Interview with Omar Miller of Advantage Cleaning

In today's episode, Jerry speaks with Omar Miller about his cleaning company, Advantage Cleaning, in New York City. 

Omar describes how and why he started his company just a few years ago after being an Uber driver. There, he learned some foundations for succeeding in today's world.

From the beginning of going door to door and cold calling whoever would listen, he developed a company that seemed like his family.

It is no wonder I tried to get Omar before I even did my first podcast ten months ago. Enjoy

Different Sites Below
https://direct.me/jerrybauer

Jerry Bauer
Hospitality Cleaning 101
Jerry@hospitalitycleaning101.com

Transcript

A Chat with Omar Miller 

Jerry: Hey, good afternoon folks. Today, as I promised, we have Omar Miller. Omar, are you here today with me?

Omar Miller: Yes, Jerry. Thanks for having me on the Cleaning Process, man. I appreciate it. 

Jerry: Listen, Omar and we have chatted a couple of times, I started this endeavor on a podcast. I started the process after being on a podcast with Ralph Pearson. I started this process September of last year, you are one of the first people I came right after you and I asked you to be a guest. And I know after planning scheduling, we're finally here today and I'm excited. So thanks for joining me here today.

Omar Miller: Absolutely, man, it's a pleasure to be here. You put out great content, a lot of educational value. So I'm excited to be invited.

Jerry: So Omar, tell us a little bit about “Advantage Cleaning” the company that you're the CEO of I know a little bit about it. But can you tell our audience about your company? 

Omar Miller: Yeah, sure. So “Advantage Cleaning” was established based off of an idea that I wanted to start a company that will be able to thrive during a recession. Because majority of my professional career has been as a contractor. In college, I took up marketing and business management. I stayed in college, I think two and a half years, three years. I left because I had a couple of friends that jumped on the real estate wave, and I jumped on right with them. So that being said, that was my initial introduction to the business world through New York City Real Estate. And I held on tight to that for 10 years, and it taught me very valuable lessons. It taught me how to communicate with people. It taught me how to strive for more, obviously, educating yourself, and understanding product knowledge and things like that. One of the greatest things I've learned from real estate, well, two things I want to say. Are people telling you no all the time, or you having to figure out what people want without them telling you? Which is a skill set that is impeccable. Another thing is recessions. I've been through two recessions in my real estate career. And the last one, I was like, “Oh my God”, I don't think I could do this again. Last one was a heavy hitter. And sitting through that was like, you're unaware of where any sort of financial means will come from at that point. So I did what any smart person would do. I jumped out of real estate, and I jumped into door to door.

Jerry: I admire that.

Omar Miller: Yeah, man. I've had some experiences with sales man, I love it. It's in my bones. It's like, it's what I love to do. I couldn't sit in an office setting or do something that had some sort of ceiling involved. Where they tell me “Hey, in five years, you can be this or you can be this in a certain amount of time”. I would panic literally. So I knew automatically that entrepreneurship was my lifeline and the only thing I wanted to do. That being said, door to door, I did door to door in Boston, I did door to door in Chicago, in New York City, in upstate New York. So it was an incredible experience. It was almost as if it was Bootcamp for entrepreneurship. Because you'll never hear no or yes faster than knocking on somebody's door. And they'll tell you no aggressively, they'll use some words before the no.

Jerry: Especially in New York City. 

Omar Miller: Yes, in Boston as well. Boston has its moment. So it was a life learning experience. And advanced cleaning was formed. Partially because of that I didn't want to go through that experience again, where it was recession, I needed something that I can get into that I can count on that if I brought other people in and I invested my time into that it would last me and it would lead me into a career path so to say. Also, another reason why I got into this and it just because I was cleaning one day at one of our, I think one of our VPS came in our regionals. And we had a breakfast or whatever. And I was cleaning, I was like maybe you guys need to hire somebody, come clean this. I'm a contractor, I go door to door, not pay me to clean this. In fact, my time is like, I gotta get out of here because there's a certain window for me to get a certain amount of sales. Anyhow, that was the point in time where I was like, wow, the light bulb went off. They actually pay companies and people to come in here and clean. And when you really consider it and go deeper into the subject, the world itself New York City is built on real estate. Boston's built on real estate, what comes when you put a building up? What must come once you put real estate anywhere, you have to maintain the property and cleaning will be involved, whether you like it or not. And I've thought about this a little bit and I was like, “wow, this is a great industry to get into”. The overheads kind of low, and let me give it a shot, and that's how we started Advantage Cleaning.

