Download the full transcript PDF.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:05] You are listening to the Thanks for Visiting Podcast. We believe hosting with heart is at the core of every short-term rental. With Annette’s background in business operation–
Annette Grant: [00:00:14] And Sarah’s extensive hospitality management and interior design experience, we have welcomed thousands of guests from over 30 countries, earning us over $1,000,000 and garnering us thousands of five-star reviews.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:28] We love sharing creative ways for your listing to stand out, serve your guests and be profitable. Each episode, we will have knowledgeable guests who bring value to the short-term rental industry–
Annette Grant: [00:00:39] Or we will share our stories of our own experiences so you can implement actual improvements to your rentals. Whether you’re experienced, new or nervous to start your own short-term rental, we promise you’ll feel right at home.Before we dive into the content, let’s hear a word from our sponsor.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:01:01] Hello. Welcome back for another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.
Annette Grant: [00:01:05] I am Annette Grant, and together we are–
Both Annette & Sarah: [00:01:07] Thanks for Visiting.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:01:08] And we’re going to kick off this episode like we do every week, that’s sharing one of you, our amazing listeners, viewers, followers. If you’re using the #STRShareSunday, we’ll share you here on the podcast to all of our email subscribers, and if you’re on our email list, get on it, and to our Instagram followers. So, Annette, who are we sharing this week?
Annette Grant: [00:01:29] This week we are sharing @East_ATL_Studio. Again that’s East_ATL_Studio. And I have to say, Rishi and Andy reached out to us via DM because they invested in their digital real estate. And Sarah and I talk about digital real estate a lot inside our membership and on our workshop, and this is a cool STR share because they have converted their short-term rental into a creative space for photography and videography.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:02:02] So cool.
Annette Grant: [00:02:02] So they’ve transitioned. They were hosting strictly short-term rental overnight stays and then they’ve transitioned. And I love this. And I want to bring this to your attention because there’s multiple ways that you can do this. You could switch your home into a studio. So what they have, you can do photos there, you can do lifestyle, and they also have an outdoor area. If you read their social media, they have over 400 happy clients. And what happens is people are renting their space via Pure Space by the hour.
And I really want you to take a look at them. And you don’t need to transfer your whole entire space into hourly. But Sarah and I always want to make you aware of all the different ways that you can earn income off of your property. And I think they are crushing it. Please look to them. Look at their Instagram, go to their site, see how they’re doing this. They are making it happen. And one other thing I want to highlight about what they’ve done, they did a great thing by having a local publication come in and feature them.
So if you have not reached out to your local, whatever that might be, is there a magazine, is there a newspaper, is there a blog? Do some of that marketing on your own and get your message out there.
So well done EastATL Studio. Love what you’re doing for your community and giving the creatives a space and love how you pivoted your short-term rental into super short-term rental by making it hourly. All right, Sarah, let’s get on to the episode.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:03:32] All right. So we are hot off the trail of TFV Live and so many good things came of that event, not only all the amazing people that are in our membership, HBM members, but also people who didn’t even know we had a podcast. So that was awesome. No, that’s great.
Annette Grant: [00:03:52] We loved it.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:03:52] We love it. And as well as people that we welcome to our stage were new friends as well, like the gentleman we have on today’s show for you. He blew us out of the water. We said, you have to come on the podcast. We have to share you with all of our listeners.
Annette Grant: [00:04:06] He probably could have done a full-day event. And we’re scheming something with him for 2023.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:04:13] He doesn’t even know it yet.
Annette Grant: [00:04:13] He doesn’t. Well, we talked about a little bit, but who we have on today, Sarah?
Sarah Karakaian: [00:04:17] All right. Today we have Sean Kemper. He started ETI Solutions with a deeper vision to help educate and train short-term rental companies in the practices of cleaning while continuing to bring innovative equipment, cleaning, and disinfecting products to the industry.
And the really cool thing with Sean is he not only has amazing products, which by the way, listeners, I have received, used, shared with my housekeeping team and they love it, but he also understands the chemistry behind his products. And that’s what we’re going to dive in today because there are some things that we learned at the event that were like–
Annette Grant: [00:04:53] Science. We were learning science.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:04:55] We were learning science. So, Sean, welcome to the show.
Sean Kemper: [00:04:59] Hey, thanks, ladies.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:05:00] Yeah.
Sean Kemper: [00:05:02] And it was awesome in Vegas.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:05:03] We had such a good time.
Annette Grant: [00:05:04] We had such a good time. I think you got mobbed after your session. And I have to ask, Sean. Sean was bold. He gave out his phone number. What happened with that?
