Best Of - Future of the Cleaning Industry with Ed Selkow

Smart Cleaning School

In part 1 of this 2-hour interview, "Conspiracies in the Cleaning Industry with Ed Selkow", Ed shared an incredible 50-year career in our industry. He shares so many great stories and lessons that will help you in your business. Ed also shared some incredible criminal stories that I called "conspiracies" that are a must listen! In this episode, we dive into the second half our interview.

Ed shares the past, present, and future of the cleaning industry. Do you want to grow with the industry? There are predictions and recommendations that Ed suggests. Here's a few notes from the interview.

• "You've got to be honing your skills, expanding on what you know how to do."
• "Where there are a whole bunch of companies that are missing, that's an opportunity for me."
• Why are so many new cleaning companies starting out post pandemic. "Desperation drives a lot of people to start cleaning businesses because it costs so little to start. It's possible to grow a cleaning company with no money, but it's also possible to walk from NYC to LA!"
• "Commercial real estate is the mother's milk of the industry." Ed explains that if no developmental growth is happening, cleaners are just trading accounts around as there is a finite amount of buildings to clean.
• Find the country economic people for networking to learn when and where new buildings are coming. Ed believes this is a huge opportunity and better than the Chamber of Commerce.
• The disinfection revenue explosion will normalize like previous fads.
• Ed gets into the intersection of "Big Data" and "The Internet of Things" (sensors), for computer models of building traffic to determine how much cleaning has to happen. This could become cleaning-on-demand.
• The increase in technology will drive cleaning prices down over time. This is what happens with every industry that technology improves. Robotics are one of these advances. For example, there are robots that can empty deskside trash cans. Couple this with cleaning-on-demand technology, and cleaning revenues will likely go down. Ed is predicting this so we can get ahead of it.
• Winning cleaning companies will be the ones that combine of technology and open systems for cleaning.
• Ed highly recommends that we all understand Seth Godin's book, "Tribes". Those that understand this mindset will survive the future.
• Ed highly recommends that we, as building contractors, link up with the BSCAI (Building Services Contractors Association International) as our professional trade association. They are dedicated to the services versus the manufacturers (ISSA). They were also influential to getting the cleaning industry labeled as "essential" to get us back to work during the pandemic.

You can find Ed Selkow at Janitorial Growth Solutions and on multiple social media outlets.

Check out my interview with the CBF Founder, entitled "A Buffalo Charges the Storm with Debbie Sardone". Debbie is offering free consultations to listeners of this show through the Smart Cleaning School Resources Page to see if CBF could be the right solution for you.