Erik Hiltz is a long time carpet cleaner and founder of Zipper Wands. He tells his start up story from the very beginning of how he got started and what motivated him to jump into manufacturing of his own brand of commercial wands and stare them with the industry. 
He started like most of us did as a technician working for a different company and learned to like this business and continued on and has worn a lot of different hats in his business career. 
From working as a SEARS carpet cleaner and learning mostly the hard way of how to clean. What detergents would work and which ones did not. And how to give great customer service to his carpet clients and the folks who buy his Zipper Wands. 

Keep It Clean! has Rob Hanks this week for a very entertaining story of an older brother convincing his two younger brothers to help him in his carpet cleaning business. They had little training and little support, but big dreams and a lot of drive. Those three brothers started one of the largest carpet and restoration supply businesses in North America.

Listen to how their partnership worked, how they planned and looked for, but also created opportunity after opportunity throughout their entire careers. Forty two years of hard work and dedication payed off with a sale to a larger firm and a well deserved retirement.

Rob's message of never giving up and finding ways to innovate and market to a wide audience is not lost today on successful people in the professional cleaning and restoration industry. 

BK Semandic came to the US from Serbia and decided to make a life here. He has an appreciation for the land of opportunity. And what an opportunity it has been! BK applies himself through the power of visualization and creating a future that is attainable. 

He tells his startup story from learning the language to understanding how the cleaning and restoration industry actually works. Along the way he breaks many of the traditional rules that we commonly associate with operating and managing a  cleaning and restoration company.

He inspires us with some powerful messages on how people should treat each other and how a responsible manager takes ownership of problems and create solutions to get things accomplished. This is a very inspirational story that needs to be heard!

An Interview with Bill Yeadon, all around nice guy, lover of business books and one of the pioneers of the professional cleaning industry. Bill has been a carpet cleaner for many, many years and a pure lover of marketing this industry.

Bill talks about his early days as a carpet cleaning professional in Florida in the early days of on-location cleaning operations, building a multi-truck operation and then working for Bane Clene Corporate showing others how to do the same thing in their markets.

Working with Bill Bane and taking training on the road was where Bill learned the lessons of being a road warrior and how much fun it was to help fellow pros learn about this wonderful industry. He continues that march today as a trainer for JonDon with instructing carpet cleaning courses, but also as a trainer in their flagship training program, "Strategies For Success".

Bill has read almost every business book ever published and is always ready to offer help to our industry colleagues. Listen to Bill tell his story of starting up in our world. 

Craig Jasper has spent a lifetime in the professional cleaning and restoration industry. Starting as a very young adult, he learned literally from the ground up to clean floors, carpets and fabrics. As most of us do, he then journeyed into the professional Restoraton industry and has become one of the most sought after instructors in the industry.

His down home instruction style fits well with his Chicago upbringing. He tells it like it is. Listen to the story of his startup and the obstacles he overcame  on his way to the top of the industry food chain. Some of the historical names he brings up will trigger memories in all uf us that listen.

If you are in the professional cleaning industry and you have not heard of Courtney Lee, you have been living under a rock. This guy is everywhere on FaceBook and many different cleaning related pages. Always a positive person and always willing to lend a hand to fellow cleaning professionals, Courtney had found himself struggling with some of the same issues we all face, busy vs profitable. 

After coming to his own "moment of clarity", he completely changed his business model and is now enjoying a much more comfortable lifestyle and less stress compared to his early days in our industry.

His startup story starts out very familiar to others we have heard from in past interviews but takes a dramatic turn at a fast food drive up window. Listen to a very inspiring story of Courtney Lee on Keep It Clean.

Jessika James has been around our professional cleaning and restoration world for 37 years, seeing many new changes and challenges for the industry. She is a pioneer of contents processing from the middle 80's and a pioneer of contents processing education by recently organizing an IICRC class dedicated to this venture.

Jessika got her start in the family business, doesn't that sound familiar? By working with her families cleaning and restoration business first as a carpet cleaning technician and floor care specialist. No easy roads for most owner's children in our industry!!

As an approved IICRC Instructor and a frequent guest speaker on many different topics related to restoration and cleaning, Jessika is one person from our industry that should get your attention. She tells her startup story from beginning to today and has some fresh advice for those just getting started. 

Please give a listen to Jessika James on the Keep It Clean podcast!!

There are few people we meet in life that will stand out forever in our hearts and minds. Kenway Mead was one of those people in my life. Always positive, always kind and an absolute class act.   

He was the face of IICUC and later IICRC as the Executive Administrator of the organization through his own company Kenway Consultants, Inc., or KCI. We called his office and spoke to his employees when we contacted headquarters office to deal with IICRC certification issues. Callers would never know that they had not called the IICRC directly. 

He started like many of us, working with carpet. First as an installer and then as a cleaner and embraced and appreciated the service industry. He and his wife Pat, who ran the financial side of the office at Kenway's side, were a one-two punch of professionalism.

His son, Brad Mead gives us the industry story of Kenway Mead as only a son could. Through the eyes of someone who admired what his father had created and learned some of his own skills by watching Kenway work through the myriad of personalities and people brought together in the volunteer world of IICRC. 

Keep It Clean was thrilled to have one great person (Brad Mead) talk about another great person (Kenway Mead). 

Dr. Dan Bernazzani discusses his start in the carpet cleaning/building services industry beginning in the late 1970's. Starting small during his college years, his operation grew to two locations and worked for some of the most well established family names in the New England area, mostly in Vermont.

Dan spent years honing his craft by saying yes to many different types of clients and projects, all the while learning something new every day. His lifelong quest for knowledge also afforded him the opportunity to earn his Ph.D in his early 60's and work with some of the most knowledgable people on the planet in Environmental Science.

He has a philosophy of collaboration with all stakeholders in a project and used his collaborative skillset to lead the IICRC through one of most exciting times in that organization's  history. 

He is a world renowned consultant for large commercial losses and an author of numerous papers and articles on water and fire damage restoration. Sit back and listen to how it all started.

Reg Rogers shares with Keep It Clean! his transition from rock and roll drummer to carpet cleaner. No, we are not kidding. It really happened just the way Reg tells it! The music industry is just that, an industry.  Just like any other industry, some talented folks struggle to monetize their dreams and search for new opportunities.

Reg tells a motivating story of his startup in the professional cleaning industry, cutting his teeth on empty, nasty apartments like most of us in the industry. Being someone what is quick on the uptake, Reg transitioned into management in a short time and learned how to handle a multi truck operation. Sensing his talents could find more out of life, he found a niche in the high end residential market and used his skills to leap to a franchise company directing the operations of the franchisees. Flooring sales followed to help round out the skills package and learn how to direct sales of products instead of services.

Economic downturn hit everyone in the late 2000's and Reg found himself searching for a new gig, but carpet cleaning called him back with the founding of Carpet Cleaner America. An Austrian carpet cleaning machine manufacturer needed talented people to help establish a beach head in the US and Reg found himself back in carpet care using dry compound and encapsulation for a new look at an old problem, dirty carpets. Hear the story as it unfolds in episode 20 of Keep It Clean!