This FRANCHISE MODEL SOLVES what most businesses get WRONG

#entrepreneurship #franchisebusiness #anagocleaningsystems #podcast

On the Built4Profit Podcast, hosts interview Adam Povlitz, CEO of  ⁨@AnagoCleaning⁩   and a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine and Forbes Business Council, about building and scaling Anago’s three-tier commercial cleaning franchise model. 

Povlitz explains how Anago separates cleaning operations from sales, marketing, and back-office administration to reduce overhead and allow owners to focus on their strengths, and why the company focuses only on commercial, contract-based cleaning. 

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Get to know Anago Cleaning Systems:  

Website: www.anagocleaning.com
Facebook:  www.Facebook.com/AnagoCleaning 
Instagram:  www.Instagram.com/AnagoCleaning 
LinkedIn:  www.Linkedin.com/company/anago-cleaning-systems/  
YouTube:  www.youtube.com/AnagoCleaning 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the first episode where we're featuring someone who has been a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine Inc. and Forbes. And he's on the Forbes Business Council. Pretty impressive. He is impressive. And the company that they have built and scaled, starting with his father, is also very impressive. So today on the podcast, we have Adam Pavlitz from Anna Go Cleaning System. Welcome to Built for Profit Podcast, where entrepreneurs share real stories and strategies that actually work. We're here to inspire, challenge, and give you the playbook to profit with purpose. Let's get into it. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Say it like a lady's name, Anna Go Cleaning Systems.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Thanks for writing it down. Very easy to remember.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Everyone tries to give like an accent to it, like Anna Go or my dad used to joke, he would say, like your ex-girlfriend was named Anna. You know, Anna Go.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

It'd be funny if it had an ex-girlfriend named.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

None on the list, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Adi Cirasi, what does the name mean? Was it named after something?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

So there's actually a story behind that where he had a friend who actually had a company. It was some sort of like, what do you call it? Like a one of those masks. The N95 mask. So it was a brand of those. He had the name. My dad was friends with him. He liked the name. He was playing around with, you know, professional maintenance or just some of those generic names. He heard the name. He tells his mother, she was like an old Greek woman. And she goes, Oh my gosh, I think that means blessed by God. And so then it's like, well, you can't go with any other name after that. And funny is then we find out later it doesn't mean that. It means to guide or uplift. And so we look at it now and say, like, we guide or uplift our franchise owners through small business ownership.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

I like that. And that's why you're the CEO now. Just because you've connected all those things. I won't tell you when I looked it up, it was a Japanese word for a seaweed eel. It's like you're not the first person. Darn it.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Yeah, it's probably one of the reasons we didn't go there. Because, like, why would we want an eel to clean my office? You know?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Tell us a little bit about what Anago does, who you specify in helping and serve as clients. Because one of the things that you mentioned was this is a technology company.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

There's a lot to unpack there.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

One at a time. We got a question about those two things.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

So Anigo is a three-tier commercial cleaning franchise business. And I specify three-tier because most franchises are two-tier. So, like your listeners are probably familiar with McDonald's or something where it's the corporate office and the people who own the restaurant. Ours is three-tier. I manage the corporate office, then we have what's called a master franchise. And then within those, there's what we call a unit or janitorial franchise. It's kind of easier to think about upside down. So your janitorial franchise is exactly that, right? It's someone who owns an independent cleaning business, and essentially they manage, you know, the chemicals, the equipment, they train their people on the proper procedures, and they keep the buildings clean. Our model hypothesizes is okay, but when they get those accounts, who's going to handle the back office side of things? So what we've done is we separated that into two, right? So most cleaning is done at night, and then most of the daytime aspect of the business is handled by a separate entity called the master franchise. And so essentially you have your unit franchise who's handling the cleaning aspects of the business, and your master franchise, their sole role is focused on sales, marketing, and back office administration and like daytime customer service. So it creates this cool synergy where you know your unit franchise owner, they own a cleaning business, but they don't have to operate 24-7 because that's what a cleaning business is. Sell and administration by day, clean by night. And so they don't have to have any sales team, they don't have to have a website, any advertising expense. And then the master franchise, all they do is focus on sales, you know, like the sales, they have a sales team, they have the website, they spend the PPC budget and do the back office accounting, but they have to do zero cleaning. And so it creates, like I said, it creates a great synergy because everyone's saving money by minimizing their overhead along the way.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Those separate entities, then, Adam?

