At More Clean Of Texas, we are intensely focused on the best possible service and services to our clients. A critical factor in our success has been our continued focus on forward thinking and driving innovation to better serve our clientele as we undergo expansion. We are humbly honored to receive this award and wish to recognize and thank our entire team for their continued hard work and dedication on behalf of our clients.
Innovation Drives Success at More Clean of Texas
The 2023 Sweeper of the Year recipient has experienced tremendous growth since embracing a “forward-thinking” mentality
January 26, 2023
In an industry slow to adopt change, More Clean of Texas is breaking the mold.
Since 2004, owner Steve Watts had been serving the Abilene, TX area as an exterior commercial maintenance provider. During the day, Steve would mow lawns in the area and then at night take his Tymco out to take care of their sweeping needs.
In 2011, Steve’s son Cole joined the business and began to grow a service area around their commercial contracts. They added more landscaping services and two more sweepers.
“In Abilene, we were the only sweeping company within 100 miles so we knew in order to grow, we had to expand everything,” Cole Watts says. “We focused on word of mouth and old fashioned relationship building to get our services out there.”
Between 2011 and 2016, the company outgrew their Abilene service area and began providing services in their surrounding communities, adding satellite locations in 2 towns on the edge of that 100 mile radius. Though only a short drive away (by Texas standards, at least) from the new locations, the Watts’ quickly found out that managing people and equipment remotely required solid processes and organization. SOPs were developed to ensure every employee was sweeping a lot with the same approach no matter what location they worked in. Pre and post trip inspections were digitized, allowing ownership to track maintenance and repairs without seeing the trucks every day. Cloud based time tracking was introduced, routing and dispatch were moved from paper to iPads, and every employee was given a company email address to facilitate communication.
In 2016, they took a leap of faith and started a 3rd satellite location in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex- a stark contrast to the more suburban and rural towns that Steve and Cole were familiar with. Cole recalls, “We really grew our company strictly on word of mouth referrals from our customers, and our 3 locations were in geographically isolated towns of around 100,000 people. Expanding to an area with over 6 million residents where we had very few connections was daunting, but we were excited about the new challenge.” The company began to also develop multiple third party partnerships to obtain larger contracts, which helped to give them a footprint in the new area.
In 2017, the company experienced “rapid fire growth” adding 16 sweepers in six months. Along with the growth came hundreds of new sites to sweep, 30 new employees and a whole new world of opportunities for the company.
“That year we followed an opportunity for growth and were awarded the contract to self sweep almost every location of a retail chain in Texas,- about 180 stores in total,” Cole Watts says. “This ‘overnight success’ came after 10+ years of hard work, sales, and relationship building. Everything just started to fall into place.”
Process Allows for Rapid Growth
Any business owner knows that rapid growth can cause extensive challenges. Steve and Cole knew that in order to be successful with their growth, they needed to shore up the processes and operations behind every facet of the business.
“You need to identify the areas that you can make the most impact and focus there,” Cole says. “I realized I didn’t have to be involved in everything we were doing as long as we had the right people and process in place. We start with company identity and culture, and instill quality and service standards in all our employees beginning their first day. When we know we have the right people, we know we can be successful.”
Adding to the challenge of accelerated growth, not only was More Clean onboarding new employees, equipment, and customers at a much higher rate than ever before, the team… Read Complete Article