Jerry: Did you bring on a mentor or anybody who helped you originally, because I know, there's different franchises out there and stuff like that, you didn't go that route? Who advise you in the beginning of what type of equipment to buy and stuff like that?

Omar Miller: Well, that's a great question, Jerry. In the beginning, I couldn't afford a franchise. I probably would have if I could, but mentorship has guided me along the way, mentorship is so important. I can't stress enough if you have someone good in your life, or someone willing to help you out a little bit how crucial that is in the growth process. Because I've collapsed so many cycles just by speaking with someone beforehand, who was willing to help me out and which is why I kind of return the favorite today. Free of charge, I don't charge people to ask me questions or anything like that. I think it's one of the benefits. And I do believe in, there's a point in time where you have to give back, you have to give back freely what was given to you, and I truly believe in that man. The law of abundance to give back in return we receive more, and that's what worked for me. So leading up to, because literally, in the beginning, I didn't know anything about pricing, marketing, how to hire all the infrastructure that goes in to cleaning, it's easy to have a dream. What you want to do, though, is in between that dream, worked really hard to attain the goals that you want. So what I did first and foremost was put together a plan, a strategy, a business plan, this is where I want it to be, this is what I want my gross sales to be, this is how many employees I want. Now, the good question is, how are you going to get there? So I started dialing the phone, looking up different companies, calling people CEOs of some of the companies I admire in New York City didn't get much traction that way. I showed up to a lot of these places to “Hey, can I speak to you for 5, 10 minutes?” A lot of people did not have time from which I understand, it's perfectly fin. But it wasn't good to tear my determination. So that being said, I went in other directions. I found other mentors that I still keep to this day, who helped me and guide me. They even gave me some equipment, which is what you asked, some of their older equipment which I've made use of. It's like someone giving you a used car and the battery might not work, there might be a short, there might be something wrong with the wiring, but you make it work. And it works for you to get you through those times. And that's pretty much worked me along with aggressively working hard. New York City is a pretty tough place to get anyone's attention, let alone someone that's not in front of your face. Because as we all know, in the cleaning industry, our point of contact is usually in an office. And if we're not part of that office, it's usually hard to get up there and speak to that someone without a meeting, or without an email or something of the sort. So I spent a lot of time applying like door to door skills to going B2B, whatever, by any means. If I had to get in the building, if I had to go to the back of a building, I was gonna get up there and speak with somebody. I also had a strategy. I also had another strategy which was pretty cool, because prior to me starting Advantage, I had lost everything on another business, like it went really bad. Anyway, I started doing Uber, I started driving Uber. And I was strategic about it, because I would go to a specific area. And I would pick up people were more than likely, their means of their income and their demographics in that particular area was at a higher level. So I knew that whoever sat in the back of my seat had to listen to me for 40 minutes, that they’ve no choice. You talk about a good sales pitch. I wish in door to door real estate, someone have listened for 40 minutes, this was incredible. So literally, they thought they were getting in for a cab ride to the plane, but my agenda was, “I'm going to tell you all about my cleaning company” and it actually worked. It work because I met someone who introduced me to their operations, because they were the vice president. And boom, one thing happens after the other in cleaning, as long as you do the right thing for the right reasons, and you work hard and that's what we did. We got a contract that was really good. And from that point, I took that contract and I used it to market and promote everything else, and I worked probably maybe 12, 15 hour days per day. We're really hard to get where we are now.