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Because everybody's showing every their A game to what they're contributing.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Because it's like I could say, Shay, you're a great cook, you should start a restaurant, but then there's a massive difference between being a great cook and what it takes to, you know, properly operate a restaurant business with, you know, turnover, spoilage, marketing, you know, employee recruitment and retention. It it becomes this kind of amoeba. And so we basically say, if you're a great cook, come cook. And if you're great at business operations, you know, there's a role for you as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

It's interesting because you kind of almost saw the challenge, if you will, because a lot of people go into business because they're good at a certain skill set, like you said, cooking, but they're not sure of how to hire people to scale or manage books or find the other parts of it. So you kind of took that obstacle away.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

I want to make sure that I've got this. So if I want to franchise with you, they come in at the cleaning level.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Either.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

So both are versions of think of it like you know, almost like a blue-collar franchise and a white-collar franchise. So someone who's, you know, a mid to senior career professional has managed a marketing team, sales team, operations team. You would come in, it's a higher ticket at a master franchise level. And then you would be the owner of a huge territory. So think Atlanta, South Florida, Dallas, you know, what, you know, big, big markets like that, several counties. I think the average territory is like two million people in it. It's huge. But within that territory, you operate as two things. One, you are a franchise business as well, right? That's sort of the best kept secret in franchising, is like people make franchise businesses or convert their businesses to franchise because there's a lot of money to be made in the franchise fees, in the royalty, and all that sort of stuff. And so we allow the master franchise territory owner to come in as legally, I think the term is a subfranchisor. So they are a franchisor within our brand, but only within their territory. And then they are recruiting those unit janitorial franchises and then handling all of the sales and administration, like I was saying.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

The part that I like about it is that it's almost like no matter where your skill set is, there's a spot for you. And this is all commercial.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yes, no residential. It's actually a totally different line of business, just because how the insurance works and the revenue versus expense. Cause in the commercial world, your revenue is considered fixed versus variable, whereas in residential, your revenue is also variable. So like an office gets cleaning five days a week and people are there and maybe there's less people, more people, but it still needs the cleaning. And so you sign annual contracts. If you're getting your house cleaned and Susie the cleaner comes every Wednesday and you're on vacation, guess what? You say, Hey, Susie, don't come that week because I'm not gonna be in town. I don't need it clean. And so your variable revenue kind of bounces around. But what happens on both is you have fixed labor expenses, right? If you're trying to create a residential cleaning business, you can't say, Oh, we're closed. And so we've just found that side of the world. I know there's lots of businesses that can do it. It's just different challenges.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

You brought up masks and COVID. So I'm gonna lean back into that. So during that period when people were not, and you see people kind of going back to working at home, I guess. Did it increase the need for your services? Because I know that in some of the offices we had deep cleans, right? It was a different kind of clean.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

We rapidly pivoted to the disinfection model. It was about six weeks of 80-hour a week work, but we quite literally created an entire program and actually outsourced from a medical professional. And we have a full disinfection program that we created. There's a massive difference between like sanitization and disinfection, even like definitionally. And what you find is most people are just like wiping down their desk with a Lysol wipe during that period. The dwell time, you have to leave that Lysol wipe and leave your desk wet for 10 minutes in order for it to kill COVID. You did not do anything to actually kill those germs. Now we have chemicals where it's near instant like seconds versus minutes like that. I mean, look, everybody had a rough year that year. We grew, but not a lot. It was like a single digit, like 8% growth year. But when you're growing 8% and you know, half the world is closing by 50% or more, you know, you go, okay, well, we did all right.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Yeah, I love stories like that where you pivot. And we saw a lot of businesses that did the leaned in. So, and then you started in the company, not as CEO, which we find this track record interesting. So tell us a little bit about your journey. And honestly, Adam, I think what we're interested in the most too was seeing your your inside look at it.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

