Story by James Leigh
Photos by Donald Cross
Misty Poole never planned to clean carpets or ductwork, but as she nears her 24th year with Steamatic of Arkansas, she could not be happier.
The daughter of a former Electrolux vacuum salesman, Poole went to college and earned a psychology degree. Over time, she has discovered the two go hand-in-hand.
“It’s a funny story,” she said. “I actually got a psychology degree and found out I couldn’t make any money with it. I was managing a shoe store right out of college. I stayed there for a couple of years, and then my husband and I decided to have a baby.”
Poole’s father had started a carpet cleaning business when she was in high school, and after she had the baby, he suggested she work for him and bring the baby along.
“I think that was his way of getting to be around the grandbaby every single day,” she said. “When I started here, I could barely type, and it’s just been a whole lot of self-education. This is not where I thought I would be, but I can’t imagine doing anything different now. It’ll be 24 years in May that I will have been here. It’s a long time, especially working with family.”
Working with family is not always the easiest thing, Poole said, and the first five years “were really rough.”
“When I started down here, I was raising the baby down here, worked with my dad, worked with my husband,” she said. “Anytime you work family that’s difficult. … The first five years was hard. Then I really started kind of getting my voice, I guess. Surprisingly, I used to be super shy when I was younger, and I have just broken straight out of that because I’m not shy at all anymore.”
The family purchased the Steamatic franchise in 2001, which gave them more options for customers.
“It took us a long time to get past just the ‘They’re carpet cleaners,'” Poole said. “When we bought the Steamatic franchise in 2001, we had already done small-scale water and fire restoration, but we were able to add air duct cleaning on, which we’d never done before.”
Now that carpet is not as popular, the business had to “shift with the times,” Poole said.
“We do tile and hardwood floor cleaning,” she said. “My husband has actually traveled around the United States and set up an entire oriental and area rug cleaning system down in our facility. He’s done a lot of training and education for that, so of course we do that. Air duct cleaning, dryer vent cleaning, mold remediation, emergency water mitigation, fire damages as far as cleaning structure and contents — we do a lot.”
While cleaning may not be the most glamourous career choice, Poole said “people don’t call us unless they need help,” and being able to help others is the best part of her job.
“We’ve done fire damages where people have either lost a family member in it or a pet, and that’s difficult,” she said. “So you just have to have the right characteristics to be able to handle that, and I love to help people. Like I said, I got my psychology degree because I thought I was going to help people, and then I realized I couldn’t make anything with it. So this has just worked out really well.”
Poole said her psychology degree has been beneficial to her career.
“Psychology is the study of behavior, so some of the things that I did learn — I can figure out you know why somebody maybe thinks this way,” she said. “It actually helps out most with our employees, figuring out what makes them tick, what their love language is as far as an employee. … Each one is completely different. When I do train a supervisor, that’s one of the things that I do have to teach them is you have to be observant, see what doesn’t work for them, what does work for them, and you have to tailor how you deal with them completely to their particular personality because what works for one person never works exactly the same for the other person. I mean, I’ve got five people here in the office, and every one of them has completely different personalities.”
The cleaning and restoration industry is still male-dominated, Poole said, which has been difficult to overcome.
“This is a male-dominated industry, so to be taken seriously, like I’ve told them before, I’ve had to work twice as hard to get half the respect simply because I’m a female,” she said. “I’ve had other franchise owners called office before, and I answer, and they say, ‘Oh, what are you doing down there?’ I’m like, ‘Well, I work here every day.'”
People are surprised when Poole comes in to do cleaning at their homes.
“I know I don’t look like a stereotypical carpet cleaner, but I am certified in carpet cleaning,” she said. “I cleaned carpets one summer in college; my dad needed help and just threw a deal I could not resist, which was no nights and weekends. And I spent the whole summer cleaning carpets, and I mean it wasn’t bad. But I even had customers that were concerned about me being a female in their house. They didn’t want me to break anything or tear anything up, like I didn’t know what I was doing.”
