Turning Around Underperforming Franchises: Luke Barrett’s Strategic Approach

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspodi and today’s guest is Luke Barrett, managing partner and owner of Citywide Facility Solutions. Founded in 1961, Citywide helps businesses handle janitorial services, building maintenance and more, offering a single point of contact for easier communication.

Luke plays a key role in driving the company’s growth through strategic team building and compliance management, ensuring every project meets legal standards. He holds a master’s of arts in teaching, along with dual bachelor of science degrees in psychology and physical education. Under Luke’s guidance, the company continues to expand, serving clients across various industries and taking on new challenges in facility management. Now, before we get into all that good stuff,

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Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, managing partner owner of Citywide Facility Solutions, Luke Barrett. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Luke Barrett (01:44)
Happy to be here, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (01:46)
And I want to clarify, you own one of the franchises. Which location is it?

Luke Barrett (01:50)
We are in Rogers, Arkansas, so we would be considered the Northwest Arkansas market.

Anthony Codispoti (01:55)
Okay, now before we get into citywide facility solutions, how that opportunity came about, what it is you guys do there, you’ve got a little bit of an interesting path to get here. Understand you were a college professor and a baseball coach. I don’t understand how you get from here to there, but kind of walk us through it.

Luke Barrett (02:15)
Well, ⁓ you know, I played college baseball and I didn’t want to give up the sport. And I thought, what a better way to use my teaching degree ⁓ to teach athletes. I wanted to be a sports psychologist, but they told me that would take another four or five years of school. And I was already starting to make a family and that wasn’t going to work for me or my wife. So I got into the Kankakee Community College ⁓ assistant baseball coach, of recruiting and

Lo and behold, that’s probably what started my sales career because I always jokingly say that was the hardest sales job that I’ve ever had was telling a mother to let their 18 year old son become a man with me helping mentor him into that. So yeah, I spent about seven or eight years doing that. And then an opportunity presented.

Anthony Codispoti (03:03)
You parents didn’t want their kids to go to college?

Luke Barrett (03:06)
No, it was getting them to leave their hometown and travel maybe from a smaller town in Indiana to an hour south of Chicago ⁓ and really trusting in us to turn their boy into a man, essentially.

Anthony Codispoti (03:21)
Got it. Okay, please continue.

Luke Barrett (03:23)
Yeah, and so then an opportunity presented itself, ⁓ a sales opportunity in Oklahoma City of doing roofing and construction work, became the general manager of NRG Roofing, and then a couple of years with No Hail Storms, ⁓ I realized I didn’t want to rely on Mother Nature to pay my bills.

Anthony Codispoti (03:45)
Also in that industry, that’s sort of the trigger. Like if you’ve got bad weather, business is good. But if weather is calm and even in that area, the sales dry up.

Luke Barrett (03:55)
Absolutely. ⁓ unless you’ve been in it, the market for, you know, five to 10 years, nobody really knows your name because there’s just so many roofers. So yes, you just get lost in the mix and it’s really hard to build your brand. My brother has done a great job doing it. He still does it. It just really wasn’t for me. ⁓ And I wanted to help people a little bit more than, you know, being the guy that knocks on your door the 30th time of the day to see if I can help you put on a roof.

Anthony Codispoti (04:24)
Okay, all right, and so what took place after that? Where did you go next?

Luke Barrett (04:28)
That’s where I met my mentor, Leah Monagold. ⁓ And that’s really how I got involved with Citywide. She worked at Enterprise as an area manager. And I remember parking my truck about three blocks down the road. So she didn’t see that I had a roofing logo on my truck. ⁓ And I remember getting the call for the interview, getting excited and telling my wife. ⁓ And she goes, you’re gonna go rent cars for a living? And I go, hey, they’re gonna give me the tools to be my own boss.

I jumped at the opportunity with Enterprise, climbed up the ranks ⁓ and then worked there for about 10 years. ⁓ then, yeah, COVID kind of happened, micro trip shortages and-

Anthony Codispoti (05:08)
Things were going well up until COVID. You were on a career track. Things were going, you enjoyed the job. You had a good mentor and then COVID hit and nobody’s renting cars.

Luke Barrett (05:20)
Well, there were rent and cars, but it was really tough for me. I was with the fleet management division and it was tough for me to work from home, to be quite frank. I have to have human interaction. That’s another reason why I chose Citywide is because no matter what happens, we have to stay open because we’re an essential business. And throughout the entire time of COVID, there wasn’t a Citywide branch that wasn’t out there helping people stay safe and healthy throughout that process.

Anthony Codispoti (05:47)
So how did you find Citywide or how did they find you?

Luke Barrett (05:50)
Well, my mentor reached out to me.

Yep. She, she, ⁓ with COVID there were, ⁓ layoffs that, that happened. ⁓ and they picked the top people and she was there for over 20 years and one of the top people. And, ⁓ yeah, so she, she ran into the opportunity at citywide, ⁓ after, ⁓ leaving enterprise. ⁓ and so I, the microchip shortages happened, vehicles weren’t being able to be delivered. It was just a tough, tough.

thing working from home. And so I started thinking about expanding my horizons. And so I reached out to her because she’s always been a mentor resource. And then I went to a bigger company before insurance benefits. So it’s funny that you say that you own that type of company, but I made that choice. And after about 90 days, I realized the culture wasn’t for me, that I wanted to find a smaller company that I can make a quicker, bigger impact the lives. And then I reached out to her and I told her,

You told me I was going to make a mistake not coming to work for you. I’m being vulnerable here and I’m telling you I made a mistake and I want to come work for you.

Anthony Codispoti (07:03)
And that door was still open. so what did you start doing right out of the gate?

Luke Barrett (07:08)
So I was performing as the director of sales, had a team of about six to eight sales people underneath me, all the way from sales associates to sales executives, and really just driving revenue on the janitorial sales side of things.

