastly, it shows our
42:30
customers, the hotels that we really know what we're talking
42:34
about. Yeah.
42:36
You know, you've, you've written some articles, you've spoken at
42:39
industry events. What kind of topics are you
42:43
covering? Like you getting into sort of
42:46
the minutiae of here's how you clean something.
42:48
Are you talking about sort of general importance of doing
42:52
these, you know, 4 * a year cleanings?
42:55
What kind of topics can? People get from you.
42:58
Yeah. I, I, I think it's, there's, I
43:00
would say there's a couple different areas.
43:02
It I, I don't get into the minutiae if of the cleaning.
43:06
I, I if we're in one of those settings, I make sure that I
43:09
bring in one of my because as your.
43:13
Wife has told us you're you don't know cleaning even till
43:16
now then. OK, go ahead.
43:18
It's right. We wouldn't be in business very
43:19
long if they were up to me. But but I've got a good team
43:22
that that does know it and I leave the I leave the details to
43:25
them when they talk about those things the but I focus on a few
43:32
things. One is either talking about, you
43:36
know, growth strategies for growth or marketing ideas,
43:39
things like that, which is really where I focus a lot of my
43:41
effort on that. And people, those are the two
43:44
areas that I focus on growth and people in general and not really
43:49
in that order. But I think what I what I also
43:51
like to talk about is we're talking about that cleaning, you
43:56
know, helping the customers, the hotels.
43:58
So, so that's one area as you know how we can help hotels, the
44:03
other areas where we're a franchisor as you mentioned.
44:07
So I like to really talk a lot about franchising, not something
44:10
I knew about and what I was looking for a franchise business
44:13
per SE when I was looking for a company to buy.
44:17
But the more I learned about it, it I just thought it was an
44:20
interesting way for for a couple reasons. 1 is it is scalable.
44:26
So for us to grow, we can, we need less if we want to set up a
44:31
new location that's fine and we have done that company owned as
44:35
opposed to franchise you did. But it does require more
44:39
operation focus and requires capital.
44:42
And so that is this is, is is an issue.
44:46
It can be an issue. Not saying it's not worth it,
44:49
but that's a consideration as opposed to being much more
44:52
scalable by bringing in a hopefully a high quality
44:56
franchise partner who will be there to run and own the
45:00
business. Obviously we support them a lot,
45:03
but but, but that's the case and we think that that's good for
45:07
our customers because they're going to benefit from a team
45:11
that's very well trained, but yet they're going to have the
45:14
tender love and care of the of the local team.
45:17
So we, we talk a lot about a franchising, how that helps our
45:20
customers, but even more so, and, and, and how you can scale
45:24
a business by franchising, but even more so, just the the
45:28
benefits to the broader benefits of franchising.
45:32
It's a great way for people to go into business ownership.
45:36
People like myself was looking at the time, granted, I'm the
45:39
franchisor, but finding a franchise is a good step for a
45:44
lot of people who maybe are used to work in corporate America,
45:50
want to do something more entrepreneurial, but yet this is
45:54
this, this is sort of a halfway there.
45:58
They own their own business, but yet they're going to get a lot
46:01
of help every step of the way. So you mentioned one of the
46:04
things that you talk about, David, are growth and marketing
46:07
strategies. What are some things maybe for
46:10
our listeners, kind of some low hanging fruit that you see a lot
46:12
of people miss that could be helpful in their businesses?
46:17
In our case, not to repeat myself, but maybe it helps the
46:23
cause is the focus is that we've, we talked about how we
46:27
really service heavily the hospitality industry, even
46:33
though we we know how to service lots of other types of customers
46:36
and occasionally do. But we find the focus is really
46:39
what keeps us is part of the reason we've been successful
46:42
because we know our customers, we don't go, go astray and, and,
46:48
and it keeps us, it's certainly enough opportunity for us.
46:52
So I think the focus is a lot of it focusing on, on our customer
46:58
base. And, and, and another thing that
47:01
I get on and maybe I'm overly fixated on is just being very
47:06
responsive with a small team is get away as a small team as you
47:10
can. Just as an example, the company
47:12
owned location that we have in Chicago that, that we, we
47:16
operate the original location. Prior to COVID we had a, we had
47:21
a large team of the cleaning technicians and each work
47:25
roughly 40 hours, 35 to 40 hours.
47:29
We after COVID when in a different world.
47:34
We although we made it to COVID to fine.
47:37
When we came out of COVID, we, we changed our model where now
47:42
we have a smaller team of technicians that all but two of
47:49
them want as many hours as we can give them.
