Straight Talk – an ISSA Podcast

Hosted by ISSA

Business News

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Episodes

572

Latest episode

Nov 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

Straight Talk, an ISSA podcast, presents a curated playlist of the hottest topics facing the cleaning industry today—from health and safety to infection prevention to innovative products to business development and much more. ISSA, the worldwide cleaning association, brings together the top experts and decision makers give our listeners and members the most up-to-date information for their businesses.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

November 2, 202613 min

From Classroom Kid to IICRC-Approved Instructor

What does it take to become one of the youngest IICRC-approved instructors in history—and what does that milestone mean beyond the title?

October 30, 202619 min

AI Is Calling. Will You Answer?

Ask any AI tool to recommend a carpet cleaner, a house cleaning service or a commercial cleaning company, and it will hand back a short list in seconds. The newer development is that customers are starting to tell AI to contact those companies, explain the job, get a price and see when a crew can come out.

October 29, 202624 min

Same Calls, Bigger Business: What Top Owners Do Differently

Are you getting enough value from the calls your carpet cleaning business already receives? In this episode of Straight Talk!, Jeff Cross welcomes John Clendenning to explore the Carpet Cleaning Benchmark Survey and the gaps it reports between typical companies and top operators. ap

October 28, 202610 min

Don't Let a Chatbot Decide Who You Hire

Hiring used to begin with a handshake, or at least a phone call. Today, plenty of job seekers send in an application and get a rejection without ever speaking to a person at the company, assuming a response comes at all.

October 28, 202614 min

How to Stop the Revolving Door at Your Cleaning Company

Ask a cleaning business owner about staffing and the complaints arrive fast. Good people are impossible to find. Young workers won't stick around. Turnover is the cost of doing business. Wells Ye has heard every version of those lines, and he doesn't buy any of them. Ye is the founder of EmployJoy.ai, an AI-powered hiring platform built for residential and commercial cleaning companies. He ran a house cleaning business in Evanston, Illinois, before launching the platform and is the author of Revolutionize Service Industry Hiring: Discover the Secrets to Exceptional Success. On the question of whether the industry's transient reputation is simply the way things are, his answer is direct. “Is this under our control, the owners, the CEOs, the company managers? I think my answer is resoundingly yes, it is under our control,” Ye said. “Then the question is, are we doing a great job to execute our control? That's two separate questions.”

October 28, 202614 min

Inside RIA’s Fight for Pricing Transparency

Restorers know the routine. The estimate goes in, a reviewer trims it back (sometimes way back) and the conversation about what the job cost either drifts sideways or ends right there. For years, the Restoration Industry Association (RIA) has pushed back on the idea that a number generated by estimating software is the final word on price. Much of that work now sits with the Independent Pricing Task Force, a volunteer group under RIA’s Advocacy and Government Affairs (AGA) Committee.

October 27, 202614 min

Earning Trust From the Front Line Up

A new CEO gets the title on day one. Earning the trust of the people doing the work takes longer, and Craig Honig went looking for it on foot.

October 26, 202612 min

Finding Her Strengths, Earning Her Spotlight: The Jameka Carter Story

Every career has a beginning—the first opportunity, someone who offers encouragement or an experience that reveals what’s possible. As emerging leaders find their footing, those early moments can help shape the contribution they make.

October 22, 20268 min

Hire the Job, Not the Personality

A great interview doesn’t always produce a great hire. A sales candidate can bring energy, confidence and an impressive track record, yet still struggle to land the cleaning contracts a company needs. For building service contractors (BSCs), finding the right salesperson starts with understanding customers and how they buy. Jeff Carmon, manager of member services for Elite BSC, has spent years helping contractors build business development processes that hold up over the long haul. His view on sales hiring is direct: Define the job before going out to find someone to fill it.

October 21, 20267 min

Austen O’Reilly Is Selling Relationships First

Most people get through college without thinking twice about the cleaning industry. Austen O’Reilly was one of them. “I didn’t even know that this world existed,” O’Reilly said. “I mean, there are school janitors. That’s what I would have thought of. But beyond that, I had no idea what any of this was.”