Anthony Codispoti (07:24)
Okay, so I want to hear more about that role, but paint us a picture of the kinds of services that citywide facility solutions provides.

Luke Barrett (07:31)
So pretty unique. We specialize in janitorial services. That’s our monarch ⁓ service that we have. But then we have a myriad of other services, 20 plus services from the parking lot to the roof. You can imagine in facility commercial buildings, 10,000 square feet or above, there can be a lot of things that go wrong and they have to focus on their jobs. So they rely on citywide to fix those problems that do come up when they arise.

Anthony Codispoti (07:57)
What kind of problems? I you guys are cleaning, right? You’re taking out the trash. You’re doing that. But what are you doing in a parking lot? What are you doing on a roof?

Luke Barrett (08:04)
Yeah, so anytime that, you know, there’s an issue that ⁓ takes place or our facility solutions manager is walking the property, they might see something that could prevent a future problem. ⁓ Let’s say your parking lot doesn’t have good striping and it keeps causing accidents and such. It can become a liability to the company. So we come and give them a quote to be able to repave, restripe the parking lots for them. ⁓

Other times our cleaners have been cleaning and a water heater breaks and it’s on the weekend and nobody’s at the job but us and we’re able to do the water remediation for them so they can be opened up for Monday. So you can imagine from fixing a light bulb to a leaky roof to clogged gutters. I mean, there’s a lot of things that get asked by our facility solutions managers to find solutions for.

Anthony Codispoti (08:56)
You know, and I can see that. I’m in an office building myself here and I don’t, our cleaning people do a decent job, but I don’t think they’re sort of proactively looking for those sorts of things, which would certainly be helpful. Cause right now it’s the tenants that, you know, report the, any issues that occur. And if something happens over the weekend, nobody’s going to notice for a few days. So I could see how that’d be useful. so tell me more about how ⁓ you guys approach.

things from the sales side. You’re managing a team of six folks. What is it you’re doing? Is it cold calling? Are you knocking on doors? You go into chamber of commerce events?

Luke Barrett (09:33)
Yeah, so I do, it’s funny you say that. ⁓ I’ve been at, think every chamber ⁓ of commerce event that Northwest Arkansas can have just because I think brand recognition is very, very important. ⁓ So yes, I’m heavily involved in the chambers of commerce. ⁓ Other ways we do it here in Northwest Arkansas, we are heavily in the field. ⁓ Our sales executive knocks over a hundred doors a month. ⁓

We realize it’s a numbers game. You’ve got to play the numbers on the sales side of things. We’ve also got a team of people that call, our BDS team that calls, where Jake correlates with them saying where he stopped by, the good conversations he’s had, and then they can go back and book a meeting for Jake to go meet with that person, measure the building, and give a proposal for janitorial services. It all starts with janitorial services, typically, ⁓ just because that’s really where

Our niche is the janitorial side, ⁓ but it’s just an added benefit to be able to do anything from the roof to the curb for our clients. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (10:39)
And so those are sort of the value adds that would come later. ⁓ Sort of like, I equate it to like McDonald’s do you want fries with that kind of a thing? Like you guys are cleaning the place and you’re like, hey, I noticed this issue with the roof. Would you like a quote for that? Sure, that’d be helpful. Thank you.

Luke Barrett (10:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It makes it easy for them to, you know, plan as well for the next fiscal year. If you’re taking a proactive approach, ⁓ reactive approaches always cost you more money to the bottom line. And so if we’ve got somebody always doing inspections once a week and they’re building and while they’re doing the inspection, they notice something that could prevent a larger issue down the, down the road. We just want to be a partner to our clients.

and let them know, we noticed this, it’s up to you how you want to proceed with it. I always kind of jokingly say it’s a la carte, all of our other services. ⁓ We like to thrive with and earn your trust through janitorial to be able to do those other services.

Anthony Codispoti (11:39)
And so does that mean that you’re keeping roofers on staff, ⁓ plumbers, ⁓ HVAC, is that how that works?

Luke Barrett (11:47)
Like, yes, like I said, always be connecting. So if I’m driving down the street and there’s a small, smaller mom and pop looking HVAC company, ⁓ middle tiered ⁓ HVAC company, plumbers, electricians, you name it, I’m stopping at the gas pump and I’m saying, hey man, do you have a business card? I’d love to get to know what you guys do, what your niche is, what you’re trying to look for and see if maybe we can help each other out.

Anthony Codispoti (12:13)
that makes a lot of sense because these smaller sort of mid tier, they don’t have the kind of overhead that the bigger companies would. So the service ends up being more cost effective for you to deliver to your end client.

Luke Barrett (12:23)
No doubt.

Anthony Codispoti (12:25)
Now you mentioned that you briefly went to a larger company before joining Citywide because you wanted the good benefits. That wasn’t the right fit for you. And I think the comment that you made was I wanted to go somewhere where I could have a bigger impact sooner. Say more about that. What kind of impact are you talking about?

Luke Barrett (12:45)
So, you know, looking at working for bigger companies and now working for a smaller company, ⁓ it seems you’re not just a number. You’re having conversations with employees. You’re getting to know them on a whole nother level ⁓ because you know that if something isn’t working, it’s going to impact their lives negatively. A whole lot more than if you’re working with 50,000 people around the country. ⁓

It’s just kind of a big machine ⁓ that just keeps churning and burning whether you’re there or not. ⁓ I think on a smaller company level, ⁓ people aren’t as replaceable as they are in corporate America. I’m only as good as the people that I can hire, ⁓ essentially. And I think making that impact, treating people right, treating them with respect, following the values that I like, honesty and integrity and always doing the right thing.

and being a problem solver. Those are the three things that I look for and people that hate to lose. ⁓ I would rather have somebody that hates to lose or loves to win on my team because.

