From Acid to AI: 60 Years of Cleaning Innovation | E20 – Hard Refresh – An ISSA Podcast

Sa.

Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Hard Refresh. We got Ron Segura today. Ron, welcome to the show, my man. We are incredibly blessed, Karina and I, today, to have you on the show. Most of you probably know Ron in the industry, longtime legend, the Disney Aficiado himself is here on the show. So, Ron, introduce yourself. Pleasure to have you.

Well, it's nice to be here and thank you for the invitation. And so this is my 60th year in the cleaning industry.

Amazing.

I've worked in every segment of the industry. Didn't excel in every segment, but worked in every segment and the last 24 years. Actually this month was my 24th anniversary of having my own consulting company. And prior to that, the previous 10 years I worked for the Walt Disney Company's corporate real estate group. And my responsibility initially was to oversee about 120 janitors in house janitors at the corporate facility, which was the Disney Studio Studios. And then at the end of the 10 years, I was also responsible for about 5 million square feet of outsourced space. And then I also managed the document services department. And the document services department, although not related to Janitorial, was kind of interesting because my department archived all the original scripts of any movie television. So we would, we would keep a copy on site and then we would send them to an underground facility in the Midwest. So that was kind of interesting. I've also had several years in the contracting side, distribution side, and manufacturers rep side. So it's been, it's been very, very interesting. And so today what I deal with are I could be dealing with a service provider and at the same time, I could be having another project where I'm actually having or assisting a company who outsour outsources their services. So it's pretty interesting group. So anyway, that's the both sides.

Yeah. Well, I mean, if there's anyone we've ever talked to, I think 60 years literally earns you the ultimate legend badge.

Yep, I would agree.

No one comes close. So.

Yeah, they keep dropping away. So I don't know if that's such a good thing.

Well, we are glad you're here. And we were talking before we started kicking off this recording today that Ron has a little bit of a twist on our two truths and a lie from questions that he's prepared for. Karina and I. So, Ron, take it away.

All right, so this is a. It's kind of interesting. And, and here's. Here's the question. I'm going to give you the question. And then I'm going to give you four different names. And then out of those four different names, you'll. You'll select the. I'm sure you'll select the right one. But here was a question. Who actually, who being a celebrity, actually went out of their way to always recognize the janitors who clean their facility, clean their offices, but then also janitors in general. And here's the names. The first one is Bette Midler, Tom Selleck, Henry Winkler, and Leonard Nimoy.

Which one do you think I'm gonna say? Tom Selleck.

That's who I was gonna say. Okay.

All right. Well, that wasn't the one.

Oh.

Although I will say that now, Tom Selleck had a production company and he was there on the, on the, on the studio lot. Very cordial. Never. It's a good, nice custom.

That's why I was thinking it.

Yeah. So. And then you had Leonard Nimoy, not the best, so we'll move on from him. But you had Henry Winkler. Now, Henry would always want to meet the person who was cleaning his facility. And he always wanted, during the day. So if we ever changed anybody, we would take him up there and he would introduce himself to them and thank them. Very cordial. But he wasn't the top one. The one who took the. Took the honors was Bette Midler.

Okay.

Bet Every. At the end of every year, she would make sure that she gave the janitor that was cleaning her facility a nice basket of, you know, of fruit and muffins. And she'd leave her a nice letter, and then she would also send over a bigger one for the janitorial staff. And throughout the year, she would always recognize anything beyond the call of duty that was performed in her office. So she was the one. She was the best, bar none, any customer have ever had. Now, here's an. Here's kind of a fun one. And I. I think I mentioned to you both at the beginning that I haven't been at Disney for a long time mentioning names while an employee or after a certain amount of years, you couldn't do that. It doesn't apply to me now. And anyway, I'm too old anyway. What are they going to do to me? Put me in. So this is kind of a. I guess it's kind of a true or false. So here it is. There was a pool to see how quickly a new office staff member for a production company would quit or be fired by the individual who was in a sitcom and then also became a talk show host. So who do you think that person was sitcom and this there was actually a board. So when the person was requested to fill a position at this production company they would send the person out and then the time of date and time of day was put right next to them. Who do you think was that person? Disney. Okay, I'll give you a hint. I'll give you initials E.D.