Sean Kemper: [00:05:16] I had a few prank calls, and I recall.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:05:17] Okay. This is for you. It’s hot.
Sean Kemper: [00:05:19] I learned to go get people number.
Annette Grant: [00:05:21] Okay, there we go. All right, Sean, seriously, you blew us away on stage. Everyone was taking notes. We were learning. We’re like, wait a second, why is this stuff not taught? We always talk about personal finance not being taught in junior high and high school.
After your session, I was like, “Why do we not learn some of these basic cleaning things?” Because it really does come down to chemistry. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, these aren’t just things for people to use in their short-term rentals.” They can also use them at home. And that’s always fun when things can be used in both places.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:05:51] And listeners, just before you decide whether or not this episode is for you or not, I want you to remember that I would say 99% of our listeners, Sean, are real estate investors, and I don’t know why any of them wouldn’t want to know what products are being used inside their homes. Because if you are investing all this money in the materials, into all the things that make up your property, you want to make sure that those things are being cared for correctly.
So stay tuned. Pay attention. That way if you hire out your cleaning team, you can ask them educated questions about their products and maybe have a conversation about what they’re using. So Sean, the cool thing when you hit the stage the first thing you said, which I had no idea, is that you went to school for marketing. So talk to us about young Sean growing up and how you ended up where you are today.
Sean Kemper: [00:06:41] Excellent. Well, young Sean growing up was just a normal kid, loved playing football and all the other sports we did. Getting into college, I always know wanted to be in sales. That was kind of my thing. I love meeting people, helping people, training, introducing things. But I got into marketing and I just love the marketing and advertising aspect of it too, how you take a product or whatever you’re selling or doing and just showcase it, really, really shine it up, use the bells and whistles and everything that goes along and pitching an item or something. So marketing was my gig and that’s what I did and continue to grow from there.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:07:15] Okay, well then how did you get into cleaning?
Sean Kemper: [00:07:18] Well, my dad actually bought a company down in South Alabama probably 30-plus years ago, and I didn’t think I was going to be back with the company. So I graduated college, moved down to New Orleans. I was actually working with a raw material chemical supplier at one time for a little bit, and then that’s when the Internet was just rolling out. So then I got into the Internet companies and I started selling the Internet when it first came out and people didn’t know what the heck it was like, “Do you need a computer to get on the Internet?”
It was hysterical at first.
So that company was awesome. I did some IPOs with them and grew that whole technology side. And then I had an offer from one of my headhunters I dealt with to get back into the chemical business, and it was a company called Ecolab, which most of y’all might have known or see Ecolab. They’re a global company. But I had a territory down in South Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida. And all we did was educate and train on cleaning chemicals.
And basically, we dealt with all the fast food restaurants, your big ones, McDonald’s, Burger King, Tricon. We did all their private labeling. So my job was to go around and meet those owners, meet those managers, educate the janitorial staffs and show them how to clean grills and bathrooms. And any aspect of the restaurant, we showed them how to do it.
So I did that for several years, moved up to Chicago as a manager with them. And then my dad gave me a holler and said, “Hey, all that you’re doing there now, why don’t you come back down to Alabama and let’s see what we can do?” And my wife, being from New Orleans, at the time, she wanted to get a little bit closer to home too.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:08:50] So talk to us about your dad’s business. What exactly was it?
Sean Kemper: [00:08:53] It’s chemical manufacturing. I still work there with them. It’s a manufacturing process. So we make all the chemicals. Basically, my first job when I came to work with family business was to go pick up janitorial distributors. And so that’s what I did.
I went out and hit all over the southeast and I picked up janitorial distributors, showed our products, demoed our products. Then I would work with their sales teams and help them educate them, so then in turn they could sell the products to their end users, be it restaurants, churches, schools, whatever it might be.
So then basically it’s me training them and then they sell our products. So we built that relationship and they would grow the line. Then I would pick up different distributors in other areas and do the same thing and just kept growing. But one of my first distributors was based out of Orange Beach, Alabama, Liberty Lennons, and they were in the vacation rental space. And it was really cool space. And we’re down here close to the beach in south Alabama. So that’s where I finally fell into the short-term vacational rental.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:09:53] Okay. So you struck up a conversation with the linen company. It was linens, correct?
Sean Kemper: [00:09:57] Yeah. A little bit of chemicals and everything to it.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:10:00] Okay. And so what was it about the vacation rental world or the residential rental world that seemed to catapult your name for yourself as opposed to the big restaurants and things like that? Was it just like how big it was? Was there a huge void that you found that people weren’t being educated in the housekeeping chemical world? What was it about that industry that interested you?
