But a lot of Business Knowledge Comes from Experience
During the past week, all of our NPI teams got the chance to sit down and have dinner with the business owners we will be working with. After finding out who would be joining us on this two quarter journey, we were all very excited to get started, and this was the perfect way to start things off. My team is getting the chance to work with Mary who owns her own housekeeping business called Immaculate Cleaning. On Monday, we met at La Mejor Taqueria to sit down with Mary and learn more about her story and her business. As business students, we often get stuck thinking about business strictly in the academic sense since that’s what we’ve been taught, but a lot of business knowledge comes from experience. It was so great to hear about Mary’s experience and everything she’s learned in the process.
Mary’s family first came to San Jose about twenty years ago. Since then, she and her sisters have moved around the Bay Area, but Mary ended up back in San Jose. When she first started her business, she was living in Contra Costa, cleaning for anyone that would let her in their house. She would take any amount of money they gave her, and sometimes they didn’t pay her at all. This is a mistake, she says, she knows not to make today. We asked if she’s always had a passion for cleaning, but she said that she started the trade out of necessity first and the passion came later on.
Today, Immaculate Cleaning operates in the areas of San Jose, Santa Clara, and Palo Alto. There are four full-time employees and one part-time employee, not including Mary. Mary doesn’t do much of the cleaning anymore and instead focuses more on the administrative and pricing duties. She says that she’s most proud of the close, personal relationships she has with her clients, which is something you can see when you read customer reviews for Immaculate Cleaning on Yelp. During our dinner, we were really able to get an idea of what she wants to focus on during this process. Mainly, she wants to focus on establishing her brand, something she’s definitely laid a foundation for already, and I think that is a goal we will be able to accomplish. The dinner left everyone at the table feeling ambitious and optimistic about what’s to come for this partnership between NPI and Immaculate Cleaning.