My father founded the company, like I mentioned to you guys earlier, back in 1989. I had no intention of joining the family business. My background is finance. I have an MBA in finance, I worked in investment banking, and then I ended up doing corporate finance at IBM for a while. So it's 2008. IBM is going through this massive round of layoff. I was an analyst, I was not laid off. I was given employee numbers and exit packages and was helping them determine who was going to be getting the golden parachutes and whose parachutes were not so golden. And it just left a, you know, like a pit in my stomach. I'm probably mid-20s at that point. And it's like, okay, so wait a minute. So I could be here 10, 20 years from now, and they hire some other 20-something who's deciding my fate. And I just kind of mentally checked out from there a little bit. And I was down for the holidays. My dad goes, Hey, I think I got the tiger by the tail with this Anago thing. And it was about six months later that I ended up joining. His exact words were, you know, congratulations on leaving your highfalutin finance job. My first job at Anago was I was a telemarketer during the day, and then I was a franchisee's assistant at night cleaning daycares. Humbling. But you know, you learn number one, what does it take to actually clean a building? And therefore, you're better at being able to price those jobs. But then I did all of, you know, my first tour, let's call it, in the local South Florida master franchise. I did that, I did outside sales, I did customer service, and then ultimately moved to the corporate office. My first job there, I was essentially traveling the country, meeting with the master franchisees. I didn't want it to come across as like, oh, it's the founder's son with a silver spoon coming out. So I just came out with a very like servant leadership approach of how can I help you? At the end of the day, if you make more money, if you're more profitable, I make more money as the franchise ours. And so I did, I did that. I've held one, two, probably three other roles along the way. And then it was 2015 when they promoted me to president and 2018 when I became CEO.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

So you were your dad's retirement plan.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Just were my children, just take note. And I know you mentioned very humbling experience, but now you've got, I'm sure, a very strong reputation, like with what you've built. They've seen you working hard. But did you see a shift, Adam, in how they either took coaching or took leadership or took feedback from you because you had been in those roles, you had done this, like you had been in daycares cleaning.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Absolutely. In any organization, when someone new comes in and quickly gets into a leadership role, it's always like, okay, what kind of credentials do you even have to be giving me this advice? And I probably know more than you know a typical business owner does about finance. And I can talk to you about that. But also let's talk about like how are you handling when customer issues come through? I can tell you about that because I lived it. It gives you instant credibility when it's like, no, I've I've lived it.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

I would imagine that you've put some training and systems in place, again, just based on your data. This is how your mind works. And then now you're in this strong leadership role. So, can you talk about that for the franchise? What you guys, how you support them.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

So when I got to Anigo, my dad was like, you know, the pure serial entrepreneur type person. So there was very limited SOP structure. It was very much like slap a logo on it, and you can be Anago too. And so it had to become something where it was like, okay, how do we grow in a more scalable way? When I first started, there was probably maybe 20 master franchises. So there were 20 completely different looking websites. You know, people, you give someone a graphic, they would stretch the logo and it would look all squish. And so step one was like, okay, we need to have a unified looking brand. And so it was all about creating a singular look for all the advertising, marketing, websites, all that sort of stuff. And then step two was all about the operating procedures. What do the manuals say? How are they saying it? How do we make sure everyone starts using it? And then of course that develops now into a whole video training series. And a new master franchise gets two weeks of training, one week in person, another week remote, and that's just to get you through like the first months. There's a whole program of training.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

