Connecting Canadian Window Cleaners With Home Owners

The owner of a window cleaning business was impressed with Sher's work ethic and hired him as a salesperson.

Guelph student connecting homeowners with ‘the best’ contractors: When University of Guelph student Dylan Sher was in high school he got caught between irate homeowners and his boss, a fly-by-night window-washing contractor, and it inspired him to start his own contracting service. "I was faced with a valid problem, which is mistrust in the home service industry and I sought to fix it," said Dylan Sher. "I had the means and the ability at the time to go and look after it so that is what I did."

Sher (pictured) is the founder of Fixopolis an online service that connects homeowners with contractors in their community. "We feel that we really encompass a sophisticated way to find contractors," he said. "It is not so much a listing service or one of the many other ways to find contractors online. We knew right away that we had to find a new way of presenting ourselves."

The Fixopolis website has many of the same features as established online contractor listing services but what sets them apart is their quoting engine. "What the quoting engine actually does is it understands the scope of the project from the homeowner's perspective and packages it up into a nice, what we call, job shadow, which we send to the contractors," Sher said. "It has all the job specifications lined up so the contractor can go and quote on this job accordingly."

People looking for contractors fill out an online form on the Fixopolis website then wait for the contractors to contact them. "Homeowners like it because it is free and gets them in contact with the best contractors and it is a relatively easy process," Sher said. "Once you take three minutes out of your day to fill out the form you start getting phone calls back as opposed to making phone calls to all the people you might want." They follow up with homeowners to rate contractors. Reviews posted on the site are limited to clients that have interacted with listed contractors thereby eliminating false reviews from being posted.

Sher was born in Richmond Hill. He started his first business when he was 10, shoveling driveways. "Any business you start when you are 10-years-old is going to be by mistake," he said. "People thought it was cute and asked for my phone number. That kind of got me into the feeling of the whole thing. It was such a cool feeling."

As he grew so did the business. "Eventually, when I was a teenager I got a snow blower and a lawnmower and had a little landscaping business in the neighbourhood," he said. "The whole Fixopolis journey started as a spinoff from that."

The owner of a window cleaning business was impressed with Sher's work ethic and hired him as a salesperson. "He was kind of my mentor and he was a really smart guy because he paid me on commission," Sher said. "He would take me to the door with him and who is going to say no to a little kid. I got the experience and confidence that I brought back to my own business clearing driveways."

Sher worked his way up to sales manager and hired his friends to work on commission but what he didn't know was his boss was cutting corners and the quality of work was suffering. "We were out of the loop and had no way of hearing the feedback from clients," he said. "I had no way of knowing about the complaints until it all started to catch up with everyone. I thought, if I can't trust the company how can I expect people to trust us when we knock on their door?"

When the owner fled to California Sher decided to start Fixopolis. "I was in Grade 10 when all of this went down," he said. He sought advice from other contractors and business people and by the time he was 17 he had secured $100,000 in seed money to launch the business. "We used that money to build the platform, incorporate and pay for advertisement," he said. "Fixopolis became an entity in February 2012. The GTA is our main service area and we are just opening up Hamilton and Guelph as we speak. As soon as we have a minimum of five contractors per category in our back end to open up those categories then we will do them."

He hopes to see the service grow well beyond Southern Ontario. "I see Fixopolis as a driving force in the industry and I want to make it happen whether it be across Canada, North America and so on and so forth," he said. Sher is in the second year of a five-year agri-business program at the University of Guelph and hopes to have his own farming operation some day. "People ask me why I am developing an app and a website when I want to get into agriculture and I think they are going to be one in the same in the future, really," he said. "Agriculture is my passion and where I want to end up as a career. If an opportunity presents itself in the future where I can come up with some sort of web-based farming idea, I will take it."

Laugh Of The Week - Toolgirl

Double handed squeegee technique, never been seen before!

ToolGirl, Mag Ruffman Pro-tips for window washing: ToolGirl, Mag Ruffman has some pro-tips for window washing to get rid of those summer stains and maybe make window washing fun. "It's fall & all the windows are crusty & dirty." "Get a strip applicator - it's a strip with fuzzy stuff." "I'm using the kitty litter box... but don't worry, she can hold it." The first double handed squeegee user ever... a laugh a minute.

Glass Ho! Insider tips for sparkly windows - Watch the toolgirl video of this amazing technique! Did you know that there are world class window-cleaning conventions where people compete in speed trials to see who can squeegee a window fastest?  They're clocking under 30 seconds for a big store window.  Sweet. If you're like most of us, you're using Window Washing Option A from the list below.  If you're a hot-dogger, you might find yourself in the Option C category. (Editors note: We don't recommend using any of the following tips except maybe - option B..)

