Who Squeezed My Lemons? Turning Grit, Risk, and Real-Life Lessons Into a Book with Eric Montes

Episode Title

Who Squeezed My Lemons? Turning Grit, Risk, and Real-Life Lessons Into a Book with Eric Montes

📄 Episode Description

In this episode of Cleaning Processes with Jerry, Jerry reconnects with longtime industry colleague Eric Montes—chemical‑industry veteran and now author of Who Squeezed My Lemons: 100 Unfiltered Truths About Grit, Risk, and Turning Sour Into Sweet in Business and Life.

Eric shares the story behind writing his first book, why he kept the project secret until the final days, and how a single viral LinkedIn post sparked the idea to turn years of personal notes into a published work. He talks openly about vulnerability, authenticity, and why short‑form, straight‑to‑the‑point content resonates in 2026.

Jerry and Eric also dig into:

• How Who Moved My Cheese inspired the structure of the book
• The power of capturing ideas in your phone’s Notes app
• Why perfection is the enemy of shipping meaningful work
• The emotional side of creating public content
• How Eric’s company, Magnus, built a razor–blade recurring‑revenue model in a commoditized chemical market
• The importance of trust, storytelling, and staying connected with good people

Follow Eric on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericmmontes/

🍋 Special Listener Giveaway

Want a chance to win a free copy of Who Squeezed My Lemons?

Email Jerry@hospitalitycleaning101.com with the subject line LEMON and you’ll be entered into a drawing to have a copy of the book sent directly to you.

Want to level up your operation?

Visit HospitalityCleaning101.com — home to 120+ practical, no‑nonsense articles on cleaning, sanitation, and chemical management built specifically for hospitality and food service pros.

If you’re looking to break into the hospitality market, check out the consulting page to see how Jerry partners with manufacturers and distributors to build real traction and real revenue.

Jerry Bauer
Hospitality Cleaning 101
Jerry@hospitalitycleaning101.com

Transcript

Who Squeezed My Lemons

Jerry Bauer: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. This is Jerry with cleaning Processes with Jerry. As you might have heard me say before, this is a podcast which was designed to bring like-minded individuals together out of the chemical and cleaning industry. Today's a perfect example of that. When I reached out to someone I've known for years.

Actually, we worked together at two different chemical providers outta different offices. So even though we didn't work side by side, our path had cost many times. Today I'm gonna welcome Eric Montez. Eric recently has written a book called, who Squeezed My Lemons. It's 100 unfiltered truths about grit risk, and turning sour into Sweet.

In both business and life, I would consider it a book very much like Who Moved My Cheese. I have it at my desk off to the side every day [00:01:00] frequently. I'll grab it, read a couple of the truths out of it, ponder, think about it, meditate, and move on, and each time I read it, I get a little bit more out of it.

So it's a perfect example for anybody in this industry or any industry in fact. And I'm welcome and I'm more than excited for you all joining us today as I'm getting ready to invite Eric to come on. 

But before I do that, please let me ask you, if you like the show, please like it, please share it. Comment.

And at the end of the show, I will have all the different particulars, how to reach out to Eric, how to get the book through Amazon. He's also has the website and such. All of that will be in the show notes and stay tuned as we bring Eric in 

Eric Montes: you

Jerry Bauer: eric, thanks for joining me today. How you doing?

Eric Montes: I'm doing great. Thank you, Jerry.

Jerry Bauer: So you're in Texas, you've always lived in Texas, correct.

Eric Montes: I've lived in Texas now 17 years, so really almost as [00:02:00] long as I lived in Florida where I was born. I was born in Orlando.

Jerry Bauer: Okay. Because if you were in Florida when we worked years ago,

Eric Montes: Hey, by the way, congrats on your four years of podcasts.

Jerry Bauer: Thank you very much. It's been a great hobby. I'm actually trying to ramp it up,

Eric Montes: yeah, I saw that. I was like, wow. I thought writing a book and publishing a book was hard. I bet 

​Podcasts is pretty hard as well, so.

