Entrepreneurs Rebuild After Bankruptcy

Bob Serwas (left), co-owner of Serwas window cleaning services and his partner Chris Mathias, overcame a bankruptcy & rebuilt their business.

Entrepreneurs rebuild after bankruptcy: Bob Serwas, co-owner of Serwas Window Cleaning Services, knows what it’s like to succeed, fail, and then succeed again. He and his partner, Chris Mathias, have learned that slow and steady is the way to build a business. “I was warned by people not to grow big too fast and that’s exactly what I did,” Serwas said.

Looking back, Serwas, who fell in love with window washing when he was a teenager, was working for a local company when that company was sold to a competitor. The merger did not go well, and Serwas and his partner decided to form Residential Window Specialists in 1996.

The business exploded. In just three years, it was grossing a million dollars a year and the partners had a new challenge. Since window washing is a seasonal business, they wanted to find a way to provide year-round employment.

To fill the gap, they purchased an awning cleaning and sealing division and a mobile blind cleaning and sales division. The result was a growing debt. Serwas commented, “I took out a loan, and the bank socked me with a big payment. At the same time, we discovered that the employees we had were clocking in but not completing jobs.”

What resulted was an accounts receivable nightmare. Companies were billed for jobs that weren’t completed and refused to pay. While Serwas tried to incorporate the new businesses into the existing one, employees were playing video games instead of working. “It went from one crisis to the next,” he stated. “I needed help and was run ragged. The new divisions were wearing me down.”

As the accounts receivable mounted and bills couldn’t be paid, the lender called the loan. Serwas defaulted and had no option but to declare bankruptcy. The next four years were spent building credit and paying off debt. He had lost his house, 10 trucks and most of his personal property. He traded off an old pressure washer for a $100 minivan so his wife could get around, and spent six months living with his parents.

His efforts paid off, and by 2004, he had cleared his credit and purchased a home. Long hours of working a full-time job and cleaning windows on the side along with his wife meant $3,543 in the bank and an opportunity to do the same business again, but to do it right.

“I bought a bucket of equipment and an old computer and started again. I talked to the people at SCORE and decided I would make this work because it’s the only thing I love to do and I do it well. I learned to monitor the business more closely and watch the accounts receivable carefully,” Serwas noted.

Back in business with Mathias, Serwas runs the residential division and Mathias handles commercial accounts. For the past 11 years, growth has been controlled and the gross sales have reached the previous high. There are 23 employees, and Serwas says they are phenomenal workers. Additional services, such as hanging Christmas décor, pest control, gutter cleaning and snow removal, have been added slowly.

The company is now well respected, and Serwas says that he strives to achieve greatness without compromising quality workmanship. He and Mathias have a hectic schedule and look forward to winter when things slow down.

“I feel satisfied at the end of the year when I can finally breathe,” Serwas said. “We look at the final figures and say, ‘Wow.’ But even better are those remarks we get from customers when they say they can’t believe how good their windows look.”

Exterior Cleaning Benefits

Pat Tenpas knows the last thing anyone wants to see when they look past the for-sale sign in her yard is a mess of spider webs and bird droppings, dirty windows and clogged gutters. On a hot, muggy day last week, the Oshkosh woman called in professionals from Serwas Window Cleaning to give her large home an exterior face lift. After spending Wisconsin’s long winter down south, the local resident returned to cluttered gutters, spotty windows and siding and a few remnants that proved pesky critters had taken up residence. “I noticed the eaves troughs were filled still with a lot of leaves and mud from fall, and the outside, I think, still had spider webs and everything on them from fall, too, or the end of summer that didn’t get washed off,” Tenpas, 63, said. The Serwas crew left Tenpas’ awnings, windows and skylights clear. It was perfect timing, she said, as the Oshkosh native’s for-sale sign arrived a day later.“The house is nice and clean … it looks totally awesome,” she said. Tenpas said she recommends homeowners consider a good outdoor cleaning at least annually, maybe twice a year, especially if they live — like she does — in an area boasting plentiful trees. “There gets to be a lot of pine needles and trees in the eaves troughs, and water that’s coming straight down onto the house and making it dirty,” she said. “I think (cleaning) adds to your house; it has more curb appeal.”Serwas Window Cleaning co-owner Bob Serwas said the company gets plenty of local calls to power wash windows and siding, spray for spiders, clean gutters and remove lake-fly residue. “With such a bad winter, windows were so dirty,” he said. “Business just exploded when the weather got nicer, even though with gas prices so high people are holding off, wanting to go with a fall (cleaning).” Serwas said homeowners reap many benefits from taking the spring-cleaning mentality outdoors — from health to home-selling. “If things pile up around houses, it can mold and rot, cause critters to show up, other insects,” said Serwas, whose business also does a lot of jobs for local real estate agents to ready a home for resell. This month, Serwas said, he also has seen an increase in calls about a particular seasonal concern. “We’re starting to get calls for bees and wasps all over the house,” he said. “We’ll knock down mud nests, we can also take care of bees nests, paper nests, underground nests; there are a lot of babies that just hatched and are trying to feed, so they’re all over.”And this is one case where calling in the experts can be beneficial, he says. “That one’s kind of a dangerous situation; we’ve been stung,” he said with a laugh.

On the left is Billy Broderick and on the ground is Paul Daubert who work for Serwas Window Cleaning power was the gutters and siding of a home on Shorehaven Court.