Sean Kemper: [00:10:24] Coming from the corporate side with Ecolab, and all the hotels and restaurants and everybody that we dealt with, it was so structured and so standardized. And then when I got into this business, I’m like, “Wow, there’s such a huge need for education training.” These people don’t know what the products they’re using and they’re just being barked at from a janitorial guy, and there’s not a lot of expertise in that. So I saw that niche back then and just kept growing and growing and building the business through that area.
Annette Grant: [00:10:53] Right, because I’ll be honest, when I think about cleaning, I’m like, you go to either a big box store and you go to the cleaning aisle, or the dollar store and you just pick a glass cleaner, a bathroom cleaner. I know there’s a lot of them that are popular and you just put like three or four. And to me, I’m just going to be honest, that was the arsenal. And most likely there’s bleach in there. And I know during your section at our live event, bleach was a hot topic because I feel that’s what a lot of cleaners, including myself, that’s the cure-all.
So can you talk to us about when you go in and start to educate, let’s say you were coming to help Sarah and I with our team. What are some basic stuff that you would just go over? What are some things our listeners can start to work on today with our products?
Sean Kemper: [00:11:41] That’s the reason I formed ETR Solutions, was to take it a step further with help educate and train, and then also get into a consulting side so I can come into your property, I can see what you’re currently using, learn more about your homes and the materials and what you’re cleaning, what you’re up against, and then we help match the right products for that.
You don’t want to use acids on your natural stones because they don’t etch them. The magic eraser, I’m not a big fan of that guy. I know it’s cheap and everything, but it takes paint off walls. That little thing could be pretty aggressive itself, so it can damage some surfaces.
So just understanding the whole cleaning process and why we do what we do and which products we use. Also, a key thing is you run to the dollar store, Home Depot and all that Lowe’s in those places and you’re not getting the proper safety documentation. You’re not getting your safety data sheets, which could be a humongous fine if you’re the food or the Health Department were to come in your facility and you don’t have these proper documents.
Now blew away a couple of people, even when their vehicles, when they’re transporting the chemicals to the properties, they have to actually have them in their vehicle as well. This could be considered a fine. A lot of times we don’t see it because we’re on a smaller scale, but I would rather you be protected and ready in case something did happen.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:12:55] There’s something, too, about being a small business owner. When you know what the big guys know, you kind of hold your head a little higher. So if you have that in your car, or you explain to your housekeeping team if you’re going to be servicing my home, it’s important to me that it gets transported correctly. Here’s what I learned from Sean on the Thanks for Visiting Podcast. You just feel like you’re in control of your business.
So Sean, can you take us– so let’s say it’s 101 cleaning chemistry. We’re in the middle of the US. I know it can get very specialized when you’re on the coasts or what have you, but talk to us about the basics of cleaning. What can our listeners take away today that would empower them to just know a little bit more about the products that should enter their home?
Annette Grant: [00:13:38] Yeah, and if we want to do like bathrooms, kitchens, what are some best practices in those two areas that would be helpful?
Sean Kemper: [00:13:45] Well, Sarah, you made a great point about these owners. You really want to have enough knowledge in your head that you can be dangerous because there’s so many of these cleaners out there. You want to make sure you’re being protected with your ROI, your return on your investment, and make sure everything they’re doing is proper.
I wouldn’t want somebody go in the dollar store and buy some fragrant product and just sticking soap or surfactants everywhere. And these chemical buzzwords, if you have a little bit of knowledge, it’s good because then you can keep that in your back pocket. And when somebody is telling you they did what they’re supposed to do, then you might be like, “No, I did learn this. This is something that I did learn and I kept it for this reason.”
But you talked about certain areas in the house. So bathrooms are tricky. Bathrooms typically deal with mineral buildup, which is going to be your calcium, your lime. Certain areas of the country have hard water. And unfortunately, there’s the product for that is an acid-type product. But the acids are safe. Phosphoric citric are really good acids, but people don’t like to use them because sometimes they have a little bit of a funny pungent smell. But that’s just the nature of the beast.
In order to get your job done properly and get the best from the product, you need to use acids in those scenarios inside your tubs and your porcelain and the toilet sinks. These types of products work really well in that scenario. So cleaning those things with your acid-based product and then disinfecting.
And then kitchens, obviously we’re dealing with more grease and heavy buildup like that and that’s where your higher PH or degreaser type chemicals or even maybe a good bacteria-based product that has organics that are designed to break down your greases and fats. So chemistry has come a long way. There’s some really unique products that do serve a purpose to help you clean faster.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:15:31] Can you go over this whole PH thing because I learned a lot listening to you last week? Talk to us about the PH scale really quickly and what we need to know about it as property owners who are interested in cleaning products.