Anthony Codispoti (13:52)
⁓ say more about that. That’s an interesting distinction.

Luke Barrett (13:55)
Yeah, so that’s probably the last question I ask anybody in an interview is, do you love to win or do you hate to lose? And if they say they love to win, they’re going to have to overcome some objections with me because everybody can remember the great times they won. But if somebody allows the losses to be learning lessons and then make them push harder to never have to have that learning lesson again, I want those resilient type of people on my sales team and just on my operations team as well.

Anthony Codispoti (14:22)
So you find that that hate of losing is a better driver than the love of winning.

Luke Barrett (14:27)
Yeah, people get comfortable when they are always winning. ⁓ You have to learn to be ⁓ comfortable in the uncomfortable as a former boss once told me. And if you’re always winning, you’re probably not putting yourself outside of your comfort zone very often.

Anthony Codispoti (14:47)
And then I understand pretty recently a special opportunity became available to you.

Luke Barrett (14:52)
Yes, so I was as the director of sales. ⁓ I noticed on our. Our internal recruiting that there was an opportunity to become a managing partner and owner of the citywide facility solutions here in Northwest Arkansas. And so I have moved here. I’ve been here for about a month, month and a half, ⁓ and I’ve taken over this franchise and looking to grow it just the same way we grew the Oklahoma City Market.

Anthony Codispoti (15:22)
Okay, and how’s it going so far?

Luke Barrett (15:25)
It’s, it’s, there’s a lot, it’s a lot different than just being a director of sales when you’re having to deal with the front of the house, the back of the house and everything in between. ⁓ A lot more conversations with employees than I’ve ever had on the operations ⁓ side. ⁓ You know, our model is once we sell it, we want to get it into the right minded people. Those are operation minded people. Salespeople tend to be good hunters. They don’t tend to be good gardeners. And so.

⁓ Dealing with the operations side, seeing what affects them based on how the front end of sales sells a janitorial contract can affect their lives very, very positively or very, very negatively if expectations aren’t set with the client upfront.

Anthony Codispoti (16:12)
So do you have somebody separate that’s doing the hunting, that’s doing the sales, and then somebody separate that does the gardening, sort of the account maintenance and maintaining that relationship?

Luke Barrett (16:23)
Absolutely. ⁓ We have a sales executive named Jake Zakovich. ⁓ He goes out there, he is the hunter. He’s already, think the goal was a hundred doors knocked this month. I think he’s probably well past 150 at this point. He’s lived here ⁓ ever since he graduated from University of Arkansas. And then we have a facility solutions manager who’s on operational side of things. That’s Janine Salmon as well as Mason Taylor.

Mason’s from Alma, ⁓ Arkansas, which is down by Fort Smith. And then the unique thing with Janine is she’s bilingual and was born and raised in El Salvador. ⁓ And she’s working to get everything finalized to become a US citizen. And I jumped at the opportunity, told her she’s way overqualified for the position based on her resume. But I think that we can help each other grow this thing into something really, really good.

Anthony Codispoti (17:20)
And so paint a picture on who your typical client is.

Luke Barrett (17:24)
So we’ve got, we could service really any industry. The main industries that I don’t like to service is the retail side of things. But we do a lot of healthcare clinics, urgent cares. ⁓ We do a lot of dealerships around the country as well as here in Northwest Arkansas. So we look for buildings that are either getting clean three or more days a week or 10,000 square feet or above is really what I’m looking for in this

area. ⁓ That’s our ideal client, somebody that needs services three or more times a week that has a billion, 10,000 square feet or above is really in our niche. And it can be any type of industry. We work with manufacturing and industrial industries. ⁓ We’ve got a really, really broad spectrum of clients and it’s unique to each client. Healthcare is going to get clean completely different than a car dealership.

So it’s having to know those conversations upfront on the sales side to be able to set operations up for success on the backend.

Anthony Codispoti (18:31)
Why don’t you like retail?

Luke Barrett (18:33)
Well, typically they have ⁓ employees cleaning while they’re while they’re working throughout the day as well as there’s just the liability of having items and things around. ⁓ don’t want to take on that liability of if something comes up missing, then pointing the fingers at anybody on my team. ⁓ It just it’s easier that way. A lot of times they’re they’re very budget driven and so they look to cut their costs. ⁓

by having their employees doing the cleaning for them. So it’s just not really a good fit for what we do.

Anthony Codispoti (19:08)
about restaurants or hotels are this good fit for you?

Luke Barrett (19:12)
Yes and no. Other services for hotels and restaurants like cleaning their hood, their vent hoods things like that. Typically no. And a lot of times it is because they stay open later. ⁓ And if our crews are coming in at midnight, are they going to perform if they’ve been working six hours and then this is their last stop? A lot of grease, a lot of things that you have to really think about cleaning completely different. And it takes a lot longer.

So a lot of restaurants decide to have their staff do it as well.

Anthony Codispoti (19:46)
Gotcha. So you’re coming in after normal business hours at most of your client locations.

Luke Barrett (19:51)
Yes. Yeah. Unless they have some type of government security clearance where we have to be there while they’re there on site. But we also do offer date porter services. There’s a lot of hospitals out there that use our date porter services to do their flips of their clients rooms. When one leaves that we go in, change the seats quickly, clean the room up before the next person comes in to see the doctor.

Anthony Codispoti (20:17)
So you guys pride yourself on being a single point of contact for building maintenance. What kind of strategies have you implemented to streamline that communication and ensure that you’ve got really good responsiveness for your clients?

