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Eddie Pickett had a dream. He dreamed of owning his own business ..... a family business .... a business that would not only support his family, but also involve family members and be an asset to his community ..... a business he would nurture from the ground up and in which he could take pride. He wasn’t sure how he was going to accomplish it, and he knew it wouldn’t be easy ..... but he was determined to make it happen and told himself that he would do whatever it took. And that he did! From its initial home-based start in February of 2007, to the grand opening of his new location in November, 2009, he kept on top of every detail and took practical, incremental steps as needed to attain his goal.
Using his 30 years of experience in the industry, Eddie developed and utilized his mission statement of becoming “the premier cleaning service in the area with customer satisfaction being the number one priority” as his day-by-day guide.
He made an important decision to get some guidance as he developed his business plan, contacting the Small Business Development Center at Winthrop University to provide free counseling and assistance
Eddie had been watching as York County and Rock Hill specifically grew, with more and more businesses opening in the area every year. He knew all these companies would need cleaning services and products so he did appropriate research, and set realistic and measurable goals for his fledgling business:
- He identified his target market
- He determined how many clients and the square footage of their facilities he would need to service daily in order to pay expenses
- He decided how many and what type of employees, including administrative personnel and supervisors, he would need per client to provide the level of service he wanted to offer
- He chose both his employees and his equipment with care, wanting quality in both
- He decided on an advertising and marketing strategy
- He called upon old industry contacts from his 30 years in the field, and developed new alliances with them, a very helpful step in both the word-of-mouth process and setting up accounts with them as vendors
- He made the crucial new contacts that help spread the word about a business -- joining and participating at the Chamber of Commerce and getting involved with business networking groups, steps which have brought him new clients.
We believe that true success is seeing our clients’ dreams come true, knowing that they made it happen with a little nudge in the right direction. Winthrop Regional SBDC staff are proud to call Eddie Pickett and his Quality Cleaning Janitor Services one of our favorite success stories.
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