Jerry: Well, I congratulate you on even working in New York City, as well as Boston. I'm originally from the Midwest. I'm originally from St. Louis, Missouri. So I don't want anyone, especially it's my hometown, I don't want anybody to think that that's a small town. However, when I moved here, eight years ago, I immediately was sent to work in New York City. I had just bought an iPhone, I just put Google Maps on it. In New York City is an animal all within itself. It is a beast, I didn't understand the parking, I didn't understand, I've seen 1000s of one way roads, but I just didn't, it takes a while to get around. When you finally find a parking spot, you've got to utilize that parking spot. And I can admire you because a lot of this stuff, you might as well just start knocking on some doors, if you've got a parking spot, you can go one walk this way, and walk this way. You can hit more than enough people, because it'd be foolish to get back in the car and start trying to go drive to someplace else. So I admire you because you have something that I couldn't adapt to. And it's not that I didn't like New York City, I love the city. But it takes us first a special company, as well as a special person, as well as the person running the company to adapt all of that. So my hat is off to you extremely, is probably why I came after you so aggressively to come and join me. I wanted to hear how you did it all. But now when you do get a customer, what's the process? Because I'm sure you have different levels of employees, supervisors, stuff like that. Do you personally go out and bid all the jobs, or do you have different people who work together as a team?

Omar Miller: Good question. In the beginning, I did everything. And thank God for mentorship, like I said in the beginning, because I didn't know how to price accordingly. So I learned a lot through the mentorship in terms of just pricing things. Because there's all different categories of cleaning, subcategories, you got janitorial services, you got window, you got floors, so I really had to hone in and educate myself on how to price these things properly. Number one, because I didn't want to over bid, because I wanted to win the bid. Number two, I didn't want to under bid, I didn't want to walk away without a profit. Well, maybe have a technician that was coming in. One of my guys or one of my techs, and they weren't getting paid properly. Because one of the things that I am huge on is economic development, which we'll get into later. So I believe in supporting people and bringing them on the right way and allowing growth. So in the beginning, “Yes”. Now, I have two or three people like we get a lot of calls based off of referrals, because of some of the work that we do. Clients really liked the way we communicate effectively and efficiently. That being said, we have a very good process in terms of quality control, and it's ultimately speaks for itself. I'll never stand in front of a client and try to sell myself, I like the company to speak for itself. So we do get a lot of calls. And we have expanded in that area where someone shows up, they'll do the walkthrough, they'll get square footage to get the scope of services and then we'll put a proposal together. I still go out on the big jobs. I still go out because it's just me, I want to make sure everything is going well. Because there's a lot in the process in New York City, we have a lot of landmark properties, and then you have a lot of restoration that comes into play. So I like to differentiate that and explain that to my client, whether it's metal, marble, all those different topics that come up and how to clean something properly.

Jerry: Now, you lead me right into my next question and it comes down to employees. I've seen stuff you've posted, you've communicated about your employees. Explain your process, because you and I both know. I sell chemicals. Chemicals can be a commodity. We talked about equipment today. Before we started, I was having problems with my microphone. It's a piece of equipment. But employees are totally different, you have to retain your good employees. Tell us your secret of hiring and keeping good employees at this time.