Luke Barrett (20:31)
I think it’s always about how you start a ⁓ partnership with somebody. ⁓ If they know that you’re holding people accountable, you’re holding yourself accountable to do the things that was said that was going to be done, you can earn that trust very quickly. ⁓ Once you earn that trust of somebody, then they start just naturally asking you for help. ⁓ So it’s all about connecting early on, making sure that we follow the processes and procedures that we have in place.

on the operational side, making sure that we are doing inspections once a week, going and talking to the client, asking for a rating zero out of 10, how are we doing? We wanna make sure that there’s always a pulse on our partnerships ⁓ with our clients. We don’t want to be surprised that they’re not happy. We would rather know what the issues are and try to solve them in a proactive manner. So yeah, there’s a lot of ways we can really build and grow in that way, but it really comes down to

Once we start with janitorial and then we’re offering 20 other services that can take a lot of time off of their plate, it just becomes a perfect partnership for busy, busy people.

Anthony Codispoti (21:41)
And then how do you go about what’s your approach for finding the folks that are doing sort of that frontline cleaning work?

Luke Barrett (21:49)
So I do a lot of work with Hispanic Chambers of Commerce in the past. I’m gonna be having a booth at an event, stopping by churches. ⁓ There’s a couple of Hispanic churches that I’ve stopped by, talked with the pastors and let them know what I’m trying to do of creating kind of a ripple effect of helping other people grow their small business into a medium, maybe large size business. My goal is one day they don’t

need citywide and they can go and do it on their own. We’ve helped build that business up so well for them that they know what to do ⁓ on their own. They know how to do the sales side. They know how to do the management side. ⁓ But early on, we’re really impacting a lot of lives because any account we bring on, we’re hiring in a small to medium sized company to come in and do that cleaning, which is going to impact their family’s lives and then impact all the lives of the employees that work at the company, keeping them healthy and safe.

Anthony Codispoti (22:50)
It’s pretty early on with your new location there in Arkansas, but as you think sort of historically all the time that you’ve been with the company, what’s been the biggest growth lever for you guys to pull? What’s the most successful way for you to find clients? Do ads work at all? Is it really just smile and dial and knocking on doors?

Luke Barrett (23:12)
What equity? I’m a firm believer. Sales is you have to be connecting. And if you’re not putting yourself out there to meet new people, putting yourself out there and being vulnerable with people, ⁓ you’re not going to connect with people. So it’s a numbers game. I’m heavily involved in tracking numbers of our salespeople, making sure that they’re successful. ⁓ They hate to lose, right? So I wanna make sure that I can…

avoid the losses by bringing on wins, but at the same time, realizing that in sales, you’re going to get a lot of nos. So you have to be very, very resilient ⁓ of a person. You can’t take things very personally. And you have to be able to kind of flush it and move on and not, and just not really wear it ⁓ as they’re not saying no to me. They’re just saying no to the idea of meeting with me right now. So I the biggest lever is

is the phone and the sidewalks knocking on the doors.

Anthony Codispoti (24:15)
Do people even answer their phone anymore?

Luke Barrett (24:17)
I don’t think so, but they’ll answer a text or they’ll at least read it. You know, so that’s, that’s one thing whenever I go in, I ask for people’s cell phone numbers. have Jake ask for the cell phone numbers because at that point, yeah, a lot of times if you ask there, yeah, sure. Here, ⁓ you try to get ahold of me. ⁓ I’m just busy right now, but send me a message and we’ll get a time to meet and see if you guys can possibly help us out. We try to take more of a, an approach of, don’t know if I can help you, but if you give me 30 minutes to an hour,

Anthony Codispoti (24:27)
Give it out.

Luke Barrett (24:46)
to really fact-find what you guys currently do and where your pain is, I could probably provide a solution to take that pain away.

Anthony Codispoti (24:53)
And so in most situations, are you going in and they already have a provider and maybe the cost is too high or they’re not happy with the service or are you going into a lot of places that have just been doing it themselves and have never hired or considered an outside source?

Luke Barrett (25:08)
A lot of people outsource, but they have a taste in their mouth of everybody starts off really good. And then as the cleaning goes on, they gradually goes down. And then you have to take a corrective measure to make that service go back up. And it becomes a roller coaster for them. ⁓ Nobody wants to have to focus on janitorial. I always say, if they’re focused on janitorial, we’re not doing our jobs right. Yeah.

We look to take that off their plate and just really help them give time back in their day to be able to focus on really what their job is.

Anthony Codispoti (25:46)
And so what are you guys doing differently from the competition so that you don’t have that sort of, it started out great and then things kind of nose dive in terms of quality?

Luke Barrett (25:55)
Well, a lot of it’s the people. ⁓ We hire certain people for the operations side that strive to help people. ⁓ We also want to make sure that, you know, when we are ⁓ talking with people that we’re asking them, how are things going? If you’re below an eight, there’s something going on. We have to fix the problem. Is it changing a crew out, bringing in a new crew? ⁓ What’s the systemic problem?

that is frustrating you the most. And then we got to provide the solution quickly and efficiently and then hold everyone accountable to performing. We also use technology. We have a complaint policy where we enter it into our Dynamics 365. And then by 10 a.m. the next morning, we have to follow up with the client to make sure that that garbage can that was missed wasn’t missed the next clean. And then it reminds us seven days, 30 days, 60 days after that complaint was in the system and resolved.

that, hey, follow up on this and make sure that we aren’t continuing to make that mistake. I think that’s really the biggest thing is, hey, remember last month, we had this issue with the garbage cans. How’s that been going? And then that tells the client that your attention to detail is good and that you’re really, really, really ⁓ invested in making their facility ⁓ a better place to be. Your employees can come work.

Anthony Codispoti (27:17)
You know, this is an important point I’d like to dive into a little bit more because in business, you’re providing a service. You always want it to be perfect. The reality is we’re human beings, mistakes happen. ⁓ I think the really important thing is when those mistakes happen, how do you respond? How do you react? What do you do to course correct? And so using some smaller examples, like somebody forgot to empty a trash can. Can you make me think of a bigger example where, man, this is something pretty

big that went wrong and you had to step in and course correct and sort of massage that relationship to get their trust back.