47:52
So we're doing a lot of overtime.
47:53
So it simplifies our business from that because there's less,
47:57
just fewer moving pieces, more, fewer people to schedule to do
48:01
the cleaning and we're able to attract higher quality of, of
48:06
technicians because they're paid well and and they're paid
48:11
certainly overtime. They're they're paid more, you
48:13
know, time and 1/2 or double time, depending on the
48:15
situation. So they're making a lot of
48:17
money. Frankly, they deserve to because
48:19
they're good. And so we'd rather be able to
48:22
to, to bring in a smaller team of well compensated, well
48:25
trained high quality people then maybe people that are the other
48:31
end of the extreme and a bigger team.
48:34
So that's just an example of kind of one of the things that I
48:38
that we really try to focus on. A lot of our franchisees do that
48:40
as well. They realize the fewer moving
48:42
pieces the better and you'll get higher quality results with
48:46
higher quality people who hopefully will benefit as they
48:49
should because they're working hard.
48:52
So what was COVID like for you guys?
48:54
You know, the travel industry was decimated.
48:57
Were hotels having you come in less often because they're
49:00
trying to save money? Were they having you come in
49:02
more often because they're worried about the virus?
49:05
Yeah. I had a feeling you were going
49:07
to ask that once I opened the door about COVID.
49:10
But it's a great question. It's an important question.
49:13
So at the very beginning it was tough, there's no doubt about
49:16
it. But we got as much warning about
49:19
it as possible if anyone could just because we had a company
49:22
owned location. So we started to see some of our
49:24
customers are canceling and then that became a lot in a very
49:28
short period of time unprecedented.
49:30
So we huddled up, we got very close with our franchisees.
49:34
We were, we had very frequent phone calls with, you know, all
49:38
hands calls several times a week and we encouraged them.
49:43
There were some services that we did particularly disinfecting
49:47
that was very much in demand and we really that's when we
49:50
expanded beyond hotels. A lot of companies were coming
49:53
to us. They saw us on our website.
49:55
So we expanded beyond hotels because office buildings and
49:58
things like that. And we did a lot of
50:00
disinfecting. We helped the hotels where we
50:03
could. They saw that even though we
50:07
weren't necessarily making a lot of money off of them, we would
50:09
try to help them whatever ways we could.
50:12
So we, we, the good news about our model, business model is
50:17
there's not a lot of overhead in, in it.
50:20
So we were able to hunker down. We encourage our franchisees to
50:23
hunker down as much as they can. And you know, after a couple
50:26
months things started to pick up and got a little better.
50:29
And by the end of 2020, we were basically at this more or less
50:33
the same level of sales as we were at the beginning of the
50:36
year. And, and, and, and, and, and
50:39
learned a lot from there. So we, some of the, I won't say
50:44
it wasn't easy and it was scary And of course for all of us not
50:47
knowing how long it would last. And we did have to let go a
50:50
number of the workers, unfortunately, but many of them
50:54
have come back and, and we've been able to keep our customer
51:00
relationships, in fact, probably strengthen them because they saw
51:04
we did whatever we could to help them in a short time in a
51:08
difficult environment. And even we weren't making a lot
51:11
of money doing it. Plus it broadened us a bit out
51:13
of hotels, even though that's still our main focus.
51:16
But some of those customers we picked up then we've been able
51:18
to maintain. So that's it.
51:20
And and I think we got smarter. I think we were always lean, but
51:23
I think we've gotten even leaner, Better Business
51:25
practices. I mentioned one example of of of
51:28
how we treat and view our workforce.
51:31
I want to ask a little bit more about that.
51:33
Talk about getting lean. And I can see, you know, one of
51:38
the advantages of kind of reducing your headcount is
51:43
you've got a stronger core of people, right?
51:45
And, and the people that you have are more reliable.
51:48
But the, if I'm doing the math in my head, right, the cost of
51:53
your payroll's going up because you're paying those folks more
51:56
because, you know, overtime is time and 1/2 or double time.
51:59
Am I sort of thinking about that in the right way?
52:02
OK, that's right. The absolute, that's the trade
52:05
off. But sometimes for those extra
52:07
projects, we may charge more, you know, if it's night work as
52:11
an example, we'll charge more for it.
52:13
And in other times we're still finding that they're just more
52:16
efficient. We're just because sometimes,
52:19
you know, the work isn't always consistent.
52:21
So if you've got less work one week this way, they'll just get
52:26
less overtime or maybe no overtime as opposed to trying to
52:30
find hours for some people that we don't have hours for.
