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Not many bankers leave their comfortable, well-paid jobs to clean toilets. But that’s exactly what John Disselkamp did.
This decision turned out to be the best of his life. Disselkamp now runs a $10 million cleaning company. However, for several months after quitting his banking job, it looked like he was about to commit career suicide.
From wiping to wiping
At age 35, Disselkamp decided he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life “sitting behind a calculator,” so he quit his job at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, and moved in with his mother.
“I was basically homeless, had probably $20,000 in credit card debt, and had no savings for retirement,” he said on the podcast “Fail Your Way to Success.”
But Mr. Disselkamp wasn’t just freeloading; he had devised a plan inspired by a former bank client who started a successful cleaning business. Disselkamp realized he first needed to understand the fundamentals of business, so he took a job as a janitor, earning him $600 a month.
RELATED: This college student started a side hustle to avoid having to bartend until 4am. Currently, he earns his $7,000 a month and puts it to good use.
fish out of water
“At first I didn’t understand anything,” he recalls. “One time, a building owner asked what he could use to clean his floors, so I had to take a photo and send it to a friend in the industry to ask.”
However, this humbling experience made him realize his true talent. He was very good at asking for help when he needed it.
“When I realized that my cleaning skills alone weren’t going to get me very far, I realized that the real business I was in was in the people business,” he says. “And that was what I was interested in from the beginning.”
From cleaning one toilet to cleaning multiple toilets
The long journey to working as a janitor and finally hiring a janitor started with a phone call.
“I researched prominent local property management companies and called the person whose name I saw on their website,” he says. “I got his voicemail and left a message and he never called back. I called again about 4 days later and left a message and he never called back.1 I called again a week later and he called me back. “He didn’t call me back. Then three weeks later he called me and said, ‘Hi, John, it’s Greg. I’ll call you. ‘I’m sorry it took so long to do this.'” – 200,000-story, 200,000-square-foot building.
Today, his company, First Class Commercial Cleaning, has 330 employees and cleans about 5 million square feet per night.
the power of teamwork
Bringing people together is what led to Disselkamp’s success and helped him grow.
“Our success is not about me. I’m just one of 330 others,” he says. “I am truly fortunate to have an amazing team of people, from leadership and management to supervisors and front-line cleaners, who work extremely hard and genuinely care about serving others.”
do ordinary things exceptionally well
Another secret to Disselkamp’s success is the realization that the key to growing a simple business is to care about your team members as much as you care about your customers.
“There’s a saying we tell managers: Before you ask someone to go get a mop, ask how their family is doing,” Disselkamp says.
Of course, a quick inquiry is not enough. People who can make $600 a month and make $10 million a year have mastered the art of making their employees feel a part of something.
As Disselkamp says, “Fortune 500 companies might put a ping pong table in the break room or make everyone sit outside at lunch and think the culture will change. After all, culture is about It’s about building relationships, building trust, and genuinely caring about your people.” ”
Still, it wasn’t just smooth sailing to the top. “There were days when I went to his wife and said, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,'” he says. “But you have to have some grit, because in order to be successful, you have to fall down and get back up.”
This story was originally podcast for failing and succeeding
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