Jerry Bauer: It's, it, it, it's a challenge. I was told that all I needed was an iPhone. That's not true. You need a whole lot more with the editing and stuff, but you have to have a passion for it. You have to enjoy it. I will tell you that the technology has made it easier because now with AI can help edit and stuff like that.

But don't congratulate me. I'm congratulating you. I've always wanted to talk to you, but now that you've got a book out, tell me, how the book is going.

Eric Montes: Yeah, so I published it about six weeks ago. They say writing a book is one of the [00:03:00] harder things you can do, simply because there's just probably 40 or 50 million books out there. And they're different creatures. They just don't market themselves. You have to go out and market it if you don't have a publisher.

I published it independently, so I didn't go through traditional publishing, which nowadays you really don't have to anymore because you go through directly through Amazon and. Promote it, on the different social sites, which I've been doing vigorously. And so it's been a great launch so far.

Jerry Bauer: Who did you have guidance through that process? In the very beginning, because everybody has a book in 'em. Everybody wants to write a book.

Eric Montes: You talk to people, everybody. Everybody says they want to write a book. Most don't do it. And even more don't even publish one. If they do write it and if they finish it, they don't publish it because they just get intimidated by the whole process. I looked at some of the most successful business books out there, when I was doing this good to Great, who Moved My Cheese, [00:04:00] which was the inspiration for my title.

But, think and grow. Rich Dad, poor dad. I looked at all these books and I'm like, man, they're selling 30, 40, 50 million copies. What made them successful and did a little bit of research around it and, it wasn't anything really special. They had a great story.

They had authent authenticity in their writing, and I wanted to mirror that. You don't have to go far to look for success and mirror that. And piggyback off of what they've done and which is what I've tried to do for who squeezed my lemons.

Jerry Bauer: It's an easy read, let's be honest, I read a lot of books. I don't finish a lot of books. Sometimes it just goes a little too deep where you know you don't stay with it, but your book isn't. I stayed with it. I read it in two days,

I go back to it many times because I have it on my desk and it is just who moved the cheese? It makes you think about different things. And were you marketing it for one certain audience?

Eric Montes: I tried to tailor it for 2026 short attention [00:05:00] spans. You take who Moved My Cheese, which is a great book, and it had parables in it. You had to translate what was going on. I wanted to make it similar, but tailored to our day and age where people's attention spans are really short.

I don't think people are interested in long novels anymore, particularly in the nonfiction space. Fiction is a little bit different, I think people want to get right down to it. It's like the short form video of books is the way I try to describe, who squeezed my lemons.

And it's a hundred unfiltered truths that, all have a story behind each of the truths. So it's very authentic. There's no AI infused in it. Right now you have a lot of that going on. It seems like you don't know what's fake. You don't know what's real anymore. When you're looking at social, you've seen it on LinkedIn and you've probably seen it on X, right?

You can tag what's an AI post and what's not. And I really wanted to make this book authentic, in the sense that you can go to it, you can go back to it and go back to it. And it's really easy reading and it's different, and that was intentional.

[00:06:00] Creating content with a podcast. This is my first time doing a book and I didn't realize how vulnerable it is to publish content. And so I have a newfound respect for artists in terms of like musicians or actors or podcasters or authors, because you really do put yourself out there in a very vulnerable way because not everybody's gonna like it.

And. A lot of people are gonna like it. Not everybody's gonna like it and people are gonna have things to say about it that aren't good. So you have to have thick skin to be able to do that. It's not like a business, right? So like at Magnus, we put out a product and it doesn't work or somebody doesn't like it.

We can tweak it, we can twist it, we can redo the formula, we can make it right. But once the book's out there, it's out there. Once your podcasts are out there, they're out there. And so there's a certain vulnerability to that, to me, that I didn't anticipate when I was writing the book.

Jerry Bauer: it's interesting you bring all this up because my son is an artist. Because he's a musician. He [00:07:00] teaches music, plays in a band, has a degree. Everything in his life has been around that. And by me doing the podcast. Has made me appreciate what he has to go through a whole lot more.

I couldn't play a note. I actually own a guitar and I can't do it. I just can't do it, but it's made me appreciate what my son has been able to do on a different level of thinking. Let's be honest, we've been selling chemicals most of our life. If somebody doesn't like blue, we can give 'em a ping pot pan.

