S2 EP2: Rising from The Ashes with Tammy Holmgren

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Eric Smith:

Hi everyone. Eric Smith here with Alliant Systems by TEXO. A new episode of Laundry Talks Season Two, episode two. Today we've got a really – a very interesting story, a little bit of a difficult story, but also one that's going to have a good ending. Today's episode is going to be called Rising from the Ashes. This is a story about every laundry owner's worst nightmare.

And you know, what do you do next? Today I've got my co-host with me. Someone I've worked with for a long time in the laundry industry. Ruel Lunar. Ruel, what's going on?

Ruel Lunar:

Not too much, man. I'm happy that we finally were able to connect on one. I feel like we've been talking about us doing a Laundry Talks together for a while, so I appreciate you having me on.

Eric Smith:

Yeah, so, first time on, huh?

Ruel Lunar:

Yeah, exactly.

Eric Smith:

Yeah. So, this is a story we talked about at Alliant conference last fall. It was a little newer at that point. This situation just occurred and we shared it with our audience there. And a lot of people had mentioned how important it was for, you know, operators to share successes, failures, how they solve problems and how much, you know, how meaningful that can be inside the industry for people to kind of share this information.

Let's bring on our guest. Today's guest is GM of Spotless Uniform and Linen, Tammy Holmgren. Tammy, how are you doing today?

Intro Voice:

This is the podcast for the textile rental operator community to learn new things, share ideas and drive conversations. Welcome to Laundry Talks with your host, Eric Smith.

Tammy Holmgren:

I'm doing great. Thank you. How are you both?

Eric Smith:

I’m great. Ruel, how about you?

Ruel Lunar:

Doing great. Good to see you, Tammy. And always appreciate you. You know, being able to share your story. I think a lot of people can resonate with what y'all went through. I think everyone has seen someone or know someone that has been through something similar and just really, you know, appreciate your time to be able to share with us today and talk through it.

Tammy Holmgren:

I appreciate you guys having me on here.

Eric Smith:

Yeah. So, before we dive in, why don’t you just give us a real quick overview of who is Spotless Uniforms. What type of company is it? How long have you been with the company?

Tammy Holmgren:

So, Spotless Uniform and Linen is actually a fifth generation independent. We are based out of Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, and we service the majority of British Columbia and northern Alberta, our neighboring province. Company is owned by the Hinton's. Sean Hinton is our president. And yeah, five generations. And the plan is to move on to generation six in the upcoming years.

Eric Smith:

Well, let me ask you this question then. So, it is a family business. You're not in the family. You've been brought in from the outside to really help facilitate the growth that they're trying to achieve. Tell me a little bit about your background, how you came to be at the company.

Tammy Holmgren:

Yeah. So, I've been – August this year it will be four years that I’ve been with Spotless Uniform, and Sean - he did. He brought me as not somebody that had experience in this industry. I come from heavier industries. I've worked in forestry, industrial biomass for power stations across the world.

A little bit of mining background, construction background. So, I really had no idea what actually took place in this facility that I drove past every day of my life, that I lived here. I don't think a lot of people really know what does go behind closed doors. It's just you take for granted that your cover all show up every day and have what you need, the PPE you need to do your job, or your bar towels or your shop towels.

So yeah, I have had zero industry experience, but what I did have was the experience in structure, organizational structure, planning, strategic planning and growth and human resources. So, Sean - the company grew. They've done an amazing job growing the company and just reached a point where we needed to kind of take a look at what is the structure need to be like, and what do we need to set ourselves up to continue this growth path.

Eric Smith:

That's awesome. And not as many people in industry come to this industry and consider this to be more of a lighter industry. Most people - the laundry industry is the heavy industry. So, that's awesome.

Eric Smith:

Yeah. I mean, why don't we just talk? Why don't we cut to the chase? Talk about what happened on August 5th the last year and maybe set the stage for us?

Tammy Holmgren:

Sure. I mean, I think a day that no owner, no anybody, no employee, no manager, nobody in this industry ever wants to have happened to them. We lost our primary processing facility to a fire on the evening of August the 5th. The building was a complete loss. Thankfully, nobody was hurt.

We had no injuries. Nobody was hurt. So, that is the most important thing. And I'm happy to report that we are still going strong and working on our rebuild.