52:35
So there's definitely that trade off as well.
52:37
I mean, I'm not saying this approach works well for every
52:40
business of going that approach, but for us it does because that
52:45
way we pretty much know they'll always get roughly 35 to 40
52:49
hours, usually get more. But in the previous world, there
52:52
would be some weeks where things were quieter and they'd be
52:56
getting a much less paycheck or or we would top up their
52:59
paycheck anyway. So there's some of that.
53:01
And I also think that we've now, to your point, gotten a better
53:05
quality team and they appreciate what we're doing.
53:09
And they not saying they don't deserve to make the money, but
53:12
they appreciate this structure and that we're working hard to
53:15
get them as many hours as we can.
53:17
And, and I think they're just more efficient because we're
53:19
able to pay them more, get a higher quality team.
53:22
So it, it, it, it, it's, it's there's a lot of, there are some
53:27
benefits of this, even if occasionally it may cost us
53:30
more. Gotcha.
53:32
So payroll might cost you more because you're paying time in
53:35
half or double time, but you like being able to give your
53:39
employees more regular, more steady hours and in some cases
53:42
extra hours because it helps keep the good people with you
53:45
longer. And that's that's really what is
53:48
most important here. Yeah.
53:50
David, what's your superpower? Set humility aside.
53:56
What is it? You do the best.
53:57
Yeah. The, It's funny, I, I went to
54:03
this exercise a few years ago, which I'm not sure why I did,
54:07
but I sort of got wrote into it and I'm glad I did.
54:10
I mean, I think I'm a very disciplined person.
54:13
That's one thing. And but, but at the end of the
54:16
day, kind of a more formal, more formally put it is that you
54:24
mentioned my education and part of the back of my mind possibly
54:30
of going and getting a PhD. Maybe I want to teach.
54:34
I realized midway through getting a PhD that certainly I
54:38
didn't want to become staying academics or become an academic
54:41
because the research, it just wasn't something I wanted to do.
54:44
But I did always kind of have the back of my mind, the
54:45
teaching aspect and like that. So I think for me is that just,
54:52
you know, modeling productive? I'm going to read what what it
54:57
was it because it's probably just better to come from here is
55:02
that modeling productive behaviors needed to help people
55:06
achieve their goals. And when this person that does
55:10
this for a living kind of came up with that, I think there's a
55:13
lot of truth to that. And you know, that combines the
55:16
aspect of teaching and that combines the aspect of
55:20
franchising, setting examples for our franchisees.
55:23
So I think that's a lot of it. And it's, it's discipline, it's
55:27
repetition, hopefully modeling good behavior.
55:30
So it's a combination of all that.
55:32
But but I think that's a lot of it.
55:34
And I enjoy doing that. I love to see people grow,
55:37
people succeed. It's great.
55:39
When we start a new franchise, they're often very nervous and
55:44
as they should be and you know, get their first customer, get
55:48
their second customer, get repeat business and go from
55:51
there. So helping them learn how to do
55:54
that, teaching by example. I think that's really probably
56:00
the, the, the, what I like to do and I, you know, probably decent
56:04
at it. How about?
56:07
Daily practices or habits that have become an essential part of
56:11
your success. It's a discipline.
56:14
I mean, from, from my personal perspective, someone told me
56:18
this, do you know, first I have to take care of myself.
56:23
And I think I do. I work very hard, but I love
56:25
doing it. And part of it is just I'm very
56:27
disciplined. I get up early in the morning, I
56:29
go running for an hour every day pretty much without fail, even
56:33
if I have the first flight in the morning.
56:35
So I think the discipline really helps me a lot make it through
56:39
the day. But also just, yeah, I've been
56:41
doing that for for over 40 years.
56:44
So it's pretty ingrained in me. And I that's also feeds into a
56:54
franchise system where hopefully you've got good systems.
56:57
Not to say you can't tweak them and shouldn't tweak them over
56:59
time, but it's really just repetition.
57:02
So I mentioned starting a new franchise.
57:04
It's teaching them all the different systems, how to clean,
57:08
how to market, how to grow your business, what you should be
57:10
doing year one, year 2, year three, those types of things.
57:13
So it's this repetition and saying it died.
57:17
When I first joined Renew, I thought if I say something to
57:20
our employees once, they get it and should never be an issue
57:24
again. But certainly learn how naive I
57:26
was on that. So it's repetition and you know,
57:29
I may try to narrow it down to the three most important
57:33
messages I want to get across and keep repeating those until
57:37
they're kind of internalized and then come up with three new
57:39
ones. So I, I but it.