Omar Miller: So different, I mean, see employees to me, I kind of like did the reverse osmosis. Most people will tell you the most important part of this is the client. The most important part of this is the employee. The most important part of this is the person you're bringing in, because that person represents you. Ultimately, only the only thing I wanted was to be successful to be honest. I just wanted to be a successful person. There was a point in time in my life where people didn't believe in me, or just didn't give me enough time to develop myself. In most industries, I jumped in because they were fast paced, and they were cutthroat and you needed to get the job done now, and not later. So if you came in here, you need to learn what you got to know what you're doing immediately real estate door to door, you have a 20 second window on door to door, someone say if you can't convince someone in 20 seconds, you're gonna be banging on doors all day. So you got to think of something, you got to think of some of the facts, real estate as well. People buy from people they like and trust. So real estate, you have to really meet your clients’ needs number one, and dig into what they might want. What they haven't, maybe subconsciously, they haven't let you know yet. So you have to know your client that well, maybe sometimes better than themselves. So ultimately just want success. I understood that you have to understand development. And what I do on my end with my employees is the reason I stress economic development is something called DQP (Developing Quality People), I truly believe in that. And I truly believe that if you develop someone's qualities that everything else will follow through. So the difference between means, let's say maybe some of my competitors in New York City, is that unlike the constant turnover in hiring and firing, our retention is excellent. And that's the one thing that I thrive off of is the fact that we have an 80% retention rate, and we hire from within. So that being said, there are a couple of things that I keep in mind when I hire somebody, they have to align with our core values. If they can't align with our value system, it's going to be very problematic for me to shift the mindset, if it has to shift it to where it needs to be. You might be rough around the edges but you need an opportunity. You need to let someone know who you are, and what you're capable of doing. Some people come in, they're what they call a rock star. They can clean, they can do floors, everything, but they might be missing the educational content. Now, if you combine those, now you have a beast on your head because you have someone who not only can talk to the client about dilution ratios, but can also go in there and get the job done properly. They know all of the things that need to get done in a facility and how to handle it properly if someone was to come in and ask a question, as of safety concerns or one of those issues. So our core values are integrity, product knowledge, reliability, commitment to client, employee leadership and growth, which is my favorite and engaged staff. Because another thing that we do is we check on our staffs moves. We want to know where you are in terms of mentally, you got to do a pulse check with people, it's almost like you have to understand what people are going through. Life is not the easiest, when people have families, they got bills. So I understand that. I don't expect people to come in and be a robot. But I do like to check on all of our staff, even if it's not me, if it's a supervisor or training coordinator, one inspector or manager checking, just to know that we're concerned about what their well-being, because the way I look at the whole process is I'm bringing you in, not as a short term process, I'm bringing you in as an investment, because I want to see you grow. My biggest issue with Jobs was the ceiling. I don't want other people to feel that way. And you can go to any one of my supervisors or managers now and ask them, and they'll tell you how fast they've grown, which is what I promised based on following procedures. So if you come in a facility, the faster you learn how to do an inspection, the faster you get certified as a custodial technician, the faster you get these things, the faster I see how bad you want to learn, and the faster I promote, and help you and develop your career, because I can't grow without my employees.

Jerry: And to work with the employee’s mindset, I love that. I said a chair that I recently had some surgery done on my back. I'm doing some physical therapy. And I was talking to the physical therapist yesterday. And they were asking about my movement this, my legs, and on everything is progressing perfect. And she said, but how are you doing? And I said, that's an excellent question. Because when I had the bad back, trust me, it affected my mind as much as it did my back. And when you have employees, you have to look at the whole thing of the employees. It's not just that they're the fastest, but that they might have a different concern outside work. And it's not that you have to fix it, but you have to show that you care because you are looking out and they are an investment, the most important investment you have. So tell me what's next for your company? What's the horizon? I know you have some lofty goals and tell me what's the next step for your company?

Omar Miller: That is a great question. And I can sit here like, I gotta cut myself off. Sometimes I gotta cut myself off because I had to talk shop with people, you are not in our industry. So what's next for advantage is, I'm so excited about this industry because it's believe it's the seventh largest industry in the world, right? 

Jerry: Correct, I believe so. 