So speaking of numbers, and I know that you're very focused on them, Adam. If you're looking at a franchise, what's a number that they're usually probably focused on, but you know that's not really going to move the needle, or that's not really where the effort or energy should be.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

That's a good question. I think I would say that the prime focus ends up being a lot of times, like how many appointments do they have, right? Because appointments are essentially like qualified leads that turn into proposals that turn into customers. That's everybody's focus. More leads, we need more leads, we need more appointments. And that's fine. But what happens is I think more top of funnel and mid-funnel stuff gets ignored and shouldn't be. It's how do you build your reputation in the community? How do you get out at all the events to ensure that when someone does need a cleaning company, they know what the heck an Anago even is? You build that brand awareness. So I would say the focus really should be more in that realm.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yeah, I think that's brilliant because you're right. Everyone's always looking for more leads and I would guess even more control on the conversion level once you're in the middle of that funnel. Like that's where we can control the rebuttals and handling those objections and things like that. We say business is a contact sport. It's people, no matter what business you're in.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Probably historically there was some consistency in people coming in and not understanding the time it takes in terms of just time that you would need to be investing on a day-to-day basis. The model is designed to scale rapidly. My average franchise owner who is operating more than a year or longer is doing 3.5 million-ish in revenue, but you have to come in as a builder. A lot of franchises pick out restaurants. It's very much like if you build it, they will come model. And it's like, okay, you build a restaurant, you have to design everything, you staff it up, and then the corporate entity does all their mega commercials and you just happen to be in a good real estate location, and people just start showing up. It's not this model. This model is a hunter model. And so if you don't wake up every day going, like, okay, how do I get more business? How do I get more franchises? What part of town haven't we prospected enough on? It doesn't work well for someone who's kind of sitting back and waiting for it.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

And I love that you disclose that because it doesn't mean it's good or bad or someone's good or bad. It's just finding the right succeed and or successful because it's a win-win. You want them to succeed in your model.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

I tell everyone during the franchise awarding process, I tell them an old African proverb and it says, in Africa, every day the lion wakes up and has to outrun the slowest gazelle or it starves. And the gazelle wakes up and every morning it has to outrun the fastest lion or it gets eaten. But every morning, everybody wakes up running. And so if that doesn't line up with how you operate, that's fine. There's plenty of businesses that might work for you, but this is that type of business.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

It's great for the right fit because you're built to scale. It's like, let's go. And you attract the people that you should be attracting and you will repel the people that you should be repelling. So it's some logistic questions because I am the nerd. They work out of their homes, you have an office. Does it matter? I mean, what is kind of the overhead?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Master franchises do have an office because you need to be able to meet with potential franchisees. Usually you're going to have a staff of you know anywhere from five to 15. So you need that central hub. It doesn't have to be a big office, right? You know, a couple thousand square feet or something like that, kind of a generally small office. Unit franchises work out of their home, out of a truck, whatever it is. I mean, because ultimately their office is going to all their customers' offices and making sure they're clean.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

So who are the people that are attracted to this? And we'll start with the master franchise. The people that are successful or system, they act and do it, they their background. Any common denominators?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

I think number one, I mean, it's always someone who's mid to senior level executive already. They understand how to manage a team like that at scale. And so it's more a scaling type, since it's more of a scaling type business, you're looking for someone who's already experienced scale, highly driven, highly passionate type people that, you know, like I said, they wake up every day running. And then at the unit level, the average unit franchisee is only buying somewhere in the neighborhood of about $2,000 a month in business to start. We say it's the ultimate side hustle, right? It's like, look, very low capital to get in. The work is done at night. So you're able to, if you want to keep your day job and it's just for some extra dough, fine. But most people come in and it's just like, I'm looking to make a couple extra bucks. But then ultimately they grow. I mean, we just did our annual conference three, four weeks ago. And one of the ladies there, she has a million dollar a year cleaning business under Anigo. And I think she started, I want to say her original purchase was a $3,000 a month purchase. And so grow to $80 something,000 a month. She's killing it. And this is her career, and she owns a big business. I think she has 20 employees. So it allows you to come in and say, I just want to be small, pay for my kids' college tuition or something like that. Or you come in and you go, wait a minute, I could totally see this replacing my primary source of income.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