57:42
But again, it's about repetition and discipline and and hopefully
57:46
being consistent while I'm doing those.
57:49
What's something fun you like to do outside of work?
57:53
I mentioned I like to run whether it's not always fun, but
57:56
most of the days it's fun. I read a lot, a lot of
58:01
nonfiction, things like that and just just like being with my
58:06
family. I mean, I travel a lot for work.
58:08
I travel every week. You can see today I'm in my Home
58:12
Office. But I, I, I travel a lot to
58:15
visit franchisees. I travel a lot to visit
58:17
customers. And so if you like, I've got 3
58:21
offices, one on the road, 1 here.
58:23
And then American Airlines is my third.
58:25
So travel a lot. I haven't yet expanded that too
58:29
much on the personal travel, but we do take out several really
58:32
nice try to make nice personal vacations.
58:36
So I've got the travel bug. Part of that is just by visiting
58:39
all these hotels, but but I'd love to travel, love spending
58:43
time with my family and, and, and my running are and, and a
58:46
lot of reading is probably the things I do the most outside of
58:49
work. What kind of reading you got a
58:51
book you want to recommend? Yeah, there's one probably might
58:54
well from most relevant to hear probably the the author I like
59:00
the most and have learned the most from is is Jim Collins of
59:06
great by choice fame. Yeah, I love the the good to
59:10
great. I think that's just a great book
59:12
about it and I and I think great by choice, even though probably
59:18
less famous, may even be a better at least resonated with
59:21
me. But they're both terrific books
59:23
and I've learned a lot from that.
59:24
I've read them more than once. And I just think pretty much
59:27
everything he does I just really respect very heavily and try to
59:34
learn from from from his writings.
59:37
David, sometimes our biggest mistakes in the moment become
59:42
our greatest teachers. You think of a moment in your
59:45
career that seemed like a set back at the time but actually
59:48
propelled you forward. Yeah, I think the biggest is as
59:56
I mentioned, certainly about the layoffs and you know, it's tough
1:00:00
and it's a personal blow and but but I think it also teaches you
1:00:05
to to re evaluate and say, hey, maybe there's other things that
1:00:08
I, you know, ways of looking at the world or.
1:00:12
Or, or it broadened me, shall I say, because while I was always
1:00:18
thinking maybe someday I could run a business, this forced me
1:00:22
to do it. And so I think sometimes there's
1:00:27
resiliency and, and, and I'll take that kind of at a lower
1:00:30
level is that there are many times like we'll go to a project
1:00:34
to a customer and we just fall short.
1:00:37
It's often not our fault, but it happens.
1:00:39
But it's, but it's how you deal with the aftermath.
1:00:42
I think whether it's a layoff or in this case, a project that
1:00:46
goes S that I think it's how you deal with that that really
1:00:49
separates you and you can learn. We, we, we often will come out
1:00:54
better, stronger relationship with the customer after we have
1:00:58
an issue than we did beforehand, because they see the way that we
1:01:01
handle it. You know, this turning lemons
1:01:03
into lemonade is something we talk a lot about and and I think
1:01:09
that's something that, you know, it sounds horrible to time you
1:01:12
make a mistake and but I think you're always going to make
1:01:16
mistakes. Certainly in our case, we're a
1:01:18
service based industry working in a live environment.
1:01:21
These are going to happen and but but it's setting the
1:01:24
expectations of the customer and then dealing with it in a very
1:01:28
responsive manner. So, and why tie that again back
1:01:32
to my layoffs is it's just sometimes bad things happen.
1:01:37
Maybe they're your fault, maybe they're not, but doesn't make
1:01:39
sense to dwell on it. Just deal with it, try to try to
1:01:43
address it as quickly as you can and learn from it frankly.
1:01:47
You know, I love this. This came up in an interview I
1:01:49
had earlier this week too. Excuse me.
1:01:51
And I, I do think it's, if people have the right mindset,
1:01:56
it becomes an opportunity to, to deepen the relationship with the
1:02:00
client. You know, everybody's
1:02:01
embarrassed, I'm upset. There's some hard feelings when
1:02:05
you know, a mistake is made about how you handle that in
1:02:08
that moment says a lot to your customer about who you are and
1:02:13
how you're going to continue to show up for them in those hard
1:02:16
moments. And so from my own experience,
1:02:19
as well as talking to countless others and example after example
1:02:23
after example of when a mistake happened, they stepped up, they
1:02:27
owned it. Sometimes they took it on the
1:02:29
chin financially to fix it, But that relationship is deeper
1:02:33
stronger than ever. They've got more referrals from
1:02:36
those types of customers. And so I'm glad to hear your
1:02:40
story kind of echo that message that I think sometimes other
1:02:45
people are are sort of hesitant, reluctant to kind of to to take
1:02:51
those kinds of proactive, those kind of active steps in the
1:02:55
moment that you need to fix it. Yeah, I, I, I, I don't disagree.