Omar Miller: Yeah, that being said, there's so many different facets to it. So we recently started a maintenance program. I have a mentor who helped me and guiding me through that, because we already had the technicians with the skill set. So we applied it to our already facilities, for the facilities we already had. And now we do preventative maintenance, we do windows now. So there's so many different avenues in this one platform of janitorial commercial cleaning, that you can now go into. So I'm really excited about it. So we've launched our maintenance program about two years ago, we now branched out into like, we've always done windows and glass, but now we do it at a higher level. So we'll do things that are like 30 feet up, and things like that where people can't get up to. In the future, I plan on expanding our process of hiring and growth and mindset, just training people to be like better people and to allowing people to decide who they want to be, giving them some time to do that. And I plan on doing that throughout New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey, so we're already within the tri-state. And our plan is to branch out nationally at some point. We've been doing very well, I would say at this point, are probably doing some of the largest attractions in New York City and probably maybe most of them. We have a great team, our staff is extremely engaged, our clients really like our staff, we have a great quality control program that keeps them, you got to keep the metrics involved. It's not just about running in some way and doing an inspection, the metric is to figure out how you can make that inspection look good before it happens. So that's exactly what we do. We have a lot of small pieces that go into an inspection. It's not just showing up to inspect, there's a process to it. And we keep paperwork, we hold everyone accountable, everyone signs off all the things we do, there's a meeting at least twice a week for areas of concern to make sure we can improve even when there's nothing to do. We find something that we can improve on before the client ask them. Because the number one goal is for the client to feel confident enough to leave us alone. When your clients worried about you too much, or what's the cleaning company doing that's an issue. So we'll over communicate, I can tell you that for a fact, I definitely over communicate and provide the proper resources for my clients to have clarity into everything we're doing, which is what they really like. So what's next is just growth. What's next is growth and providing more opportunity, and really just buckling down and seeing, what are the areas that we can do? What are the areas we can improve on? Another thing that's coming down the pipeline at some point is that we're developing some sort of SaaS platform (system as a software), we're going to develop something where we can, like most companies that have done good in this industry. They've developed something to give back on a higher scale. That's exactly what Advantage is doing next. I have some things in play. When people such as yourself, Jerry, people who understand my suppliers, and all the different vendors I use, so I really want to bottle up this formula, and then distributed to the people looking to grow. Because, like myself, I don't want you to have to come into an industry and spend six months trying to figure it out. Because not everyone is built like me, or you or someone else. They might get deterred in the first two months, when they could have been a superstar, they could have started a company that provided for their families and produce jobs and gave opportunities, so we can collapse that cycle. Hopefully, it gives someone else an opportunity to say, “You know what, I can do this” rather than saying,” Oh, this is the fifth thing I tried. I'm just not good at it. I'm gonna go over here. Let's give people a chance and collapse in cycles, and let them figure out for themselves, what works and what doesn't work”.

Jerry: Well, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, this is the exact reason I started this podcast. And now I know, after talking you for 30 minutes, why I came to try to talk to you first. I didn't know the name of this podcast when I started. I debated it for three months. It's called Cleaning Processes with Jerry. Well, if you've listened to the other 12 episodes I've had, we really don't talk about cleaning processes. We talk about the industry and how we're all working strive to make it better. What am I going to do talk for 30 minutes out of wax floor, that would be as boring as boring can be. So you're the exact reason and I congratulate you because you don't talk about yourself, you talk about your team, you talk about your company what you've developed with the team around it. I congratulate you as high as I ever can. I admire you. Tell me how other people now can get a hold of you mentorship business and stuff like that. I know you're on LinkedIn, I know different formats, but tell people who are listening, how they can reach out to you possible?

Omar Miller: Absolutely. So the best way to reach me is probably through email. The email that you'd like to reach me at is info@advantagecleaningllc.net. Drop me an email, I will definitely respond to you whatever questions you have. Also, if you see me on Instagram, I'm using Instagram posting pictures of my team. So if you go to advantage_cleaning_serv, you can drop me a DM and I'll be happy to get back to you.

Jerry: Well, I appreciate it very much. I'm going to plan on actually calling you frequently to get motivated myself because you've done a great job and I admire you. Well, with that I'm going to end the show. But again, thanks for joining me today. And hopefully we'll stay in touch.

Omar Miller: Absolutely. Thanks, Jerry.