That didn't help me.

A miss female talk show host and DeGeneres. Got it.

Now close.

How quick do you think the the quickest was? 45 minutes.

Wow.

It was very hard.

I would never think that.

Yeah. So if you read a lot about her now it's true story comes out. So sometimes you never know. Could be the nicest people in the world but right anyway, you know, doesn't mean anything.

But I love those fun facts. I guess I think they're like little golden nuggets. I love them now.

It's fun. We should have more of our guests do the work. Karina.

Yeah, seriously. I expect nothing less from a legend.

That's awesome. Ron. That was a lot of fun. Thank you for doing that. All right, well Karina, let's take it away for some quick control and then we'll dive in.

Yes. All right. So we have a webinar coming up. It is going to be August 6th and we are doing. We're hosting a panel. We're led by the amazing guys at Brightco. So we are going to have a panel with some incredible speakers. Billy from Velocity, Dana Boyce from Pioneer and I think we are waiting on one more speaker. So the session is about retention but stay tuned for the signup link for that and also stay tuned on the next topic for the CLX because we have one more virtual CLX and then we'll do the in person one in Vegas. So lot of exciting stuff happening.

Yeah. Vegas is right around the corner.

I can't believe it.

It's just time flies.

I don't like it.

Well, I know you don't like Vegas so.

I don't. I don't.

If it was in Chicago you'd be like I'm so excited.

Yes I would.

Percent that was. All right. Well for clearing the cash on Mindset today, obviously we get to. We get a pull from Ron's depth of experience today. But we're going to, we're going to talk about first, Ron, what you've witnessed literally over the evolvement of the industry over the last several decades. And I'd like to start it off with like what do you think is perhaps from your observation a turning point where Cleaning technology moved from, like, nice to have to now where it feels like, mission critical. And when you feel like that transition has really hit and as a secondary to that, how does technology shape client expectations today?

In. Yeah, you know, that's a, that's an interesting question, because people don't realize that the cleaning industry has been a changing industry ever since I've been in it. I mean, when I started in the cleaning industry, we used 20% hydrochloric acid to clean the toilet bowls and the urinals.

Right.

If you, if you got on your hands, curtains and. Or if you. The fumes from that came up, you know, but then we went from that acid to a phosphoric acid in the 60s, around the late. Well, not the 60s, about the 70s, in the early 70s. And that phosphoric acid, you know, it had a nice smell. It had optical brighteners, and if you spilled it on your hand, it didn't. You had a little bit of time to get it off. In fact, I was selling. I was a distributor salesman at the time, and I'd worked with the manufacturer's rep in when this was being introduced. And it was the latest technology at that time. He would get a penny and he would pour a little bit of the, of the cleaner on his palm and he would talk and he'd have the penny, and he wouldn't bring attention to the penny until he got to the conclusion. And then he would say, you know, so these bowls that we have now, they look dull. And look at the way this penny has been. It just sat right in here and it would be nice and shiny on half of it. And the other half, I thought, well, that's a pretty dynamic, you know, demonstration. So the first time that I did it, you know, I followed it to the, to the T. And people were really, you know, were interested. Now what I didn't realize that if you put phosphoric acid on a paper cut, it burns and it gets hotter and hotter. And that's what I had. I had just a little cut on there. But anyway, that was the latest technology and we sold a lot of that. Well, look what happened from phosphoric acid. Then we went to non acid from non acid. Look at what we have today. We have things that chemicals that look like water, smell like water, and yet they do a tremendous job.

Yeah.

