Meet Jacob Bailey

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jacob Bailey a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jacob, thank you so much for joining us today and appreciate you talking about a sensitive topic. It’s unfortunately relevant to so many in the community as layoffs have been on the rise recently, and so we’d appreciate hearing your story and how you overcame being let go?

Haha, oh boy. So this has happened to me twice in my life – once from a summer job that I had in college and once during the pandemic when I was thrown into a role that I really had no business being in.

But what was funny, was that in both cases my reaction was the same: I started my own business to show my old bosses that I could be just as successful without them.

And I did!

The first time was actually the very first business that I ever started: a marine services company. I honestly had no idea what I was doing, but was determined to figure it out. I put my brother to work providing the labor, got my dad to talk his boss into letting me work out of his facility, and I was off to the races. Of course, eventually I went back to school when the summer ended and wound down that business – but I proved to myself that I could do it.

Many years later when this whole scene played itself out again, I knew that I could do it and knew that I had it in me to build something sustainable. So when I found myself out on my own again, after taking some time to pick myself back up and nurse my bruised ego, I set up shop for myself and haven’t looked back since.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

Today, I run two cleaning businesses in Ohio and am an active real estate investor in my community of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Three years ago, I founded a small residential house cleaning company called Summit Maids to try and provide a better house cleaning experience than what was being offered on the market already. With the core values of Take Care of the Team, Do Right by the Client, and Raise Up the Community to guide us, we took off from the first month and have been able to make an incredible impact in our community ever since. We’ve been proud to provide wages nearly twice as high as our competitors, two of our team members have purchased their first homes, we have helped one team member out of a domestic violence situation, and have given hundreds of foster children presents at the holidays.

Based on that wild success that we saw, we started to branch out into commercial work and providing the same great experience to businesses that we have provided to individual members of our community. Earlier this year, we acquired a 30-year old commercial cleaning business that had a fantastic team and similar ethos to us. We’re really looking forward to what we can accomplish with this new, bigger, combined team!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The three skills or qualities that were most impactful?

Well the very first thing that comes to mind is pure grit. The ability to stick it out when things get hard and just keep going no matter how much beating you take along the way.

I remember once being told that as long as you don’t quit, you haven’t failed; and as long as you are still breathing there’s no reason to quit. That’s always stuck with me.

I don’t know of anyone who has ever made anything of themselves who doesn’t have some level of grit.

Next, I would say is curiosity.

I love to learn and to explore things that I know nothing about. It was out of that curiosity that I started to learn about small, local service businesses and how they could be built into real businesses that could make a difference through the application of technology. If I hadn’t been open and curious about things, then I never would have learned about the industry that would really change my life.

Finally, I think some level of compassion if you are going to be in any kind of business that deals with a lot of people. Without it, the people business will chew you up and spit you out. You have to have some compassion for other people and what they have going on in their lives in order to be able to roll with the challenges that come from relying on other people. I like to think that we do a pretty good job of this at Summit Maids and Cleaning Unlimited, but even with all the good we do – I know that we still have a long way to go to achieve our goals.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

Always!

I’d love to connect with anyone who wants to follow my footsteps in this industry. I’ve learned so much that it would be a shame not to pass on some of my knowledge and learnings to help someone else avoid some of my pitfalls and mistakes. Plus, I’m always looking for people that we might be able to partner with!

I am also always looking for other people interested in real estate investing and would love to meet other folks who are doing things in that space as well.

I can be found on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobwhitish/

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cleaningunlimitedservice.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobwhitish/