The Next Chapter

The story never ends when good contractors continue pushing forward.

We tell a lot of stories in Cleaner. We give you glimpses inside a lot of businesses and the lives of their owners. But when the story is over, regardless of what you or I take from it, we all move on.

So often the company owners and managers featured in our contractor profiles talk about their plans for the future — services they’d like to add, growth and expansion, other company initiatives — but we rarely have the opportunity to find out how those plans have played out. We share success stories and insights from the path to success, and I’d like to start taking you a little further down that path.

We profiled C&L Water Solutions of Littleton, Colorado, in our February issue. It’s a great story about the next generation taking over a family business and pushing it to new levels. That story started with a phone call, but I didn’t make the call. I was sitting at my desk one day when the phone rang. Larry Larson, the founder of C&L, was on the line wanting to discuss a column I’d written about the growth and significance of trenchless technologies.

I always like hearing from readers. I especially like it when my column can facilitate some discussion. Larry and I had a nice conversation, and it led to the C&L profile in February. Like a lot of the contractors we profile, I talk to them but never get to meet them face to face.

Fortunately, I had the chance to meet Larry in person at this year’s WWETT Show in Indianapolis. It was a great opportunity to learn more about him and his company, and to get some feedback on the story we wrote. More than anything, it’s just great to establish a personal connection.

Had we not met, I wouldn’t have learned the most fascinating part of the story beyond the story: In the four months since we’d done that initial interview, the company grew from 49 to 80 employees. Very few companies could foster the kind of growth that would necessitate nearly doubling the workforce in such a short period of time. Even fewer could do it successfully. But that’s exactly what C&L has done.

And how did they do it? By offering a bounty. Any employee who brought in a new employee was rewarded. So not only did the ranks grow, they grew with good, qualified people. You’ll probably be reading about that hiring feat in a future issue. And you’ll be able to read about the company’s growth and progress at Cleaner.com. There’s more to the story, and we’re going to bring it to you.

We’re going to be revisiting some other profiles as well, so you can see how the plans and predictions of the contractors you’ve read about have panned out. It’ll all be online, so you can find out what’s new, what’s gone right — and wrong — and revisit the original stories if you like.

I hope you check out the updates and can learn from them.

Enjoy this month’s issue.



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