And for us to be able to tell the story to the customer and the transition from the customer in the phosphoric acid days, they didn't care how you cleaned it. Just clean it. They didn't have any risk management programs, they didn't have any sustainability departments. But over the years, all of that changed. Safety was important and it continues to be important. So as an industry, we've been changing for a long time. In fact, when I started, we literally dripped and waxed. We removed wax that we had applied with steel wool pads and we had these big machines, floor machines that entailed two or three people to get them off the, the truck. But from there we went to a lighter weight, better product. We went from just having a scrubber that did everything to high speed floor machines. You went from 5 rpms to 300 rpms and then we went up to 1500 rpms so that we could get that shine. Well, the customers then we kept setting the bar and the customers didn't want to go below that. And so the biggest thing that we missed out on I think in those days was we didn't promote what we were doing. And the technology that we were, we were using. Well now look at what we have. Now we don't necessarily strip and refinish, but now we have coatings and a variety of other different products that extend that process. And it's all from, from this industry that everybody thought was the place that people go when they can't do anything else. So, so that was, that was a big, a big thing. And then now we're able to, because of having a different type and a more knowledgeable buyer, we're able to talk intelligently in their language. And every day there's a new change in our industry. So we have set the bar so we can't go back to the 70s, we can't go back to the 80s or 90s. The only way we can go is go up and we have to continue to improve in these technologies. And that's one of the good things about our industry today is that we are constantly moving and moving up and we're able to come up with technology that that really reflects on the professionalism of our industry compared to when I started.

Well, and I love one of the things that I love that you said, Ron, was the promoting of the technology. Right. I think that's always where I like to challenge us as an industry. Is it, Are you promoting the technology within our industry? Are you promoting it, the technology outside, from an external perspective to share what we're doing, how to move the industry forward? Because I think that's where from BSCS to manufacturing Distributor, that's really the challenge that I see in terms of all of this amazing innovation that's happening respectively in different sectors within the industry and to promote it, it's just not a nut that's been cracked very well in my opinion. So I'm just curious to see your, hear your perspective on that.

Yeah, and I always, I'm a big proponent of not highlighting the features, highlighting the benefits if I'm a buyer. That's all. Well, that, you know, you have this technology that you use and you have this software and you have this program. But my, what I want to know is how does that impact me? How does that help me to have a safer facility, a healthier facility? And I think that's where there's a gap at this point, that as an industry we would need to start filling that gap in being able to highlight the benefits of the technology that we're bringing to the table. And so we have to do that to our customers. But where there's another lapse is we also have to explain those benefits and highlight those benefits to the people that we expect to use that technology within our organizations. And that's a big gap also. But once we start to do that, then we're going to have, people are going to be receptive. Let me give you an example. So I had a customer and they had a large contract with a high profile company in the Silicon Valley. And so what we did is we met with the sustainability department and it was right before an Issa convention. And we explained what the convention was all about, but we wanted to get the buy in from there from them because keep in mind that sustainability people in an organization have a straight line communication to executive management. You sell them on something and it's going to go up. So we said, when we come back, we would like to sit with you and we'd like to bring back some things that we think will impact your facility in a positive way. They said, great. So the first year we come back and the owner of the company was pretty creative. He put a little bag and he would keep pulling things out of the bag. And that year, one of the things that was real good was the strips that you put on the handles, the disinfectant strips that you put on there. They loved it. They couldn't get over it. In fact, they said, let's do it. The next year we do the same thing and we bring back something that would contribute to water conservation in their urinals. They loved it. We piloted in a couple of buildings and then all of a sudden they said, let's run the gamut at the end of the year they were mentioned in the environmental report, the sustainability report, as the building service contractor contributing this, which helped us in water conservation, reaching our water conservation goals. So the idea was that we got them to the point where they would say, isn't it time for that convention? What are you guys bringing back? Well, when we brought it back, we, we showed them the product and then we already knew areas that we could put it in and then we could explain the benefits to them. And that's really the key rather than just saying, well, you know, this year we found this, this, this and this, and they're all sustainable, they're all going to help you reach your goals. And as for a BSc, that sets them apart from a lot of the other people now in house with our staff. You know, I worked for many people over the years when I was on the owners would go to a Issa show and every year they'd come back with two or three products. Okay, we're going to use these now. And then the next year or even before that year was over, the interest would wane and then we'd come back or they would come back and say, okay, well we're going to use this product. So the staff, they began to reason, we'll just hold out six months and this guy is going to go back to what we were using before. So we'll just pacify him. We'll, we'll keep it up on the shelf and he'll never know that we're not using it or we're not using it the right way. And, and it's a lot of times if I go into a warehouse, whether it's in house or a bsc, you'll see cases of product that have been there for a while and you ask, why are these still here? And they'll say, well, the people didn't like it or they say it didn't work. So there it is. It's important that we spend the time to get the buy in from them and really address the highlights and show how it's going to impact their job, how it's going to make it easier, how it's going to make the customer happy. Because janitors, they want their customer happy. They don't want those complaints and they don't want to be ignored. It means the world when that customer says, and you're the best. So anyway, that's, that's my thought and.

