Today we’d like to introduce you to Ricardo Regalado.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Ricardo. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Well let’s see, the story begins with my cousin pushing my then girlfriend (Marley) and now wife to purchase his cleaning business franchise. He literally brought this up every family gathering for over 2 years, it finally worked, and we gave in and decided to both quit our full-time jobs to enter the crazy world of Entrepreneurship and boy am I happy we decided to make that decision. She was a full time Mac makeup artist and I was a full time Mortgage Banker. No experience in A. running a business and B. the cleaning industry. We started the company with us two, my cousin Tony, father and aunt. We took on his existing business which was about 25 accounts. Not only was the takeover a crash course in the cleaning business, but a crash course in running a business, not to mention the fact that we had to drive 1 hour to our territory area and back 1 hour every day for about 18 months.
We quickly realized the franchise industry was not for us, especially since I had many years of experience in sales and marketing so little by little we sold off those accounts and began to build our Rozalado brand.
Fast forward to now, 3.5 years later we have built the company from us 5 to over 200 employees and have accounts in 3 states now and still growing every day. We have built the company on the foundation of great culture, family-oriented environment with a twist of corporate structure.
We are striving to be a Single source solution for commercial building services. We are bringing a hospitality service style approach to this classic industry and using an innovative approach by implementing our technology applications to help streamline the old processes between clients and service providers. The cleaning industry is very traditional and classic and has operated the same way for so many years that it is in dire need of new technology to automate many of the processes and operations.
This also brings me to our new business concept that we are developing for yes you guessed it, this classic archaic commercial cleaning industry. RozaRoute, is our new app that we are currently in development and will be ready for beta testing by early April. It is a data driven app that will be a B2B solution for the cleaning industry and soon the field service industry in general. We are targeting the cleaning industry initially because we are the subject matter expert in this specific field and we’ll be testing it out on Rozalado and about 10 other committed cleaning companies here in the Chicago and Midwest market.
RozaRoute provides real time data and analytics on team’s performance while the teams are in the field. Some additional key productivity tools are section by section task lists that help create a more efficient workflow for the cleaning technicians, route optimization throughout an account for efficiency, a walkthrough builder of an account that translates into the workflow and lastly a profile page for the technicians that connects them into a community portal of all the staff/team members throughout the company which we believe will help with empowering the teams, giving them an image and a purpose while they’re out in the field performing their work.
We are very excited with all the growth Rozalado as endured these past years and the potential that RozaRoute has. With all this growth we also happy to share that we will be moving in to a new 9,500 sq. ft. bow truss office space near the Sauganash area. The sky is the limit for Rozalado and RozaRoute and I feel like we are scratching the surface on how we are changing the perception of cleaners and the cleaning industry.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not. LOL. There have been many ups and downs. As I stated before.
If being an Entrepreneur was easy everyone would do it. There are so many obstacles throughout the life of being a business owner that it could break you if you are not emotionally ready or stable for this life. Every day presents a new issue, but for me, with every bad day a good day comes right behind it. It motivates me to overcome every problem with a solution. I have realized that one of the major characteristics a business owner must have is problem solving skills. Without it you will fail repeatedly.
One of the struggles we deal with every day is finding hard working, reliable and trustworthy employees. A company cannot grow and scale without having the right foundation of employees. We are continuously developing our employees by training, education seminars, new position promotions and so forth. We are true believers of creating a road map of success for potential team members, so they can understand what our vision is for them while they work with us.
Even with all this though, the toughest part is the recruiting and endless searching of those potential employees. We are in the commercial cleaning industry which ultimately means to a person a cleaner job. I cannot express enough that we are making it our mission to change this perception of cleaning just being a job and a pass-through side gig for a little extra money.
The struggle we deal with is potential applicants taking our job opportunities serious and looking at these opportunities as career moves. Yes, our best employees have all started as cleaners, which we like to call (Technicians) and now they all have management roles and play intricate roles in our day to day business operations.
Please tell us about Rozalado Services and RozaRoute.
Rozalado services has begun as just a commercial cleaning company but now has transformed into a full service provider. We offer a variety of services such as daily commercial cleaning, overnight commercial cleaning, day porter services, post construction cleaning, window washing, carpet cleaning, tile and grout cleaning, VCT stripping and waxing as well as buffing, Maintenance services (painting, carpentry, electrician, plumbing), pest control, and lastly supply inventory management. This has allowed us to offer clients a single source solution for their commercial building needs. We service a variety of clients such as healthcare, residential mid to high rises, retail, Hospitality, municipalities and construction companies.
Rozalado has really set itself apart by its top-notch client services and commitment to high expectations and cleaning standards. We pride ourselves on going above and beyond for our clients. Performing weekly visits to our accounts, performing unexpected inspections of our teams work not just to see if they’re missing tasks but also to see what we can do to help improve the cleanliness of a client’s facility or office. We have the advantage offering a ton of value in so many different aspects of a client’s office and facility that the client’s that allow us to truly manage their cleaning and maintenance program have seen tremendous added value.
We treat our client’s offices and facilities as if they were ours. We are an extension of their business, brand and family.
I am proud of how much pride all of my Roza team takes in the work we perform and the service we offer our clients.
Our commitment to that hospitality type approach to our service and the use of all of our technology applications and processes are what set us apart by far.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
3 words well actually 8 – The Chicago Bulls and their 1st NBA title. I am an avid basketball fan. Played in junior high, high school and college. I even coached for over 4 years.
The memory is the feeling I felt when they won their 1st title after struggling for so many years with less than good teams. They continued to push through and eventually accomplish their goal.
I vividly remember watching the series at my cousin’s house in the now (West town area) of Chicago. He had a 3 flat with a big backyard that my cousins and I would always be outside playing kick the can, red light/green light and other games. We watched the series outside in their garage with an old school antenna TV. Wearing our oversized big head t shirts. That was the cool thing to do when we were kids. We were all huddled around the TV cheering and super stoked about what was happening in front of our eyes. The Bulls had won it all baby!!!!!! Long time coming. MJ had given us what we all wanted. The golden trophy. It was the best thing I had ever seen and been a part of at that time. We hit the streets and watch as people were going crazy, cars were honking, lights flashing, people yelling. It was awesome!!
Pricing:
- For our Rozalado cleaning services we are at about $25/hour for commercial clients for daily/evening cleaning, but can vary based on account type. A walk through is always preferred.
- Post construction cleaning service rates vary but start at about $35/hour
Contact Info:
- Address: 4520 West Lawrence Avenue, Chicago, IL, United States 60630
- Website: www.rozaladocleaning.com
- Phone: 3128779127
- Email: ricardo@rozaladocleaning.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rozaladocleaning/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rozaladocleaning/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/rozalado-cleaning-chicago
- Other: www.rozaroute.com
Image Credit:
gregory rothstein, capital one, 1871, IHCC
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