Option A: Some people use paper towels, ammonia-based cleaners and an old-fashioned lubricant called ‘elbow-grease’. However, rubbing a window with paper towels puts a static charge on the glass and then it’s dirty again as soon as you’re finished. Where does this register on the Handyperson’s Emotional Scale? Somewhere around “Just shoot me”.

Option B: You can pay a professional window-washing company to make your glass sparkly. Attractive young men with rippling musculature will swarm over your home for several hours. It may be worth it, especially if you live with your mother-in-law and she needs entertaining. Encourage her to pass snacks to the young men and yell, “Nice glass!”

Option C: Refuse to give those window-washing fellows all of the arm-sculpting opportunities. Invest about $40 and set yourself up for a lifetime of fun and deltoids that are perfectly al dente. A previous effort..

Canadian Company Cleans Up In U.S. Market

Canadian company cleans up in U.S. market: Cleaning up the Magic Kingdom is a big part of Canadian entrepreneur John Radford’s business this year. His company, Construction Cleaners Group, is doing the cleaning during construction of Walt Disney World’s huge Fantasyland expansion under way in Orlando, Fla. The company’s workers are busy vacuuming the caves and below the tracks of the new Little Mermaid computerized ride; power-washing stone bridges along streetscapes; and shining the Dumbo the Flying Elephant virtual-reality pavilion to get it ready for opening. The clean-up is taking place round the clock until construction is finished and Walt Disney Co. brings in its own cleaning staff.

It’s all part of what Mr. Radford, the founder and chief executive officer, describes as the specialized cleaning his company offers, as a janitorial service catering to the construction industry. It does what's called an “architectural clean” for general contractors – from shining windows inside and out to vacuuming rugs to waxing floors to meet the satisfaction of the architect once a project is complete. Each job is a one-shot deal so the company usually has several on the go at once.

Construction Cleaners has come a long way from its start, back in the late 1970s, when the Toronto Board of Trade took a chance on a 19-year-old Mr. Radford by giving him a grant for $2,000 to go into the cleaning business. He bought equipment, put a small down payment on an old truck, and hired a student staffer.

Today, the company, with headquarters in both Toronto and West Palm Beach, Fla., and seven regional U.S. offices, has about 20 full-time employees and annual revenues of $2.5-million -- additional staff are hired as needed. About 95 per cent of business is in the United States, working for construction companies with projects ranging from Universal Studios to federal prisons and the U.S. military.

Mr. Radford, the founder and chief executive officer, describes as the specialized cleaning his company offers, as a janitorial service catering to the construction industry.

The 54-year-old Mr. Radford focuses on sales, splitting his time between Canada and the United States. He shares how he cracked the U.S. market and why he’s now looking back to Canada for work.

Q: Why construction cleaning?

A: I grew up in the construction business as a young boy in Windsor. My dad was vice-president of Eastern Construction so I remember jumping in the trucks as a kid. The company moved to Toronto when I was 14 and did a lot of big projects like Roy Thomson Hall and Sun Life. By the time I was in university [at the University of Western Ontario], I’d help my dad in the summers doing things like window cleaning and blacktopping. One of the first jobs I ever did for him was when they were renovating Union Station. That was my start in doing commercial construction projects.

Q: Once you had the seed money from the Toronto Board of Trade, how did you get your own clients?

A: I started knocking on the doors of construction trailers and offering my services. My first job was Hazelton Lanes in Yorkville. They were doing construction and wanted the stores cleaned up because they had clients from Paris coming in. I liked that they paid cash – cash is king when you’re small. There are good margins on those upscale businesses, so they paid us what we wanted. They just wanted a perfect store.

Q: When did you take your business to the United States?

A: During the recession in the late eighties when interest rates were high. The Toronto market was extremely competitive, with people literally working for cost, so I couldn’t continue in business doing that. I applied for a visa to work and live in the U.S. – that was when free trade was brought in – and was lucky enough to get one. The idea was to take the business you had in Canada and start a similar company in the U.S.

Q: How did you break into the U.S market?

A: It was much more difficult to research than it would be today because we didn’t have the internet to do searches. I read engineering magazines that would tell me what projects were starting and the year they were finishing. I’d catalogue all those and hit them. If there was a $10- or $20-million job, I’d watch them until I knew they were finishing, phone them up and say, ‘Would you like a price?’ Nine times out of 10, they’d say, ‘We’d love a price.’

I really keyed in on doing construction work only and on some of the big players in Canada like EllisDon that were expanding in the U.S. as well. I ran on their coattails for jobs we did in Toronto, and said, ‘Well, we can do your jobs in the U.S.’, so it was a natural fit. Before leaving Canada, I also decided to explore some different, smaller mid-sized markets like Wichita, Kan., that were far less competitive but still had a lot of great projects going on, like courthouses and arenas. One of the first jobs we did was a big hockey arena in Albany N.Y., for one of the major hockey teams.