Ruel Lunar:

Yeah. And Tammy, we'd love to hear, you know, kind of walk us through maybe like the first five minutes. What happened? When you first got that call, what was your initial reaction? And kind of were the first things that you kind of had to obviously take in but also act on immediately.

Tammy Holmgren:

So, I was actually at Ladies Night Golf when the call came through or I was on my way home, I shouldn't say I was there, I just it was a Tuesday evening, and I was at Golf Ladies night on Tuesday evenings. And Sean had actually called and said, hey, I'm getting a fire alarm at the office. And I said, I'm three minutes away. I said, I'll check.

And honestly, I just assumed it was going to be a false alarm. It’s not the first thought that comes to your mind that it's something real. But I was on my way home and I said, I'm three minutes away. I'll give you a call back. And, you know, Bluetooth safely talking on the phone, hung up the phone and the fire trucks pulled up behind me, and I had to actually pull over and let the fire trucks pass and I thought, okay, they're responding to the alarm.

And as soon as they pulled past me, I pulled ahead and came around the corner and could see the smoke and knew that this was real. This was actually happening.

Ruel Lunar:

I could only imagine. It feels like a nightmare. You know, you walk up to a building that you go to every day for 3 or 4 years, and you see something like that. I can't imagine what kind of emotions were going through and thoughts.

Tammy Holmgren:

Yeah, I think for me, in that moment, it was more into just the emergency operations kind of standpoint of it. What needs to happen is anybody there ensuring that we knew nobody had been in the building at the time. The first fire trucks were on scene. Obviously, at that point in time, I was the second person on scene beside the fire trucks there. They did have their fire chief on site right away.

So, the timing of me being there was really beneficial for them because I was able to sit down and they pulled me into his vehicle right away and sat down. And basically, we drew a map of the building where the equipment was, where everything was stored so that they had a solid plan for their crews of knowing exactly what was going on, where things had ended that day, where equipment was placed, forklifts, you know, anything like that.

So, that piece I remember very clearly. It was this scribbled out map on a piece of paper. This is here, this is here, which was beneficial for the fire department for sure, but it was very clear that it was going to be a defensive fire pretty much from the get-go.

Eric Smith:

Yeah. You know, I mean, and we talked about this before, but I mean, the statistics for not just, you know, a laundry that has a disaster like this, but for any business that the statistics are not great. And I think – Ruel, you pointed out maybe that like if you can't resume billing and resuming your business and you're invoicing within five days, you're almost certainly not going to make it.

And that's one of the key indicators, I think, for any business that has a disaster of this nature. So, that was kind of what you were facing at the time.

Ruel Lunar:

Whenever we're looking at the data, I think it was something over 90%. If you can't continue the business and be able to process and that sort of nature, it's staggeringly high, which I was surprised with when I first looked at it.

Eric Smith:

Yeah. So, Tammy, there were a couple I mean - it wasn't a lot of great news - but there's a couple little kind of small, good things that - some good news, I think. I don't know if you want to talk like about your warehouse facility. Obviously, no one was injured. You know, no one was hurt. So that's the kind of step one. But tell me, what are a couple of the positives that you've discovered in the next few hours?

Tammy Holmgren:

I think - I mean, the resilience of the team and the support that we had from the staff and the employees was incredible there. We are not a large center. We're about 80,000 people here, but we service very large geographical area. But the team is very much like a family and word of course - with social media nowadays spread quite quickly about the fire.

I didn't know at the time how many of our staff were actually on site, but it literally was almost the entire team that was across the highway watching this happen. They banded together and, you know, supported one another, which was really incredible throughout.

I mean, you're in a mitigation and a planning room right away. We had a - have still it is there. One thing we didn't lose is an office on site that was separated from the actual processing facility. And so, I was on the phone with some of our contractors, literally 11:00 at night. They're answering phone calls, and they were there at 6:00 the next morning with generators to get us power to the office space that we had so that we could set up, you know, laptops, computers and everything.

Our IT provider had whatever computers they had there. They immediately set them up and brought them over the next day as well, too. So, we were almost immediately able to set up an office, a temporary office, our phone systems as well, because we are in a phone system. So, we were able to get our phones and everything up and running relatively quickly, ensuring internet backup and quickly, and get everything set up to ensure that we could communicate with our other employees and team members in any other areas of the province, as well as insurance and the planning for what had to happen going forward.

