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Not many bankers would depart their comfortable, high-paying position to scrub toilets. But that is exactly what John Disselkamp did.
The decision turned out to be the very best of his life. Disselkamp now runs a $10 Million Janitorial company. But for the months after he left his banking job, it gave the impression of he was committing profession suicide.
From mopping it as much as mopping
At 35, Disselkamp decided that he “didn’t wish to be sitting in front of a calculator” for the remainder of his life, so he quit his job at a Louisville, Kentucky bank and moved in along with his mom.
“I used to be mainly homeless, with probably $20,000 in bank card debt and no retirement savings,” he told me on the Fail Your Way to Success podcast.
But Disselkamp wasn’t just freeloading — he was understanding a plan inspired by a former banking client who had opened a successful cleansing business. Disselkamp realized he needed to first understand the business from the bottom up, so he got a job as a janitor, earning $600 a month.
Related: This College Student Started a Side Hustle So He Didn’t Have to Bartend Until 4 am. Now He’s Earning $7,000 a Month — and Putting It to Good Use.
A fish out of water
“In the start, I didn’t know anything,” he recalls. “One time, the owner of a constructing asked me what we must always use to scrub the ground, and I needed to take an image, send it to a friend of mine within the industry, and ask him.”
But the humbling experience led him to see his true talents. He was superb at reaching out for help when crucial.
“When I spotted my ability to scrub wasn’t going to get us very far, I saw that the true business I’m in is within the people business,” he says. “And that is what had interested me from the start.”
From cleansing one toilet to many
The long journey from working as a janitor to ultimately employing janitors began with a chilly call.
“I looked up considered one of the more outstanding local property management firms and called up a man whose name I discovered on their website,” he says. “I got his voicemail, left him a message, and he didn’t call back. I called him again about 4 days later, left a message, and he didn’t call back. I did it again every week later, and he didn’t call back. And then three weeks later, he calls and says, ‘Hey, John, it’s Greg. Sorry it’s taken so long to get back with you.'” Two months later, Disselkamp’s company had a gig cleansing an eight-story, 200,000-square-foot constructing.
Today, his company First Class Commercial Cleaning has 330 employees, serving roughly 5 million square feet per night.
The power of teamwork
Connecting people is what led to Disselkamp’s success and it’s what has helped him flourish.
“Our success is not about me—I’m just considered one of 330 other people,” he says. “I’m really fortunate to have a team of great human beings that work extremely hard and genuinely care about serving others, from our leadership and management team to our supervisors and frontline cleaners.”
Doing common things uncommonly well
Another secret to Disselkamp’s success is his realization that the important thing to growing a straightforward business is to care—as much about your team members as your customers.
“We have a saying we tell our managers: before you ask anyone to go pick up a mop, ask them how their family’s doing,” Disselkamp says.
Of course, it isn’t just so simple as making a cursory inquiry. Anyone who can go from bringing in $600 a month to netting $10 million a 12 months has mastered the art of creating employees feel like they seem to be a a part of something.
As Disselkamp says, “Fortune 500 firms may put a ping pong table within the break room or let everyone sit outside for lunch and think that is going to alter culture when really culture comes all the way down to one-on-one relationships and constructing trust and genuinely caring about your people.”
Still, it hasn’t just been a smooth, straight ride to the highest. “I’ve had many days where I’ve gone to my wife and said, ‘I don’t need to do that anymore,'” he says. “But you might have to have some grit because with a view to succeed, you might have to maintain falling down and getting back up.”
This story originally appeared on the Fail Your Way to Success podcast