There's a reason for each. But when you're out here and doing different things where it makes you think at a different level. It really makes you appreciate other people who do the same. And that's probably why I jumped at trying to get you, because I've always thought about writing a book. I've started a couple or whatever, but they're more technical and stuff like that.

But I admire you for doing this, and it's a great book,

Eric Montes: Thank you very much. The interesting thing is too, I didn't tell anybody about it. [00:08:00] Not even my family didn't know until the last minute I was doing this kind of, and one of the truths in there is similar to that, where just do it, don't talk about it and let the results speak for themselves.

And, uh, I was, I was doing some background work and different things to put my ideas in place. One of those was a, uh, and this is an interesting story. I was on a flight from Miami to Dallas late last year. And I had never told this story publicly before. You may have seen it on LinkedIn or you may not have, but it was regarding a bad boss.

Jerry Bauer: I did see that.

Eric Montes: Yeah, and I got the idea to do this on this flight. It dawned on me, I said, I need to tell this story and the right platform to do it on was LinkedIn. And during that flight, literally, this is the truth. I wrote that entire, I think it was like 500 words. On that flight and hit publish when I walked off that plane.

And I was like, I don't know how this is gonna go. I think people need to hear it. It's an interesting kind of story I thought, but, everybody has a story, right? That's the mantra I go by is we all [00:09:00] have a story we get old, nobody listens to us and then we die.

And so I wanted to try to figure out a way to memorialize some of these things that we've gone through, that you've gone through and so after I hit publish, I was like, okay. 'cause I've never been a big content creator on LinkedIn or X. Didn't have many followers. I think I have a thousand followers now still, just because I haven't really engaged much on a creation side.

I've consumed a lot, but didn't create a lot. And so when I hit publish on this post, it went viral. It got like a million And I had people DMing me, saying, Hey, what's the story behind the story? What happened before? What happened after, talking to me about asking me about my career and what I've been through just from this goofy, bad boss story that probably a lot of people have gone through, but nobody really ever shares or they're afraid to share.

I didn't care. I wasn't worried about retribution, I wasn't worried about, backfire. I just wanted to put it out there and I put it out there raw and unfiltered. And I think it resonated with a lot of people, particularly on LinkedIn. And so that kind of created this series [00:10:00] of thoughts and stories too, on LinkedIn that I posted.

I went back, before that bad boss thing at Ecolab and went back to another story I had before that and it was kinda like a Quentin Tarantino movie, I didn't make it linear, it was like pulp Fiction where it was like I went back and then I went forward and, you can go out there and see 'em all.

But all of 'em got great traction and that was really the inspiration behind who squeezed my lemons were those stories and the fact that, we all have a story. I wanted to find a way to memorialize that going forward. And the best way I thought to do that was writing and publishing a book.

Jerry Bauer: did you just start the book right then?

Eric Montes: So interestingly enough I think, I had started it in the sense that on my phone we all, we have that notes app, right? And so I think it was over 10 years. I have a thing in my notes app that has all these things I've jotted down. If I heard something, let's say it was from you that, was inspirational or something that hit me really hard I would jot it down.

I would leave the meeting, or I'd leave the situation, I'd jotted down and I had hundreds [00:11:00] of these, literally three, 400 of 'em I could show you. And they I didn't know what I was gonna do with 'em. I was like, I'm gonna figure this out one day and see, how these can play out.

And once I put these stories out there and they resonated, I'm like, bingo. It hit me. I'm like, I'm gonna use these truths I've learned and put 'em in a book. so I did, the hard part was putting them in place and where they should be and making it in sync for people to read.

And that's where the whole lemon to Lemonade stand came in. I've always had an affinity for that analogy. And I broke it down into the lemons, the squeeze and the lemonade stand, and mix and matched things I've learned over the years and stories I have behind them.

And put it in the book.

Jerry Bauer: The note app and they have more than one now. Different note apps on your phone really help a lot because I drive a lot or travel and stuff, and where I can't necessarily grab my phone and type something out. In other words.