Luke Barrett (27:54)
think any time that you’re dealing with people ⁓ and it’s a small family operation that you’re dealing with, ⁓ I’ve heard of cleaners bringing children in to a facility. ⁓ That’s a big no-no. We don’t allow that. ⁓ We tell people up front to do that, but sometimes people have things going on in life and they just have to do it or something. And we just tell them, communicate with us. ⁓ We’ll try to find a different solution for that night if you can’t.

But ultimately, if the client looks at their cameras and there’s a child sitting in there, that’s a liability concern for them as well. So that’s not a fun conversation to have with somebody. So we try to take the proactive approach when we’re bringing on our ICs that we’re telling them, hey, here’s the things that we expect you not to do and that can never happen, or we’re gonna have to remove you from the facility.

Anthony Codispoti (28:47)
So then it becomes a hard conversation, not only with the client, but with your team members as well.

Luke Barrett (28:52)
And I think that’s the benefit of the way we do our contracting of our crews is that we’re able to sit on the same side of the table as our clients and they’re not having to have that uncomfortable conversation with the crew member that brought their kid in. I’m having that conversation with them. So it just only enhances the partnership with our clients in my opinion, because we’re sitting on the same side of the table realizing, hey, I’m on the same boat with you. This isn’t acceptable and I’m going to get it fixed for you.

And then always closing the loop, making sure that I follow up with the client, letting them know that the problem is fixed and it won’t happen again.

Anthony Codispoti (29:27)
Yeah, that kind of highlights another reason why it’s probably so advantageous for a group to hire you guys rather than try to maintain their own part-time crew that comes in in the evening when nobody’s there and having to manage them and oversee them and are they really doing what they’re supposed to be doing that you guys take all that off their plate.

Luke Barrett (29:47)
A lot of people do in-house, Anthony. It’s a cost-effective way of doing it. If an employee needs some extra money, it’s a good way to supplement extra money for that employee. ⁓ But at the end of the day, if you’re consistently in the markets today, hiring people is one of the hardest things to do right now, is finding good employees. ⁓ So what’s that cost of hiring and firing those employees is a big conversation that I have with people.

that are doing the in-house approach.

Anthony Codispoti (30:19)
Luke, talk to me about any legal or regulatory standards that you guys need to be in tune with.

Luke Barrett (30:26)
So OSHA, blood board pathogen training and all of our medical facilities. ⁓ If we are doing terminal cleans, there is a lot to terminal cleans in a medical facility. We have to do trainings on that. ⁓ Making sure that we have our ICs having the right insurance ⁓ set in place to protect themselves. ⁓ Making sure that they have an LLC set up to protect themselves as well. We help people start their own LLCs.

⁓ if they don’t have it when they first sign on with us as a cleaning crew. ⁓ The list goes on and on, ⁓ but I would say, you know, those OSHA standards being able to NSA certified, all of those things that you can provide proof to a client will put trust in that you guys are professional and sometimes a pretty unprofessional industry.

Anthony Codispoti (31:19)
Where does the future of citywide facility solutions take you? What do you think is on the horizon?

Luke Barrett (31:27)
well, hopefully a lot of growth. I’ve kind of got a growth mindset. That’s what I pride myself in is growing the business through sales, but then nurturing the relationships we have and maintaining those relationships long-term is only gonna drive our bottom line higher and higher. ⁓ My goal is always, every person’s goal that starts a franchise is be at $10 million within the first 10 years. ⁓ I was able to watch

Our team in Oklahoma City do that in about six or seven years. So now I’ve seen it work. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen the way it’s supposed to happen. And that’s my goal is to drive this thing and become one of the top franchises in the entire country.

Anthony Codispoti (32:11)
⁓ And you’re talking about your sales process a bit earlier and kind of needing to have that thick skin and hating to lose and bouncing back and keep going. What is sort of a target hit rate? If I make 100 calls, how many appointments ⁓ should I be setting and out of those appointments, what percentage of those would I ultimately expect to close?

Luke Barrett (32:34)
Yeah, so I look at it more of how many building surveys are you booking a month and how many proposals are you delivering after those building surveys every month? If somebody can make 50 calls and book 10 meetings because they’re really, really good on the phone, but never deliver a proposal, well, we’re never going to close business. So it’s really weighing that is, all right, are you able to book the meeting? And then are you able to go there, have a really good meeting, find pain?

to be able to fix people’s problems and then deliver the solution to them efficiently where they’re gonna have trust and citywide is gonna be able to ⁓ make their place a whole heck of a lot better. ⁓ So yeah, there’s a lot that goes into the sales side. It’s more of a business to business approach. And so I really just try to help that process move along. Always having calendar to find next steps with people is huge in our industry.

Because like I said, if they’re not focused on janitorial, they will completely forget about you and your salespeople and everything about it, right? So we wanna make sure that we’re staying diligent. So if they’re making a hundred phone calls and I want them to be booking 12 meetings a month on their own and then having a BDS team booking another six or seven, that equates to about 20 building surveys in a month. And then if you’re delivering 20 building surveys and you’re closing at 50%,

Well, you should have a pipeline where you’re able to close $10,000 every month. Everybody wants to make six figures in sales and the top performers in the citywide system, some of them are making a quarter million dollars because they stay diligent to their pipeline, growing their pipeline and they’re closing 10 to $20,000 every month, like clockwork. So getting my team to be able to learn the process early on, the right way to do things, the right questions to ask.

which aren’t closed ended, they’re open to any questions. ⁓ Getting them to really learn to dig deeper into the people’s problems and then finding a good solution for that and being able to clearly explain, here’s how we’re going to fix it for you for the longterm. So yeah, the goal is to get to that $10,000 a month mark to earn the platinum status or diamond level status sales executive. have to sell $126,000.

in the fiscal year. So I put that as a goal for every one of my salespeople. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (35:07)
And so an average deal is about $1,000 a month. Yeah. Typical, okay.

