In an industry where nobody comes back, five of my former team members asked to return in about three years. Here’s what that taught me, and what I think actually built it.
Five people in about three years have asked to come back to Just Peachy Clean.
Let me tell you why that number stops me in my tracks.
None of these five left on bad terms. Not one. Some left for personal reasons, some to chase another career or a dream, some just made a life decision. They all gave great notice. They were great employees. No drama, no burned bridges. They went off to try something different, or to handle things life threw at them, and later, five of them asked to come back.
In the cleaning industry, that is almost unheard of.
Why nobody comes back in this industry
This is a hard job. It’s physical, it’s demanding, it’s hard on your body. And on top of that, cleaning technicians in this industry are often not treated well. A lot of companies don’t pay well, don’t offer benefits, don’t train, and expect the world from their techs without ever setting real expectations or running it like an actual business.
I want to be fair here. A lot of the time it’s newer or smaller companies who don’t even realize they’re doing it. You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it, I’ve said that a lot lately. So this isn’t a dig at small companies. It’s just the reality a lot of cleaners live in, and even some franchises play the same game, paying the bare minimum and wondering why nobody stays.
Years ago, right after we changed our pay model because I wanted to pay people better, I looked up what a couple of local franchises were paying. Barely a dollar over minimum wage. And like I’ve said before, if you pay the floor, you can’t be shocked when people treat it like a floor job.
So when I say it’s rare for a cleaning tech to ask to come back, I mean it’s rare.
The honest scoreboard
I’m not going to dress this up, because the honesty is the whole point.
Of the five who asked to come back: one hasn’t started back with us yet. One came back and it did not work out, and not for any terrible reason, they decided to chase a different career, and they’re just not a JPC peach anymore. And three are for sure winners.
Three out of five, back and thriving. I’m really proud of that.
So how do I do it? Honestly, I’m not totally sure
That’s a terrible coaching mantra, I know. But in all seriousness, here’s what we actually do, and I think it adds up.
We spend real energy making sure we treat our technicians right. We pay them well enough. We support them in the field. And we will release a client fast if that client is abusive to our tech. I don’t only mean physically, though that’s an obvious line. If someone is treating one of our people badly, following them around, belittling them, I am not going to keep sending my team into that house to get beat up on. Same if a home is consistently beyond our scope, biohazard, serious pet messes, hoarding situations. There are companies that handle those. We’re just not one of them, and we’ll happily refer them out. That’s a client we let go, on purpose, to protect our people.
We listen to our team. When something feels off, we don’t let it sit and fester. We bring the person in for a one-on-one. How’s life? What’s going on? How can we support you better? Do you feel like you’ve had enough training? What do we need to do to set you up for success and help you be the peach we know you can be?
And we celebrate them out loud. Five-star review, great client feedback, a text or call singing their praises, we shout it out in our group chat. A lot of them love making our TikToks, and some of them, honestly, probably just do it because it makes me happy. Either way, we share it, we cheer each other on, we’re silly together, we show up for each other.
I’ve had plenty of bad bosses in my life. I built this because I didn’t want to be one.
Do we get it right every time? No.
Absolutely not, and I won’t pretend otherwise. We’ve bombed things. We’ve promoted someone into a trainer role and then buried them in so much training we burned them out way too fast.
But here’s the part I’m proudest of. Those people didn’t leave JPC. They left that position. They’re still with us, still cleaning, and I love that.
Because that’s the culture I actually want: thrive in whatever seat you’re in. If you want to be a cleaning technician for the rest of your career, I am one hundred percent here for it. I don’t need you chasing growth unless you want it. And if you do want to move up, trainer, field supervisor, vacation-clean specialist, we’ll coach you and lift you up. But if we put you somewhere you thought you’d love and you don’t, you can go back to the seat you were in before. I would so much rather keep you happy than keep you in a chair that’s draining you, or lose you altogether.
We had a technician move into the office, and after a couple months she said, you know what, office work isn’t for me, can I go back to cleaning? A hundred percent yes. I want you in the seat that fills your soul. If cleaning fills you up and office work drains you, then let’s make that happen.
So let me turn it around on you
What are you doing to build a team culture people want to come back to?
How do your technicians actually feel about the job? Do you have people asking to return, and honestly, are any of the ones who left people you’d even want back? Are you training them? Lifting them up? Shouting them out? Are you doing the things that build a team who loves working for you?
And, as a callback to another one of my videos, are your people showing up in the suit? If you don’t know what I mean by that, go watch that one, because it matters here.
I’ll leave you with those questions. Have a fantastic night, and I’ll see you tomorrow.