Todd Krause owns The Cleaning Authority in Fishers, on the northeast side of Indianapolis. He came to it from a career in institutional finance. His job ended on March 6, 2020, and ten days later he found a cleaning company for sale almost in his backyard.

The financials were solid. Then he got inside. There were thirty-two to thirty-four employees on paper, and on a good day twenty-two showed up. Every morning started with the managers telling each team what they'd done wrong the day before. Cleaner turnover was north of 200 percent a year, and the company was losing about 60 percent of its customers annually.

He told the managers to stop, and he tied bonuses directly to customer feedback. Mrs. Smith says the team did a good job, and a known amount lands on the next paycheck. She leaves a review and there's another. The crews didn't believe any of it until the first couple of teams got paid. The culture changed within weeks.

Other owners tell him that sounds expensive. Todd is a CPA, so he has the number. He says it cut operating expenses by more than eight percent, which he puts at $320,000 a year in profit on $4 million in revenue. He has since been named Franchisee of the Year by the International Franchise Association, and again by The Cleaning Authority.

It didn't start with the cleaning company. His father hauled milk for dairy farmers in Wisconsin, and in winter he'd shovel snow off their roofs so the sheds wouldn't collapse. You can hear where Todd got it.

Find Todd at silversunconsulting.com. His email and cell number are on the About page.

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