My Worst Day in the Janitorial Business

It was June of 1996 and my cleaning business was running like a fine watch. We were making lots of money, our customers were happy, and (finally!) I was able to turn down contracts that weren’t exactly what we wanted to clean. It was a very, very good time. The phone rang around 10 a.m., and it was my boss at my biggest account, the phone company. He said his boss from Denver was going to be in town, and was wondering if we could meet. We set an appointment for the next week, and when we got off the phone I announced to everyone in the office that we might be getting a chance to bid on some really major stuff. We were already cleaning 31 buildings for the phone company, my boss had told me that we would always be invited to every bid, and he had said a few months earlier that their biggest downtown office buildings would be coming up for bid soon. Very tall buildings that had words like “Center” and “Plaza” in their names. Big buildings and big money. Suddenly I could smell the fresh interior of the new battle-cruiser I had been looking at, a full-on GMC Suburban with the 454-V8 and a glossy black paint job that was almost blinding to the eye. It could tow just about anything, and it could seat nine people. Just the thought of it felt like freedom; not just freedom on the road, but the kind of freedom you get when your business has climbed and scratched its way to the next level and you can afford to have someone else take care of things while you’re off on vacations. Meeting day arrived, and everything went completely sideways in under 60 seconds. The company had decided to give all of their buildings in 5 states to a huge contractor out of Utah, and I walked out of there with a 30-day notice for all 31 buildings. The guy from Denver said he didn’t want to give me my notice by mail. He said he figured that since I was one of their biggest providers in the area that he owed it to me to break the news in person. It was a very decent gesture and it was obviously a tough thing for him to do, because I'm sure he knew that he would have to sit there and watch my spirit die by 9:01 a.m. Have you ever had to do that? Drive home with the news that your income was going to be cut by almost 40% within 30 days? Wondering what the h*** you were going to do? It sucked the wind right out of my lungs. I wasn’t really breathing – I was taking in huge gulps of air only when I needed it, and then letting it out with deep, fast exhales. In my mind I was moving money around, selling stuff, canceling memberships, reducing insurance coverage, laying off a lot of really good employees, even taking our daughter out of the private school she loved so much. I felt like I was being pulled backwards about 10 years, and I knew that once again I might be mopping down stripper and struggling with the wet vacuum. Once again I might be a janitor who also happened to own the business, not only having to be available to my customers from 9 to 5, but also wrestling a floor machine in and out of a van from 5 to midnight. I had thought that all of that was behind me, forever, but there it was again, right in my face. And, while it certainly wasn’t the worst thing, it also crossed my mind that some punk janitorial salesman who had probably never swung a mop in his life might be at a GMC dealership somewhere in Utah, ordering my freedom machine. They say bad things happen to good people, but they also say that when one door closes another one opens, and I have found that both are true. Eventually my business came out of that train-wreck bigger and better than ever. Eventually I completely re-invented the way I did almost everything - advertising, sales, bidding and more. This is actually just the beginning of the story - learn how my worst day turned out to be a huge turning point for my business, and how it can be a positive turning point for your business, too. Click here> to see how to start and build a janitorial office cleaning business the right way.