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Creative Loafing Atlanta -
Profile Jerry Turner, crime scene cleaner.
Listen to
Meth lab cleanup radio interview on The
Story with Dick Gordon from WUNC Public Radio, North Carolina.
Entrepreneur.com
10 Off-the-Wall Businesses By Geoff
Williams
These businesses prove that no idea is too odd to find success.
Murder Scene Mop-Up
Entrepreneur: Jerry Turner, 38
Business: Advanced Bio-Treatment
Location: Atlanta
Date Founded: 2003
The off-the-wall factor: The simple fact is, Turner’s company is a cleaning
company. The twist is what they clean up. Cleaning up after murders and suicides
is one of their specialties, but they also handle meth labs and fecal matter and
urine, something you might find in the house or apartment of a former tenant who
had a few too many pets.
How Turner got started: As a serial entrepreneur--this is his eighth
business--Turner’s always on the lookout for a great opportunity. His first
company, which he started when he was 18, was a landscaping firm. His last
business before this was as an independent insurance agent. A few years ago,
Turner read an article about crime scene cleanup and decided to start his own
company because of “the money aspect, to be truthful,” he says. “I don’t like to
work--or I don’t want to work my whole life. I thought this was the kind of
company that could be profitable and that I could build quickly, sell it someday
and go play the rest of my life.”
Typical reaction when people learn what Turner does: “They’re surprised,” he
says. And fascinated: They immediately begin asking him questions about the gore
and gruesome situations he’s seen.
Off-the-wall insight: Turner never really knows how much an assignment will cost
until he or his crew of 13 employees finishes a job. ‘Let’s say this guy’s been
killed in the kitchen,” says Turner, very matter-of-factly. “There’s blood on
the baseboard--or has it actually seeped under the baseboard? And maybe it’s
gotten under the vinyl floor covering. And if it has, maybe the fluid has
mitigated into the sub floor, and so let’s say you cut that apart--maybe it’s
reached the second sub floor. It may have migrated to the ceiling below. It’s
impossible to know, until you know what you’re dealing with.”
Of all the cleanup tasks he’s required to do--and he’s been worked everywhere
from nuclear power plants to construction sites--the most difficult is removing
pungent odors, whether it’s of death or fecal matter. But that’s not the most
challenging part of running the business: Spreading the word about what his
company does is the difficult part. Turner recognizes that an ad in the
newspaper might be deemed tasteless--few people will likely respond well to a
caption saying, “Remember us if your uncle ever gets bludgeoned to death and
blood splatters on your good rug.”
Not-so-off-the-wall revenue: By next summer, Turner expects to be bringing in $1
million in sales a year, in part because he has four more offices that will be
opening around the country by then.
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