The central theme of this podcast episode revolves around the remarkable journey of Adam Pavlitz, CEO and President of Anago Cleaning Systems, as he shares his insights on leadership and the evolution of his company. From his initial role at IBM to ascending the ranks at Anago, Adam elucidates the significance of proactive communication and a servant leadership approach in fostering growth and resilience within the organization. He highlights the unique three-tier franchising model employed by Anago and how it effectively serves both the franchisees and the ultimate cleaning clients. Furthermore, Adam discusses the critical importance of selecting the right team members and embracing a culture that prioritizes values aligned with organizational goals. This episode serves as a profound exploration of leadership dynamics and the strategies that have propelled Anago towards its ambitious growth objectives.

Takeaways:

• The podcast features Adam Pavlitz, CEO of Anago Cleaning Systems, who shares insights on leadership and growth.
• Pavlitz discusses his journey from IBM to becoming the president and later CEO of Anago.
• He emphasizes the importance of communication and adaptability during challenging times, especially during COVID-19.
• The unique three-tier franchise model of Anago enhances operational efficiency and profitability for franchisees.
• Pavlitz believes in hiring for cultural fit and the importance of a thorough interview process.
• His vision includes significant revenue growth, aiming for Anago to become a $300 million brand by 2028.

Links referenced in this episode:

• anagocleaning.com
• facebook.com/anagocleaning
• instagram.com/anagocleaning
• linkedin.com/company/anagocleaning
• twitter.com/anagocleaning
• linkedin.com/in/adampavlitz

Mentioned in this episode:

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Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight - Welcome

Welcome to the podcast

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast where we hear from influential leaders and their game changing insights.

I'm Jaclyn Strominger, your host and today I want to welcome our amazing guest, Adam Pavlitz. So a little background on Adam.

Adam holds an MBA from the University of Miami and a lean Six Sigma green belt from Nova Southeastern University. He is a certified franchise executive and a cleaning industry management standards certified expert. I didn't even know they had that. Wow.

Okay, so Adam is also a thought leader on the Forbes Business Council and a regular contributor to Entrepreneur and Forbes publications. So welcome. That is a lot of awesomeness. So enough about me, enough about you. No, but honestly, a lot about you.

So I am so, so obviously welcome to the, welcome to the podcast. And I'm so glad.

Thank you.

Glad to have you here. So just even reading your, your bio and you know, there is some serious amazing leadership things that have happened in your career.

So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about your journey. You know, even from, you know, being an employee at IBM to coming to Anago and having this great rise.

Yeah, yeah, no, thank you for the introduction. That was, I appreciate that. No, so I started. Yeah.

So we were, we started, it was growth initiatives, it was focusing on, you know, okay, can we, can we go into this new line of business? Can we take on this new project? What's the ROI on it?

And then it quickly pivoted to basically they were giving me employee numbers, no names, and doing it. I was doing analyses on who we were going to let go of, who was going to get the golden parachute, whose parachute wasn't going to be so golden.

I think I got the tiger by the tail. And it was about six months later and maybe seven months later that I joined. And he goes, congratulations, you've left your highfalutin finance job.

And your first job at Anago is you're going to be a telemarketer by day and a franchisees assistant at night cleaning and daycare. And this was Pre Diaper Genie. Yeah, sweet, sweet Pre Diaper Genie days. Right.

So you go and you're emptying, you know, 55 gallon drum of dirty diapers and you know, you got to hold your breath and tie it off as fast as you can.

Like, where's that?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, look, look who snuck in. My daughter.

Hi.

Excuse me, honey, say hi. Oh, daddy's working. I love you.

Go.

I told him, I was like, you can't come in. I want. I'm going to be on a podcast. But you know. Yeah, My kids are 6. My kids are 6, 3 and 1.

So I get, you know, about as much listening as you would expect.

Hey, you know what it's the best thing about? It's the best thing about being and about being our own boss and being an entrepreneur and having your own business. But that's part of life.