And obviously our customers were the biggest, you know, that communication needed to go out right away to make sure that there was no panic setting in with anybody. We were sitting down. We were putting up a plan to place our trucks from the night. Yesterday’s processing were pre-loaded and sitting in the yard, so we could have technically had our RSR team out on route that next morning.

We chose not to. We brought in a heavy duty mechanic from one of the local shops that we work with to do inspections on all the trucks, make sure there wasn't any smoke damage or anything that could have affected the operation, even though they were away from the building where they were parked in the compound overnight, and the RSR team was able to rescind deliveries the following morning, Thursday morning, with messaging that we'd been able to prepare them all with for the conversations that they could have with the customers while they were out doing or else.

Ruel Lunar:

Definitely a lot of small wins. I know you mentioned the VoIP system with the phones. Just touching base on the previous setup on the data side, right? So, like you're invoicing and all of that – Tammy, correct me if I'm wrong - but that was all within a server that was in the building that was in the fire. Is that accurate?

Tammy Holmgren:

That is correct. When I first started at Spotless Uniform, we didn't have the separate office space set up in the other building on the property. All of the offices were in the building, and our server was located in the building, and backups were being done there. There was very little offsite storage, so to speak, or offsite backups, which was a risk and something that we recognized and took care of relatively quickly.

Within the first - I can come on this day - about 6 to 8 months. We started doing, you know, more digitizing of the files, off site backups, our IT company. Basically, we came in and we just did a full plan on what we needed to do from an IT perspective for security moving forward. We had - prior to the fire - had conversations, of course, with you folks regarding moving to the Alliant cloud, which I'm sure we're going to get to in a little bit.

Eric Smith:

I'm going to go back to the backup, which is great because this is a pretty - this is something we see quite a bit where you're actually doing the backups. And there are some businesses that either have no backup procedure or it gets done sometimes or there's lapses in it, you were actually were walked in and they were doing backups, but unfortunately those backups were actually being made and stored on site when you arrived.

And I know, you kind of glossed over the fact that you transitioned to online backups and offline storage. But that was kind of a battle. And I think that's kind of a lesson with, you know, people that are really brought in to run and grow a business. You got to kind of pick those battles. And that was one of the ones that you did with ownership of kind of draw a line in the sand and say, hey, this is something we needed to invest in.

And it really, you know, kind of saved save the operation long term. So, do you want to talk a little bit about those difficult conversations that sometimes management has with the ownership of a company?

Tammy Holmgren:

Yeah. And I think one of the great things that still happens today are those difficult conversations, because those difficult conversations are what help you move forward. And they might be difficult, but I mean, they're still - you can have difficult conversations. They're done respectfully. And you sit and listen to both sides. And that's how we learn and that's how we grow.

I hear this more and more as I become more integrated into this industry and I meet more people, that there is so many of these companies that are just multi-generational. And when you have that, and in our case, I think specifically, you only know what you know, you've invested your entire life, and your family has put all of this energy and effort into growing this business.

And when things come up, if you don't know or you don't have those outside experiences or outside options with different contractors or just even, sometimes you get so busy and the growth and the things that are going on that just hasn't been a consideration because there hasn't been a problem. And sometimes when those obstacles pop up is the best time to really dig in and do what is the root cause and what is the risk.

And I think the risk analysis for me coming in, there was a lot of our IT and the systems that we were using, including our payroll. Our payroll was another one that we did. We moved to a new payroll system in 2024, January. We started the process in 2023, moved there in 2024, updated some of our accounting systems, adding new modules to the Alliant system and of course working our IT company on our backup systems.

And so, it's - I love that Sean and I still have difficult conversations. We have extremely different views and opinions, and I don't have that experience in that side from an owner's perspective. And he - I just completely respect where he's coming from with that. And he respects the outside knowledge that I bring in and some of the experience that I've had in different environments.

And we throw everything on the table and bring in other members of the team and, okay, what's going to work? And sometimes we have to try and sometimes we fail and things don't work, and that's okay. It's part of the journey. And we come up with a new plan, and we of course correct and go forward.

Eric Smith:

So, we didn't have any injuries. We didn't have any loss of life after that. Obviously there's a lot of machinery, property, equipment, uniforms, all kinds of things that you lost, but that you had access to the data and you have actually a good third party managed IT service that was able to really kind of spin up a temporary server, and they were able to bring out those backups and get you kind of limping along and running, you know, almost immediately.

