Laurie Sewell is President and CEO of Servicon, a provider of exemplary custodial, environmental, and maintenance services for complex facilities.
Servicon partners with Fortune 500 companies in the healthcare, aerospace, manufacturing, commercial real estate, municipal, and entertainment industries. Their purpose is to elevate the industry and provide healthy environments for people to thrive.
Considered a disrupter in an industry steeped in tradition, Sewell is shifting the focus from conventional concepts of custodial services to those that are driving wellness, sustainability, new analytics, and employee engagement with innovative technologies and training.
What is Servicon all about?
Servicon is a leading, woman-owned provider of exemplary environmental, custodial, and maintenance services for complex facilities.
As a company, our philosophy is to partner with our clients to define, measure, and validate goals. We are committed to doing the right thing by our clients, people, and community.
Our purpose is to elevate the cleaning industry by providing healthy environments in which people can thrive – this includes exceptional service delivery and taking care of our own people through training, education, and recognition.
Servicon pioneered sustainable cleaning – our vision is to continue to elevate the industry through integrity, leadership, and innovation.
As the third-largest company in Culver City, CA, we are experts in Infection Prevention and maintaining safe, healthy environments for more than 40 million square feet of diverse facilities and critical environments, including healthcare, aerospace, commercial, municipal, and entertainment establishments.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you joined the company?
I joined Servicon straight out of college and worked in many different roles – payroll, contract negotiations, marketing, our supplies division, sales, quality assurance, procurement… I have unloaded big rigs and know how to strip and finish a floor. In the early part of my tenure, I left Servicon to work for a chemical manufacturer to run their newly acquired distribution company.
During my years at Servicon, I have spent a great deal of time serving on industry and non-profit boards, and I am a contributing author and speaker for various publications and conventions. I have been a stakeholder on numerous committees developing cleaning and sustainability standards for the industry.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful businessperson, and why?
Grit, empathy, vulnerability
- Grit is about perseverance and passion. It involves working toward challenges through circumstances that are, at times, boring and less rewarding. It requires staying the course.
- Empathy is the desire to understand others with an eye toward making things better for all of us. It requires self-discipline and self-reflection.
- Vulnerability is the willingness to allow yourself to be impacted by others. It requires sharing and actively listening. It allows for the presence of other people and respecting them.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
We have a 10-year vision established around delivering the optimal results for our clients and employees while contributing to and supporting the communities that serve us. This is why we have set up Servicon Cares, our philanthropic program to support the people that support our business.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
We are a purpose-driven organization, and we truly care about our workforce. We are authentically concerned with the well-being of our people, clients, and community. We are privately help and therefore not beholden to shareholders, we put our clients and people first.
What were the top three mistakes you made growing your business, and what did you learn from them?
- Early on we were under the impression that in order to preserve our culture, we had to build instead of buy and/or to develop a specific function in-house vs using consultants or hiring outside expertise. This really slowed our growth and professionalization. We have since learned how to screen for culture fit and alignment and when to utilize consultants.
- When we decided to convert all of our operations to green cleaning (nearly 20 years ago), I did not appreciate or have a good grasp of how to utilize change management principles to gain acceptance and get traction. It took much longer to get our field teams on board than it should have. We now understand that major initiatives, and even smaller movements require a good change management process that includes a great deal of communication.
- Our founder held a lot of information – especially financials very closely. This did not allow for the big picture understanding from our ops management team and limited their growth and ability to maximize their performance. We now widely share our financial goals and results and hold people accountable to them. This has resulted in not only accelerated growth but an increase in job level profit.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
Certainly, developing a purpose-driven marketing strategy that communicates the heart and soul of this business and uses this as our north star in everything that we do. This is to elevate the industry and provide healthy environments for people to thrive. We want to change the face of the cleaning industry and take those who do the work out of the shadows, to allow them to be loud and proud essential workers. It is time to clean up the reputation of this industry and take care of the people that take care of the nation. Never was this so apparent as it was during COVID where our Environmental and Custodial technicians were working tirelessly to keep hospitals working under immense pressure and other essential industries such as the defense sector, moving.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
About ten years ago, we lost a very large piece of business. It was a shock to our system and managing the fallout took time. We learned that we needed to embrace change. Not to implement a system or update a practice, but our culture needed to evolve to manage change as a constant. Our objective was to recognize critical business shifts as quickly as possible. This necessitated a management philosophy that could address these issues and a structure that would effectively synthesize solutions. Our structure evolved to incent teamwork across business units and emphasize personal accountability. We prioritize being open-minded and effective communication is a constant work-in-progress. Today’s Servicon is a forward-thinking, nimble problem solver and our business results reflect that. One key side effect – we are quicker to identify mistakes and resolve them.
