Bartender?s sideline leads to launching her own construction cleanup business

It all started in 1996 when Mitzi Drake traded in her Camaro Z-28 for a truck. Prior to that, she was a full-time bartender who took on a few housecleaning jobs on the side to earn extra money.

Drake soon realized "it wasn't cool" to drive around with ladders and vacuum cleaners sticking out of her Tee-top Camaro. Then, when one of her housecleaning clients built a new house and asked her to do the construction clean-up, the idea came to her to trade gainful employment behind the bar to start her own business, which she named Finishing Touch.

"I went from mixing drinks to cleaning toilets," she said, joking.

Starting her own construction clean-up business from the ground up, however, was no joke. It took long hours and a lot of hard work, she said, to build the business from scratch to its present 18 employees and fleet of five trucks and two trailers to haul supplies and equipment.

Physical work

These days Drake stays busy with ad-ministrative duties and job bids. She still believes, however, in hands-on participation in the physical work.

She and Jim Phillips, who oversees the company's jobs as personnel manager, can just as easily be found mopping floors and washing windows as working in the office.

"I probably didn't do a lot of long-range thinking when I first started," Drake said.

Drake's goal at first was simply to make a living and she gave little thought to where she wanted to go with the company. Now, however, goal-setting and planning are very much a part of the growing business, which she said depends primarily on repeat customers and new clients gained through word-of-mouth advertising.

The company does both residential and commercial jobs. Drake has a number of local contractors who call her regularly to work.

Among those the company has worked with are MoDoCo Inc., Springfield Builders Inc., Meco Systems Inc., Ken-mar Construction Inc., Killian Construc-tion Co. and Pioneer Construction Co.

Rough cleaning

Finishing Touch often goes in to do the rough cleaning during the building phase of a project, then returns at the end to do the final clean-up. Some larger projects have to be done in phases, Phillips said.

The company has handled jobs taking a few hours, some that lasted three weeks and others that stretched out for six months, he added. One of the most memorable for Drake, Phillips and the crew was the Greene County Justice Center. Dressed in "We Do the Dirty Work" tee-shirts, the crew cleaned every inch of the 106,000 square-foot facility. "I've been in every cell in the jail." Phillips said. The biggest hazard on that particular job, he added, was "being careful not to get locked into one of the cells."

Besides commercial clean-up, Drake runs a specialty crew that does office janitorial work and another crew that specializes in floor care.

Family business

"In every job we do there is a family member involved," Phillips said. He is engaged to Drake's youngest daughter, Sara, who also works on the new construction clean-up crew. Drake's older daughter, Amy Davis, specializes in the office cleaning end of the business and Amy's husband Brian is a floor-care specialist. Even Drake's 13-year-old son Zach worked for the company during the summer. Like the other floor-care people in the company, Zach is certified in propane safety, since the polishing ma-chines used run on propane.

"The propane machines are noisy, but they do a better job than electric ma-chines," Phillips said.

Recently, Davis, Phillips and Drake all went to VIC International, a trade school in Tennessee, to learn a highly specialized technique for restoring marble, tile, terrazzo and concrete floors.

"There is special knowledge and equipment needed for this process," Drake said. She is using the technique to launch the newest branch of the business developing a nationwide client base of builders, architects and chain-business owners who want to cut down on floor-care maintenance costs.

Cutting flooring costs

With machines that employ diamond buffers, concrete floors can be brought to a high shine that requires only sweeping and mopping to maintain. Phillips said that a supermarket can spend up to $50,000 per year maintaining vinyl composition tile floors. Once tile floors are removed the underlying concrete can be cleaned and polished to a high gloss. Phillips said the reduction in maintenance cost soon pays for the initial expense of tile removal and the polishing process.

The process is now widely used in other areas, Drake said, but has not yet taken hold in this area.

Finishing Touch is located on Farm Road 134 east of Springfield, where it maintains a combined office and warehouse to store supplies and equipment. Drake said that she can bid a job from blueprints and in emergencies have a crew ready to respond in minutes, each vehicle being designated for a specific type of job and loaded with necessary materials and equipment

Drake attributes her success to commitment and the fact that she enjoys what she does.

She added that the company is licensed, insured and bonded, and that it also is a member of the Greater Ozarks Building Systems Association, Spring-field Contractors Association and the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce.