The Business of Cleaning Crime Scenes

Parts of people's skull, a nose, an eyeball. That used to not shock me, but it used to give me pause. And now it's like, hand me the eyeball. He just squeezed through his front door and climbed because his bedroom and bathroom in the back there. And he just kept throwing his trash in the front room. And then I found part of his jaw in his tooth and I grabbed it and I went to throw it in the red bag. And she goes, no, no, no, I want it. The bathroom was to this day the worst I've ever seen. And then the next day we came to the job and she was wearing it around her neck. And I was like, oh, it's now jewelry.

In Florida and all the other states of the U.S. when a crime happens, nobody comes to clean up the mess. That is, until a new type of entrepreneur showed up. In this case, one woman who has now made $12 million in revenue this year. Doing the thing that nobody thinks about cleaning up situations like this just goes to show, dirty business could be pretty profitable. I didn't know that there was a world in which a tragedy could happen or something crazy could happen and the government didn't clean it up. Why did you start this business?

Well, I was actually at the time, part of the government when I was a police officer. Someone asked me, when are you guys coming back to clean it up? And sadly, I didn't know the answer to the question. Law enforcement is prohibited from recommending any type of for profit business. So they'll typically say, google it. I started kind of looking into it and I realized, oh my God, there's a niche here that no one's doing. And every single person on the planet is under the perception that law enforcement does it. So I knew that there was some type of business there to be had. It was meant to be a side gig. I never thought that it would become the animal that it is today. But I was making $42,000 a year, kind of living paycheck to paycheck, and slowly becoming more and more disgruntled. So I decided to kind of do it as a side hustle. But then my police department gave me an ultimat. They're like, hey, we don't want you working the side business, so pick. And I said, easy choice. I quit.

So from 42K, you didn't have a lot of extra income coming in. Start a business, right? How much did it cost you to start? What did you need?

I found a school in Dallas, Texas at the time, and it was $2,500 and $2,500 was all I had in my savings account. You know what? I got to take a chance. So I went out there and I met these two guys that were in the class with me, and they said, hey, we just went to a bank and we got $150,000 small business loan. So I went to four banks and they all said, no, not no, but hell no. So I had to get creative. So I went to the fifth bank and I lied and I said, I need windows. How much can I get? And they're like, how much are the windows? You know, and I'm like, you know, and I just let them pick. And they wrote me a check for 15 grand.

So you had 15 grand. And where did that money go? Like rapid fire.

The 2,500 went to the training. Of course, 2,200 went to the trailer. About 8,000 went to PPE and equipment.

And at that point you were doing.

It yourself, you're like, all right, by myself. All right, here I go. You got it.

You basically took this ppe, your knowledge of being on site, and said, I'm going to create my own SOPs and processes in this industry after this school training happened. And then how did you get that first gig?

You know, it was. It was actually my shitty website was never found by anyone, so it was door to door. My first gig was at a Salvation Army. Guy died and decomposed in a recliner. And that was interesting, you know, trying to carry a recliner by myself.

So what did your first job pay you?

Your very first one, that one was about $2,500. And then my next one after that was a double homicide, and that was 15,000.

So you make your money back in.

Basic right there, right? 30 days. Yeah, it was like 30 days. Yeah.

So I love these types of businesses because these types of businesses are what, what is called low capex, but high cash on cash return. The faster that you run a business like this, the faster that you get your cash back. These are great for businesses, for people who don't have a ton of money and they want to use their sweat equity for the first part of building a business. Maybe that's you, if you're not too squeamish. So you started Spalding Deacon, and that was how many years ago now?

17.

Over the course of 17 years, you got crime scenes, you got floods, but you got a couple other things that nobody really talks about that is a whole different type of cleanup.

Yeah, meth labs. Yeah, yeah, Meth labs is as the economy gets worse. Meth labs skyrocket because it's a source of revenue for people. Wow.

This is what we call a recession resistant business.

Yeah, if I've ever seen one. This is probably the most recession resistant I've ever seen.

As is natural. Let's talk about meth. So there are all these statistics which you guys see here all over the Internet, about the rise in methamphetamines around the rise in fentanyl usage. What does that mean for your business? Somebody has a meth lab, you get called to clean it up. What does that cost? How does it work?

