Take 5 With Cleanfax – an ISSA Podcast

Your technician pulls into the driveway, and the homeowner is already waiting at the front door with her arms crossed. The last company she hired left a stain by the fireplace and another one by her husband's chair. Nobody from that company ever called to check on her.This time she called your company. Before your tech unrolls a single hose, though, she has already decided how this visit is going to go. What happens in the next few minutes on that doorstep will either change her mind or prove her right.

A full schedule and a wall of five-star reviews don't guarantee an owner who likes the life the company built.

Repeat clients may know your company, but they are still evaluating your crew on every visit.

In a crowded cleaning and restoration market, every company is chasing the same customers—and making the same promises. Bigger ads, bolder truck wraps and claims of being “the best” may attract attention, but they rarely build lasting trust. What truly makes a company stand out is surprisingly simple: reliability.

The job's done. The carpet is dry. The hard floor you cleaned is shiny. The invoice is paid. Everything looks fine. Then a year goes by. No call. No repeat booking. No bad review, no angry phone call, nothing you can point to and fix. The customer just quietly moved on, and you never found out why.

You have been doing this 20 years. You know the work cold. There is a real chance that this is the most dangerous thing about your business right now.

Procrastination in a cleaning or restoration company is rarely a calendar problem. It's a fear response, and it charges interest.

The moment a job ends is the one time a customer sees a company with nothing left to gain. Most contractors waste it on a text message.Two days after the job, the text goes out. “Hi, just following up. How did we do?”Across town, the customer squints at her phone. Who is this? What did they do at my house? Is a real person on the other end of this thing?

Nobody gets into cleaning or restoration because they love confrontation. But guess what — this business is built on tough conversations. Today, we will cover four conversations every owner and manager dreads... and exactly how to have them without losing sleep, losing your cool, or losing your best people. 

A customer calls three days after a carpet cleaning job, upset that the carpet smells like urine. The crew did nothing wrong—the dog came back to the same spot and had another accident. Nobody on the job cut a corner. So, does the company apologize?

Every business owner tells themselves an occasional lie—but those lies often sound so reasonable that they're easy to believe. 

Are you stuck somewhere way in the past when it comes to pricing your services?

The restoration industry is facing some real challenges in 2026, but the latest Restoration Benchmarking Survey Report shows there is plenty of reason for optimism.

You walked the job. You measured every room. You wrote a clean, fair, professional proposal. And then your prospect looked you dead in the eye and hit you with the five most expensive words in our industry: “Let me think about it.”

It is time to grab your gloves, a pen, a clipboard, and something sharp…because we are about to perform an autopsy. 

You are hungry. You walk into a restaurant that looks pretty fantastic. You glance at the menu, and there it is — a glossy photo of a burger that seems almost too good to be true. You order it with high hopes. Then the server sets down something that looks like it lost a fight on the way to the table. Same restaurant. Same name on the menu. Totally different sandwich. Today on Take 5 with Cleanfax, we are sitting with a question every owner needs to ask: Is your company pretty on the outside but ugly on the inside?

When business is steady, referrals are coming in, and the schedule stays full, it is easy to believe everything is fine. But comfort has a way of quietly slowing innovation, weakening culture, and making companies vulnerable to change.

In the cleaning and restoration world, there are a lot of people who know what they’re doing technically. They have the skills. But knowing your stuff and being seen as a professional—those are two very different things.

Ever had a customer hear your price and say, “Oh… that’s it?” That’s not a win. That’s a warning sign. In this Take 5 With Cleanfax, we dig into one of the most common traps in the cleaning and restoration world: pricing too low and calling it “staying busy.” 

In this episode of Take 5 with Cleanfax, we tackle a common—and costly—habit in the cleaning and restoration world: over-explaining to your clients. 

There’s a small sound in the Jeep. Just a little tick. Nothing urgent… until it is. In this Take 5 With Cleanfax, we turn a simple (and expensive) lesson into a bigger conversation about something every business owner deals with: tolerating small problems for too long.

Think about the last time you ate at a restaurant where the fork had something crusty on it you couldn't identify. Then you headed to the restroom, and it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a year. You back out slowly from the restaurant, touching as few surfaces as possible on the way out. Did you go back? Of course you didn't. Nobody does. Your clients are doing the exact same assessment of you.

Why do small companies lose jobs to bigger competitors—even when they know they could do better work? In this five-minute episode, we break down the one advantage small companies have every single time… and why most don’t use it.

There may be no more dangerous phrase in business than "We've always done it this way." It sounds reasonable. It even sounds like loyalty to a craft. But often, it's a quiet barrier between where your business is and where it could be.

Listen to business coach John Clendenning describe strategies for tracking marketing results.

Listen to how companies should focus on the human side of trauma cleanup.

Listen to John Clendenning describe online strategies for cleaning companies.

Listen to DRYmedic Restoration Service's Ben Gergis discuss challenges with aging homes and the increasing severity of weather events.

Listen to Kelly Brewer, the new CEO of Insurcomm, describe her journey and the future of the company.

Listen to industry pro Amy Prihoda discuss how she taps into the power of selling indoor air quality to her clients.

Listen to Doug Hoffman describe this new intiative.

Listen to Joe Burnich with Big West Marketing share why a pricing page might be a game changer to your company website.

Listen to Joe Burnich with Big West Marketing share in under five minutes his favorite do's and don'ts.

Listent to Tim Hull, the president and owner of Violand Management Associates, outline the plan for this year's event.

Listen to Kyle Kluth share what Pinnacle Eco Clean does when they get the inevitable phone call.

Listen to Richard Rykbos outline his own company's strategy to the very best clientele.

Listen to website and SEO expert Joe Burnich outline a plan to make changes to Google accounts without getting penalized.

Listen to Joe Burnich share an interesting fact about Google and a rule it enforces.

How do you conduct a walk-through or inspection of a customer's home? Kyle Kluth with Pinnacle Eco Clean shares solid tips.

Listen and see what advertising strategies you could be missing out on to gain new business.

Listen to business coach Jeff Carmon outline how to deal with clients when it is time to raise your prices.

Listen to Steve Toburen describe strategies to get paid on time each and every time you complete a job.

Listen to the strategies Steve Toburen shares on how to handle this situation.

Listen to Samuel Sales talk about his father's passion for the carpet cleaning industry and how he will be missed.

Listen to Dean Mercado and Jeff Cross discuss ways to use AI beyond generative text.

Listen to business strategies aimed to help you keep your valuable customers.