Lance Pastrana, an Army veteran, and his spouse built Bravo Cleaning Services from scratch in southwest Florida. His spouse grew the residential side to over 150 clients; Lance started commercial cleaning after leaving the Army, worked seven days a week, then hired staff and focused on marketing. He credits the Boots to Business program and plans to franchise the company for other transitioning service members.
Questions this video answers
August 31, 2017.
Over 150 clients.
About six months.
Southwest Florida.
Chapters
My name is Lance Pastrana. I'm the owner of Bravo cleaning Services, located here in southwest Florida. My company offers residential and commercial cleaning services. While I was still in the military, my wife started the residential side of the company. Through hard work and dedication, she built up her clientele from one client out in longboat key to over 150 clients she has now. And upon my exit from the military, I started the commercial division of the company.
I love going into someone's home and providing that service and leaving knowing that they're satisfied with my service, and I'm happy with what I did. When you start a business and your spouse is off to the army or whatever branch it may be, it's not easy, but you have to mentally prepare. Hey, I'm going to grow this business, and he's going to be proud of me, but I'm also going to be proud of myself, and that plays a big role in it also.
I always knew that I wanted to do the commercial side because in any business, you want to try to diversify yourself as much as you can. It all started here at our home office. I bought a van, I bought supplies, and I went out and I worked it myself, cleaning, carpet stripping and waxing floors, you know, coming back and tracking up all my paperwork and invoices and just always on the grind seven days a week. After about six months, I was then able to hire the right people, and then I was able to kind of step back a little bit and concentrate more on the marketing and promotional side of growing the business. Networking. When I was acapping my last year in the military, I had the opportunity to do the boots to business program, meeting business owners, mentors, coaches and instructors. That brought me back to my civilian skill set and out of the military mindset. And it really propelled things for me to motivate me and to get to the degree of success that I'm at now and hopefully even more at this point in my business. I've reached out to my veterans business outreach center, and I look forward to working with them to go to the next phase with my company, to franchise my company to soldiers who were once where I was that are transitioning out of the military and give them the skills and information that they may need to be successful on their exit from the military.
Anyone can start from the bottom and grow. It could take you anywhere. I mean, we've gotten to the point where we're now building our own home, and God only knows to what extent we can go. And that's our plan, is to just grow to the point where we can help other families do something like this. They can be their own boss. They can start a business. It's an emotional roller coaster. Yes. But you know what? The journey is amazing because we built this together. With your support and my support, we can grow and do anything. There's nothing we can't do. So it's a good feeling. At the end of the day, it's all worth it. It's all worth.