Most people don't understand that meth, the production of methamphetamine, produces a toxic environment. It's different. Cocaine doesn't produce that. Heroin's not going to produce that. So by creating that toxicity, you're living in a home where you're breathing it in. Your child is picking everything, all the toys up and stuff. So we're decontaminating that type of thing to make the home safe again. Average is between 12 and $40,000, and it takes a couple days to do it.

What kind of profit margins do you have on this kind of business?

Astronomical. So the biohazard and the meth labs produce about an 85% profit margin.

And is a lot of it just inherent knowledge about how to handle this that you've developed over the past 17 years?

You know, when I got trained in it back in 2006, I have completely tweaked what we do. We use different chemicals, different methods. Now, you know, the technology has made things a lot easier for us. We have our own kind of proprietary method, and that's what we teach our franchisees.

Yeah, you probably use a lot of these, huh?

Yeah, lots of these.

So moral of the story is, the dirtier the job, maybe the more money you make. Like what used to be weird when you went to a crime scene that now you're like, ah, it's Tuesday.

Body parts, wow. Biting teeth and jaw and parts of people's skull, a nose, an eyeball. Yeah. So that used to not shock me, but it used to give me pause, and now it's like, hand me the eyeball.

That's wild. So does that just come with reps?

Yeah, like anything, Right. It's just kind of muscle memory at that point, and you get used to it. And it's crazy what the human body adapts to just about any environment.

What about the most bizarre thing you've ever seen? Like, is there anything that's just. You're like, wow, this is in the record books.

Yeah. I mean, there's so many. But, like, one that, that sticks out to me is I was cleaning a gunshot suicide, and he had put a pillow over his head and shot himself to muffle the sound. And the adult daughter called us in to clean it up. And we're cleaning it up, and she insisted on watching and sitting in the corner watching us clean it up. And I thought, okay, well, that's different, but maybe that's part of closure for her. And then I found part of his jaw and his tooth and I grabbed it and I went to throw it in the red bag. And she goes, no, no, no, I want it. And I'm like, oh, God, what do I do? It was like one of those moments, like, are you sure? And then I was like, okay, I gave it to her. And then the next day we came to the job and she was wearing it around her neck. Stop it. Yeah. And I was like, oh, it's now jewelry.

Does it have your logo on the back?

Yeah, it does. Bam. Oh, this was really sad. It was an animal hoarder.

Oh, no. What does that mean?

That means they had 20, 30 dogs that were living in this and the dogs took over the property. And it's just. You could see the shit. I mean, there was just tons of animals. You see, can see the litter, things all turned over.

Could the animals and dogs get out or no?

No. This one was like from 2008, 2009. It was a massive hoard, despite the fact that it's only a one bedroom apartment.

Wow. Because if you look at it, it's almost counter height. Just stuff.

He just squeezed through his front door and climbed because his bedroom and bathroom in the back there. And he just kept throwing his trash in the front room and.

Oh, so the whole front room was full. Were the back rooms more?

Yeah, they were full. The bathroom was, to this day, the worst I've ever seen. When I was walking in there, I felt like I was walking in the Rocky Mountains and it was layers of shit that had dried, so it felt like I was walking on concrete rocks. No.

This is so sad.

Animal control came in, took the animals that were still alive. There are lots of dead ones. I was going around taking pictures, and then when I came back to look at the pictures, I was like, oh, my God. I had squeezed into a room and took a picture and I didn't realize a rat was staring at me.

How did the neighbors not know that this was going down?

Because the outside looks normal. No, it's like how they mow the lawn. Yes, they mow the lawn. They don't hoard outside. They just keep it all on the inside and hide.

What would something like this cost for.

You to clean up? It was about $15,000.

That's why you almost just like, bring in a backhoe to this.

Yeah. Or a match. Yeah.

One of the things I didn't realize was so prevalent is hoarding and people accumulating a ton of stuff. Talk to me one about, like, why do you think that happens?

You know, that's one of our bigger verticals. 3 to 5% of the population suffer from hoarding, and that's a lot of people. So what we've been able to realize is there's a traumatic event that happened in that person's life, and this is how it's manifested. Just accumulating it past the point of functionality in their home.

And what does that cost for somebody to come and clean up a hoarding situation? How does that work? And what do you do with all the stuff?

Each job is so different because some people literally want to sort through each item in their home. Other people are just like, throw it all away. We want to start over. So I would say, on average, it's between 4 and $8,000. We do it per hour because that way they can customize it to their budget.

How many times do you see where you come in, you guys clean it all up and, like, that's the trigger for change? Or do you get call again in.