Sean Kemper: [00:15:45] Yeah, again, PH scale, it’s about a 13, 14 all the way down to zero, and 7, 8 being neutral. So what we want to do is like I mentioned, your mineral scale, this calcium, lime, rust, all those types of scale buildups, that’s when your acids comes into play. Your lemon juice, your vinegar, these things are all acid. So I know a lot of people like to use vinegar because it’s cheap and it is a fairly natural product. But you need to be careful sometimes because of the PH on that product. It’s a 2 and it could definitely damage some surfaces.
Then we go all the way to the extreme of the 13s and 14s. And if you just think of a Drano or drain cleaner, which most of us I’m sure know that’s a high PH, but it has to be to remove those clogs and things that you do have in your drain. So if you understand what you’re up against in the PH scale and the chemical and the acid, alkaline, it’ll help you choose the right product.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:16:36] Okay. You also made it less scary, I feel, when you talked about mildew. Can you tell us the truth about mildew and what we can do to keep it at bay?
Sean Kemper: [00:16:46] Well, mildew trick, everybody does like you said, grab the bleach because it is cheap and it does make it, poof, disappear. But as we did in your training session, think of mold like a flower. So you have this beautiful flower, you got the stem, and then you got the root that we don’t ever see. So that bleach is basically bleaching out that flower to get rid of it. So boom, it’s gone. But the root and stem are still sticking in there and just waiting. So when the next person comes in, you get more of the humidity, the water, it grows that mold and mildew just as fast.
So, I mean, disinfectants have been out there forever to kill this. If you read the label on your disinfectant, it says it kills mold. But a lot of people, we need that instant gratification. We’ve actually designed a product called SporeGO that has natural tea tree in it, along with a stabilized peroxide. So it basically will remove that mold and mildew. It’ll get down into the root and eradicate that problem. But you’ve got to agitate it, get rid of the stain and it won’t come back.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:17:44] So bleach doesn’t actually get rid of our mold issue?
Sean Kemper: [00:17:49] Check EPA. They don’t allow bleach to be used during these restoration teams going after the hurricanes and things like that. Bleach is not an approved product because it just doesn’t get into the substrates like you need it to totally get rid of the mold and mildew so you can box that house back up after a hurricane, put the drywall back in and get everything sealed up. They can still be grown behind the walls.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:18:09] Wow. Is there a good use for bleach then, in your experience or in your travels, what have you learned it’s good for?
Sean Kemper: [00:18:16] In the kitchen, typically it was introduced as a sanitizer or maybe for your white linens and things like that. It bleaches stains out very good. But again, it is detrimental. It will break down your fabrics. It won’t allow your linens and things like that to last as long.
So again, I always choose cheaper– not cheaper, but better alternatives like the bacteria-based products that you can soak and remove organic stains, blood, food, grass, whatever it might be, and help you get rid of all of those things. So bleach, yeah, it’s a sanitizer. That’s how I think it is.
Annette Grant: [00:18:49] Sean, a lot of our listeners are owner operators and they might just have a cleaning team that cleans multiple different places throughout the week. How can we interview? What questions should we be asking our team that’s coming into our home? How can we make sure that the products that they’re using are safe on our surfaces? Or should we supply that? What would be your recommendation for our listeners?
Sean Kemper: [00:19:15] That’s an awesome question, Annette. Again, if they have enough knowledge about what’s going on in their properties, it definitely helps them. One thing we did learn on the whole thing with the floors and why there’s so much buildup and why we get the Black Foot syndrome, understanding that a neutral product on your floors is going to be better than a heavy fragrance product like Fabuloso or a High Degreaser.
So these put too much other soaps and other things onto the floor that make them dirtier. So that could be a good question. What type of product are you using on my floors? Because that is, across the industry, the number one problem.
Maybe say, “Hey, I’ve got a real chalky buildup on the shower glass doors, a white haze. What type of product would you use for that?” And that’s where you would want them to say, well, I use an acid bathroom cleaner, blah, blah, blah. So just if you have a couple of good questions to ask them, you’ll find out real quick if they know their trade.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:20:08] Cleaning quiz.
Annette Grant: [00:20:09] I want to ask about this Black Foot syndrome. I’m not going to lie. I get it at my own house and it makes me mad because I’m like, “I just cleaned the floor.” What am I doing wrong that the floors aren’t coming clean like that?
Sean Kemper: [00:20:23] It’s tricky, and it’s tough because we’ve got friends and family running around the house. You’ve got pets running around the house. We’re cooking all the time, so you’ve got floating oils coming into play. So it’s almost a never-ending battle. But choosing a good neutral product, having a program definitely for the short-term rental, you need to mop it good. You’ve got to get those greases and soils off the surface.