That I just like storytelling moment. It was like just sitting and being like story time in a library. When I was A kid like what? I just felt like I was like keep going. So a follow up question to specifically like the evolvement which going back to. I love that in on a certain level we've changed client expectations, we've led the forefront. However, at the same time the communication across the industry and Carina, you were kind of touching on this like the. There's been some missteps to really showcase the value of how the cleaning industry has moved. Like how much time and energy and money it has saved people as technology has. Whether it is chemical advancements, innovation, robotics, software. Literally what we can do today is a hundred times more than what we could have done even 30 years ago. 100% and and yet we still find ourselves like in price pinching moments, always trying to compete on price.

Right.

And you're just like guys, do you realize how far we've come? Literally saves so much money for so. And that's the world in general. And that's going off on a tangent and rant that, you know, I wish we just had people recognize more. But anyways. Well to kind of move on to.

Really quickly though before you move on though, because I thought one of the things that Ron, you said about benefits and pointing to the benefits of the technology and it like immediately identified it with you Kaden, because you've been so awesome about articulating the problem that you're trying to solve. And I as you said that Ron, it was like problem, benefit, like you're essentially kind of doing a different approach but it's the same type of mentality and targeting what people care about. And instead of going into flashy tech and exciting things, you're talking to what is actually moving behavior. And I think that was really cool.

Yeah, here's. And here's something to think about. We have this technology that enhances the communication that we have with our customer. The biggest frustration of a person who oversees or is responsible for the cleaning of a facility, whether he outsources, they outsource it, or whether they're in house, is repetitive problems. I work with a lot of companies who outsource and I help them in their outsourcing process, the RFP process. And one of the things that is really interesting, the comments that a customer will make is they'll say, you know, they come and they show me. They have these great presentations. They have all this technology as it relates to communication and you know, call me any time of the day and we'll give you real time and all these different terms. He says, and that's all fine, but it doesn't solve the problem. For instance, I had a guy in, in my office at Disney one time, and he was a contractor, and he says, ron, he says, here's three names. You call those people right now while I'm here. And they'll tell you that every time I have a problem that I take care of it. And I says, well, why don't you just give me one name that I can call? And that person will say, you know, every time I call with a problem, I find out why the problem happened, what the solution was going to be, and it never becomes a repetitive problem. So with the technology that we have today, it's conducive to being able to provide that for our customer. And I don't know, and, you know, I really don't know whether it's just that when we implement a type of software that not the right people involved are not the ones that are trained and really shown the benefits of what it brings and how to use it. Because the sense of urgency is not incorporated in a, in a software. That sense of urgency comes from the individual that's representing that company. And I think that's where the, that's the biggest, that's the biggest pushback that I find that people talk about in relationship to their staff, whether it's in house or outsources, is that sense of urgency and not solving the problem. All these things look fine. I would love to have that picture so that when I see that it was completed last night, I can initiate a call to the person that complained and said, is what we found out. But I guess consistency and I guess it's still a learning experience. But when you find out that by using a software or a process that you're able to communicate why and what the solution is, and it's not going to be repetitive again, you've set your part yourself tremendously apart from competition 100%.

Like, I literally have this conversation daily. I don't know, I won't go into detail, but the reality is, is that most people think software alone establishes, like, trust. Because all of a sudden, like, hey, I'm finding out things. And it's like, yeah, but you aren't correcting root causes. You don't want software just to say, like, hey, here's where we're messing up. We're transparent with you. We're building trust. And there's just like, yeah, but it's been an issue for three weeks in a row and you aren't solving a root cause. The software was Just there to help bring clarity to what needs to be taught and corrected and invested in. Especially frontline staff. Right. That's, that's what it's supposed to be doing. It's like, I know exactly where to help my people.

