Keep It Clean! - A Pro Cleaning Industry Podcast

Everybody's favorite cleaning guru tells his startup story for Keep It Clean! and what a story it is.  From an early computer "enthusiast" in his garage, working with his Dad in the family window cleaning business, Scott Warrington figured out a side hustle while still in high school as a carpet cleaner for a little spending money. 
Even while teaching computer microprocessor design at UT, he so enjoyed the technical side of our business using the college library to research the best ways to accomplish the carpet cleaning tasks. His studies found some of our industry's early pioneers and set Scott on a course with destiny.
while running his own large cleaning and restoration business Scott began taking calls for other cleaners looking for solutions to problems they had encountered. Scott was able to build a worldwide reputation as a technical wizard and thus find his passion of helping others solve problems in their cleaning businesses as well as their lives.

John Downey was the son, of a son, of a son of a carpet cleaner. When your professional lineage goes back to 1897, you may know a few things about the carpet cleaning business. And John does not disappoint! An inside look to the staggering history of carpet cleaning from a city in Central Ohio that has been the home to 4 multi-generational carpet cleaning businesses. 
Because it was a family business, you can imaging that things were not always smooth sailing and you would be right. John details some of the pitfalls of the "two boss" companies and how difficult that can be.
John branched out into publishing, spring boarding from a volunteer position and literally changed the way the carpet cleaning and restoration industries received information until the internet took over in the early 2000's. 
John continues to this day as an owner operator of a carpet cleaning business, along with an Executive Directorship of CIRI and also continues to publish industry specific product because he just can't sit still and do one job at a time. 
John's story is similar to many in the industry, just a tad longer and possibly with more drama.

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!

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. 

Patrick Ladinig has a long history in the carpet cleaning business, but from a very different angle than most of us here in the US. He started as a child working with his Father and learning from the ground up.

After completing school, he began working for the family business, Carpet Cleaner Industries in Austria and understanding what works in this industry.  Knowing that they needed to break into the US market, he came over to open Carpet Cleaner America in 2010 and saw carpet cleaning from an American mindset. 

Patrick explains the founding of the company, his role in the importing of the Austrian CRB machine into the US market and describes the role of dry compound cleaning into the commercial side of our industry. 

Since returning home to Klagenfurt, Austria, Patrick has taken over the family business, moved their cleaning focus from strictly carpet to a variety of flooring surfaces and is keeping pace during our worldwide pandemic with manufacturing and developing new ideas and resources for the floor cleaning 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 able to combine his passions of education and restoration work.

Barry talks about his entry into the industry and his time as an industry volunteer with IICRC. Barry has a passion for helping the education portion of our industry. He spent many years as the Education Committee chairman of the IICRC to help us understand the education challenges of adult learning and how to add a practical element to our training courses. 

Give this episode a listen and hear from one of the most popular instructors in our world and his personal story of his startup. Barry Costa is one of the good guys that has spent a lot of energy to make our businesses better. 

In the fall season of 1986, the professional carpet cleaning  industry was challenged with a new stain resistant carpet product introduced to the public. This product was unlike anything else we had ever worked on. StainMaster nylon was produced and delivered to carpet manufacturers and advertised to the public...and consumers could not buy it fast enough!!

DuPont had made arrangements with Stanley Steemer to be their warranty claim partner to service StainMaster carpets that were spotted by customers spilling things on them. The deal from DuPont was, if the professionals could not remove the spot, DuPont would replace the carpet. Other carpet cleaning professionals that were not affiliated with Stanley Steemer were not too happy.

Our hero, Bill Doan swooped in, with a lot of help from IICUC, and launched programs where other Certified carpet cleaning professionals could participate in the StainMaster cleaning claims. Industry education took off from that point and we now enjoy the benefits of 35+ years of quality education and increased revenue because of the ladies and gentlemen that spent the time and energy to engage in difficult conversations. Bill Doan is one of the catalysts of those conversations.  

He liked working with carpet cleaners so much, he actually became one! Bill spent time working for SteamWay International and Spectra, Shaw Industries carpet cleaning division. Give a listen and hear his side of the story.

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.

Hear from one of the actual founders of IICRC. Tom has spent over 50 years in the professional cleaning industry and has the history of the on-location carpet/upholstery industry. He also served as one of the first ever IICUC instructors and relates the tales of the first classes ever held in carpet cleaning, upholstery cleaning, water damage restoration and fire restoration. 

These classes were developed by just a few people and were the stepping stones for the 29 IICRC Certifications available today. Hear from one of the first instructor “road warriors” and how he crisscrossed the country delivering education first for local and regional trade associations and later for cleaning supply distribution locations.

Live the life of an early “shampoo professionals”, using in plant machines for on-location work. The horror stories of cellulosic browning, shrinking carpet and unhappy customers. He was there when the first extraction machines were being developed and how hungry carpet cleaners were for education.

Tom Hill is one of the best people this industry has ever had representing us with numerous organizations that helped bring the carpet cleaner out of the background and hear about how one company really helped the independent cleaner carve out a huge niche in residential services.

We coaxed Jeff Bishop out of retirement to give us some insight from his long service and unique perspective of the professional cleaning and restoration industry. From the 1950's to 2018, Jeff was a force in the carpet cleaning industry. He commanded attention in everything he was involved with, from his early days in cleaning to his military service during the Vietnam war, Jeff marched steadily forward through it all.

In our interview he gives insight into how he found his talent for writing during his military career and how that affected his management of Bishop's Clean Care's multiple locations in the Southeast. His technical training programs were one of the founding ideas behind the IICRC Standards development for multiple industry standards. 

His volunteer efforts during and after managing his cleaning empire brought about major changes in how industry training programs were built and sustained to this day. He has written volumes on how to clean flooring, especially carpets and wrote many of the beginning procedures for fire and water damage restoration.

This wide ranging interview allows Jeff to give us some sage advice and is part history lesson from someone that has quite frankly "seen it all". Listen in on Jeff to get some free info on how he managed his business from the ground up.