Video Transcription
Jeremy: Hey, I’m Jeremy Ashburn, and I’ve got Jim Downing with me, and he’s with 10 Point Litter Removal. Now, you guys, what do you guys do, Jim?
James: Jeremy, our company specializes in cleaning litter from commercial parking lots, professional buildings. We do this mostly by hand. We get detailed right down to the nitty-gritty on the common areas that often get overlooked by large power sweeping companies or those areas that your customers, your clienteles and your tenants see when they’re walking in. Landscape planners and things of that nature. All commercial.
Jeremy: Definitely, all commercial. So I guess if you own a local business or you are working in a managerial position in a local business, and you’re noticing the parking lot, let’s start with this question: why would you want to keep a clean parking lot? Let’s do that question. What do you think?
James: Well a lot of times, sometimes what’ll happen is the tenants, like for instance, in a strip mall, like a four, six bay strip mall, they’ll notice when they’re putting the keys in the door opening up their hair salon or their clothing store or their coffee shop. They’ll see the trash every day, and usually they’ll contact the property management company that they’re noticing that, or their customer might notice it, because of the image that they’re trying to uphold. So, it’s pretty easy for us to go to that facility and see how long that it would take us to do that and how often you should be able to do that. That’s a very common question is, how often should I clean my [inaudible] have it done.
Jeremy: So yeah. So I guess that’s the other question, how often should you keep it cleaned?
James: It depends. I mean if it’s like a professional office building, maybe like a lawyer’s office or a doctor’s office, more than likely it only needs to be done maybe once a week. Some people do want it done every day, but a lot of that depends if there’s, the fast food is usually what generates the most. You know, or people at a convenience store where, you know, I think Disney said it best. I mean, he used to give out candy, that’s why there’s trash cans every 30 feet at Walt Disney World, because if it was 27 paces before you give out the free candy at Magic Kingdom before the wrapper ended up on the ground.
James: So the question really comes down to, how clean do you want it, and is there any fast food there? And if there’s fast food it probably should be done at least, normally once a day. Our standard is usually five days a week if there’s a fast food location in the strip mall.
Jeremy: And I guess we, you know, you’re really thinking about image as far as that whole question about why keeping a clean parking lot. I mean, you know, you’ve got that image where if it’s a clean parking lot, you’re giving that great first impression. I guess that also kind of conveys the sense that it’s a safe kind of place to be.
James: Yeah, for sure, yep. And it’s easier to do.
Jeremy: I think a lot of times when I show I up in a real dirty area, I think this could be a dangerous area, you know? Or whatever.
James: It might show you know, maybe there’s a little bit of a thought, maybe the customer, I know myself I’ll kind of almost glance it over and think maybe there’s a little bit of laziness going on in the establishment. You wonder, you know, if you’re certainly gonna be charging a premium as far as a real estate company, maybe you want high end tenants, you’re probably on the other end gonna have to supply a high end product and have it cleaned for them.
Jeremy: Yeah, definitely. So the really thing to do though would be to have, if you are an owner of a local business or, you know, you are in staff and you’re responsible for the image there, as part of the staff, I would say that probably the thing would be to have you go to the location and you’ll show up and kind of do a walkthrough, and how does that work? If [crosstalk 00:03:36].
James: That’s real simple. A lot of times someone just gives me an address. I’ve given people quotes just by looking at how many parking spaces they have over satellite. It’s pretty easy to do it that way. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to maybe spend five, ten minutes with somebody and just have them show me the property lines, so that, we tend to overclean the areas that we’re doing because we certainly can figure out the property lines of a strip mall or professional office building, and normally we try to go 40 feet past the line as a rule of thumb. So sometimes even the neighbor might actually get a little bit of a benefit from that. But most of our properties take less than half an hour.
Jeremy: Okay. Definitely. Well and of course the thing to realize is that, you know, that it’s really easy for anyone to contact you. And that would just be primarily through where they would just call you, I guess that’d be the best way to reach, and would you give us your number and your website?
James: Yep. Yep. My cell phone, directly, it’s 413-531-3755. I answer it. I get back to people right away. And the other easy one is you can set up a quote or an estimate on our website at 10pointlitter.com, the number 10.
Jeremy: Okay. Definitely. 10pointlitter.com. Alright, well thanks for your time.
James: Thanks, Jeremy.