6 | Universal Services of America
provider. It’s driven into all of the employees.
You’ve got to be a leader. You’ve got to have
vision. You’ve got to have an idea of what we
can do to become more valuable. It takes a
big infrastructure and a lot of great people.”
The initial steps on the road to $2.5 bil-
lion were taken in 1965, when the company
was created by two brothers-in-law who’d re-
cently graduated fromcollege.The entity was
bankrolled by one of the partner’s fathers as
a janitorial services operation, and the idea
of adding additional capabilities was an af-
terthought until – at the end of a cleaning
shift at a client’s office – the security guard to
whom the partners typically handed over the
building’s keys didn’t show up for work.
Panicked, the client asked the partners if
they could stay in the building overnight un-
til employees arrived, and, as Jones says, by
the time morning came “the light bulb had
gone on.”
The janitorial arm of the business was ul-