Find the wheel of a car, but you can talk into it, it can transcribe it and put it in note. And now they have it where you can have it remind you two weeks later to [00:12:00] read that again. Because you might hear something on, through a podcast, you might hear something on the radio go, I gotta remember that.

I gotta remember that. And then you set it up where it tags you to remind you things down the road. And I've gone back in my note app and go. Wow, I remember this, and it's, that's a great way to do it.

Eric Montes: And the other thing too is after I placed everything where I wanted it, I thought it was in sync and I thought it flowed well. I was still going back in my mind making changes. It's still going back. And it was like almost endless. You almost have to get to a point where, and this is a truth in the book, where it's, it's good enough to ship, and I say that about products, but I it's true for a book too.

It's good enough. Just put it out there because. It could be endless editing, I'm sure in the podcast. You just have to get to a point where it's done and go forward.

Jerry Bauer: Most every time. Every time I go, this is announced,

Eric Montes: That's enough. And there was,

Jerry Bauer: buttons.

Eric Montes: I have truth number two, which is, perfection hides pain, [00:13:00] and that was supposed to be truth number one in the book. It was provocative, it was controversial. You can take it literally or figuratively. So I wanted that to be the first bang in the book.

And this is a true story. I was with a friend of mine here in Dallas, and just like I was talking about jotting down things that I hear, he had said something, I think we were having a beer at one of the local Burger, burger joints, and he had said, trust is earned because people deal with a lot of spam.

All day long. And I thought that was pretty cool. And so I said, everything that we do in life is built on trust. And I'm like, that has to be the first truth. And so that that first truth that I put in there was something that came out on the very last minute before I was gonna get the first proof copy.

So I made the change and I think 24 hours later we submitted it. 

Jerry Bauer: Is that your favorite one then by being number one?

Eric Montes: That I love being number one. There's no doubt about it, right? As we all do. But yeah, that's a really good one. Just because it's the trust is the foundation of our life, right? You have to have [00:14:00] trust with people. We deal with people you do business with, relationships. We have I just think it's the center of life and so that was very appropriate to put that.

As number one. And he dismissed it at the time he was talking about it in just a very benign way, just a very nonchalant way. And I said, wait a minute. I said, say that again. And so I remembered it, I put it in the book and so it moved what I was gonna do for number one to number two, which is perfection, heights, pain.

And I've gotten a lot of flack for that one too, because people are like, that's provocative. You don't, and I say, listen, it's a lot of these truths you can take literally or figuratively. You just have to. Hopefully understand how it applies for your life and maybe how it can, help in the future.

But sometimes if you take it literally, it might be controversial, which is cool.

Jerry Bauer: So did. Since you, basically, what you've told me is you your family wasn't aware you were doing this. None of the 100 or from your, like a couple or from your wife or children or anything like that. Or,

Eric Montes: Hey, thi she thought I was going out drinking beer. She didn't realize I was writing a book. That's a funny story. We laugh about that.[00:15:00] 

Jerry Bauer: so did you find somebody local, a local person help you through this or the process? The public Sure. And stuff like that, or?

Eric Montes: Yeah, one, one. Once I decided to do something, Jerry I think you're similar minded. I go all in it. I'm consumed by it, so I would be like, if we were at the mall on a weekend and, the girls are shopping, I would be the guy sitting there on the bench, but I wouldn't be looking at TikTok videos.

I wouldn't be consuming, I would be writing. I would be trying to figure out the format on what I wanted and thinking and all that. So it's it was a very consuming thing for me once I decided to do it. And that's like everything I do. And once I decided to do it, like whether it's starting a business or, getting into a relationship or doing the book, it's, I'm all in and I'm all in to make it, to make it the best that I could possibly make it for the benefit of, others and myself and so forth.

Jerry Bauer: Have you thought about number two yet? The next book?

Eric Montes: I haven't I'm actually, I have not even looked at the sales figures for this one yet. That's. Story. Yeah. Everybody asks me what have you sold? How many books have you sold? I haven't even looked. It's been six weeks. And they're like, why haven't you looked? I said what's it gonna do for me?