But then there’s also time where I blew their minds when I said, “Hey, just use hot water.” Sometimes just a little bit of hot water can be good to neutralize soap buildup and remove some other soles that are on there.
But one thing I do like doing is a deep clean in every six months. It just depends on the traffic and how many folks you have in your property. But doing a really good maybe even if it’s a machine, if you get Stanley Steemer or one of your local restoration guys, carpet cleaning guys, they can come in and do these extractions and they got all the cool equipment to really wash that floor really well and quickly. So it’s tough. You just got to keep it clean, use the right products and try to get those deep cleans in.
Annette Grant: [00:21:26] Yeah. Sometimes it’s too much–
Sarah Karakaian: [00:21:28] Of a good thing.
Annette Grant: [00:21:30] I think maybe all the Swiffer spray probably needs to be reduced in my world.
Sean Kemper: [00:21:35] Yeah, we have those here, too. My wife buys them and I always go, “Oh, geez.” But you pull those pads out of there and they’re just soaked with chemical. And I know they have to do that, I guess, for their packaging and everything else they’re trying to accomplish. But when I slap that onto the floor, my God, just think about all this soap buildup, everything that’s going down on there.
And then I’ll see the commercials on TV. And I think they’re even trying to get into the neutral floor game and in Blackfoot because I saw a couple interesting things they were pitching, but I’m going it’s a lot of soap that they’re slapping on that floor and depending on the size of square footage and everything else. So a little more science, I think, on our end that we need to help educate and keep everybody going in the right direction.
Annette Grant: [00:22:14] So you feel fine every so often if our cleaning team just wants to use really hot water to help break down all of the soap that’s been used prior.
Sean Kemper: [00:22:24] Yeah.
Annette Grant: [00:22:25] That’s okay.
Sean Kemper: [00:22:25] Yeah, it is crazy. But if you could see it under a microscope, you’ll hear they go in, I just mop the floor. I don’t know why they’re getting anything on their feet or the babies crawling around and getting it. It’s just a thin, thin, thin micro layer of soap or oils. And it just has built up over the years.
So our job is to try to help neutralize all that buildup so then we can get you back to bare bones with the floor. There are some sealers out there that work really well to help seal the surface so that the dirt and soils and greases can’t penetrate into the ground and things. So it’s tricky. That’s why there’s probably 20,000 different products out there for it. But again, that’s where somebody like me or maybe a local supply house, you get some extra education point of view to help you with that.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:23:11] Okay. Here’s another problem. Is there are problems at you, Sean, see if you can give a solution. So in our market, we’re in a metro market and we have a lot of back to backs and sometimes we don’t have time if a guest were to smoke in our unit or cook, even if they’re just baking–
Annette Grant: [00:23:29] Oh my gosh, bacon.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:23:30] Cooking bacon or a fish dish the night before or that morning they’re going salmon with their avocado toast, whatever it is. And shoot, I’ve got a guess coming at four. I know a lot of people have feelings about the Ozone machines and whether or not they’re safe. So what do you recommend we do when it comes to those smells that we just can’t get to seem to–
Annette Grant: [00:23:51] Neutralize.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:23:51] Neutralize and dissipate. Yeah.
Sean Kemper: [00:23:52] And those are just as tricky as the floor. So you’ve got all these airborne odors and then they’re going all over the cabinets and the materials in the kitchen. Ozone is good, but you need to think like 24 hours, and like you said, people cannot actually be in the building or the space when the Ozone machine is on because it could kill us.
So going in there, I can’t speak enough about a good bacteria-based product. We use our chemzymes and it’s got so all these different strands of good bacteria that will break down your greases and your fats and your sugars. So if you do a good clean all around where that source is– and that’s the other thing, we got to try to find out where the source is. If you’ve got to wipe down a cabinet or wipe down the back of splash, whatever it might be, all around the ovens and things.
So try to get rid of all that source as you possibly can, and then have a true odor eliminator to come back in and spray the space. A couple of tricks I always say is spray your baseboard of the door entry when they come in because then you have a nice fragrance. And that’s the first, to me, line of defense. If they smell a nice clean entrance, they’re going to put their guard down and go, okay, this place has been cleaned properly, but also a good odor neutralizer will break down all the airborne odors.
And you can also go into your filters in your AC unit and spray that filter real good, and it’ll go through the property and through the air ducts and drop down into all the rooms as well. So just good clean, good odor neutralizer if you have some really heavy smoke and cooking odors.
