Edwin Eaton runs IPro Building Services out of Wenatchee, Washington. Population 50,000. Apple capital of the world. He has been in the commercial cleaning industry for 20 years and has owned IPro for 13 of them. Today the company has 200+ employees, 60 subcontractors, and operations across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California, Utah, and Nevada.
Last year he generated $1.8 million in commercial cleaning sales from one channel: LinkedIn.
He did not post before-and-after photos of toilets. He did not run paid ads. He did not outsource it to a content agency. He posted about his employees. Specifically, about employee anniversaries.
Anton and I talked to Edwin on the Commercial Cleaning Road Show. Watch the full breakdown above. Below is exactly what he did, why it works, and what most cleaning companies get wrong about LinkedIn.
How Edwin Got Into Commercial Cleaning
Edwin's story starts in college. His roommate's uncle owned a cleaning company along the I-5 corridor in Seattle. One night while watching the Seahawks, the uncle called: a couple of cleaners had quit at some banks near campus, and he needed warm bodies for a month. He paid Edwin and his roommate in beer money.
Edwin moved into hospitality after college, but when family illness brought him back to Wenatchee, the small-town hotel scene was not there. He partnered up with the uncle, started selling, and eventually broke off to expand on his own.
Most cleaning operators stumble into the industry like this. They are not the prototypical "I always knew I wanted to be a janitor" founder. They got there sideways. The ones who scale figure out a marketing system early.
The Hockey Rink That Built a Data Center Empire
Six or seven years into the business, IPro was small. Edwin got a call from the marketing director of the local 5,500-seat arena offering him a Dasher board (the wall around the ice). He paid for it, slapped the IPro logo, website, and phone number on it.
A youth hockey tournament came through. A kid got body-checked into the IPro board. The kid's dad happened to be a senior facilities executive at a Fortune 500 data center company. He was actively looking for a commercial cleaning vendor.
He wrote down the IPro info, called Monday, and by Thursday Edwin was driving four hours into the middle of nowhere to a 150,000-square-foot data center.
That first contract: one site. Then five. Then ten. Then twenty.
Today IPro cleans 92 data centers in that single cluster.
The takeaway is not "buy a Dasher board." It is that visibility creates surface area for luck. The dad was not searching Google for a janitor. He was at a hockey game. The board put IPro in his head at the moment a contract was on his desk.
Why Most Cleaning Companies Fail on LinkedIn
This is where Edwin's $1.8M number comes from. And the explanation is going to feel obvious in retrospect.
Most commercial cleaning companies on LinkedIn post the same content:
- Before-and-after toilet photos
- "Look at this dirty floor we made shiny"
- Job-site stills
- Equipment photos
Edwin's reaction: "Wow, you cleaned the toilet. That is awesome. My company can do it. Your company can do it. That does not differentiate you in the market."
He is right. Facility managers do not decide between vendors based on whether you can clean a toilet. They assume you can clean a toilet. Decisions get made on tenure, on culture, on whether your team will still be there in six months.
So Edwin's content pivot, about three or four years ago, was to stop posting cleaning content entirely. His feed is now strictly about his people.
The Employee-of-the-Month Mistake
Before Edwin landed on the strategy that worked, he tried Employee of the Month. It backfired hard.
Whoever won would put in their two weeks notice within a month or two. Edwin sat down with one of them to figure out why. The answer: getting singled out put a target on their back. Coworkers felt like they should have won instead. The "winner" got isolated, then quit.
So Edwin scrapped Employee of the Month and switched to employee anniversaries.
"Nobody can take that away from you. You put in your work, your year, your two years, we are going to celebrate that."
A one-year anniversary. A five-year. A ten-year. Photos of the employee. A short post about who they are. Posted on LinkedIn.
That is the format. That is it.
Why $1.8M from Anniversary Posts
Here is the mechanic. A facility manager at a 200,000-square-foot manufacturing plant is on LinkedIn. They follow Edwin (or the IPro page). They see anniversary posts in their feed. Five years. Six years. Two years. Repeated. Consistent.
That facility manager's current cleaning vendor has weekly turnover. Different cleaner every visit. Different point of contact every month. They are tired of training new people on building access, on protocol, on quirks.
They see Edwin's feed and recognize what is different. Tenure. Culture. Stability.
A direct quote from one of these prospects to Edwin: "The current cleaning company I have, their turnover is almost weekly. I see your postings, you have got somebody five years, six years, two years. I want this kind of culture with whoever I am partnering with."
That is the conversion mechanism. Facility managers do not switch vendors because of a sales pitch. They switch because they see proof of something they are missing. LinkedIn lets you broadcast the proof to people who would never let you in for a cold meeting.
If you want to test this in your own cleaning company, post your next employee anniversary. Tag the employee. Talk about who they are, what they bring, why they matter. Watch what happens over six months.
The Other Free Channel: Chamber of Commerce
Edwin does not pay for Chamber of Commerce membership. But he attends every single free event the Chamber hosts: ribbon cuttings, business after-hours, networking nights.
Why? "If you are struggling to figure out who the contact is for this medical facility or manufacturing plant, it is probably going to be at this after-hours event."