1:03:01
And you know, we're, we're trying to teach our team to do
1:03:05
that. I think we're doing a pretty
1:03:06
good job at it. But you're right, it's it's it's
1:03:09
not necessarily your first instinct to do that.
1:03:14
David, I've just got one more question for you.
1:03:16
But before I ask it, I want to do 2 things.
1:03:18
Excuse me, for everyone listening today, just pause for
1:03:21
a second, open up your podcast app, go ahead and hit the follow
1:03:25
or subscribe button. I want you to continue to get
1:03:27
more great conversations like we've had today with David
1:03:29
Grossman from Renew Systems. And it's also a great way to
1:03:32
help the show, help other people find us.
1:03:35
And if you've got a spare moment, you can even leave us a
1:03:37
comment or a review. David, I also want to let people
1:03:39
know the best way to get in touch with you or the company or
1:03:43
to follow your story. What would that be?
1:03:46
Yeah, probably the best way. Certainly our website
1:03:49
asimentionedrenewsystems.com, LinkedIn, they're very active.
1:03:54
I I'm very active. I'm happy to connect with you
1:03:56
and to follow each other. But Dad, you'll see a lot, could
1:03:59
do a lot of posting and by not only renew, but my personal one.
1:04:03
And then also I'm happy to get out my e-mail address and speak
1:04:08
or connect with any of you. It's my name,
1:04:10
david.grossmangrossman@renewsystems.com. As you can tell, I really enjoy
1:04:18
talking not only about our company, about franchising,
1:04:22
about business, so we don't have to speak directly about
1:04:25
something. Again, that's going to benefit
1:04:27
me. I'm happy to to to connect and
1:04:30
and and talk if you find that all helpful.
1:04:33
That's very generous of you all. Make sure we include links to
1:04:36
all of those items in the show notes.
1:04:38
So last question for you, David. As you look forward, call it the
1:04:42
next two years in your industry, what are some of the most
1:04:45
exciting changes coming that you can't wait to be a part of?
1:04:52
You know, my industry, I, I don't want to sound naive or,
1:04:57
or, or taking things for granted or, or just dense, but we don't
1:05:05
have a lot of change in this world that we're in where
1:05:07
there's a lot of change. We're not a sexy industry.
1:05:12
We again, where there's no technology comes very slow to
1:05:15
us. I'm not too concerned in the
1:05:17
near future of what we do about being replaced by robots just
1:05:21
because it's very customized to what we do.
1:05:23
They'll help hurt some areas of cleaning, but but not us so
1:05:26
much. So there's not a lot of change
1:05:29
that comes to us which we we like and not saying we're not
1:05:33
aware of it. We go to the trade shows, we see
1:05:35
lots out there. We do a lot of testing, but we
1:05:37
like the fact that we're our strategy.
1:05:40
I'd be surprised is not the same in two years, four years, two
1:05:44
years ago, four years ago it is now.
1:05:47
It's just this blocking and tackling, occasionally adding
1:05:49
new service here or there, treating our employees well and
1:05:53
who will ultimately treat our customers well, treating our
1:05:56
franchisees well, really controlling, largely controlling
1:06:00
our own destiny, not so much worried about potential
1:06:03
customers because if we're servicing our customer,
1:06:07
ultimately servicing our customers well and, and, and,
1:06:10
and our franchisees are going to grow, our number of franchisees
1:06:14
going to grow and with this flywheel will happen.
1:06:16
So I kind of like that in this world, a lot of our success is
1:06:21
really up to us and, and, and that's pretty refreshing and,
1:06:26
and gives me a lot of confidence in, in I'm as energized now as I
1:06:30
was when I began over 15 years ago.
1:06:33
David Grossman from Renew Systems, I want to be the first.
1:06:35
Thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us
1:06:38
today. I really appreciate it.
1:06:40
Anthony, this was great. I had a lot of fun doing it.
1:06:42
Thank you for the questions. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:06:46
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:06:48
Thanks for learning with us today.