Annette Grant: [00:25:17] Wait, can you say that again? Go back to the HVAC. I don’t know if that’s the first time I’ve heard that.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:25:23] Just blown enzymes.
Annette Grant: [00:25:25] Yeah. So what can we do? So–
Sean Kemper: [00:25:28] You got filters that we change out all the time in our AC systems. So maybe get on a routine maintenance when you do change out the filter. Spray it with a nice neutralizer, odor eliminator. I learned about something at the show. There’s, I don’t know. I’ve never seen them. I need to research it. But there’s some kind of coil or something that sticks to your filter. And it’s just a fragrance, but it’s throwing a fragrance out there, which is long as to me, if you don’t get it too heavy floor or whatever direction you want to go in, you just want a nice clean smell.
But yeah, the filters are really good because the filter is going to collect all this throughout the month whenever all those odors that are in the property, pet, cooking, whatever it might be, are going to be collected in that filter as well. So changing out those filters help with odors, and then if there is a nasty odor in the property, change out the filter, put you in a new one, and then spray it with that odor eliminator.
Annette Grant: [00:26:15] I never thought about changing the filter sooner because it’s holding the odors. I never–
Sarah Karakaian: [00:26:21] Especially if you’re a pet-friendly property, we up that game because of that pet dander and it can just trap those things, and yeah.
Annette Grant: [00:26:29] You just said something about spraying the entryway. What do you mean by that? Because for instance, I know my mom is an extreme allergy to any sort of sense. She will have to leave the property. So when you just said, use something around the entryway, what do you recommend? Because I will be honest, I used to use those plugins in my place and finally, a guess when they had them all in one baggie, sitting outside, I was like, “Oh, that means they didn’t like that.”
So when you just said spray around the entryway, what do you suggest there? Especially if people could be mad when they walk in and it’s heavily scented. What do you recommend using?
Sean Kemper: [00:27:07] Good point. That’s a good point you said that I’m a backup just for a second. So something that might smell good to us, and we love this fragrance and oh, it’s so awesome. It can be very much a turnoff or just disgusting to somebody else. So the smells are very tricky. And even to go back to the chemistry and the science, we buy our fragrances from our fragrance companies, but they’ll always guide us and they’ll give us studies of this fragrance is liked by 70% of the population out there, whatever.
And you know that this is really going to be okay for the most part. They’ll show different demographics that this fragrance is better. So just innovating, being on top of your industry, knowing what’s good and what’s not good. People back in the day used to love pine. Pine is so clean. But I hate pine. I don’t like the smell of it.
So yeah, but the baseboard, not necessarily the baseball, but just the whole door frame. So when you walk in your property– and I like the chemzymes too because it has a great fragrance and one product, you don’t have to have ten different products. But if you just take a little microfiber rag or whatever, and when you spray the baseball or around the rim of the door and do a nice little mist and you can wipe it around and that fragrance and that product linger there for a little bit.
So when the guest comes back in a day or hours or whatever it might be, they smell that. And for the most part, again, this is a fragrance we’ve tested. Out of my 10, 15 years of selling this product, I think I’ve had two complaints.
Annette Grant: [00:28:31] Right. The Kimsey, and that’s your proprietary product just for the listeners.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:28:36] So he sent it to me and again, to my nose, it’s not a smell of any sort. It’s just absence of smell almost. It’s got this clean quote-unquote “fragrance” to it. So we’ll say it’s really light– we should show it to your mom and see what she thinks about it.
Annette Grant: [00:28:53] She’ll be honest.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:28:54] She will be very honest.
Annette Grant: [00:28:55] And the anaphylactic shock, [Inaudible 00:29:00].
Sarah Karakaian: [00:28:57] Oh, no. Well, maybe we should.
Sean Kemper: [00:29:00] I won’t be responsible for that.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:29:01] Yeah, you won’t be. You won’t. She carries an EpiPen. She’ll be fine.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:29:04] Oh, my gosh. Okay, Sean, we talked a little bit too in Vegas. And also when I received your products, I wanted to try them out for myself back in the day, they’re color coded. Can we talk about how color coding is related to safety and just keeping track about what you’re using? Why are colors important when it comes to chemicals and cleaning?
Sean Kemper: [00:29:26] Well, it’s just a quick eye reaction as you maybe as an inspector or even a homeowner, host, whatever, you go in there and you say, “Okay, that’s blue.” So typically, what do we think blue is?
Sarah Karakaian: [00:29:37] Water.
Annette Grant: [00:29:37] Window cleaner. I’ll be quiet and I’ll turn my mic off.
