We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chandrell Stephens. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chandrell below.

Alright, Chandrell thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

In the cleaning industry, it is notorious for low wages, spotty cleaning, and high turnover. We are challenging the current norm by offering better wages to our cleaners while still remaining competitive in the market. Our customers are delighted to work with is because the rate is justified in the quality and convenience of our services.

Unlike larger companies, we are able to be selective with whom we hire due to enticing wage rates. As a result, we experience lower to minimum turnover. We still have many of the team members we started with. In addition, I am most proud that my team members have beeb able ymto buy cars, expand their family’s, and purchase homes. I am so proud.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hello my name is Chandrell Stephens and I am the owner of Ellis County Cleaning Co. We provide meticulous construction cleaning and commercial cleaning services in the Dallas / Fort Worth area.

I graduated from Texas A&M University with a bachelor and masters degree and immediately got to work in Healthcare. I thoroughly enjoyed my job because there is always something to fix and improve in healthcare. I performed well but wished that I didn’t have to wait on a promotion or annual bonus to make more money. As a result, I started down the path of entrepreneurship. I had a few failures before I landed on cleaning in 2021. I was grateful to had found the Hartzogs, a young black entrepreneur couple, who were killing it in residential cleaning and teach others how to do so as well. I took their course and followed their blueprint to start my business at the end of 2021.

I began with servicing residential clients but soon found that it’s nuances were causing me anxiety. I was stressed dealing with my residential customers in comparison to my commercial and construction clients. As a result, I shifted those customers to a few loyal subcontractors that I had relationships with and went all in on construction cleaning (along with commercial).

We are the premier subcontractor for final clean and progress because we are reliable, have integrity, professional, and certified. We can be trusted to show up when our customers need us and perform high quality cleaning. Not only that but we have our required paperwork (i.e. insurance, financing, OSHA logs, etc.) in place that minimizes risk for ourselves and our customers. Lastly, we maintain our WBE (woman owned business enterprise), MBE (minority owned business enterprise), SBE (small business enterprise), and Texas HUB (historically underutilized business) certifications. These certifications set us apart from large owned corporations who often offer better pricing. It allows our customer to receive benefits or preferential awards by partnering with businesses like mine.

I am proud of the work that I have been able to start a business with minimal funding and have been able to use it to better the lives of my partners, community, and my family. I have been able to partner with local small cleaning contractors and give them the experience of working on large scale construction projects without any experience requirements. I have seen these partners grow in size, knowledge, and revenue. Now they are paying it forward and bringing on smaller partners. In addition, we have partnered with a local non-profit to provide well paying work to citizens re-entering society. These are individuals who are often denied work or offered the lowest pay due to their criminal history. We understand that second chances are vital to preventing re-offenders. Our work has allowed these individuals to afford basic needs, applying for housing, continue to their families, and more.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

I remember taking on my first large construction cleaning project. I was managing about 100s man hours per day. As a result, I was paying out 100s of man hours daily. I was beyond stressed. 1) managing a daily payroll for a large job was tedious 2) our customers pay schedule was every 30 to 45 days. YIKES!

This quickly became unsustainable. I realized early enough that I needed to move to a weekly pay schedule. DONE! The pay day change provided the business with some relief but not enough! I was quickly running out of money waiting to get paid. I’m typically calm under pressure but you know what they say “Pressure bursts pipes!”

I started paying more with a credit card and only paying the minimum until my checks from the customer came. That strategy helped but my credit card balance started getting out of control. Uh oh. By the time, I received the check from my customer and paid down the credit card and fulfilled the next pay day obligation, I was back in the same boat.

I spoke to a few people in my entrepreneurship support group and secured a line of credit as suggested! That did the trick. I was able to pay off my card and had enough payroll for 60 days in the bank. It saved my business and my sanity.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I started my cleaning company, we predominantly served residential. From day one, we received a high volume of calls and were able to convert a decent amount of the traffic. The business was growing and it was exciting until it wasn’t. I started to dread answering the phones and dreaded following up with customers post service fir various reasons. In residential, although great magins, every house is different and every customer expectation is different. It started to take a toll on myself and my team. I decided to leave residential to put all of my effort into construction cleaning which was well suited for my personality and lifestyle. I went from answering 15 calls per day to emailing with customers as the primary form of communication. I went from servicing +20 clients per week to 1 customer with 1 point of contact per project for months at a time. In addition, with one customer their is one standard to meet for cleaning expectation. It was like night and day. I sleep a lot better now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.eccleaningco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eccleaningco
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eccleaningco
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/e-c-cleaning-co/
• Other: Google:
  https://g.co/kgs/TC3M3Gs

Image Credits

Head Shot by A-List Photography