I'm already, I'm gung-ho about [00:16:00] it. I'm motivated to push it. I'm putting it on social every single day. I post every day, not a day goes by where I don't reply or comment or talk about, who squeezed my lemons. So I'm really focused on, getting traction and seeding this book. And we'll see where the future takes us.

I think I left the door open in my mind on, a a subsequent, book or something else, but, we'll see. We'll see where it takes us.

Jerry Bauer: That's awesome. The tell us a little bit about, since we did used to work years ago. Not in the same office, but for the same company. Tell me about the company you are the owner of now, Magnus, because I actually have some questions about that. Tell me all you're doing there.

Eric Montes: Sure. So Magnus is a product of a journey that's happened over the last, 15 years. As I, you were in. Midwest at, at some point then you moved to Long Island, what, 10 years ago?

Jerry Bauer: Yes, correct.

Eric Montes: And by the way, I have fond memories of Long Island as a kid. We used to go up to Freeport New York.

My, my father was born in New York City.

Jerry Bauer: Okay.

Eric Montes: That's where him and my mom met. But we used to go up there as kids in this Pontiac Station wagon driving up from Orlando in the [00:17:00] summer, with those rear facing seats. No seat belts. We would do this as kids. And I just remember going up there and life was so different then, because you didn't have cell phones.

I'm not that old, but we didn't have cell phones, so we would go out and catch lightning bugs and different things and the pools. But anyway, so I have very affectionate, thoughts and history on Long Island. Great

Jerry Bauer: It's a, it is a great area. But going back to the company, Magnus, are you're doing chemicals as well as, tell me about the equipment you're doing or the equipment cleaning and stuff like that.

Eric Montes: Yeah, so Magnus is a very special company in the sense that it's the model that entrepreneurs look for their entire lives and usually never find. It's the reoccurring revenue model. And so Magnus is the, it's the razor to the razor blade or the ink cartridge to the printer.

We have essentially created a niche in a very commoditized market, which is cleaners, right? Cl cleaners is the milk of the industry. Our chemicals as we can call it, is, is a very commoditized marketplace. And so what we've managed to do and, competing with.

People who have been around a long time, like the Ecolab, as and Proctor and [00:18:00] Gamble. And that is, is very difficult to do. But if you can carve out a niche, which is what we've done in Magnus, you can be very successful and you can scale it in a big way. And so when we started Magnus 12 years ago, my partner and I, Harry, uh, who I met, kind of, um.

Kind of on a, it on a whim when I sold my last company and didn't really know how to meet 'em. But we did, and it turned out to be the I think once or twice in our life we meet somebody or something happens that changes the trajectory of our life. And that was one of 'em. Uh, he, his name is Harry and he was basically the visionary of Magnus.

And I had, he didn't have the chemical background, but he had the equipment background and he had some other companies. I was the, the operator, I was the, the salesperson that went out. And so we made a really good match when we met and started Magnus at the time. And we built it to put manufacturers of food service equipment in the chemical business.

And so basically you have ovens and ice machines and different, fryers, different pieces of equipment that they sell once every seven to 10 years. But as you and I know, the chemical sells once every seven days,[00:19:00] 

Jerry Bauer: Right.

Eric Montes: that's where the razor to the razor blade comes in. And they love the idea of it because it allows them to create this reoccurring revenue stream that they didn't have before, but only with parts.

And then, what we'll do is take a combi oven, for example, a convection oven, it's got steam and it's a, they call 'em a combi oven. So that, for example, they're all different, right? There's a bunch of manufacturers of 'em, we'll create a cleaner specific for that piece of equipment and we'll do all the testing.

So we'll take that oven in-house and we'll go to their facility and we'll do testing, which sometimes takes two years and we'll. They're all different in terms of how much water they use and how their spray patterns are with the cleaning. And we'll have a base formula and we go in and we tweak it based on those different, parameters.

And what we come up with is the best product for that piece of equipment that you could possibly use. And it's not an off the shelf product, it becomes their brand. Magnus as a model, we own the formulations, we have the ip, we have three patents right now. We have another patent in work and we have the contracts in place with a lot of the chains and dealers and [00:20:00] distributors.

So we manufacture anywhere around the world.