I love brands like that because you know, really, I think everyone to some degree, and I'll categorize everyone, but a majority of people at some point in time have find, yeah, I'd really like to work for myself or build something or create a legacy or whatever the particular motivation is. And it's the cost or the barrier of time and money to get into a franchise. And a lot of them, you know, they have brick and mortar built out. It's one of their biggest expenses are signing elites, and you know all that. And how nice that you could, I don't hear side hustle a lot, but they can ramp up into it. Yeah. That doesn't say the potential with it is refreshing to hear because the potential, right? Tell your dad we like his model. Yeah, you're okay, Adam, but you know, we really like your dad.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

I've been hearing that since college.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

All right. Any last words of wisdom, Adam, especially to leaders who are scaling and making changes or taking over a business?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

You know, something I've been focused on a lot lately over the last maybe a couple of years is scaling my leadership team. And, you know, I think what what ends up happening is most people, as you climb the ladder in your career, right? You go from manager to director to VP and so on, get there because the way you do it works. And so then the company goes, oh, we're gonna put more people under him because he's you know, he's doing a great job. What you find out when you reach the CEO position is you have to completely unlearn. Everything is now flowing through you because everyone is doing it your way, but now you've become your own bottleneck, right? You've kneecapped your business because every decision has to be made by you. And so I've invested really heavily in the last few years in building out a senior leadership team. I've hired probably 12 different, you know, director and above level positions and 3C suite people. And now more about empowering them and saying, okay, what do you need? How can I help you? Here's the goal, here's the objective. What can I do to help you? Frankly, you're probably smarter than I am when it comes to marketing or operations or sales. And I'm just give you the vision and the direction and step back and frankly just get the heck out of the way. I think that's been crucial for Anago's growth over the last few years because I was my own bottleneck of growth. And now I have, you know, some senior people that are tackling the core growth factors. And it allows me time to, frankly, to dream a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

A lot of people can relate and say, like someone who's really grown and scaled to drop the mic. Thank you, Adam. This has been such a pleasure and we appreciate you know your time being on here, but just sharing this wisdom. The whole point of the Built for Profit podcast is to collapse that curve of learning and hear from seasoned leaders like yourself. And for anyone listening, the Anago isn't the only place you can find Adam. He is also a contributor to Entrepreneur magazine. So you might have maybe read some of his articles on there. He's also on the board for Forbes, which is the first time we've been able to say that on the Built for Profit podcast. So remember, we're on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. So you can get us on any platform where our podcasts are readily available. But Adam, this has been great. Thanks for the knowledge and thanks for being a guest on the podcast. Thanks, Adam. Can't wait to see the growth you're going to do in 2026.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Me too. My pleasure, guys.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Elizabeth, do you know that when you're launching a franchise, one of the biggest expense and biggest risks typically is the build out? I can see this. With missed deadlines, overrunning budgets and stuff like that, they can increase anywhere between 10 and 25% of unexpected expenses. No good. That's where Build Point USA comes in. They, everything from pre-construction to the grand opening, they're with you every step of the way to make sure those things don't happen. Yeah. And they've got over 25 years of experience in building franchises nationally. So when you've got that much on the line, why would you trust it to anyone other than someone who's got a right team who can get it done? They've got the reputation, the proven expertise, and the national resources. So if you're ready to get your doors opened faster with no unexpected surprises, go to buildpointusa.com or click in the show notes below to schedule your 30-minute discovery call before they're experts about your project. It's a generous offer. It kind of is. So again, buildpointusa.com. Check them out. We'll see you in the next episode.