While there are still some in the industry who discount her because she is a woman, most are starting to realize Poole knows what she is doing.
“It’s taken a lot to prove to a lot of my male counterparts that I do know what I’m doing, but once they get it, they get it,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a new male employee that didn’t think I knew what I was doing. They know now because when they walk in the room to our meetings, I come in the meetings and I give them advice and tell them how to do things. A lot of it’s just research that I’ve done on top of the education that I’ve gotten for the certifications. I’m always trying to read trade magazines, emails, stay on top of everything, and so yeah, I’ll usually be the first one to say ‘Hey, let’s try this new piece of equipment out,’ or show them how to use something or tell them how to use a certain chemical or something.”
Poole has also started getting wider recognition for her knowledge. She was contacted by a writer for Southern Living magazine last year to talk about upholstery and floor cleaning.
“Southern Living is like the Holy Grail for all of Southern ladies, and so that was exciting in its own,” she said. “But when the article came out, she had interviewed a guy from another company somewhere in the United States and me, and his information was about that much and the rest of the article was mine. I was really excited, and it made me feel good that I knew what I was talking about and could convey it the manner that could help her, too. And when we got off the phone, she said, ‘Do you mind if I call you again? I do a lot of cleaning articles.’ And I said,’ Yeah, sure. That’s fine.’ So then she called me again, right before Christmas for tips on how to get red wine stains out. So to me that was just really exciting.”
The company purchased the Little Rock franchise around 2015, and her father took over that location, leaving the local franchise for Poole and her husband. The company has around 28 full-time employees between the two locations and is the only franchise in the state, so while they officially “own” 17 counties, they have done jobs all over the state.
“We can travel to wherever we need to,” she said. “We go to northwest Arkansas for some large air duct cleaning jobs. Our biggest area though is Hot Springs, Hot Springs Village, Malvern, Benton, Bryant, Little Rock, Conway, Cabot. Those are our big areas that we do, but we’ll travel anywhere if the job warrants it.”
Poole said while the numbers have not been released for the past several years, she believes that Steamatic of Arkansas still leads the country in per capita carpet cleaning.
“They quit releasing all that information. We got new owners few years ago from Australia, and they don’t give us any of that information anymore. … We are one of the largest producing per capitas in the US, so that’s pretty good from a population of what 36,000-whatever we have.
“When we bought the franchise, we had told them our goal one day was to hit a million dollars in sales, and they laughed and said, ‘You’re never going to do that in Hot Springs. We do a whole lot more than that per year now. We do more revenue than some of the larger franchisors in big metropolitan areas. It’s crazy to me, but I think a lot of it is from just the way we treat our customers, customer service. We always try to treat them like they’re family, too.”
While it may be a male-dominated industry, work in cleaning and restoration has become a passion for Misty Poole, who has worked in every role in the company. (The Sentinel-Record/Donald Cross)
Steamatic of Arkansas owner Misty Poole points out some of what she and her employees do each day. (The Sentinel-Record/Donald Cross)
Steamatic of Arkansas owner Misty Poole said people are surprised to see a woman in the cleaning and restoration industry, but she is getting national recognition for her knowledge. (The Sentinel-Record/Donald Cross)
Steamatic of Arkansas owner Misty Poole points out some of the tools of the trade, including a device that spins rugs after they have been cleaned to help dry them faster. (The Sentinel-Record/Donald Cross)
From rug cleaning videos to tips on how to keep pipes from freezing, Steamatic of Arkansas owner Misty Poole keeps the company’s social media busy while continuing to run the state’s only Steamatic franchise. (The Sentinel-Record/Donald Cross)
Rug cleaning is just part of what Steamatic of Arkansas does, and owner Misty Poole has done it all, from answering the phones to cleaning ductwork. (The Sentinel-Record/Donald Cross)