Exactly. Today was a remote day. But so, so no. So I worked through all the roles. I did sales, I did customer service. And this was all in the regional office.

The regional South Florida office. I didn't know I was even at the franchisor until another year later.

And then when I became work, started working at the franchisor, I worked through all the roles there. I think my original title was like franchise developer or something kind of generic like that.

And it basically just meant I was traveling the country, meeting with all our franchisees. And, you know, I'm probably late 20s at this point, so, you know, I don't know anything. I'm, I'm just, you know, I learned what I learned.

But at the same Time, you know, you know, I'm traveling the country and I had to take very quickly take a kind of a servant leadership approach of, you know, here's what I know, you know, but how can we help you? How can we help you grow your business? How can we help you, you know, be more profitable, whatever it may be?

And I feel like that's sort of the mentality that I've maintained as we've, you know, as I've moved up the ladder and as we've grown.

It's like, what a way to wish me luck, you know.

Oh my God, that's. That is so. So your rise to, to taking this over. So, so back up. So your, your dad started, your family started this business.

Correct.

And then when did you franchise?

So he started it in 89. The. We were actually. So I'll get into this in a second.

But we're actually a little bit unique because when you say franc, think of a two tier franchise. So you know, Subway and then like the corporate office and the people who own the restaurants. Ours is a three tier model.

So it's a little, a little different and it's pretty, it's common in our industry. Not common in franchising. I would say different from like an area developer model for, for those familiar with, with franchising in general. But the.

So when, when he. So we founded in 89 it was a conventional cleaning company and it wasn't until 91 where they, where it was just that office.

It was one office and they were selling the unit franchises and then selling the commercial cleaning to clients. And that was, that was it for eight more years.

Wow, that's awesome. That's amazing.

Thank you.

And when you think about so the growth in, in there and the leadership, you know, you, you said you've got 50 employees where you are right now. And so talk to me a little bit about how you work with your employees from a leadership standpoint.

And then also your, because you're, you're also your clients and your part of your team are your franchise people, you know, master and the, you know, unit. Like, so how, how do you work with those two? Do you look at them as separate units?

Yeah, no, it's, it's a lot to keep track of. Step one, hire a really rock solid assistant. Because otherwise there's no but. Yeah, no, I mean, it is.

You have to look at, basically you're looking at everybody as your customer. Yes, you have your cleaning client. That is the final end customer.

But if you think about how our model works, I'm three layers away from the cleaning customer, the corporate office. We don't have any cleaning clients. We have the master franchise. They would manage a territory.

So, you know, maybe they, they manage Vegas or Atlanta, but it's a greater metropolitan area, big territories. There's usually 2, 3, 4, 5 million people in these territories. And then within that territory, the master franchise sells unit franchisees.

So these are folks looking to get into the cleaning business.

And, and the, they're, they're simultaneously managing a sales team that's, that's selling the commercial cleaning contracts and then they kind of broker the two together. So first, maybe let me just dissect the model a little second, then I'll circle back to your question.

So kind of putting it in a simple way to think about the business model.

When I say commercial cleaning, most people, most of your listeners are probably picturing, right, like the guy with the, the mop in the bucket or a vacuum or emptying a garbage can or something like that. And that's, that's part of it. Usually commercial cleaning is done at night.

So when I say, when you think of, when you picture commercial cleaning, you're actually thinking of what we would call our unit franchisee and their staff. So it's, it's. They, they own a cleaning business, they hire a crew, they learn the chemicals, the equipment, keep the buildings clean.

But the question is then how did they get those customers? Who's invoicing those customers? Who's doing all the marketing, who's doing the, you know, the daytime job, right?

Because all of a sudden cleaning becomes this very 247 industry.

And so what our model does is, wait a minute, we could probably make this work by splitting the day and the night, you know, shift into two businesses. So now you have your unit franchisee in, you know, your hypothetical Atlanta market.

And all he has to focus on is managing his team, keeping the buildings clean. The end, he has zero sales staff, zero accounting people, zero, you know, folks that are customer service people.

