David Heitner would rather scrub tile grout than work for Merrill Lynch.
He quit his job as a retail broker in 2002 to start a janitorial company called Heits Building Service Inc. in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J. It was a move his Merrill colleagues could not understand.
"There were some guys who said, 'hey, congratulations,'" Heitner recalled, "but most guys were laughing. .. They'd say, 'how 'bout you come by and clean my toilets?'"
Heitner, 41, grew up the son of a radiologist in Woodcliff Lake, N.J. To make matters worse, his brother is a cardiologist.
"My brother thought I was crazy, too," Heitner said. "But after I joined Merrill Lynch, I realized there was more money in the cleaning business than there was in being a broker."
Heitner got his start as a business analyst at Dun & Bradstreet. He'd sometimes have lunch at a Pizza Hut. He got to know the manager. The manager needed someone to clean the floors at night. Heitner offered to give it a try.
One Pizza Hut turned into several Pizza Huts. Then came opportunities to clean floors at Friendly's restaurants. He built a booming side business. But he sold it when he landed a job at Merrill Lynch broker in 1998.
Heitner said he quickly built up a portfolio of clients at Merrill, working in Fort Lee, N.J.
Instead of cleaning floors, he spent his nights studying for tests to get the credentials needed to sell securities, insurance and financial planning services. Then came the tech bust and with it, a dramatic drop in commissions.
Heitner's big idea was to take the financial, marketing and management savvy he gained at Dun & Bradstreet and Merrill Lynch and apply it to a highly fragmented industry that isn't always so well-organized or thoughtful.
His company (www.heits.com ) sells master franchises for as much as $205,000 to business operators. Master franchisees in turn sell sub-franchises to people who are trained to properly clean everything from offices to dialysis centers.
Despite a struggling real estate market, Heitner said he's benefited from demand for "green cleaning" and unending concerns about swine flu, MRSA and other infectious diseases.
At its most basic level, this means keeping the rags straight.
Heits' cleaners use red rags on urinals and commodes. And yellow on bathroom sinks and countertops.
"You'll never see a red or yellow cloth in your office," he said.
Rob Falasco, 49, of Blue Bell, Pa., used to sell market data and software for Reuters. When Reuters merged with Thomson Financial, he figured the new company would be flooded with sales people, so he started looking for something else to do.
"I never considered commercial cleaning," he said. "That was the furthest thing from my mind until I started doing some research."
Falasco was looking for a franchise that offered a recurring revenue stream. He bought a master franchise from Heit about 18 months ago and has never looked back.
"I know a guy who used to be a fixed-income trader and he hasn't been able to find a job in two-and-a-half years," Falasco said.
The cleaning business is steadier.
"It's hard to believe," he said, "but that's the way things have turned out."
It's not easy going blue-collar, though.
Giuseppe Grammatico, 31, of Somerset, N.J., used to sell financial products to advisers for JPMorgan Chase (JPM).
"I have family from all over the country," he said. "When I used to tell them I work at JPMorgan, they'd say, 'Wow.' When I tell them what I'm doing now, they say, 'Oh, that's interesting.'"
Three years ago, Grammatico bought a master franchise from Heits and now has about 85 franchisees working under his master franchise.
Starting out, Grammatico closed a cleaning deal on his first sales call. But that was before he sold his first subfranchise, which meant he had to do the work.
"At 12 o'clock in the morning, I'm on my hands and knees cleaning toilets," he said. "And I'm thinking what the hell did I do here? .. I just left a great paying job to do this?
"I never told anybody that story until after the first year," he said.
It would have only fueled his former colleagues further.
"I would get crank calls from them," Grammatico said. "They wanted their toilets cleaned. They wanted me to come down right away."
They're not making crank calls now.
"I have a handful of friends I see on Yahoo Messenger because they are all unemployed," he said. "Now they're looking at starting their own businesses, but they've been hit so hard, dipping into 401(k)s, that there's not much money to invest."
Financial services, cleaning services. What's the difference, asks Heitner. His former employer, Merrill Lynch, has disappeared into Bank of America Corp. (BAC), anyway.
"You put yourself in an environment where there's money to be made and try to rise to the top," Heitner said. "If people can put their egos aside and get over the image factor, it's a great opportunity."
(Al's Emporium, written by Dow Jones Newswires columnist Al Lewis, offers commentary and analysis on a wide range of business subjects through an unconventional perspective. Contact Al at al.lewis@dowjones.com or tellittoal.com)
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