A former police officer turned a side hustle cleaning up crime scenes into a multimillion-dollar franchise - and now she's taking on cleaning up the coronavirus pandemic
- Laura Spaulding makes things go away for a living: cleaning up crime scenes, hoarding disasters, and meth labs alike and sharing it all on a YouTube series.
- It started when Spaulding cleaned up after two brothers shot and killed one another while she was serving as a Kansas City police officer - she later turned it into her full-time job.
- When she scaled her business, Spaulding Decon, she brought on two stay-at-home moms at first - she now has 24 franchises and estimated her company is worth $10 million.
- Spaulding said she's written $30 million in job estimates for coronavirus-related work, including fogging and disinfecting frequented spaces like daycares and sporting arenas.
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When a woman jumped off a 22-story luxury high-rise condominium, Laura Spaulding got a call.
When a doctor distraught over his impending divorce put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger, Spaulding got a call, too.
When the ammonia concentration from cat urine permeated the neighborhood and all signs pointed to the house with 24 cats, Spaulding also got a call.
And when that meth lab down the street gets busted by the cops, Spaulding will most likely get a call as well.
It's become commonplace for Spaulding's phone to ring off the hook with panicked calls from hotel and property managers who all conveniently have her on speed dial. They reach out to her when they are faced with the types of situations that need to go away quickly - because Spaulding makes things disappear for a living.
What began as a one-woman crime-scene side hustle 15 years ago has since grown into the multimillion-dollar, nationwide outfit known as Spaulding Decon, one of only four companies in America specializing in expert biohazard, crime scene, mold remediation, extreme hoarding, and meth lab clean-up services.
The first clean-upSpaulding's life as a trauma cleaner began in 2005 when her phone rang on Christmas Day. Two brothers had shot and killed one another and their mother was on the other end of the line in dire need of a clean-up in her kitchen. Spaulding, working as a Kansas City police officer in the vice and narcotics department at the time, couldn't afford to hire outside help, so she got into her decade-old Ford Bronco with a trailer hitched to it and did the job on her own. It took two full days and required a bit of construction, as the blood had managed to seep through the door frame.
"The family watched the entire clean-up, which at the time I thought was odd. Years later, I Iearned everyone has a different way of processing grief. Seeing the blood washed away was their way of moving on," said Spaulding. "When I was done, I never felt more accomplished and satisfied, having been able to erase the visual nightmare of what had happened inside those walls. I thrive on bringing order to chaos. To this day, I get a rush from the before and after," she admitted.
Doing jobs without any assistance was a struggle, but Spaulding made do, like the time she attached makeshift PVC handrails to a furniture dolly MacGyver-style to help remove a king-size hotel mattress someone had died on. "I'm only 5'5", so navigating this giant mattress on wheels made me look like a monkey screwing a football," she explained.
At the time, Spaulding owned a home in Missouri and was living on a $40,000-a-year police officer's salary.
"I hated my living situation, I hated my job, and I hated being poor, and I saw an opportunity, so I tried to get a small business loan," she said. "I was turned down by every single bank I walked into, but I wasn't going to take no for an answer." Out of sheer desperation and necessity, she got creative and looked into home equity loans. Then, she went to another bank and told them she needed a $15,000 loan for new windows for her house.
"They rubber-stamped it and gave me the money! A few days and $2,500 later, I was in Texas for a week-long biohazard training," she shared.
A one-woman side business brings on new team members and offerings
"I was very candid about the type of work it was. I came right out and said the prerequisites were handling suicides, homicides, dead animals, and decomposition-based clean-up, and I still wound up with 60 resumes that day," she said, noting that she took the post down after 12 hours due to the flood of applicants.
While former military and law enforcement personnel like Spaulding typically make good technicians because they've seen it all before, her first two hires wound up being stay-at-home-moms.
"They didn't really need the money, they were just looking to get out of the house every now and then, so they didn't mind the sporadic schedule. That's the kind of people I needed at that point. They said after changing diapers for years they were ready for anything. I know if I could get them to overcome the death part of [it] all, they would work well and they did," she explained.
In 2008, Spaulding turned in her resignation at her medical equipment job to focus on crime-scene cleaning full time. She eventually added meth lab clean-up to her list of services. Soon after, she added extreme hoarding and mold remediation to her business model, and in 2016 she began buying unwanted homes to gut, renovate, and flip for profit.
Spaulding's willingness to take on a variety of different work has made her a one-stop shop and opened up a host of revenue streams for her and her business. With one suicide every 12 minutes and a murder every 31 minutes in the United States, there's a critical need for services like those of Spaulding Decon.
"Every day someone, somewhere is faced with a suicide or homicide or dealing with a relative that hoards and they don't know what to do. Everyone who's ever watched CSI assumes the forensics team comes in for evidence and cleans everything up, but in reality the aftermath is left to the homeowner to deal with, and that's where we come in. Most people don't know we exist, until they need us," said Spaulding.
As the need for services arose in other parts of the country, Spaulding saw the opportunity to franchise. With 24 small business-approved franchises operating at a buy-in of $150,000 each, plus royalties, Spaulding estimated her business is worth $10 million.
There seems to be no sign of it slowing down any time soon, either. In fact, just over the past few weeks she said she's written $30 million in job estimates for coronavirus-related work for everyone from daycare centers to call centers to sporting arenas, and has already been contracted to do work with the Philadelphia courthouse along with a host of manufacturing sites, office buildings, banks, and insurance companies. This work entails fogging the designated space with disinfectant and then going behind and hand wiping every surface.
"Unlike a lot of businesses, we've proven to be relatively recession proof. Trauma, hoarding, and waste removal are not contingent on the economy, so there's job security here," she said.
Becoming an online sensation
Within a year, with the aid of a digital marketing consultant, the series has grown from 14,000 to 214,000 subscribers and their Instagram account has skyrocketed to 367,000 followers.
"There was a chance this could have blown up in my face and brought out the haters, but instead we built this community of people learning about what we do and who we are," said Spaulding.
One glance at Spaulding's accomplishments along with her meteoric rise on social media to "Trauma Queen" standing and some might deem her an overnight success. She'll be the first to tell you that's the farthest thing from the truth.
Underestimating the time it can take to get a job done and miscalculating costs on renovations, along with partnering with the wrong people for her brand are just a few of her self-admitted errors over the course of her career.
"I've made every mistake in the book since opening this business, but I own them all," she shared. "It's been a gigantic learning curve and the takeaway is that people who fail either don't put enough attention or grit into their work. You've got to have a sink or swim mentality. We've all heard the saying about having a Plan B, but I say if you have a Plan B, you aren't putting 100% into your Plan A. The key to this job, like many others, is empathy. You either have it or you don't. When we suit up and get to work on a job, we aren't just transforming a physical space, we are transforming lives."