Episodes
85
Latest episode
Aug 2026
Language
EN-US
Take 5 With Cleanfax is a video and podcast program from ISSA specifically for the contract carpet and floor cleaning and disaster restoration industries. The series focuses on management and marketing topics, technical tips, emerging news and more, all in five minute segments for busy business owners, managers, and technicians. Want to be a guest on the show? Connect with Jeff Cross, Cleanfax Media Director, at jeffcross@issa.com.
The job's done. The carpet is dry. The hard floor you cleaned is shiny. The invoice is paid. Everything looks fine. Then a year goes by. No call. No repeat booking. No bad review, no angry phone call, nothing you can point to and fix. The customer just quietly moved on, and you never found out why.
You have been doing this 20 years. You know the work cold. There is a real chance that this is the most dangerous thing about your business right now.
Procrastination in a cleaning or restoration company is rarely a calendar problem. It's a fear response, and it charges interest.
The moment a job ends is the one time a customer sees a company with nothing left to gain. Most contractors waste it on a text message. Two days after the job, the text goes out. “Hi, just following up. How did we do?” Across town, the customer squints at her phone. Who is this? What did they do at my house? Is a real person on the other end of this thing?
Nobody gets into cleaning or restoration because they love confrontation. But guess what — this business is built on tough conversations. Today, we will cover four conversations every owner and manager dreads... and exactly how to have them without losing sleep, losing your cool, or losing your best people.
A customer calls three days after a carpet cleaning job, upset that the carpet smells like urine. The crew did nothing wrong—the dog came back to the same spot and had another accident. Nobody on the job cut a corner. So, does the company apologize?
Every business owner tells themselves an occasional lie—but those lies often sound so reasonable that they're easy to believe.
Are you stuck somewhere way in the past when it comes to pricing your services?
The restoration industry is facing some real challenges in 2026, but the latest Restoration Benchmarking Survey Report shows there is plenty of reason for optimism.
You walked the job. You measured every room. You wrote a clean, fair, professional proposal. And then your prospect looked you dead in the eye and hit you with the five most expensive words in our industry: “Let me think about it.”
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