The CIMS Guidebook: How Ikigai Helps BSCs Earn Certification

Most people who start a cleaning company want to clean, sell, and work with clients. They do not dream about payroll, purchasing, or accounting. Paul Greenland built Ikigai Management Consultants around that reality.

"Nobody goes into the janitor business and says, 'I want to do payroll and purchasing or accounting and finance,'" Greenland said. "They want to clean, they want to sell, they want to work with clients."

As CEO of Ikigai, a fractional, outsourced C-suite firm serving the contract cleaning industry, Greenland helps owners grow both the top and bottom lines. His team takes on the work owners do not want to do, do not like to do, and-most importantly-do not know how to do. The people doing that work know the business firsthand. Greenland's partners were once his employees, helping grow his own contract cleaning company from $10 million to $35 million across seven branch offices.

The meaning behind the name

Ikigai is a Japanese principle built on four overlapping circles: what you are good at, what the world needs, what you love to do, and what you can make money at. Translated, Greenland said, it points to "the purpose of life or driving happiness." After reading a book on the concept, he asked his partners to read it too. They bought in.

CIMS is only the start

Ikigai's latest focus is helping companies earn Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS) certification through their ISSA partnership. Many owners assume that paying the fee is the finish line. Greenland sees it differently.

"That's just the beginning of the certification," he said. "There's a lot of processes and documentation."

He calls CIMS "an ISO 9000 for the janitor world," and notes that most contractors keep their processes in their heads rather than on paper. Ikigai helps document those procedures, then tests and audits the work so clients pass with excellence. Safety and risk management, he said, is usually the weakest area.

Greenland points to experience modification rate, or EMR, as the kind of blind spot that costs real money. One client did not know what EMR meant; it turned out to be 1.55, well above the 1.0 industry standard. That gap, Greenland calculated, meant roughly $80,000 in excess workers' compensation costs in a single year.

Safety with a triple impact

Strong safety programs protect more than workers, Greenland said. Customers want contractors who stay safe on site, manage processes correctly, and send employees home in the same condition they arrived. After a fatal forklift accident, documentation built through CIMS helped avoid an OSHA fine-a rare outcome, since 90% to 95% of workplace deaths result in one.

The payoff, Greenland said, is twofold: Certification opens doors, as property management giants increasingly require it in every RFP, and it makes companies run more efficiently and profitably.

Greenland also believes every CEO needs someone to talk to, not only about the business but about the balance of their life. "What happens to you at home affects you at work," he said. "What happens to you at work affects you at home."

Owners ready to start can reach Greenland's team at the ikigaimc.com website