Sean Kemper: [00:29:44] You know your window is blue. It’s just like industry standard blue has to be a glass cleaner. So if you see that blue in that bottle and you see that, maybe it says, acid bathroom cleaner is blue, so, well, you got the wrong product in there. I think to OSHA, it’s like a $700 fine if they get the wrong product. But color coding has been in the business forever. When I was back with Ecolab 30 years ago, we always did purple, maybe as a degreaser or orange as degreaser. So there’s kind of color codes.
So when we design the Drop & Go products, I wanted to make sure that the blue was your glass and multi-surface cleaner, orange was your degreaser, purple was your acid. So all these things match up. So you as an inspector or host, you can see the product that’s in there and know they’re using the right product.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:30:30] So really quick. He just dropped this whole Drop & Go thing. Listeners, I want to share with you what this is. Number one, it’s these little capsules that are color coded and they’re very small and light, and that’s how they get shipped to you. And you drop them into the spray bottle that you already receive and you can keep that and you’ll need one of those as you run out, you just take these little drop things. It hangs on the top of the spray bottle and it’s automatically the right dosage of chemical to water.
So you drop it and literally you go and it’s the color it needs to be. So you can start building out your own cleaning program, knowing what colors equal what chemical. But also like you said, the shipping on it is really inexpensive because of how light it is. You don’t have to pay for the cost of shipping water to everyone. So did I get that right? That’s how I perceived it’s inexpensive and convenient.
Sean Kemper: [00:31:25] Yeah, you nailed it. Definitely. That’s what it is. There’s 24 cartridges in a box and the box weighs no more than 2 pounds. So you get 24 spray bottles per box. And like you did say, Sarah, we got a proper label spray bottle that has all your lingo, the OSHA requirements that needs to be on there. It’s bilingual, so it’ll help make training easier for you. You can put them in the owner closet, you can lock these up in small spaces, and just leave one or two in the property or whatever it might be.
But what’s also unique too, is that you have it there in the property, if that’s what you choose to do that which is good I think in certain spaces, but they’re not transporting chemicals back and forth. And a lot of times in a vacation rental space, they’ve got a warehouse probably 20 miles away. Then they go down to the beach or the mountain or wherever they might go, and they’re traveling so far. And if they were to slam on the brakes or at a red light or something, other chemicals dump over and spill, then you’re killing time because you’ve got to go back to this warehouse and refill and then go back down.
Well, if you got these Drop & Go, these little super concentrated cartridges, carry a couple within your vehicle, fill them up when you get into the property. Or if they’re already in the property, do the same thing there. It just saves time, labor, money, everything.
Annette Grant: [00:32:37] We had some general questions, Sean, that aren’t chemistry specific. Can we talk about supply in your team? I think giving your team the supplies that they need is helpful. Would you suggest– Sarah blew my mind with this a long time ago of just like mops, brooms, and vacuum cleaners, supplying those for your team? Is that somewhere where a lot of things can be spread from home to home, or if they’re bringing them from different property to different property?
Sean Kemper: [00:33:04] Oh, yeah, cross contam–
Annette Grant: [00:33:06] That’s the term. Cross contamination.
Sean Kemper: [00:33:09] Yeah. I mean, it’s typically not that big a deal. But again, I like to try to lighten the load for our customers. And if we can have stuff on property that’s not going to walk off all the time, or if you do have a secure spot that you can lock up and go to, let’s say bedbugs. So if bedbugs were on a property and they’re using this vacuum cleaner to clean up and then they go to the next property and the next property, how many? Three or four or five they’re cleaning, you could see bedbugs on those properties.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:33:35] That’s the only reason I make sure all of my properties have their own vacuum, and it stays there. I was in New Yorker for many, many years and had bedbugs, I don’t know, three times. So I have some PTSD from them. But also I want to talk about real quickly, Sean, your products, are they crazy toxic? What’s in them? We know a lot of our hosts who listen are very thoughtful about the environment. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that relates to what you’re offer?
Sean Kemper: [00:34:05] One thing I did when I got into this industry is we look for safer alternatives. Not to get gory or anything, but I’ve seen housekeepers have asthma real bad because they’re breathing in these beetles from some of these heavy degreasers or even bleach. I mean, bleach is not good to breathe in. And when you get cleaned in bathrooms day in and day and 10, 15, 20 years of your life, some of these things are definitely going to be detrimental and have some side effects.
So the chemistry we use is all very safe. It’s all biodegradable. Another funny thing, if you think about us is we’ve got family that are out there in the manufacturing process. So you don’t want your family, huffing and puffing some of these hazardous chemicals. So we’ve always tried to make safer formulations. We got the Drop & Go. We took it a step further and got a logo on there that is as a preferred safe chemical to use. Our customer is our friends, our family as well. So we want everybody to be protected and using safer, better chemistry.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:34:57] Our listeners are owner-operators like we said, so they’re not, for the most part, property managers of hundreds of homes, Sean. So could they leverage a company like ETR Solutions, your company as a small business owner, like really small business owner, can they leverage the offerings that you offer the same things to larger property managers?