And that's - I think that's really kind of once you get over that initial hurdle, you know, what are some of the big decisions you had to really start making? You know, once you just got some level of recovery going, what then came next as far as insurance and investigations and planning for what's next? What happened at that point?

Tammy Holmgren:

I have nothing but great things to say about our insurance company, both our broker that works through our insurance policies and brokered the deals for us, as well as our actual coverage. We've had amazing support from them. So, I really have nothing but great things to say. Everybody comes to me and going, oh, insurance, that must be a nightmare. And I go, really? It's not.

So, the fire was Tuesday night. I had a phone call at 7:00 the next morning from our head adjuster at the insurance company, and the first things were, you know, we're sorry to hear about this. What do you need? And part of that was because they had found out our broker was actually on site as well, watching the fire that night. There was it's amazing in a community like this, how many people just - they were just there.

I didn't know necessarily all the people that were there because I was kind of down with the fire crews, but it's amazing who was there and everybody that came together. I think the system side was huge. We did lose one day if there was something that I could encourage anybody to do, it would be to do your backups earlier in the day. But our backups were done nightly, but they were typically done a little bit later in the evening.

And so, our backup for that night did not happen at the time that the fire had started. So, we only lost one day of data. But of course, understanding our system, getting things back up online was huge. And I think that's whereas part of that recovery, outside of I mean, there's so many things that happened.

I mean, the other independents that reached out and helped us. I mean, Brian Bart, same thing from Echo Talks was 7:00 in the next morning. He was on the phone with Sean. What do you need? What can we do? Companies like Fabric Clean, Echo Sound, executive that just anybody, like anybody in our region, you know, how can we help? What do you need?

And so, we were able to put together some mitigation plans really quickly. We do have a facility about 6.5 hours west of us. So that of course was helpful. We're running trucks back and forth and we're running night shifts at the other facility, which is where the majority of our processing is happening right now while we rebuild.

But without the support of other independents, local contractors like our IT company that worked with you in order to get us up on the cloud really quickly, which I know we're going to get to, but just a temporary server. They spun up a virtual server within less than 24 hours of the fire. We had a virtual server going and we had our prior backup up and running. It was extremely slow. It was not something we could maintain, but at least we had the information while we worked on the next steps. We're getting moved over to the cloud.

Ruel Lunar:

And Tammy, a question about, you know, like your daily processes where you said you had lost that one, you know, days of work within the system. But like how typically far out are y'all generating invoices for like loads to be able to kind of be ahead? Is that something that y’all do today or even back then?

Tammy Holmgren:

Yeah, it is as much as we can. And it has been, I think this is where, you know, big shoutouts need to go to Ashley. Ashley Dirksen, who's our service manager. She's been with the company for a very long time and for her too, because she is based out of the print storage as well.

She understood the operations and the production side of the facility as long as the server side, because she started with us - just passed her 15-year anniversary here. So, because of the geographical area that we service, a lot of people are surprised to hear that we have our RSRs that are on route and they leave on a Sunday and don't come home until Tuesday night, or they leave on a Tuesday morning, and they come home on a Thursday night.

So, there's one- and two-night overnight routes that we have, which in some cases almost helped us because those are RSRs were out on their routes and they had both the soil and the clean in their possession during the fire. Just so happens for those. So that did help us a little bit. We do have an off-site stocker here in Prince George in a different facility.

So, we did have stock that we were able to immediately get into some of the - I'm going to say more urgent customers, not because we prioritize one over another, but some of the customers, of course, we were processing, the dirty had just arrived and then clean were set to go out the next day.

So, there was some stuff that we had to do, obviously, I think a lot of it are more related to our bar towels and our shop towels and our mops and our aprons and napkins and linens and all of that. The customers that were once a week accounts became twice a week accounts immediately. That was probably the biggest change.

We were taking the inventory that was on site at these mines or forestry companies, construction companies, wherever they were. And if they were once a week account were record clipping and search servicing and twice a week. So, the value of setting proper inventory levels for your customers, that certainly played a factor in our success of being able to recover.

Eric Smith:

And that's just because you pick up the soil and then wash it and return it a couple days later. Yeah.