But that's, I always.

Go ahead. I'm sorry, go ahead.

I was going to say, I think we always say this, Kaden. Right. Like, technology has a funny way of exposing inefficiencies or vulnerabilities with an organization if you're not set up correctly. And that's always what I find when you're talking about digital transformation, Ron, you've like hit it as well in terms of like introducing, implementing, adapting tech. You have to know your stakeholders. You have to know who's driving, who's the leader, who's accountable, who's responsible. Because that ultimately will determine the longevity of the technology if you can actually infuse it into your culture for a long time. Like a lot of times these things happen. You guys start very strong and then it just, it dies. Because no one is that stakeholder.

Yeah. And I think that's a, you know, and I, I haven't always thought this way, but, you know, in talking with a lot of people, experience a lot of things, you know, that's where the software takes a bad hit. And, you know, and I was, I would kind of tend to believe. Yeah, you know, you're, you're probably right. But in the last couple of years, you know, I've identified that you're the one with the brain. You're the one with the ability to, to make decisions. You know, this is a resource to you and if you use it the right way, it's going to work out, but if not, it's going to be on the shelf and you're not going to use it. And I think that's, you know, that's, I think you're getting a bad rap for that. But it's the, you can't extract the human element or put the human element in emotion into a software. If you can, you gotta, you got a good software.

Yeah. Well, that kind of answered my last question. So I think we'll wrap up today since Karina and I were just talking about trying to keep these shorter for our listeners, but we literally could go hours and hours longer with Ron. Reach out to ron, he's on LinkedIn and all the good avenues. Thank you for being an advocate, Ron, for the last six years of this industry being hands on in the field, leading the charge. And I hope as I'VE always said, I hope it's not necessarily what was taught by our listener, but what was caught by them, and that they were inspired to go make some changes today and think about things a little bit differently from the wealth of experience from our amazing guests today. Ron, thank you so much for joining the show. It's been awesome.

No, thank you. And I would just say this if you let me for a minute.

Yep.

You get everything that. That I know that I've learned has been from other people and observing those in our industry and, you know, to have the ability to see companies start up and grow into very, very large companies. It's been amazing. And so I would encourage everybody, you know, and I think we. We finally come back to this in our industry. For a while, it was pretty. Pretty quiet. I say there was a lack of enthusiasm. The air had been knocked out for whatever reason. But this new generation, you know, like you two, this new generation has an excitement that our industry is needed for a long time. And for me, as long as I've been in this industry, I love it more today than ever. And I love to see the new generation really taking it. Gonna take it to the next level and above. So congratulations and thank you guys and all of your listeners who are just getting involved. It's the greatest industry in the world. It's come. When I first started, if you said you were in the cleaning industry, they would look at you, and I could. I knew what they were thinking. You know, this poor guy, Ron.

Oh, yeah.

He can't do anything, but he's in the. In the cleaning industry. And look at what we have today. We can quantify our value, and people know that they need us. So, anyway, thank you for the opportunity. It's always good. And feel free to call me anytime.

Yeah, no, I want to follow that up too, Ron, because I love that you said Kate and I have gotten so close because of this industry, and I am so grateful for that, number one. But also to have someone like you on the podcast is, like, such a big deal. You are. You truly are a legend. You've done so much for our industry, and it's such a proud moment for me, specifically. I have grown up in this industry. I've cleaned buildings. My parents were cleaners, and it just. It's done so much for my family, and I just love it so much. And to be able to have a place where we can speak about technology and also shine light on this beautiful industry is just something that makes my heart so happy. And I'm just so grateful that you took the time to hang out with us.

Yeah, I am, too.

Awesome. Well, thanks, everyone, Ron. It's been an awesome episode, and hopefully our listeners get a ton of gold nuggets out of it. I'm going to go back and rewatch this one and take some notes.