New Jersey Cleaning Company Used a Small Business Loan to Grow Their Business

Each week I have the opportunity to interview business owners who are making a positive impact in their communities. Patricia Claybrook of Jidan Cleaning is one of those great stories. Not only is she building a great business, but she is also helping her employees develop into future leaders.

One of my favorite quotes from the interview was, “When you start a business, you have to surround yourself with key people like a great accountant, a great attorney, a business coach, etc. These are the people that are part of my team. I consider Zach from Lendio a key part of my financial team.”

You can view the inspiring interview with Patricia Claybrook of Jidan Cleaning below:

Lendio small business loan success story transcript below:

BURKE ALDER: Here we have with us today Pat Claybrook from Jidan Cleaning from Medford, New Jersey. Welcome today.

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: Thank you very much. Glad to be with you.

BURKE ALDER: We’re really excited to have you and to hear a little bit about your story. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your business?

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: Okay. I started Jidan Cleaning almost 9 years ago and as you stated we’re based on Medford, New Jersey but we also have an office in Philadelphia. And we service the region, the tri-state area so New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, all commercial cleaning. So we do office cleaning, carpet cleaning, window cleaning and we strip the wax floors and then we do some post construction clean up.

BURKE ALDER: Wow, I think the world will be a little bit messier without your business. So it’s great having your business around. So tell us why you started your business?

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: Well I am – I’ve thought about that question a lot and it’s rooted in my history. I wasn’t born in this country. I came to the United States from Trinidad when I was 6 years old. So being an immigrant, I think I have a kind of a different perspective regarding the opportunities here in the United States. And then growing up, I saw how my dad started with a company. He was the third employee and rose to becoming the VP operations, you know, and it’s a multi billion dollar company today. So I saw all of that hard work and decided that, you know, one day I want to put that much effort and hard work into something of my own.

“I applied to two local banks in this area and I was turned down. So then I was on the internet looking for other opportunities for financing and I came across Lendio’s website. Lendio was able to give me a term loan… and Lendio actually saved me about 1500 a week.”

BURKE ALDER: What an inspiring story. What part of your journey has had the biggest impact?

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: Well part of that journey… I was the first person in my family to graduate with a 4-year degree, with a bachelors degree. So after I graduated, I got a job as a pharmaceutical representative for one of the major pharmaceutical companies and I did that for about 15 years. And a lot of my physicians that I used to call on would always complain about how dirty their offices were even though they were paying a cleaning company to clean it. Now we hear this all the time. Sometimes they would talk more about that than we talk about the drug that I was trying to get them to write. So that just kept, you know, I kept that in the back of my head and I knew that I wanted to start a business. So I started to do some research and found out that to start a cleaning company you didn’t need a lot of money. You know I didn’t want to open a franchise and I didn’t want to have to spend $50,000 -$100,000. So based on that need that I saw out there in the marketplace and my personality, I’m very detailed, I’m a type A personality, I thought that I could start a cleaning company and be successful.

BURKE ALDER: Yeah, congratulations. You’re not only helping those in Medford. What an inspiring story. One other question for you. Why did you start looking for financing for your business?

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: Okay. So until this year, everything for the business was self financed. I used my own money. And because we were experiencing rapid growth, it was time for me to try and get a small business loan. And my accountant I did a 3-year projection and he told me that based on what we’ve done in the past and what were projected to do that I needed upwards of a 150,000 loan. And then also what started to happen, in janitorial most of your contracts are net 30, right. But even though it says net 30, you might not get paid for 45 days. So I have to pay my crews for 45 days until I get paid. And what was starting to happen, we started to get very large contracts that equated to very large payroll so I needed, you know, cash flow.

BURKE ALDER: So tell us about how you found out about Lendio and the experience you had using Lendio to find a small business loan or financing for your business.

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: Okay. So I’ll say that I applied to two local banks in this area and I was turned down. So then I was on the internet looking for other opportunities for financing and I came across Lendio’s website. I think it was – I was looking at actually the one on the black enterprise website and it was an ad or something regarding Lendio. And I was very skeptical at first. But something told me to fill it out and hit send. So I filled it out. I hit send and then the next day Zach called me. And we had a very nice chat, very personable over the phone and I didn’t have to give him a lot of information at first because, you know, today you have to be careful who you share your information with. So I gave him enough information, and he said to me, we’ll I’m going to talk to some my lenders or my partners and see what we can come up with. And seeing that, that was the first thing that triggered something in me that said this might be different because what he was trying to say to me was that he was going to take my particular situation and see what kind of vehicle would be the best fit for me. Not that they were just going to put me in anything so that caught my attention. So the bottom line Zach helped get a line of credit based on my accounts receivables which is great for my type of business. And if there’s a vehicle, well you could get up to 85% of your invoice. That’s awesome. So they were able to do that as well as to give me a term loan because I was able to get small term loans where they take the money out daily and what they did was they took that loan and actually saved me about 1500 a week.

BURKE ALDER: Wow.

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: Yeah. So it’s been – I mean it’s been great. You know that was back in July and this is October. And my line of credit has doubled and they’ve given me a second term loan. Zach has been – see I know – you know when you start a business, you have to surround yourself with key people like a great accountant, a great attorney, a business coach, etc. These are all people that I’m seeing on my team and that’s how I consider Zach and Lendio that you are my financial partner on my team. And I need all of those aspects in order to help sustain the growth that we’re having.

BURKE ALDER: Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you for that compliment. And I just wanted to let you know thank you for your time today and learning about your business and your success and your ability to make things happen, And you know through your efforts you are making the United States a great place to live. You hire people, you make this country strong so I wanted to thank you again for what you do and thanks for being with us today on The Lendio Success Story chat. Thank you very much.

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: No, you’re very welcome. It was my pleasure. And you guys have been great so thank you.

BURKE ALDER: Thank you very much.

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: Have a good weekend.

BURKE ALDER: You too. See you.

PATRICIA CLAYBROOK: All right. Bye bye.

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