Sean Kemper: [00:35:21] Oh God, yeah. I mean, we scale up. We’ve got customers that can be three or four or five properties to 1,000 properties. So the products work at all levels. Every product is basically– we’re all cleaning one house versus 1,000 houses. So definitely, yeah, very easy to plug and play.
Annette Grant: [00:35:37] And if our listeners want to know about the chemistry, if they want to know about the PH and the acid, do you have a customer service team that could help them answer any questions? Or let’s say– you spoke about it at our conference. If marble’s getting stained or the couch, someone’s sitting on it time after time, are those things that people could call your team and ask specific questions while they’re cleaning?
Sean Kemper: [00:35:58] We’re always fielding emails, we’re always checking emails. So obviously we got support. We’ll get back to you fairly quickly. And that’s one thing a family business needs to do is our service. We’re going to grow by service. We’re not going to grow by doing commercials or all this big box stuff. So if we die by our service and emails, that’s my game, my cell phone.
Annette Grant: [00:36:20] He will not be doing that anymore, listeners.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:36:24] I just know some of our attendees and people at that event were excited, Sean, to reach out to you because I know that you’ll help them build out a little program. If they tell you, I’ve got this many houses with stone, with marble, this many houses with this that, you can help them curate a cleaning program. And then once they have that and they know what goes where, they just reorder it when they need it. Is that correct?
Sean Kemper: [00:36:47] Exactly. And I’ve had tons of emails already from the folks there, just want to maybe set up a Zoom training with me, maybe interested in getting a couple of products to try and make sure I’m just not up here and talking head. So we do test these products and we love the support and relationships we build. So yeah, it’s definitely a good way to continue to grow your business and get on track with a professional program.
Annette Grant: [00:37:09] And where can our listeners find more about your products. Where they could go look for them today?
Sean Kemper: [00:37:15] Our website is etisolutions.co. Just remember that .co. That’s fairly new and a lot of people keep trying to put in .com and can’t find me. The email address that we use is info@etisolutions.co. We’ve got quick responses. I’ve even and I didn’t get a chance to share it, but I started a Facebook group that we were going to roll out there too. And it’s our Clean Seal team and that’s S-E-A-L.
You think of it like a Navy Seal, but sea, air, land is basically what we’re all cleaning. And by having that clean Seal team as a Navy Seal, they go in, they do an operation, they clean whatever they’ve got to do, mask, get these hostages back, exterminate somebody, and then they’re out. And that’s like our cleaning teams. We come in–
Annette Grant: [00:38:03] I love it.
Sean Kemper: [00:38:03] And we clean that operation and then we get out. We’re never seen.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:38:08] Sure. Like stealth mode.
Sean Kemper: [00:38:10] Exactly. We did get the love. During the pandemic, obviously, things change and people want to know what you’re cleaning and disinfecting and the housekeepers and those folks maintenance teams, all got a little more love than they normally would. So it was nice to see.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:38:22] Absolutely. I love that. We should be having these communities and Facebook groups around protecting our assets, making sure they’re lasting longer, just like getting the asset. That’s great. That’s fine. But now that we have it, how do we make it last a really long time so our guests could enjoy it for years to come and the revenue keeps coming in. We don’t replace things because we’re just caring for them the right way.
Annette Grant: [00:38:42] And safe for our team.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:38:42] And safe for our team. Awesome. Sean, before we hop off, anything else we didn’t mention that you want to make sure our listeners hear from you?
Sean Kemper: [00:38:49] I think we did a great job. It was a good conversation and just again, help educating everybody and make sure that we’re all on the same page.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:38:56] All right, listeners, thank you, Sean. We’ll make sure all of Sean’s information is in the show notes that you can reach out to him. You can build your cleaning program.
Annette Grant: [00:39:04] Buy the chemzyme.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:39:04] Yeah. No, it’s good.
Annette Grant: [00:39:07] And Drop & Go.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:39:08] With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.
Annette Grant: [00:39:10] Am Annette Grant, and together we are–
Both Annette & Sarah: [00:39:12] Thanks for Visiting.
Sarah Karakaian: [00:39:13] We’ll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to the Thanks for Visiting Podcast. Head on over to the show notes for additional information about today’s episode. And please hit that Subscribe button and leave us a review. Awesome reviews help us bring you awesome content. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to hanging out with you next week.