Jerry Bauer: That is awesome because I will tell you that I know what you mean. And outside of ovens, if you buy a piece of furniture now or for years, they'll sell you the whole kit to keep the piece of. Furniture looking nice and I don't care, and we will use chemicals for an example because I do have a chemical background.

I'll tell my wife don't buy that kit. I can get something. And she'll look at me and she said, we're buying a kit. And then you always use the kit because I always wait. I think no, this piece of equipment, this ke, these chemicals are geared to this piece of equipment or it's not a piece of equipment.

It's, it's, it's furniture. Because great concept. I never thought of that. That makes sense now it, I'm putting two and two together and getting the four, so

Eric Montes: And to your point, we supply starter kits to a lot of 'em. And realizing that these starter kits, to your point on like that furniture kit it propels a lot of the reorders and propels a lot of the traction that they get in chains and different dealers and things like that. So the [00:21:00] starter kits are very important because it comes with the oven or it comes with the ice machine, or it comes with the fryer.

And then customers hit a QR code and they know how to reorder it through that manufacturer, and we supply it globally.

Jerry Bauer: That's wild because I actually have a new customer. I do a lot of food production now, and this is not food, but they're making cosmetics and they're making creams and lotions primarily for men and. It's amazing. They do it all through social media and through selling kits. It's kinda like the razor, get it in their hands and they're gonna reorder.

It's amazing. And I, when I went there for the first time oh, a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, I don't even negotiate with 'em on the phone and stuff like that. And I actually toured the plant and I expected it to be small. It was not they, it was big time. I was surprised. And I said, I'm talking to them and I'm emailing with them.

You know what happens? Social media gets ahold of me talking to them. I'm getting bombarded with [00:22:00] ads every time I go on social media, I'm getting ads from 'em. And I said, I didn't, you just don't know. And I said, it all evolves around the starter kit, and they said, yes. It all evolves around the getting, getting the product in the hands at a discount, and people reorder and reorder.

Eric Montes: That's right. And that's a great point. We, our mantra, which we've lived since day one, is delight the customer and everyone prospers. It's it's on the wall in our building here in Texas for everybody to see. We have a great team that lives by that mantra, day in and day out.

We truly strive to delight. All of our customers, all of our partner Ven vendor partners anybody who comes in contact with our company gets that kind of service. And so it's really important because, once our customers go through this testing process I was talking about, and gets a product that they want they, they don't do it again.

They don't want to do it again because it takes so long. It's a two year sales cycle sometimes [00:23:00] or testing cycle. And so once they go through this, they don't wanna do it again. And, we service 'em in a way that makes them not wanna look anywhere else. Makes them want to continue to do business with us.

So Magnus has, through our team, we have a great team. We have created a reputation in the market of excellence and performance with our products. We become the go-to. So we get, we get calls now all the time, Hey, can you help us here? Can you help us there? So we're at the point where we're, every company has a resource issue, right?

Whether you're a $10 billion company or a $10 million company, you're always trying to figure out what's priority and what's not. And so we're trying to figure out now how do we, how do we structure our company going forward so it can scale even more.

Jerry Bauer: Is it primarily the equipment, is it primarily in the hospitality field or does it go outside? Because I've seen on LinkedIn you, you talk about ovens and stuff like that. Is it only for food service or do you doing stuff outside of food service as well?

Eric Montes: So primarily we're 99% food service at the moment.

Jerry Bauer: Okay.

Eric Montes: We have a brand called Workforce. It's our [00:24:00] in-house brand, like you would say, up and up at Target, or great value at Target. At Walmart, Kirkland, Costco. So we have a workforce brand that services the gap in what the manufacturers aren't using and what your, to your point, the need is in the market, whether it's food service or hospitality.

So that workforce brand fills in those gaps, which would be, the commoditized stuff like pot and pan soap and floor cleaners, and some of the specialty items that we have patented. We put on our workforce label. So yeah, we are trying to branch into into those segments outside of just strictly food service.

Jerry Bauer: That's great since you haven't done it. I will do it. I will hold up,

Eric Montes: Nice. That's very exciting. I

Jerry Bauer: hold up a picture of your book

Eric Montes: Thank

Jerry Bauer: As we come to almost the close here, is there any questions that I should have asked that I haven't yet?