Are there any other you know, we talked about, you know, your IT company. We talked about some of the other independents that really lent a hand. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that now that you've now moved off of an off-site server. So, in the future now everything's in the cloud. That's not going to be a concern moving forward.

But, you know, that was a pretty big move to transition from an on-site server to the cloud and I assume it's not something you want to go back to the old version of.

Tammy Holmgren:

No, no, not at all. We’re extremely happy with the Alliant Cloud. And we are going to be moving our terrorist facility over onto the Alliant Cloud as well, because we do operate two separates there. So, I know that's in the works right now. We're doing some preliminary of cleanup as to what we need to do in the system there to get ready to do that.

The team was eight days Ruel, I think? From the first phone call. So, the fire was on Tuesday night. Wednesday was a lot of mitigation and planning I did - I know, Eric, I did speak to you on that Wednesday, and you had set up a call with the team for me for Thursday morning. And so, I would say Thursday morning was August the 7th. We were in full planning mode. Or how do we do this? How do we move over, connected you all with our IT company and by the following Friday, the Alliant Cloud was live, which was just a game changer for us.

Ruel Lunar:

Yeah, yeah, eight days is definitely accurate. Yeah, and I think just with everything going on, right? That y'all are trying to coordinate where you know, your IT is helping us. I think your IT did a great job being able to be readily available with anything that we needed at any given time. Right? We were really able to push that timeline as short as possible. So, I'm really, really happy with that success and happy to hear the other locations are going to come on soon too.

Tammy Holmgren:

Yeah, they will as well. I'll throw that shout out to them too, Sean and the team over there.

Eric Smith:

Yeah, and there's also some hidden savings. I mean, people, you know, there's people that are going to continue to host their own servers and that's fine. But once you get out of that business, it's not just hosting the server. If you've got a server and a large operation, you probably have a server room.

You probably have to worry about the HVAC of the server room and, you know, the cabling to it and the maintenance and the patches and all that stuff kind of goes away. Most people's insurance goes down if they're not hosting an on-site server. So, those are all really some, you know, for people in this industry worried about something like this happening, you know, that's just something that you can really easily just take off for your plate.

What's the new plans, what's happening right now as far as rebuilding and give us some of the vision of what's happening at Spotless today?

Tammy Holmgren:

Oh, that’s the fun stuff.

Yeah. I mean, out of all of this, I think there's just some really exciting things that are happening. Our company is still continuing to grow. We are still signing new accounts. We expanded further into northern Alberta. Actually, we just launched it the week before the fire.

So, we're still pursuing our growth there. And we have a building design done and completed and development permits have been submitted. We have a water treatment system that has been selected, and that team is working with the engineering departments, mechanical engineers and everything from our construction company.

We did choose a local contractor as our contracting company for rebuild. So, we're in all the fun stuff. We've done the design, which is really exciting. And that's probably I think the thing that, you know, now we just have these days when things are a little frustrating and they're not going as fast as you hope they could be. And then you pull up the picture and go, okay, soon we're going to be there.

Eric Smith:

Is there a ribbon cutting date that we can put on our calendars?

Tammy Holmgren:

It’s going to be, I mean, our goal would be July of 2027 and very well might be August. So, we're just - that's the tentative goal right now. I mean, I'd love to tell you that we're going to be in there in May or June, but I think I'm probably looking at rose colored glasses if I were to do that.

Ruel Lunar:

Any plans or date for breaking ground yet?

Tammy Holmgren:

We're just waiting for the permit to come back for some of the groundwork. So that will be happening fairly quickly here, that the groundwork will be done. It's just the different stages of the permitting that we have to go through in our region here.

But we're optimistic that there'll be some groundbreaking work done. We do have our media company setting up a couple time lapse cameras, so there will be progress that we'll be able to post of the build as it goes through working with our - finalizing our equipment layouts and designing suppliers right now. And yeah, it's fun for sure. That's the fun part. And the exciting things that just keep you going and moving forward.

Ruel Lunar:

Brand spanking new equipment as well I'm guessing too, huh?

Tammy Holmgren:

So yeah, everything will be brand spanking, yeah. That's what the new plan. Yeah.

We never had a water treat – I mean, we did have a water treatment before, but it wasn't to the level of what we're doing now. So, we will be - I mean it makes sense and it's the right thing to do, particularly in our industry, to be from an environmental standpoint.