We used to clean $100-million prisons in the middle of coal-mining towns. Nobody’s there to bid on this stuff so we would get huge $100,000 cleanups and bring our managers in. They’d stay at the local hotels and we’d hire the hotel’s cleaning people. Or we’d put ads in the local newspapers and use different employment agencies.

Q: Are prisons big business for you?

A: We do a lot of prisons. We had five prisons going in Pennsylvania at one time. They’re like a self-contained village – half a million square feet – with huge kitchens, medical and dental facilities and basketball courts. There’s a lot of cleaning involved. We’re starting on a $200-million federal prison in West Virginia and just finished one a month ago in Alabama. Those big federal prisons are cookie-cutter – all the same architect – so if you clean one, you can clean 10 across the country and price them out the same.

Q: How did you set up the company?

A: I used the model from big general contractors in the U.S.… for setting up. I’d get my key people and take them to the site. If it was a big enough job, they’d stay there a few weeks and I’d hire locally. As long as I had my supervising managers to be able to handle those local jobs, I could do it.

The uniqueness of our business is that we run it on a national basis so we can cover every state or province. It’s all with the same stencil. The key is to have your own personnel managers in charge, people who know what they are doing. You can always hire cleaners. It’s the managers who are so important.

Q: How did you find those managers?

A: It’s a team-building process from the original people we brought in. When you hire locally, maybe two guys work out great and are willing to go on the road. We have about 15 regional managers and the rest are labour. We’ll keep the labour on tab for when something comes up in their region and hook up when we need them. We pay well and some of these guys just like the freedom of jumping in their truck and going to different places.

Q: How do you market?

A: Word of mouth somewhat. When we finish a job, the company might say, ‘We’re starting another project in New Mexico.' So we follow some of the different general contractors who are happy with us. In the office, we key in on all the starts of jobs, catalogue them very carefully and follow up. We don’t get them all but we hit about 50 per cent or more on everything we bid.

Q: What was the biggest challenge going into the U.S.?

A: Recognition. People didn’t know who we were. Buffalo was one of the first inroads I made into the U.S. market from Toronto because they were building schools and hospitals. It was a whole other market but I could still go home at night. Another early job was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. We had to work at night, sometimes 150 feet in the air with lifts. …You get good kudos for tough jobs like that and you build from there.

Q: How did you connect with companies like Disney and Universal?

A: I’d drive around all the different sites in Florida for hours looking at the things being built, such as hotels to see who’s doing what. Then it’s a matter of talking, networking and hustling. Business is all about hustling. It’s finding the right person who can give you the contract. The one we’re doing at Disney is for a company called Hoar Construction. They’ve used us for a lot of work before and happened to be doing the Fantasyland project, so our connection led to the current contract.

Once you get in, you get requests from other companies and we hustle up. There are trailers for the different projects, so we’ll go knock on a trailer and say, ‘Hey, we’re doing work here and this is our brochure.’ The great thing about my business is they never say no. Companies are always interested in price and service. They all sub this work out because they don’t want to do it. Plus, if you’re already on site doing work, that’s a huge thing.

Q: What’s the difference between business in U.S. and Canada?

A: I wouldn’t say the companies in the U.S. pay better but they pay well. One thing is, we don’t have near as many major projects with big budgets here. There’s not a lot of difference in working. The big jobs in Toronto tend to be union as well so you deal with the same things. I find that Americans, even if they don’t know you well, will give you a fair shot. If you do great work, you’ll have a good chance of getting more work.

Q: Are you planning to come back and do more in Canada?

A: I never really left Canada. I have family here and a home in Oakville but my green card allows me to live and work in the U.S. I’ve got a joint venture company here and we’re trying to get more work. Right now we’re doing all the cleaning for the [Trump International Hotel and Tower Toronto]. We’ve done Trump work in Miami so we got the work up here because of our roots with them in the U.S. There are some nice jobs coming up in places like Halifax, and Saskatchewan is a hotbed of construction right now. It’s an interesting twist that, 25 years later, we’re coming back to the Canadian market looking for areas that have grown up.

Q: What’s your advice for breaking into the U.S?

A: It’s a matter of doing great work, keeping your reputation in good stead and your nose clean, and letting them know you’re around.

I think the future in North America is service businesses. It’s a low startup and can be highly profitable. You don’t have to concentrate on the big cities. You just can’t compete. There’s less competition in the smaller places. … You can build a nice little business and it’s just a plane trip away.

Q: How do you manage running a U.S.-based business from Toronto?

A: The technology makes it easier. I’m on the phone all the time. With cell phones, you can stay on top of jobs, so it really doesn’t matter if I’m in Toronto or Florida. I’m up to date with all of my people all the time. You can run this business out of anywhere.