People issues demonstrated how important the HR function was. Our workforce has expanded as our business has grown. As a family, women-owned business, our relationships will always be a priority. We believe that they are a significant competitive advantage. To ensure that our values are consistently exercised throughout our system, our HR team has become a much bigger, important part of our structure. They have established a recruiting pipeline that enables us to facilitate our growth with quality people and are active in managing issues as they arise.
Getting comfortable telling our story. For many years, we were turned inward managing our business. This inculcated a modesty to our effort and achievements. We knew that we did things differently and our results demonstrated continued success, but we weren’t comfortable vocalizing this. In the last few years, we have been more systematic in defining the Servicon differences and marketing them. The benefit is two-fold: 1) we are expanding our ability to look forward by actively engaging in the discussion that defines how our industry evolves; and 2) it makes our employees and clients proud that they are associated with such a forward-thinking, progressive organization.
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
I am more an intrapreneur – developing product lines, services and positioning Servicon for new markets. One of the most notable ideas was to become a pioneer of green cleaning and sustainability in the industry. We were the first company in the industry to convert all of our cleaning services to green cleaning.
What are you learning now? Why is that important?
- People, people, people…we are a people business that cleans. Everything I do involves some component or insight that enables me to manage our people better. This is a priority for our management teams, as well. Some of this learning is relational, some is financial, some is environmental…but our eye is constantly on finding and retaining good people.
- Flexibility…the pandemic forced us to manage problem-solving differently. We’ve made some big decisions about working remotely. Who needs to be in the office and when? How we ensure that issues are identified and addressed? How do we stay connected while we’re forced to be apart? So much of this comes down to effective communication. We have worked to adapt our approaches to ensure that both our minds and our dialogue is open.
- Work/life balance is a constant struggle, not a one-time issue. As we change through the pandemic, we have learned that our “new” way of life has a “new” set of costs. Again, effective communication enables us to surface and address issues in ways that minimize negative impact.
If you were initially joining the company again, what things would you do differently?
Not a thing…I have been so fortunate in my choices specifically because of the people. It has compelled me to be closer to our work and genuine in conversations. The mutual care and respect for each other has been a source of great strength in troubled times and a point of immeasurable personal pride that I am a part of this.
Of course, knowing to invest in Amazon or Apple 20 years ago might’ve been nice…
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
- Salesforce – we are building it out to not only be our CRM and assist with our sales process, but also to nurture and grow our existing clients and manage their contracts.
- Zoom and Teams – our use of collaboration software, prompted by the pandemic, has allowed us to move to a hybrid work environment and to offer varying types of remote work. This has enabled us to widen our talent pool and increase our employee engagement – which all helps the business to grow.
- LinkedIn – we have been utilizing it to develop relationships with potential clients, find new talent and to maximize our brand awareness through thought leadership and engagement.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
Put deep work time on your calendar or you will be mastered by the tyranny of the urgent!
Can you recommend one book, one podcast, and one online course for entrepreneurs?
- Book – anything by Adam Grant, most recently, Think Again. It provides insights into how we change our minds, how we persuade others, and how we build cultures of lifelong learning.
- Podcast – How I Built This – produced by NPR – do I need to say more?
- Online Course – anything by Master Class, even if it is bread baking. There is value in learning anything from a master in their field.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I believe that a successful business is a combination of a good idea, implementing by good people, motivated by a real purpose who are enjoying the journey. So maybe a lemonade stands with the local kids to teach them how to run a business.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
Did I say the people? I genuinely care for my team and my clients as individuals. My son once said: “Mom I don’t think I would like doing your job.” He thought my job was meetings, spreadsheets, and presentations. To which I replied: “I love my job! My job is helping people every day to do better in their work, to provide a good living for their families, and having authentic caring interactions with different people every day. Oh, and sometimes I do spreadsheets and meetings.” 😊
What is your favorite quote?
“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
This quote has been attributed to Al Gore who said it was an old African proverb. Not only can you achieve so much more as a team, but you will also feel more fulfilled in the end and have more fun along the way. I also believe that you often need to slow down to go fast. This has so much personal meaning to me because by nature I am impatient and want things done immediately. I am in a constant struggle with my instincts and need to remember to slow down and include more people in the journey.
What valuable advice would you give new entrepreneurs starting out?
Start anywhere and with the end in mind. Sometimes people believe that you need to have the perfect plan and everything needs to be in order before beginning. Point your arrow and shoot and then shoot again…
How can readers get in touch with you?
You can contact me and by visiting and on Linkedin
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