So, we have gone with Camco Systems. So Camco will be providing - we're using a ceramic membrane filter system and as well as a reverse osmosis system. So, the goal will be to reuse upwards of 80% of the water that we have through. We were one of the top three water usage companies in our city, so we're excited to be able to now drop that right down and go on a new environmental chapter that's going to take us to the next level from sustainability.

Eric Smith:

I love that. I wanted to add that one, summer in British Columbia sounds like a pretty good time to come up and visit. So, we'll definitely be looking for that invitation for the ribbon cutting.

Tammy Holmgren:

It will be coming, and it definitely will be summertime, because I think I'd have a hard time getting any of you up here if it were four degrees in January.

Eric Smith:

You know, by the way, funny golf story. You mentioned that you happened to be just leaving your ladies golf outing. When you came down to our conference last year, you did play a full 18 holes of golf with me and a pair of flip flops, and I've never seen that before.

Tammy Holmgren:

I did.

Eric Smith:

Yeah, and that’s partly - not intentionally. Your luggage had unfortunately been lost, which is kind of a blow for you that day. But you did. You made it through the whole round. I think part of it actually was barefoot. You eventually took flip flops off.

Tammy Holmgren:

Yeah, I golfed barefoot.

Ruel Lunar:

Yeah. I didn't know if that was like a handicap or something. You were just that good, Tammy.

Eric Smith:

Yeah, she was that good that she decided to wear flip flops.

Tammy Holmgren:

I love to golf, but it doesn't mean that I'm good at golf. But I do love to golf. But yeah, I was glad I had enough in my carry-on bag that I didn't have to worry about the jet bag. I think I wore the same clothes a couple of days in the row in the conference there, but yeah, the golfing and flip flops and bare feet was a part of our story.

Eric Smith:

So, you know, and it's always nice because sadly fires are actually more common than we like them to be in our industry. Some of them are actually very small incidents or that are contained quickly or prevented, but, you know, they're so real. It's a real problem.

I don't know if you have any, even just 1 or 2 things, like looking back from where you said, you know, what is it you would tell every operator out there to go check today when they get done listening to this, what should they make sure they have right now?

Tammy Holmgren:

I mean, certainly look at your IT systems and your infrastructure of how you have that set up, right? What would happen? Where is your data saved? Because the integrity of the data is absolutely critical.

I think, you know, having those proper shut down procedures and notifications and, you know, your motion sensors, all of that is fantastic. There's a lot of new technology out there that we are looking at right now that I think will come into play with the new facility.

I mean, I think it's important to note that there was no determination of the cause of the fire. So, it's not like there is a specific root cause that I can turn around and speak to today that's been brought by the fire inspector or the insurance company.

The area that the fire started in the building is an area that was clean product. It was Z rack[MD8] of hanging garments ready to go out the next day it was folded shelves. Our towels. The only equipment in that area at the building was a computer and a strapping machine. So, a lot of people, I think, is being automatically that we're talking about a combustion of our equipment or dryers or something. For us, that wasn't the case.

They were able to recover some of the footage of where the fire started, but they weren't unable to determine the actual cause of it. So, I don't have a solution for that piece of it, but I think it's just really important to know that there's a lot of technology out there that I think we're going to be looking at moving forward.

Eric, you got a chance to see Sean down at the Clean Show shortly after the fire. That was, I think, a hard trip for him to take. It was literally less than three weeks after the fire. And when we talked about this and it was a, you know, how do you go? And I kind of said, Sean, like, how do you not go where you're going to need new equipment?

And this is the time to be going and looking at all of that and see what is out there from new technology and new systems. So that was a - I think everybody was shocked to see him down there. But it just made sense.

Eric Smith:

Well, he's pretty hands on.

Tammy Holmgren:

Yeah.

Eric Smith:

You know one quick story about Sean. When he first put in our software 20 plus years ago, he was the one that traveled down to Texas and sat in our conference room. And he was like the customers and things like that. He's probably the grow in the business to where maybe he's not the person that does that anymore.

Maybe you don't even want him in those screens anymore, honestly.

Tammy Holmgren:

Certainly, that is something.

Eric Smith:

But yeah, I mean, he did tell me at the Clean Show, and I've told this to you before, but yeah, he said when he hired you, partly because you had no industry experience, that was a huge benefit for him. And you had experience helping grow businesses, just not in the laundry.

