3 Minutes on a Park Bench with Noel from Maidpro Westchester

Patch: What services does Maidpro Westchester offer?

Noel: We clean homes and small businesses, for homes we clean the kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, hallways, stairs and we often add specialty services such as fridge, oven, inside cabinets and even interior windows when preferred by the customer. For business we customize a cleaning plan run through pursuant to the layout and scheduling needs of the business. To clarify, we don’t do major commercial cleaning jobs, those large companies in need of large equipment.

Patch: Can you tell us about the 49 point checklist?

Noel: Sure, the 49 Point checklist is a trademarked list of all the cleaning points of a regular cleaning visit. The list serves two functions, it reports what has been cleaned so customers may reference it with pride and they have the opportunity to cross check any concerns. It also serves as a benchmark to alert customers of any cleaning services either outside our scope or within the special services list. We use a comment section on the checklist to have the cleaner, we call them PROS due to the substantial training, communicate any points about the cleaning to the customer.

Patch: What is your definition of success?

Noel: I have a humble definition of success, but I believe it is more on point than the grandiose definitions. Success, to me, is the achievement of a comfortable life style while in pursuit of excellence within a chosen job, profession or trade that brings joy to worker, manager, or in my case, owner. The corny saying, you don’t work a day in your life if you work at something you love has its virtues.

Patch: If you had to recommend three books to someone, what would they be and why?

Noel: Well, I’m a non-fiction reader, so please forgive me in advance, that all my picks are non-fiction. The first book would be, Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. For obvious reasons, this book caught my fancy. It’s not only a good overall read, but I found it particularly interesting that the author is a philosopher, lawyer, professor and among those distinguished titles, she adds, homemaker, wife and mother. The book is not only a practical guide but it reminds me of all the established tasks we have fine-tuned here at Maidpro Westchester and it magnifies horrific concern of the key mistakes done by what we like to call our “future customers.” I’m referring to the absolute error of having a person responsible for both child care and house cleaning. There is no safe way of achieving both, as an important task must be neglected for the sake of the other. It also reminds me of the catastrophic error of hiring informal help and exposing, otherwise well run households, to tax liabilities (remember some high profile members of congress convicted for failing to pay taxes related to hiring domestic help). In addition, these same savvy consumers hire informal workers and expose themselves to liabilities related to injuries on the job, breakage of prized possessions and several other high risk scenarios.

Book recommendation two is probably On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, although at first glance, this selection might appear a bit morbid, but the underlying subject of the book is “Life” and all it offers at our final stages. Let’s face it, there are few things certain in life but death is one of them (and for you science fiction hounds, I stand by my statement but I’ll add “for the foreseeable future” for you guys. The insights in this book not only open our eyes to just how scripted our emotions and experience are at this sentinel moments, but it also gives us coping skills that ready us for our faithful days and those of our loved ones while simultaneously refining our sense of empathy.

And the final book recommendation is The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene This is the odd ball of the group, and it introduces so many conceptual and existential thoughts, how could I not add this to “suggested reading.” Since we are get caught up in life’s daily challenges, I find this book not only offers an escape, but it also reminds us just how inconsequential our day to day affairs really are, in the scheme of the entire universe or as the book teaches us, maybe multiverse. If one immerses themselves in the book, it will truly be a satisfying read and it will ground us, since we all need some grounding every now and then.

Patch: How did you get into the cleaning industry?

Noel: My cleaning industry ingress is a bit unusual, but hang in there while I point out the parallels in my background. I’ve been a consultant and staff worker in the health care industry for almost 30 years. The reimbursement specialties were mostly in the home health care industry and it is there, where home visits, custodial care needs and staff management skills were well built. The correlations between the two seemingly different industries were abundant and applied to the cleaning industry business in reaction to substantial adverse changes from the previous industry.

Patch: What would you say to a reader who is considering hiring a cleaning service, but may be timid about the security and privacy of his or her home/business?

Noel: First, I’d mention, I’m the same way, I cringe at the thought of having anyone, much less a stranger walk through my home, even if I’m there to observe, but odds are, I don’t have the time to observe, heck it I did, I’d do it myself. As a result of this commonly found timid concern, I’d emphasize we heavily pre-screen, front load interview, background check and bond all our employees. We understand the trust you give to us and reciprocate the faith you have in us with our thorough hiring procedures.

Patch: What is your favorite part about your job?

Noel: We are prepared for just about every eventuality, and we remind our future and current customers, you lower your risk exposure with us since we have a quick claim process for any insurance claim, we pay all required taxes for our staff (unemployment, social security, workers compensation) an oversight for many customers who choose to hire domestic help independently, at considerable financial risk to their personal finance status.

Patch: How does Maidpro Westchester stand out from the competition?

Noel: I have to throw an oxymoron here, because my favorite part about the job is dealing with customers and staff and balancing their needs and achieving satisfied workers and customers. When don’t rest with the favorable feedback we actively pursue continued feedback. What makes my reply overtly contradictory is that I’m otherwise rather introverted and private, but that all goes out the window when working on making our customers and staff happy.

Patch: What is the best business advice you have ever received and who gave it to you?

Noel: I guess I”ll be a little wimpy here, and answer with two sources, since I’m completely unable to pick one among them. I’ve been blessed with, not one, but two terrific business coaches. One light hearted piece of advice which is so obvious it sometimes eludes us, would be, “…throw money at the problem.” Wise advice given to me by Ryan Rabideau and expert consultant of the cleaning industry working at Maidpro’s central office. It was important I hear it, because my disciplined personal finance habits, might have prevented implementation of this simplistic problem solving approach. The other, equally wise piece of advice is a bit more technical and not quite a quote but more of a teaching and encouragement to use breakeven analysis for specific systems, for example she gave me a breakeven formula for direct mail, including a calculation of the breakeven response rate. As an owner who thrives on analytical approaches, hence my introverted ways, it is great to have methods to measure performance beyond the more obvious methods. This little tidbit I attribute to Deedie Domenicali a generous wise retired executive contributing her valuable time to us business owners through the SCORE program.

Patch: How can readers contact you or find out more about Maidpro Westchester?

Noel: How to reach us, let me count the ways! We encourage being contacted in whatever way suits our future customers best, however we do slightly favor calls since the process of issuing estimates is a bit interactive and not as amenable to our many other communication sources, but we won’t discourage any of them. We’d start anyone out with our web page so customers can gauge their interest. We don’t want to turn anyone off by overwhelming them when they are not ready for services, especially since our pricing structure substantially rewards recurring customers based on level of frequency. Thereafter, we welcome calls, text messages, emails, heck we don’t even mind lining up with the competition at our Home Advisor broker page, which will suggest other services, in addition to our services. I’ll even add, if our site or staff report we don’t service your area, give me a call directly and I’ll happily authorize services for your area or find you someone who will! For the aforementioned contact points, see below:

Office 914-219-3389 – Fax 914-214-5114 – email: Westchester.ny@maidpro.com
Mobile for texting 914-570-4154 – website maidpro.com/Westchester