Eric Montes: Wow, that was 30 minutes. That was quick.

Jerry Bauer: Tell me what I should have asked you that you've been begging to tell the story about all day.

Eric Montes: I just, I'm just happy to see you, Jerry. It's been too long. [00:25:00] And so it just, it really made me think that, we have to continue to keep in touch with good people. There's not many of us out there that are like you and, true.

Jerry Bauer: It's what this show was built on and just so you know, and I know. You before the last ISSA show, and I haven't seen you in, let's say 15 years. I sent you a message through LinkedIn. Are you gonna be at the ISA, which I did go on your website. You are a member of ISSA, correct? Yeah. And you said no, you weren't gonna back.

And I went to the ISSA show in Vegas this year. I wasn't selling anything. I wasn't buying anything. And I went and I'm smart enough not to gamble anymore. Because I've never won. So I went there just to network, to see old friends, meet new friends, and to bring people together because it's hopefully somebody who listens, reaches out to you.

Hopefully someone reaches out to the, my, my past guest, the, my last guest I actually met at the ISSA show. I don't think any of us really understand how large the cleaning and chemical industry is. It's huge. It is huge. And if you can't, if you, I'm almost said if you can't, if you don't like [00:26:00] working for one company, but you like the industry, you can shift and you're the perfect example of it.

You and your partner have started up a company that I never even thought of because my mind's moving all the time thinking about how. A new moss trap and stuff like that because it keeps me young. How many people have you seen. At my age who's just given up and they just keep riding the rails and, trying to get one more paycheck out and living off this.

And I, I'm not, I, I'm just having too much fun. And you, it's kinda like the book. You gotta go out and make the fun. You gotta go out and do it yourself. You can't sit back and wait for someone else to do it for you. So how do people buy the book? I assume it's on Amazon or would you rather 'em go to your website or what's the best way to get the book?

Eric Montes: It is. It's on Amazon, so you can search it. Who squeezed? My lemons actually. On Google, if you search who Squeeze My Lemons, it comes up before the Led Zeppelin song. Now. So when you did that at, when I did that, at first, led Zeppelin would come up, you know that lemon song?

So it's it's coming up before, before the Lemon song now, which is a, I think a big feat.

But you can go to the website, it's who squeeze my [00:27:00] lemons.com. And then it's also available on Amazon and it's all over social media right now, so it's gotten a

Jerry Bauer: Now, just so you know, I'm gonna ride your coattails. I don't have what I do after this. And you'd, I do the podcast, then I bring out a YouTube then I do a blog post where I talk about the interview, we talk about the book stuff, and I'm. I'm trying to get on Google as well, so when someone googles the book, you'll be number one, two, and three, but I might be four or five something down the road where I want someone to come to my website and see all the things I'm doing.

So I'm writing your coattails on this as well 

Eric Montes: we'll put the podcast on the website and  

Jerry Bauer: sounds great.

Eric Montes: people to it as well, so look forward to it.

Jerry Bauer: And I will have all your contact information on it. And, um, it's, I've done, I've done over 40 of these and it's a thrill being here with you today. I've always wanted to get back in touch with you and this has been a great pleasure for me.

Eric Montes: Jerry, you're a good man.

Jerry Bauer: Stay well. Okay. I'll be in touch. Take care. [00:28:00] Bye.

Alex: What a conversation between Jerry Bauer and Eric Montez today. Two industry veterans who spent careers selling chemicals, both now building something bigger on their own terms — that's exactly what this show is about.

Go grab Eric's book, Who Squeezed My Lemons, on Amazon or head to whosqueezedmylemons.com — the link is in the show notes. It's a fast read and you'll go back to it more than once.

And if this is your first time listening, head over to HospitalityCleaning101.com — that's Jerry's home base for the blog, resources, and everything built for people in food service, hospitality, and the cleaning and sanitation world.

If you got something out of today's episode, do Jerry a favor — leave a review, hit subscribe, and pass it along to someone in the industry. That's how this show keeps growing.

This has been Cleaning Processes with Jerry. We'll see you next time."