Keep It Clean! - A Pro Cleaning Industry Podcast

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 enti...

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 managi...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 t...

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...

Listen to this latest interview with special guest Barry Costa. Barry talks about his start in the cleaning and restoration world while working with his Dad in the 1960’s and 70’s as a helper and starting his own company while working as a school teacher in New Hampshire. He is an award winning school teacher and if you have had the great fortune of taking any of his restoration or installation classes, you know that this is a true statement. He is an outstanding educator and is ab...