Maybe, you know, he does some of the customer service himself or something like that, but very, very minimal. And then on the flip side, you have the master franchisee. And that's the daytime aspects of the industry, right?

So they're going to have the, usually that's like a mid, mid career executive, usually someone who's managed a team, a sales team or a customer service team and they're hiring the sales team. They're the ones with the website, doing all the PPC and all the advertising and everything like that.

They sell the commercial cleaning contracts in the greater Atlanta area in that example.

And then once they've sold it, they have unit franchisees that they've sold and say, okay, depending on where it's located, we're going to broker it to this person or that person. And so it creates this cool synergy because now that master franchise has zero cleaning people on staff.

So it's like the white collar in the blue collar industry while the franchisee has no salespeople. So everyone's saving money by not having the, you know, the huge chunk of overhead for fully dedicated positions.

Master has no cleaning unit, has no sales, and it turned kind of into a win for everybody.

So when you, when you're, when you talk about leading all of that, it's a lot of, I mean, it really is, it's, it's talking to very different audiences every single time with, with the master franchisees. Right. Again, these are, these are business executives. These are my direct. There's almost like channel marketing, right.

Like I have to make sure things are extremely vetted, extremely looked over because if I pass it to them, it's only ultimately trained the trainer because then they have to then train their unit franchisees and their staff on anything I show them. So we have to really, I mean, everything has to be extremely buttoned up to make sure your master franchisees are getting what they need.

And then with the unit franchisee, right, a lot of these folks are coming into business, you know, for their first time ever.

It's, it's, you know, I think I want to say it's like 75% of our unit franchisees start with like a 30,000, you know, 20 to $30,000 level of, of business of cleaning revenue that they're looking for. So it's like, it's a Side hustle. It's a really great side hustle. Right. Because it's. It's something you do after hours. It's usually.

That's outside of typical business hours. Most start as a side hustle. It's just, hey, I'm looking to make a couple extra bucks, and I heard about this whole cleaning franchise opportunity.

I'm trying to make a, you know, buy a new car, a new house, whatever, and I'm looking for a few bucks, but at the same time, we just gave an award not that long ago to a lady and her team in the Philadelphia area. She's a unit franchisee. Her business as a unit franchise is doing a million dollars, over a million dollars a year.

And so, you know, it can start as a side hustle, but it also can scale to, you know, something pretty sizable, you know, for the right person.

I mean. And so that part is really. I find that fascinating because somebody can start that as that side hustle, as you said, and then grow it.

So they have this. It's an entrepreneurial aspect in that. As that unit and creating that feeling of being an entrepreneur, you know, having that side business.

And so where does she. Where can she go? Like, can she go. Would you put her into something? Like, could she potentially become a master?

We've had. Yeah, we've had several. Let me think about this. The Orlando market, where we're former unit franchisees that became master franchisees. The.

The Cleveland market was. They. They were. They. They were outside of our. Our model, but they were.

They owned a cleaning business before they came to Anigo and said, I want to become a master franchisee. It's very. It's definitely possible. It is. It really is like, two different business strategies, though. Right?

Because someone, like, as an example, if I said, jacqueline, you know, you're a phenomenal cook. You should start a restaurant. And you go, oh, yeah, great. Yeah. And. And maybe you are.

I don't know, maybe you make a really mean, you know, I don't know, chicken front chase, you know, whatever.

And I can cook, but I would never want to open up a restaurant.

And. And. But so. And exactly, though. And the reason why is, right, because being a good cook and managing a restaurant are like, night and day.

Yeah.

It's. You know, you could.

You could be a phenomenal cook, but then it turns into, okay, what do you know about, like, marketing, recruiting, turnover, spoilage, you know, inventory. I mean, it's very.

And then the front end and those two. Right. You could be a great cleaner. But do you. Do you Want to run the business or would you rather be cleaning?

Well, it's, it's not even being a cleaner, right, because you know, you know you can get, you can get your cleaning business large enough where you're not personally cleaning either. But it's. Are you, do you want to manage a team operationally or are you someone who's better at maybe the sales and marketing side of things?

