Straight Talk – an ISSA Podcast
Straight Talk, an ISSA podcast, presents a curated playlist of the hottest topics facing the cleaning industry today—from health and safety to infection prevention to innovative products to business development and much more. ISSA, the worldwide cleaning association, brings together the top experts and decision makers give our listeners and members the most up-to-date information for their businesses.
Episodes
547 episodes
From Custodian to CEO: A Family Legacy Built on Showing Up
From custodian to company founder, J. Ernesto Moreno built a business with family at its heart. In this conversation with ISSA Media Director Jeff Cross, Moreno and his daughters, Kyleigh and Kennedy, share how they’re growing Moreno & Asso...
Leverage, Language—and a Bigger Table
Victor Lizano has spent more than 30 years in financial services, much of that time working alongside small and medium-sized businesses as a banker, mentor and advisor. Today he applies that experience to the cleaning industry as co-owner and g...
Before the Forecast Becomes the Emergency
Is your business ready for extreme weather? Preparation involves employee safety, buildings, vehicles, equipment and the customers and suppliers you depend on.
ISSA Healthcare Turns Its Booth Into a Hub at ISSA Show North America 2026
More than 600 exhibitors will fill the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas when the expo floor at ISSA Show North America opens on Nov. 17. For someone who manages cleaning in a hospital, or wants to win that work as a contr...
ISSA Healthcare Takes Its Surfaces Conversation to Melbourne
The format ISSA Healthcare has refined over nine years of U.S. summits is heading overseas. On Oct. 7, 2026, the day before the ISSA Cleaning & Hygiene Expo opens at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, ISSA Healthcar...
Stop Chasing Tactics and Find Your Marketing Recipe
Your marketing isn’t delivering. Should you spend more on ads, make videos, update your website or figure out AI search?
When a Cleaner Quits, the Costs Keep Coming
Employee turnover is more than a staffing inconvenience—it can quietly erode a cleaning company’s profitability.
Why Mold Remediation Shouldn't Grade Its Own Work
After a mold or water-damage remediation job wraps up, someone has to decide whether the space is clean. For Raj Manickam, CEO of SteamMaster Restoration and Cleaning in Colorado's Vail Valley, that decision should never rest with the company t...
John Swigart’s Path to the ISSA Presidency
John Swigart has spent nearly three decades building a career at the company his grandfather founded, and this year he added two significant titles to his name. In April 2026, he added CEO to his letterhead, in addition to serving a...
Hidden in Plain Sight
The cleaning and restoration industries continue to struggle with recruiting, retention and finding dependable employees. Yet one potentially valuable group of workers is often overlooked—people with disabilities and others who face barriers to...
How Allan Industries Brought Robots to Work in a Union Town
Allan Industries is testing what automation looks like on the ground floor of a union town. At a newly built commercial property on Market Street in Philadelphia, autonomous vacuums and a robotic scrubber now work alongside the company’s union ...
Who Tells the Boss What to Do?
Accountability comes easily when the conversation centers on employees, supervisors and frontline managers. Expectations get set, performance gets tracked, and someone steps in when results fall short.
Certified to Advocate: Taking Restoration’s Story to Washington
What does the future of advocacy look like for the IICRC and the industries it serves?
From Opinion to Evidence: The Next Era of Professional Cleaning
At The Experience Convention & Trade Show in Las Vegas recently, three physicians spent their days talking not with patients but with carpet cleaners and disaster restoration contractors.
When Harassment Shows Up at Work
What happens when a cleaning employee reports harassment—and is your company prepared to handle it correctly?
The Future is Already Here
It’s time to give the next generation the opportunity—and freedom—to lead.
Before the Trucks Roll: Inside Disaster Communications
When a hurricane makes landfall, a tornado tears through a community, flooding overwhelms a town, or a wildfire forces thousands to evacuate, restoration contractors often arrive ready to help—but long before that first truck rolls in, an enorm...
Inside the Creation of Imperial Brady
What did it take to bring two distribution giants to the same table? This is the inside story.
Turning Customer Reviews Into Marketing Fuel
Collecting 5-star feedback is the easy part. Putting it to work is where most cleaning and restoration companies stop short.
Accountability Isn't Punishment. It's Clarity.
Why do so many business owners dread conversations about accountability? The answer may surprise you.
Hiring Without an HR Department
Hiring employees is hard enough. Doing it without an HR department can feel nearly impossible.
The Restroom Metric the Industry Never Tracked
Most facility teams can say how much soap a building goes through in a month. They can pull cleaning frequencies, towel usage, service calls, and complaint logs. What almost none of them track is whether the person who walks into the restroom c...
Integrity Commercial Products: A Company Betting on Innovation and Durability Over Commodity
What does it take to launch a manufacturing company in today's commercial cleaning industry?
The Business of Sustainability on Stage at ISSA Show
Sustainability is no longer limited to environmental responsibility. For today’s professional cleaning organizations, it is increasingly connected to efficiency, customer value, risk management, regulatory readiness, and long-term business resi...