General Manager Kirk Simpson talks about meeting Urban Clean’s Founding CEO Damien Boehm eight years ago and the vital role technology has played in the brand’s success.
Co-founder and General Manager of Urban Clean since 2015, Kirk Simpson describes the day he met Damien Boehm who’d launched a small side hustle/cleaning business some years before.
Damien had contacted Kirk, who was a Business Development Manager responsible for helping organisations grow their brands, to pitch his idea of a global commercial cleaning business.
Kirk arrived to find entrepreneur Damien in a makeshift home office in Brisbane’s suburbs.
“When I met him, he was he was in his garage. There he was sitting there with a desk and fan. And he was all excited. Damien would say that I laughed at him – but I wouldn’t characterise it like that – I was just amused because he had all these big plans and was full of ideas and energy. That’s his role – he’s the visionary – but at the time I didn’t really get it. He talked about becoming this global cleaning business and I was like, really? But after a little while, I came on board, and I found that the industry was solid and there was real market demand. And that was what probably got my attention. The competition was huge, which said to me that the market demand was there,” Kirk said.
Since franchising Urban Clean, Kirk and Damien have played to their strengths and built the business into Australia’s fastest growing franchise with 150 + franchises across the country, and ax expansion strategy into the USA and New Zealand.
Damien knows what he wants to happen, and Kirk is the one who puts the systems in place that makes it happen. Kirk says a business is only as good as the technology and solutions it’s framed by.
“If you’ve got the right processes, if you’ve got the right systems of delivery, if you’ve got the right technology behind the people, then you have reached that fine line in business.”
Kirk says that one of the components that sets Urban Clean apart from its competitors is the technology that allows clients to directly communicate with service providers and feel assured that the job is being done properly and on time.
“Data flow is a tool that we use to report back to customers on a nightly basis. We can take images of things that are important, it gives us an entry report. Customers know when we turn up, it gives a PDF downloads containing images with important things that we’ve identified must be done and that maybe previously were never done for them. We’ve got a set list of things that customers have flagged as important and when we get it done, we take a photo, so the customer is reassured via a report which is sent to their devices. They may be at home (because we mostly clean at night) and from the work site to their lounge where they might be relaxing after dinner, they know we are taking care of business – their business,” Kirk said.
Kirk identifies communicating with customers as a real challenge with commercial cleaning. He says Urban Clean has cracked this code and is pioneering a winning formula.
“I’d say that 95% of people that are cleaning on any given night have never met or know the name of the person they actually planning for. So, there’s a huge disconnect in the industry, right? So how can you keep a customer happy that you’ve never met? It’s a grossly overlooked problem and the leverage that we have gained from getting an understanding of that has been huge. We have figured out, also through tech solutions, the right kind of way to want to communicate with the people that we are cleaning for and make sure our customers get exactly what they want.”
Kirk’s next big challenge will be to navigate Urban Clean’s expansion into the United States, taking the brand’s different premise to commercial cleaning rather than the American janitorial format, to several U.S states.
“We’re going to start with the states that we’ve identified will be most welcoming economically for our type of business, so straight into Nevada, then Texas, and then some other states, before moving into Canada and then the U.K and Europe. Having a successful system is a successful system, right? When you have a good solid business in Australia, with a good track record in an established franchise system, that does make a difference when moving into new areas. We’re excited and we’re ready,” Kirk said.