Luke Barrett (35:12)
Yeah, we want to be around, mean, our sweet spot, I say, is between $2,500 and $5,000. Okay. Especially when you’re early on. ⁓ Smaller accounts take up just as much time of a partnership as accounts that are that medium size that we really thrive in that are five day a week accounts that were there like clockwork. When something happens, there’s not two or three days in between cleans that the client is sitting there looking at that on the floor.

that they don’t wanna pick up or something like that. ⁓ It’s just more beneficial that way to be able to be always in front of our clients.

Anthony Codispoti (35:49)
Let’s take a little bit of a detour, Luke. I’d like to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, whether it’s something personal or professional. I’m curious how you got through it and what you learned.

Luke Barrett (36:00)
I’d say taking a leap of faith, ⁓ going away from the coaching and baseball, what I always knew and moving to Oklahoma city was a huge, huge challenge for me because it put me out of my comfort zone. When you’re born and raised in a town ⁓ and your dad owned a company and everybody knows the last name, it’s, I say big fish, little pond, right? Then I go down to Oklahoma city, don’t know anybody.

and I’ve got a network and make all new friends, everything like that. That was a big leap of faith for me and my family. My daughters were really young. I had a three year old and a two month old. ⁓ And then while I was working, I would say one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to overcome was when my mother had her stroke a couple of days after Thanksgiving a few years ago. ⁓ I’m a self-proclaimed mama’s boy and ⁓ she’s still here with us. ⁓

Thankfully, I had to have dinner with, I got to have dinner with her last night. But going through that, I’ll never forget the drive from Oklahoma City to Springfield, Missouri to see my mom during COVID and I can’t go see her. It was tough. It’s brutal. Only one visitor a day ⁓ sitting in the house with my sister and my dad wondering if our mom’s even going to make it. We didn’t know.

And that sent me kind of in a spiral of, I got to a pretty dark place where I’m working from home all day, every day. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (37:36)
This is the bigger company that you mentioned before. Yeah.

Luke Barrett (37:39)
And I’ll never forget my wife. And I’m not going to get emotional, but she sat down with me and she’s like, you’re not happy. And I’m like, what, do mean? I’m not happy. I’m making six figures. We’ve got great insurance. You guys are providing. She’s like, you are not happy. And I’m like, yeah, well, I need this job. Like I’ve got to be able to provide for you. And she goes, if you were to go away tomorrow, let’s say you got in a car accident and passed away. Would you be replaced in a week at that company?

And I had to do some deep searching, right? Like that’s a tough question to answer. And the answer was, yeah, I probably would be replaced quickly. So that’s when I was like, all right, I’m not happy. ⁓ I need to do something different, pivot. I’m getting frustrated with microchip shortages and cars not being delivered. And it just put me in kind of ⁓ a depressed state where I didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, ⁓ but having a good wife.

having a good support system in my family, ⁓ I’ve gotten back stronger. ⁓ I would have never, if that didn’t happen, I’d probably never leave enterprise and go to the other company and then find my way back to my mentor, Leah. So everything happens for a reason. I’m a firm believer in that. And if you’re always trying to do the right thing by people, the right thing is gonna be done by you eventually. You just gotta keep on pushing.

Anthony Codispoti (39:01)
It’s so interesting as human beings, when we’re able to look in the rear view mirror, it’s so much easier to connect the dots and to have gratitude for some of those really, really hard times, dark places that we find ourselves in. But as we’re going through that dark tunnel in the moment, it just feels like punishment. And it’s like, what’s the lesson here? What am I supposed to be doing? I feel lost, I’m banging my head against the wall.

And so it’s great to hear your story, Luke, because it’s a wonderful example of, I mean, it was sort of like a series of things that were going wrong and had to have been really hard in the moment to get through it. Thankfully, you had such a great support system with your wife there.

Luke Barrett (39:48)
Yeah, I mean, anytime I look back at low points in life, having to give up baseball, ⁓ you feel like nothing’s ever gonna happen to make you leap up and forward. ⁓ I’ve learned that if you kind of can stay still in the chaos and shut things down in your brain and compartmentalize and have a daily plan, execute the plan, you’re gonna get out of that dark hole.

And that’s when the rebound is way higher. That’s when the best things that ever happened in your life is when you come out of one of the lowest points of your life. I’m a firm believer in that. ⁓ The bounce back is way better than the fall.

Anthony Codispoti (40:32)
That’s interesting. And I’ve talked with a number of athletes, and I think the same holds true for people who have owned a business. And then they’re no longer an athlete or they no longer own that business. And it’s not just a loss of what do I do with myself? It’s a loss of identity. It feels like a part of you has died and you don’t know. There’s this void and you don’t know how to fill that void.

And it sounds like you, you know, looking back, I don’t know if you were sort of aware of the strategy that you were using in the moment, but say more about that, how you, you know, kind of had that plan, that system to get you out.

Luke Barrett (41:07)
Yeah, it’s really just what three things am I gonna be able to do every day to make myself better? What goals do I have for the day? ⁓ And how am I gonna accomplish the goals? And at the end of the day, if you don’t accomplish the goals, what happened? What’s the reason for it? I think that was a big turning point for the team in Oklahoma City is when they started really focusing on what is my game plan. Because when you’re in that dark tunnel, it’s hard to really focus on

what you need to do. You’re focused so much on the negative side of things that you’re not even looking for the small wins that lead to the bigger wins. So I would tell people that write down three things that you want to accomplish every day. And at the end of the day, look at that list and be vulnerable with yourself, hold yourself accountable. Did you make the calls that you were supposed to make? If not, what happened? And how can I avoid doing that in the future? ⁓ Being that consistent approach, I think will avoid those big pitfalls in life. ⁓

and being a good communicator. When things aren’t going right, I tell my team, I want you to be able to know that my door is always open and you can talk to me and be vulnerable and I’m not gonna judge you. If anything, I’ve probably been through some stuff in my life that I can give you some advice to help you get out of that sooner rather than later.