The shape of his networking: "God gave us two ears and one mouth. We listen more than we talk." Hand them a card. Ask them about their business. Do not pitch. Five or six IPro people show up to events together in branded gear, so they are known in the room before anyone introduces them.
If you are an operator running outbound cold calling and cold email and you are not also showing up to free Chamber events in your market, you are leaving meetings on the table.
The Three Niches Edwin Targets
After 13 years, Edwin has narrowed his pursuit to three verticals he considers recession-proof:
- Data centers: 24/7/365 operations, big budgets, technical cleaning requirements. IPro's cluster is now 92 sites.
- Manufacturing plants: The Amazon economy keeps these running. Stuff has to ship, plants have to be clean.
- Medical: Clinics and hospitals always need cleaning. Recession does not slow it.
Earlier on, IPro took anything: insurance offices, car dealerships, whatever paid. As the company grew, Edwin shifted toward verticals that justify full-time crews with benefits.
The mental model: do you want a once-a-week 1,000-square-foot office where you cannot keep an employee, or do you want a data center with eight to ten full-time people getting benefits?
Pick the structural conditions you want and target accordingly.
Don't Lead with Price
Washington has the highest minimum wage in the country. IPro pays well above market. So IPro is often more expensive than the competition.
Edwin's sales answer: lead with pain points, not pricing.
"We look at the pain points and a lot of the pain points for facility managers is missed services, communication just is not there. We are able to speak to that. By the time the price comes, they kind of expect it to be where it is at."
If your sales conversation starts with price, you have already lost. If it starts with the prospect's pain, the price arrives as confirmation, not friction.
Edwin avoids government contracts entirely for this reason. They are lowest-bid procurement and his model cannot win those. Smart filter.
Hiring for Vibe
In the early days, hiring meant a Craigslist ad, ten applicants, two showing up, and offering both jobs.
Now IPro is selective. Specifically: they hire for vibe.
Edwin's term for the wrong hire: "cancerous people." A negative coworker shows up, behaves like a negative coworker, and the good employees quit because they cannot take it. Hiring one wrong person can drain three right ones.
Their hire process is also transparent. The pitch: "You are going to be cleaning toilets. You are going to be taking out trash. It is not sexy. It is not glamorous. Are you good with that?" Self-selecting filter. Fewer disappointments three months in.
Communication Is the Real Product
The line Edwin keeps coming back to: "We are not in the cleaning industry. We are in the relationship building industry."
If you cannot communicate, you cannot keep clients. You cannot keep employees either.
IPro's communication system:
- Weekly client check-ins, in person where possible
- QA inspections via dedicated inspectors
- Photos and emails documenting every issue
- Subcontractor video reviews via FaceTime or Zoom
For subs specifically, Edwin video-calls them to see their office, their equipment, the chemicals they use. Mid-grade or higher equipment is a signal of competence. Low-end gear is a signal to keep looking.
When client complaints come in, the response sequence is the same every time: resolve fast, document with photos, then sit with the employee with empathy. "We do not want to cut your hours. We do not want to lose you. How can we help you so this does not happen again?"
That posture is why IPro's tenure is what shows up on LinkedIn.
The Cancer Diagnosis That Reset the Business
Last year, Edwin's wife was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. (She is now cancer-free and rang the bell.) The diagnosis forced Edwin to step out of day-to-day operations.
His wife's advice: "Step back. If there is an issue, let them figure it out. They will never learn if you keep micromanaging."
Today, Edwin estimates he is in the business 10% of the time. He has shifted his focus to leadership development. He brings in a dedicated leadership coach (Fletcher Ellingsson) for quarterly four-hour classes with the management team. He runs weekly 1:1s with leadership. He coaches managers through how to handle difficult conversations with employees.
That is the move every cleaning owner who is stuck at $1M to $5M does not make. They keep their hands in everything. They do not develop leaders. They burn out.
Find a Mentor Early
Edwin's biggest single inflection point: finding mentor Ed Selkow. Selkow wrote the book on bidding commercial facilities. He told Edwin straight up: "You are doing it all wrong."
Before Selkow, Edwin was working until 2-3-4 AM, sleeping a couple hours, selling at 8 AM, repeating until he burned out. After Selkow, he had structure.
Edwin's quote-of-quotes for new operators: "Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice." Pay a mentor. Get the ROI later.
Final Advice for Day-One Operators
If Edwin were starting today, his advice is one line: pick a niche and attack it.
His son (23 now) sold $37,000 in new accounts in his first month at age 21 by attacking car dealerships exclusively. Visited every dealership in an hour radius. The next month he did not sell anything, but he understood the rhythm. Now he is a specialist.
"Once you get one, you are the expert on cleaning car dealerships. You learn it. You get complaints. You fix them. You know what to do and what not to do. When you walk into the next dealership, you already know what to say."
That is the playbook for any vertical. Stop trying to be all things to all clients. Pick one niche. Become the operator who knows that niche better than anyone in your market. Then expand.
If you want to put this strategy to work in your cleaning company and you need a partner on outbound, content, or LinkedIn presence, book a strategy call. We work with cleaning companies across North America to build channels exactly like this.