Which, you know, usually is two different, very, very different personalities when you're more customer service, operational focus versus sales and marketing.

Right, Very true, very true. So thinking about your, your, your, your teams as you know, they're all. There's different people that you have to speak to.

One thing that I think is always common in any company, whether you're at the top or no matter where you are, there is a level of values and a vision that you have as the head of this company. How do you share that with all these different layers in your company?

Yeah, you, you talk a lot. The.

So, so, you know, I, what I found is, and this is, I probably learned this the best during COVID when, when all that went down, we were, you know, the world had no idea what was going on.

And so we were, all we were doing is we said, okay, we need to stay in front of everything we possibly can and share that with our, with our franchisees. I think originally we're sharing it.

We had twice a week calls, we got, we back down to once a week calls and then to every other week calls where the entire system was on and it was, here's what we know, here's where you can, you know, get PPP money. Here's where you go to, you know, get your masks. Here's where you go to get certain disinfectant chemicals that we need for our, for our model.

Here's what's happening in the news. I mean just, I mean, whatever, just, just communicate, communicate, communicate.

And so coming out of COVID we, you know, I think it was eye opening, you know, because you go, okay, if we can communicate and quite literally like pivot our entire business model from a cleaning business of recurring things like schools and businesses that are now closed to. Now we're a disinfecting company and we literally wrote and are one of the only certified disinfecting companies in the country.

Now, even though that means nothing, right, we're all back to being animals and not washing our hands and stuff. But, but at the time, right?

Although I would say if you're a certified disinfecting company, then you, then that's like a huge like sales tool to call the cruise ships who end up with the neurovir.

Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. And so there's definitely, obviously there's certain, I joke. Right. Obviously there's certain industries that you know, anytime.

When you talk about schools with young kids, they're absolutely looking for any kind of medical hospital, doctor's offices, cruise ships, like you said, any of those things are still holding a much higher level of, of need for disinfection than, than pre Covid. But I mean it was everybody, it was, you know, your, your local pizza place was like, hey, we need to be disinfected. You're.

And so that we pivoted the business model, literally wrote, wrote the book on how to do disinfect.

And there's like, I mean it's, there's all these silly things like when you're disinfecting, you know, when you, if you wipe a surface, you know, you, you can only wipe in one direction if you're disinfecting. Otherwise you're just spreading the germs around. There's, there's a certain amount of time a chemical has to stay on a surface.

So that was sort of the.

One of the running jokes is that people that thought they were, you know, using Lysol wipes to disinfect their desk, it was like, no, you just have lemony fresh germs that never. That you didn't actually kill on your desk.

But I mean, so to pivot our entire model in a matter of months, you know, it took, it took constant open communication over and over and over. And so we've kind of taken that. And obviously it's not weekly calls anymore, but it's.

But, but being out ahead of everything, you know, regularly communicating our vision. So we did. Right coming out of COVID we did, we were probably mid-60s, maybe 66, 68 million dollar in revenue brand.

And I, I put, I sat with our leadership team and said I want to be a hundred million dollar brand and I want to do it in two years. And we, we put together like a five prong plan. We, we cast the vision out to the R master franchises and part of it was helping them.

We actually gave them like royalty rebates on when they were hiring some of their sales staff.

We did all that, we did these really great partnerships with sales training organizations to really help push and grow and we were able to do it in 19 months. And so. Yeah, and so stupid me, you know, I don't know if it was the brains or Ego.

And it's, and now it's beating the drum.

It's here, here are the, you know, we've all sat together collaboratively to come up with what are the aspects of the plan and what we're going to implement, what are we going to focus on? And when you have those, it makes it very easy to say no to everything else. And, and then it's just laser focus on.

These are the areas that we're going to be continually working on to, to, to grow revenue for the brand.

That's, I love that. So talk to me a little bit about your leadership team that you entrust to help you grow.