Three or six months? The recidivism is very high. So I think it's 98%, if I remember correctly. So there's only about a 2% chance you'll stop doing it.

What's the best advice you'd give to younger you? So a lot of businesses would never agree to do this. Look at this YouTube channel. This is Florida's YouTube channel.

Spalding decon is one of the nation's largest cleanup companies handling the aftermath of homicides, suicides, decompositions, hoarding, and much more.

You decided, hell with it. I'm going to show people behind the scenes. And it led to millions and millions of views. Talk to us about your strategy online.

The number one problem that I had to overcome in this business was awareness. Everyone thinks that the police clean this up. The only way that I was going to reach out to the masses was by putting these educational videos on YouTube.

So let's say you wanted to start a crime scene cleanup company. What type of human wants to do this type of business?

Crazy Person. Yeah, totally crazy person. It's actually somebody that has a ton of empathy, that has the physical fitness to be able to do it, and is really not bothered by the smells and the blood. Yeah.

And so I immediately think military, first responders, law enforcement. Is that one of the archetypes?

100% correct.

Yeah. So let's say we got our first responder here in front of us who wants to start a franchise in crime scene cleanup. What do they need to know up front? Like, what is the two to three things that you gotta know before you start a crime scene cleanup business?

Physically, it's difficult because you're wearing a Tyvek suit, a respirator, which is really like breathing out of a straw. So it's very warm environments. We do a lot of work in attics. So if you're not physically fit, it's probably not going to work out for you. One thing is, is the marketing is the most difficult part of this business because it's not a buy one, get one free. Let's put a coupon out. No, it doesn't work that way. You have to get extremely creative with the marketing and do it in a way that you're in front of the people that you need to be in front of, but not down their throats, if that makes sense. This.

Who's this guy?

That's Maggie the Maggot. This is for sure. She is awesome. So she is. You know, this came to fruition one day. I was working a job. You know, we're kind of having fun making light of it, and we decided to take the Maggots on the floor and make races. And we had our Maggots race. I did not win. There was three maggots there. And I was like, you know what? That is exactly the mascot that we need. And she's adorable, unlike the real Maggots. And it's kind of just blown up.

Most small businesses do one thing really poorly, which is any type of brand name whatsoever.

Yeah.

What else have you guys done besides this guy? Which I'm totally keeping.

You totally can have it. So what we had to do is kind of make our business not so dire and not so heavy. We got our fans involved, and a fan actually created that. We posted a contest for the drawing of Maggie, and then we had the plushies created. We have a ton of T shirts and hats, and it's just kind of gotten a lot bigger from a merchandise standpoint than I ever imagined.

So despite this being about crime scene cleanups and maybe seeming a little Bloody. There's always a light hearted way to do it. What are two or three hacks that really help for people to run this business better?

Create a fantastic system where you have the ability to find your tools right where you need them. Everything is very organized and systematic. So our trucks all moving mirror one another. All the tools are in the same exact spot. So whether they're working on our Dodge Ram or our box truck, it should be identical. So that helps alleviate a lot of errors. Train people and incentivize them to have the same goals as you. They should mirror one another. Engage your employees in the marketing efforts as well. So when we go to properties, not only are we focused on the house that we're working in, but we also go three doors down each other way and we market each the whole neighborhood.

Humans are like Pavlov's dogs. Yeah, it's like incentive alignment equals outcome in action. We're all about action here, as you guys know. So let's assume that you want to go and start a crime scene cleanup company. How could you start it fastest to steal somebody else's 10,000 hours? What's the fastest way to go?

Well, if you want to become a franchisee, it's less than $150,000 to get in. Or you can take our crime scene clean courses@crime scenecleaning.thinkific.com all the courses are there and we help you start out, but you are on your own.

I like it. So basically you've got the do it fast and done alongside you or do it yourself and learn it like your own way. What I love about that too is there's so many people in life that we choose to do it the hard way and instead we could learn from others footsteps. And so I think it's cool you offer the two different ways and this is kind of what it looks like. I use Thinkific too, so I get this.

Oh, do you?

Right, yeah. Despite me hating this outfit and how insufferably hot it is, there's a couple of things I learned about this business that are fascinating. One, this is a business where you can get government contracts so you can be reoccurring near customers. Two, this business has huge profit margins, meaning you get to keep more of every $3 recession resistant business. Four, in a growing market where your customers don't really complain because. So if any of you guys want to do a business like this, hit me up. I like these margins.