And then also he had no idea, you know, that he was also getting a first-class disaster mitigation specialist when he hired you. And so, I think he was very thankful and that you're on his team. And that was my takeaway from the discussion with him at the Clean Show.

Tammy Holmgren:

Yeah, I truly do love working for this family, and Sean is very hands-on. You are right. And it's funny you say that because at those times where I go: “No, you don’t need to be.”

Eric Smith:

Well, maybe read only read only for you, Sean.

Ruel Lunar:

Yeah, exactly. You know what? Keep them in Alliant BI just with a dashboard to keep them nice and pretty and not the actual software, huh?

Tammy Holmgren:

Oh, the Alliant BI. There's a whole other thing. We're pretty stoked about that. And yeah, Sean’s loving that as well too. But yeah, we do joke about that recently. And even - it was yesterday we were having a conversation, and I had said something and he had made a comment back and he goes, wait a minute. It's a good thing that I don't know that, right? I said, yes, it's a good thing you don't. There's nothing for you to worry about. It's already been done.

So, the benefit for me, though, coming in, not having any industry experience and having an owner that was so hands on and was there like anything I needed was there, you know, as I was coming in and transitioning and learning, I have his support every single day, whether he's here or not here. I'm working from home today because I wanted to be a little quieter for being able to do this.

But yeah, the responsiveness and the ability to just get those answers or perspectives or history right away. He knows this business inside and out. And so, it's been a great journey and a huge benefit for me to have an order that is so involved. And now I'm happy to be able to take some of that off of him and his family, in the sense that we have a different team, and that was really what it was. Is he wanted me to build a team and look at the systems of how do we continue to do this?

And so, it's now that, you know, you do need a bit of redundancy with your teammates and with cross training and the things that you do and where people can pick up and jump in. And I think we have an amazing team. I'm super proud of them. I learn from them every single day. And it's nice to be able to sit back and watch them flourish and grow.

We would not be where we are today. We would not be this success story if it wasn't for the team that we had. We didn't lose any employees. We kept everybody on after the fire. I'm just, yeah, super grateful for the team that we have and everything that is going on.

Ruel Lunar:

I can definitely echo that. Anyone that I've worked with, all the team, including yourself, Sean, Sierra, shout out to Sierra as well. Y'all are great.

Tammy Holmgren:

She’s incredible, isn't she? She just – that girl, she is like our right hand and our rock when it comes to any of our systems. Like, particularly with the Alliant and the setup, we had her down at the training session with you guys in February. I don't know if you know this yet, but Ashley is coming to the one in July, so I'll you'll get to see her down there.

Ruel Lunar:

That's great. Yeah. Excited to meet her. I don't think I've seen her in person.

Tammy Holmgren:

Oh, yeah. She's a ball of energy. I'm sure you've seen that from some of her social media posts, that girl.

Eric Smith:

Well, this was just been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining. Thanks for sharing this story. I think it's going to help people. I mean, if it ends up giving you one company to maybe take a look at their backup strategy or even do a fire drill.

So, there's so many people when I ask them, by the way, are you doing backups? They say, sure, but a lot of times they don't really even know or where they are. And so, doing like a fire drill and saying, okay, today let's act like we have no access to the system. Let me put my hands on that backup to prove that we could actually have it, and that that would be a great exercise for any business.

Tammy Holmgren:

Absolutely, and I just think to also have those connections with your suppliers, I mean, you know, I'm talking about the cloud and the Alliant BI and all the great things that we're having out of it. But, I mean, I do need to thank you all. You know, the Alliant team has been absolutely incredible.

And even just helping us, our ability to be able to move forward and grow with new modules and explore more things now. So, you know, Nick and Jack and Chris and you know, Ruel, of course, obviously you too and Eric. Like, I really can't thank you all enough. The support that you guys gave us through all of this was fantastic.

And yeah, for anybody out there that is if all independent, check your backups. Do those tests. Fire drills are fantastic. You know, do you load your trucks at the end of the day? Where's your inventory. Anything like that. What would happen just looking at all those little things that you just don't know until they happen.

Eric Smith:

Perfect. Well, we can't wait to see what the next chapter is for Spotless and you and the entire company. So, thank you so much.

Tammy Holmgren:

Thank you both.