Yeah, we have it's. And it's growing. I actually, so, so my leadership team prior to Covid was, was relatively small. I think we had probably maybe five people.

Now it's double that. Partly, partly. I think we got, we all got bit by the, what was it in 20.

I have a, I have a lady who's retiring this year. She's been with us 30 years. I mean it's, you know, they don't make people like that anymore.

But the, the, you know, so up until then it was a small team and, and we were, I would say we were extremely reactive. It was, oh, franchisee, you know, that's kind of like the double edged sword of the servant leadership is, oh, what else do you need?

What else do you need? What else do you need?

A few people, you know, a few people left that were in key roles and I go, man, I can't ever get, get caught flat footed like that again. And I happened to be, so, I happened to be on the board at my church and I was talking to my pastor and they're growing extremely rapidly.

And I go, now listen, you know, I'm cleaning toilets and you're saving souls. So our missions are, you know, a little different. But I go, what? I go, you've hired all these people. What have you done?

You know, you've hired people and you're growing and, and they're all been, They've all been rock stars. What did you do? And he told me this book. Who. W H O who Not World Health Organization. WHO By Jeff Smart and stupid. Me. I go, great idea.

I put it on my Amazon wish list and then left it there. And. And finally I buy the book and. And I'm going. And I. And I'm literally flipping through and like literally every page.

It was right when the phones came out with the thing where you could read text. Like the phone could. Could extract the text off a page. And I'm flipping through this book at every page. I'm like, oh, wow. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Oh God, this is great.

Every page it gives you a complete guide on like, how to build the job description, how to interview what, how to structure the interview, what questions to ask, what, what you're really asking for. Sometimes when you're asking the question. And it's. And I. And I literally took it and I made my own little cheat guide. And, And I.

And I swear by it now. I mean, I literally, I require our staff when we're hiring now when they're hiring to use that guide to, to interview people. Because it.

It's a longer interview process.

But I feel like, I feel like I'd rather spend the time up front to find the right person than bring somebody on just kind of based on, you know, a vibe or whatever that you get off the person and have it be a bad fit. So since reading that, I've hired a chief strategy officer, IT director, chief operating officer, VP of marketing.

We hired the rest, about four people in the marketing department. And I'm hiring more IT people right now. And so now, I mean, we have an executive team of. It's about nine people. And. And I'm so.

I'm one of those anti meeting people.

I, I used to have like the weekly executive team meeting and then what I would find is that, you know, usually, usually I had chatted with those people throughout the week and knew everything they were working on. And then half the stuff they were working on wasn't relevant to the other people on the team. Like maybe half of it was and half of it wasn't.

And so it just turned into this thing where we're sitting in a room for hour, hour and a half. Going around the room of, you know, what's the updates and all that sort of stuff.

And you're only really getting 10 minutes of value out of it as each member. So you're going like, wait a minute, this is a waste of time. So we do, we're much more like cross functional team structured.

So if there's a, you know, a project in marketing that has to go on, it's okay. Who does marketing need? What constituent members of the executive board need to make this work? Make the, you know, get whatever they need.

So okay, I need operations and finance and whomever. Great, let's bring them all in together, knock the meeting out and, and get back to working on whatever we're working on.

Right. So it's almost a lot more driven by what you're, by development or project or focus for the time. So you're getting together.

So people are working together versus just giving like, oh, here's your update. Like making it purposeful.

Exactly, exactly. So now every meeting is if, if there's a, the only update meeting.

So now I still do meetings with each, each department and it depends on the position. My coo, I meet with him every week. My, my, my marketing vp, marketing still reports up through me at this point.

I don't, I don't have like a cmo, so we meet twice a month. Strategy. It's a, it's a monthly meeting and it's a lot, you know, it's a lot higher level conversation and so on.

So it's just depending on the role and then it, then it ends up being, you know, more focused meetings with specific agendas and specific outcomes we're looking for. And you can kind of do. We don't, we're not technically doing eos, the Entrepreneur Operating System.