Anthony Codispoti (42:23)
Yeah, it’s so great to have mentors, have bosses like that, to have peers that you can go to in those kinds of times to lean on, because you’re right.

And I don’t know if you’re involved in any peer groups as well, but I found that to be incredibly helpful. You can sit in a room and folks are like, yeah, I’ve gone through that before. here’s the service provider I use to help me or here’s the strategy that I found useful. you’re like, man, thank you. That’s such a great shortcut.

Luke Barrett (42:54)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, incredible when you are vulnerable and put yourself out there, the effects that that can have on yourself, but then the people around you, you realize that they’ve been through the same thing and they were able to get out of it. You can, you can talk through that. lot of people, think forever we’ve mental health is something that we’ve just swept under the rug. And me with my psychology degree, I don’t agree with that whatsoever. If you’re having issues and obstacles in life, ⁓ you’ve got to have somebody that you can go talk to about that.

Leah was that for me for many, many, many years. She still is to the day. She’s a mentor to my, to me, ⁓ as well as my wife and my, and my parents, know, it’s, you have to have a resource of somebody to reach out to when things aren’t going well. whether that’s a best friend and uncle, it doesn’t matter. Don’t, don’t get depressed and sit in that dark hole and think that you’re never going to get out of it. Somebody will help you get out of that hole. So.

That’s always been my message to people in my employees is if you’re having issues, I want to know about what’s affected you as a person before as an employee. I think that’s when you really create a culture of everybody pulling from the same side of the rope.

Anthony Codispoti (44:04)
I think that’s an important message because so many times when people find themselves in a dark place, the natural human tendency is just to sort of turtle up to withdraw inside. Yeah, shut down. And it is the least helpful thing. It’s going to put you further into that dark tunnel. The best thing for you in those moments, in my experience and in talking with lots of people, be curious to hear your take on this, Luke, especially with your psychology background, is to reach out to someone that you trust.

and have that human connection and be able to share that experience and talk about it and process it. You’re nodding your head.

Luke Barrett (44:42)
Yeah, yeah, that who’s getting sometimes in those situations, you don’t even know who you are. ⁓ Lean on somebody that knows who you are to the core and they’ll they’ll remind you, you know that, hey, everything’s going to be okay. Everything is happening for a reason. But what are we doing to fix it? You know, also having people that you talk to that won’t let you have the woe is me attitude of, this is nothing’s ever going to work out. You know, sometimes

somebody in your life’s gotta have that tough conversation of quit feeling sorry for yourself and let’s give them- Yeah, yeah. You have to know the person, right? And if you’ve got a best friend, a sister, brother, whoever it may be, they’re gonna know when to give you the tough love and when not to. ⁓ But so many times we’re so prideful that we’ll never talk to anybody about it. We’ll just keep on battling the demons in our head behind closed doors and it just goes-

Anthony Codispoti (45:15)
Tough love.

Luke Barrett (45:38)
further and further down a rabbit hole of nothing good.

Anthony Codispoti (45:44)
What’s your superpower?

Luke Barrett (45:47)
man, I would say connection. Like being able to connect with people. ⁓ It drives my wife nuts. I can be in a room of strangers and by the end of it, I probably got two or three people’s cell phone numbers and we’re probably gonna connect in a week or two and do something, you know, to see if we, it’s just always be connecting, man. Like that’s, I thrive to, I try to make everybody happy in my life. I think one of, think a flaw of mine is,

I worry too much about that where I put myself in positions of vulnerability or maybe exposure to getting hurt or something like that because I always trust people right when I meet them. ⁓ I’m very people oriented. yeah, work in a room is something that I enjoy doing ⁓ thoroughly and it can drive other people that are introverts nuts. Like how do you become best friends with complete strangers? So never bring me on a cruise. I’ve never been on one.

because all I’d probably do is talk.

Anthony Codispoti (46:46)
⁓ How about resources that you’d recommend to our audience? A book, a course, a podcast, something that’s been useful for you?

Luke Barrett (46:56)
Something that’s changed my life personally, professionally is the book by Jaco. ⁓ It is called Extreme Ownership. ⁓ And it is something that it talks about when things go wrong, you have to look inward before going outward. I think that’s made me a better husband, a better boss, and just an overall better person to deal with day in and day out, because it allows you to really be more consistent with your communication.

If you look internally and put yourself in another person’s shoes when things are going wrong, ⁓ you’re not going to point the finger and throw people under the bus. You’re going to treat people with respect and do the right thing every single time. And taking ownership and accountability when things don’t go wrong. Being able to say, yes, I made the mistake. I’m going to fall on the sword right now. And sometimes that just bleeds into your team. When things go wrong, they’re not going to blame the boss. They’re going to look inward.

And they’re gonna say, well, maybe I didn’t make enough calls that day. Or maybe I should have followed up on that proposal, that one last call before just saying, well, they just won’t return my emails or my calls. Maybe I do need to go walk over there and knock on their door and say, how’s life, man? Are you busy? Is that why you’re not reaching back out to me? You know, ⁓ I think that was a big game changer. We did the practice of every Monday morning, a sales executive or one of the person on the sales team would go over two chapters of it.

and discuss something in their life that they can correlate on those two chapters too. And it was really, really cool to see the buy-in from the team. ⁓ I thought it was gonna be a corny thing to do that they wouldn’t gravitate toward, but they bought in and it was an amazing thing to see.

