Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Derrick Foster Rebecca Serfozo. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Derrick Foster thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you have any advice regarding quality control and maintaining quality as your brand grows?

We started our company in December 2022 with a mission to provide quality cleaning and exceptional customer service to all of our clients. Since having started, our company has grown tremendously and yet, our mission remains the same. Having grown as a business, we initially experienced a few road blocks when choosing staff that aligns with our mission although, we have found that in order to maintain quality services, we must ensure that our staff is appreciated, cared for and enjoying the work they do. We do this by modeling to each of our staff members the expectations for their role by joining alongside them on jobs and exploring with them their future with our company. We have found that when your team feels appreciated and supported, they desire to align with the mission. We have ensured that our staff makes competitive pay to maintain their integrity to the work they do, while also sustaining a profit for our company. In doing so, we have chosen to increase the prices of our services while guaranteeing customer satisfaction. At times this can be a risk for our company although, we decided that we would rather miss out on contracts than have multiple contracts that left us and our team feeling unsatisfied with the work we did. We also develop relationships with each of our staff members and treat them as a family. We have succeeded in communicating the expectation that each of our clients is family to us, as well, so just as we take care of one another, we must ensure that our clients are satisfied every time we leave their home. In modeling to our team the relationships that we desire between our company and our clients, it encourages each of our cleaners to develop the same kindness and appreciation towards the work we do. When we became concerned about the quality of our services as we continued to grow, we determined that our best resource was to return to our mission and identify the purpose of our services in the first place. From there we were able to develop a plan to assist us in maintaining this mission as we expanded as a company.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Rebecca Serfozo and my fiancé’s name is Derrick Foster. We decided to start a cleaning company together in December 2022 after discovering that cleaning was a personal passion of ours. We realized how much a clean space positively impacts people’s mood, health and overall well being and we enjoyed enhancing our client’s mood when leaving them with a clean space. We acknowledged the amount of stress that can be placed on our client’s when their homes and businesses are unclean and we wanted to work to help relieve some of that stress. We decided that our mission was to provide quality cleaning services and exceptional customer service to all of our clients with a goal to ensure client satisfaction after every clean. When we began providing services we focused on large scale cleans such as deep cleaning and move in/move out cleans. Since having started, we have now expanded to providing commercial cleaning services, regular (weekly, biweekly and monthly) cleaning services, car detailing and so much more! We work hard to meet our clients needs and have even developed relationships with other local, reliable companies to refer our clients to for additional services that are outside of our scope of service provision. We are proud to say that our client’s become family to us and we want to meet their needs however we can!

How’d you meet your business partner?

I love sharing the story of how we met! My fiancé and I are actually both graduates from Clearview High School, Lorain, OH. We met when we were in 6th grade although, at that time we weren’t interested in each other! I was more focused on my friends and sports and he was doing the same! We went to high school and our sophomore year our friend groups began to merge. We started to get closer and basically the rest is history! We have been through a lot together so developing a business just felt like a natural next step for us. He is my best friend, my confidant AND now my business partner so obviously there are some obstacles that come with that. But as we continue to communicate and grow together we are learning how to effectively communicate and problem solve with one another and we model that relationship to our staff, our clients and our friends and family alike. We have seen so many positives develop as a result of the work that we have put into our relationship and our business is just one of them! We are both so excited to see what the future holds for us collectively and individually.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

There have been many lessons that I have had to unlearn in my life thus far but the one that sticks out to me the most is that “mistakes/problems are bad”. Mistakes and problems happen more often than we really want them to and although, we strive to provide the best services there are times that we fall short.With the help of my business partner, I have learned that these times are not times to get down on ourselves or quickly give up the entire business! (Although my pride sometimes wants that to happen). I have learned that when mistakes and problems arise it provides us a great opportunity to learn, grow and improve our services. Our problems and mistakes have turned from feeling like failures to feeling like growth opportunities and exciting adventures and challenges for us to overcome. By reframing my mindset regarding mistakes/problems, I have become more excited about entering new endeavors and have eliminated much of the fear and hesitancy that I would typically feel around these things. I have developed an excitement for learning and it has advanced our company in ways that I would have never imagined. I am so grateful for what our mistakes have taught us and am eager to continue learning throughout this journey!

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