We're not technically doing that, but that's basically what we're doing where it's like, are you on track? We've set the plan. Are you on track? Are you off track? If you're not on track, how can I help you get back on track?

And you know, I'm probably, you know, a micromanager by nature, but this definitely deliberately forces me to step back, allow the smart people in the room to do their thing and then just, you know, ask my questions on a, you know, weekly, bi weekly or monthly basis.

You know, I love what you said about reading the book who.

And that brings me to like, think about, you know, one of the biggest things about leadership and bringing the right people into a company is, you know, and I haven't read the book.

But it's, but to me it's finding that achievement code and what are the values that you have and that you want your company to have and that people can bring that people can. You want to bring the people in to have those same, not, not literally the same cookie cutter.

But the interview process does have to be longer and I love what you said where it's longer to interview them. You're asking different questions, but you're bringing, spending more time to bring in the right people than just.

It's not just a body because they have to.

Exactly.

It has to be the right fit. And I absolutely love that and I'll share with you and I've probably shared this with people before.

So listeners, I'm sorry if you hear this again, but I feel like I can't share it enough. And that is having that, having that question that you have as a company that really helps, you know, whether that person is the right fit is so key.

And the one that I tend to like is what do you do with the cup? Right, so good one. Right. So I, you come in to meet with me, I offer you a glass of water, a cup of tea or something.

We go and get it, I give it to you, the interview is over. Now what, what do you do? Do I leave?

That's a good one.

Right? Do I leave the cup on the table or do I say, hey, Adam, thank you so much, it was a great interview. Oh, and where would you like me to put this cup?

Or, or can you put me back to the conference or the kitchen or whatever I got it from so I can put the cup back me?

I mean, if you're, if, yeah, if you're not asking, I mean, that's, that's a culture question. Right, Right.

And so there's twofold for me, a couple of things. Number one is, is a person comfortable asking a question? Number two, are they, are they the person that's just going to leave paper around?

Because I can't stand that. Me personally, like, I want people that are going to pitch in.

So that person who's going to ask what to do with the cup, they're the kind that's going to pitch in. I don't know.

Anyway, so I like that. My go to question is how many golf balls fit in a 747?

And, and everyone's heard of that as one of those, like Google, you know, used to ask that in the interview questions. Oh, okay.

So, so apparently Google, apparently Google used to ask these questions to the engineers as part of the interview process, and they actually wanted a number, and. And they would, you know, you'd just be on the spot trying to, you know, do some serious geometry right there. And what. What I.

So I deliberately asked the question, and then I say, now, here's what I'm after. Tell me what your. If your job was to fill the 747 with golf balls, how would you go? You know, I need to know what your logic is.

What would you think about? What would you ask if that was your job is to get that done.

And I like it because, you know, you get some people that are just like, well, you know, you know, I would figure out the volume and do the math, and they just kind of leave it. And then you have people that are going, like, do I. Okay, am I flying this thing? Am I putting golf balls in the.

In the, you know, the pipe where the pilots sit? Am I. And I want to see. Because my job every day as a CEO is. Is I don't get. I don't have, you know, oh, every day we do X, Y and Z. Every day is new.

Every day is something different. A lot of the stuff forces me to think outside the box. And so I want to see, does someone stay kind of in the box and ask very basic questions?

Do they start thinking outside the box and going like, well, what about, you know, am I. I don't know. Is it. Is it a. Is it a commercial plane? Is. Or is it like a military hangar that's being. You know, I want people to just start getting.

Getting, you know, get weird with your questions. I said, I literally, I'm like, there's no bad questions. Just go stream of consciousness.

And I hope nobody interviewing for Anago is listening to this podcast right now. But.

But that. But it's. It's true. But it. It's a great question. I mean, whether or not.

I mean, you could ask the question a thousand different ways that, you know what, you know, you could say whether you're filling up a. An airplane. You could even use a. A boat. Well, kind of, right? Like, there's so many, you know, or is it a car? Is it, you know, how big of a car?

Is it a limo? I mean, like, so many different ways you could think about that. But I. I like that because it gets people.

It's a great question to get people to think, even in general. Are they thinkers? Are they thinkers? And are they able to ask a question again?

I think those are all great things, and I love how you have a question that. That Gets people thinking so that you can see. How will they, how will they be once they're here?

Are they just, are they wrote, they're just going to take, they're just going to be like, okay, this is how we push the button? Or.

Right.

Are they going to be like, oh, you know what, maybe we should push it this way, not this way. Right, right.

I just, I've found that, you know, once you've. I don't know, the. I feel like, I feel like the people who can only like, answer the question inside of, you know, I'm not going to.

I don't want to pick on someone. And I, but like, I'm thinking like mentally accounting. Okay.

Accounting is a role where, like, you have to know the rules and, and then you execute the rules. And there are people who are, who are very good at knowing and executing the rules, and there are people that are not.

And you know, we've all probably had known a good accountant and a bad accountant, but, but that's extremely scientific. Whereas, you know, in someone in marketing, in sales, in, in a senior leadership role, it's a lot more art. Right. And it's, and it's.

What are the rules? Well, we don't all know. And they're sort of gray and fuzzy. Like, okay, you know, don't, you know, there's.

Well, we know the laws, you know, and, but then, you know, so don't kill somebody but like, also get your job done.

Right. Right.

You know what I mean? So it's, so it's. How do you operate where the, you know, the. All of a sudden the rules are a little bit more gray. The, the framework is fuzzier.

There's not just if A happens plus B, then you get C, It's. Well, you could add a B and a number seven and the number eight card from Uno, that's green. And, and that's your answer.

And if that's the best answer, great. Right now I like, it's the outside the box thinking that I'm after.

What is something that you want to improve and what are you working on as, as a leader?

Honestly? I mean, one of the big things I'm, I'm continuing to work on is, is backing away.

It's the hardest thing to do when you're, you know, you're the one who's been in it, you know, as literally as blood in the business. And, you know, I'm probably, I've had people say, you know, I've never seen a CEO be as hands on as you.

And you go like, thank you, question mark, you know, like, I don't know if that's a compliment, but. But it is.

It's learning, you know, it's learning your own limitations and saying, okay, you know, I've gotten to a point where this is, you know, this is as smart as I am individually. And now I need sort of the hive mind of the senior leadership. We have a franchise advisory committee.

And bringing them in and saying, okay, you know, again, you know, where should we go? Where should we drive this? Here's what I see, here's what I'm thinking I'm good at and how I can help.

But then again, it's just bringing the, Bringing in people who are smarter than you and then letting them work and getting the heck out of the way sometimes. That's probably what I'm focusing on the most right now is, is being CEO and getting out of their way.

Getting out of the way. Well, I absolutely love that. Absolutely love that. So take note, right? That's a huge, huge thing like getting out of people.

Getting out of the way of the people that you bring on. So I really, I love that. So I have loved having you on as, as a guest and great insight.

I mean, seriously, the, the culture and working with different, you know, you said so many great things and it's like keeping your. All the people that in your different areas, they're all, they all work together and they're all your customer, which is really important.

And because it's how we treat people, right? We want to treat the people with great, with greatness. And that's. You do that with your customers. So it's really great to hear.

How can people get a hold of you and connect with you?

Yeah. So everything is.

Our website is anagocleaning.com that's a n a g o cleaning.com where all our social media, so you know, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or X or whatever they call it now. It's all, it's all at. It's all at Anago Cleaning.

And then I'm very active on LinkedIn myself, so if you just look up Adam Pavlitz and shoot me a message, I'll be sure to respond.

Oh, fantastic. So listeners, please follow him, connect with him. Go check out the company. This is everything. Follow him, follow him on all the socials.

And I so appreciate you being a guest. I am Jacqueline Strominger, host of Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight, and I thank everybody for listening.

And if you also have a great leadership story or a great leader and you'd like to be a guest, Please go to LeaptoYourSuccess.com and click on podcast and apply to be a guest on our show. So thank you so much.