Anthony Codispoti (48:37)
Give us another nugget from that book. I mean, you used the phrase, it changed my life. So I want to hear a little bit more about this.

Luke Barrett (48:43)
Yeah, right after ⁓ everything went down, it was the second time when I left ⁓ enterprise and went to the other company, ⁓ I read that book a second time and it allowed me to bounce back a whole lot faster. It allowed me to not be prideful and not call Leah and say, I made a mistake. ⁓ I took ownership of the decision and what am I going to do to change it? I think that’s the biggest thing is finding

the solution and then changing it and then making it a habit at that point. That way it’s a consistent habit. So you’re not making the same mistake over and over and over again. I have two daughters, 15 and 13.

Anthony Codispoti (49:23)
You have kids?

How about that?

Have you found a way to even try to sort of teach some of those same lessons from that book to your kids?

Luke Barrett (49:37)
100%. When grades aren’t well, when grades aren’t well, and I’m asking them what’s going on and they immediately start pointing the finger at the teacher. I said, we’re not going to do that. What have you done to get the grades that you’ve gotten? then lo and behold, we’ll open up the thing. And she has, she’s forgot to turn in a couple of things to the teachers where she’s got low grades. She turns them in, the grade goes up and I’m saying, see, if you don’t sit there and blame the teacher and you look inward and say, what do I need to do to get that grade lifted?

then it’s going to happen. I think the big thing too is it’s very easy to make excuses. And when you take extreme ownership, there is no excuse. You can’t make excuses for yourself if you look inward first. ⁓ Naturally, you just won’t do it.

Anthony Codispoti (50:25)
How does that messaging received by your daughters?

Luke Barrett (50:28)
Oh, he’s doing it again. No, think, you know, 15 year old Angelina, she’s pretty close to a straight A student. I never was. I didn’t apply myself in high school the way she does. So hopefully, you know, just seeing me being consistent, um, in my approach at work, in me consistently being able to provide for the family has, has brought that consistency in her life. Um, I’ve been married to my, my wife for 18 years.

Anthony Codispoti (50:30)
You

Luke Barrett (50:58)
⁓ And so, you know, being able to be a better husband to her shows her. ⁓ Sorry, my headphone just went off. Give me one second.

Anthony Codispoti (51:12)
That’s all right, I can hear you again.

Luke Barrett (51:13)
Alright, yeah, so just being able to show her by example of what you should be treated like by somebody in the future, I think is huge for kids, you know, ⁓ there’s always that nature versus nurture conversation. I think that’s a 50-50 road. Gen X plays a part, but if you love on your family and you rely on them and they rely on you, they’re going to be good ⁓ stewards of society.

Anthony Codispoti (51:39)
What habits do you have to get you started in the day?

Luke Barrett (51:43)
brush my teeth. just, ⁓ no, I try to write. try to practice what I preach ⁓ of what’s my daily plan. You know, what, what, what am I going to do to grow the business? What am I going to do to set my sales executive up for success? It’s usually by holding him accountable to what his goals are following up with him at the end of the day, asking how it went. ⁓ and doing, just riding along is, one of the

Anthony Codispoti (51:46)
Good start for everybody, I think.

Luke Barrett (52:13)
hardest things for somebody to do when you’re in a leadership position, but it can make the biggest impact to your employees. So slowing down when you’re busy of saying, what needs to get done today before I leave the door? If you have a plan and you try to execute the plan and something doesn’t work, you can fix it and try it again the next day. So I think that’s the biggest thing that I do is I think about, all right, what three things am I going to accomplish today? And if I get those done, try to add two, three more things to the list.

Um, yeah, I’d say that’s probably the biggest thing that I do mentally every morning is like, what do I need to do to get better? 1 % better every day.

Anthony Codispoti (52:56)
I’ve just got one more question for you, Luke, but before I ask it, I want to do two things. I want to invite all listeners right now, pause just for a second and go to your podcast app. Go ahead and hit the follower subscribe button. Leave us a comment or review. All this stuff really helps other people find the show and it ensures that you continue to get more great content like this in your feed. Luke, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. They’re in Northwest Arkansas. Maybe they just like something about your story.

Luke Barrett (53:23)
LinkedIn, always be connecting. ⁓ I’ve got a decent size presence on LinkedIn, but you can find me, Luke Barrett, just look up Citywide Facility Solutions, Northwest Arkansas. ⁓ That’s probably the easiest way to get a hold of me, ⁓ is LinkedIn, always be connecting to my motto. So I would be kind of hypocritical if I didn’t utilize that.

Anthony Codispoti (53:45)
And we’ll make sure we include links to your LinkedIn profile there in the show notes. Last question for you, ⁓ you and I reconnect a year from now, Luke, and you are celebrating something big. What’s that thing you’re celebrating one year from today? What is that?

Luke Barrett (53:58)
Platinum Club.

That is being one of the top 10 franchises in the entire nation.

Anthony Codispoti (54:07)
I mean, that’s aggressive. In 12 months from that, you just took over a few months back.

Luke Barrett (54:11)
Yeah, yeah, pressure makes diamonds, right, Anthony? Yeah, so I think, you know, we are only as good as the goals that we make. And if we make goals that we’re always achieving, ⁓ those aren’t goals, in my opinion. Goals have to, you have to fall short of your goals every once in a while. ⁓ you want to put yourself out of your comfort zone, set high, high standards for yourself of accountability every single day and strive to hit those goals.

Anthony Codispoti (54:31)
You want to really stretch yourself.

Luke Barrett (54:41)
And on the days you don’t feel like it, be the person that is resilient enough to get that head trash out of the way and attack every day, get 1 % better.

Anthony Codispoti (54:53)
Luke Barrett from Citywide Facility Solutions, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Luke Barrett (55:01)
Thank you very much, Anthony. It’s been a pleasure.

Anthony Codispoti (55:03)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.