Houston Republic

When Jose Menjivar was a refugee fleeing the El Salvador communist revolution, the lessons his father taught often came to mind.  

“You get out what you put in so if you work hard, things will happen for you,” Menjivar told Houston Republic. “I'm living proof that if you make the effort and do things right, good will materialize.”

These days Menjivar is president of PJS of Houston, a commercial cleaning company that employs more than 1,400 people. 

"The problem I see today is that some people want everything handed to them instead of putting in the effort and the system just doesn't work that way," he said, who noted there was no such thing as a handout when Menjivar was growing up.

"My dad took my siblings and me to work with him in the cornfields when we were 7 years old and taught us how to work," Menjivar said. "He taught us that each year we had to do better than the next because life is about bettering yourself."

With these principles, Menjivar worked his way up from being a janitor 30 years ago, according to media reports. 

“The manager of one of the buildings I had been cleaning wrote a letter of praise to my superiors about me and that literally opened the door to get on management’s radar,” Menjivar said in an interview. “Somebody finally noticed that I was doing something right. I was brought into the main office. From there, I moved up.”

He oversees more than 300 accounts, about 40 million square feet of buildings and sees opportunity to expand.

“Fifteen years ago we we're probably cleaning 10 million square feet and 15 years later, we're at 40 million plus, so I'm thinking we could be at 80 million in the next eight years,” Menjivar said. “When you have a good product, you can take over other contracts where people aren’t doing as great a job as they should.”

Although he embraces technologies, such as cordless vacuum cleaners and electrostatic disinfecting in the era of COVID-19, Menjivar values human contacts and he has learned to surround himself with good employees.

“There's always going to be an opportunity for the human factor,” he said. “There are certain things that technology is just not going to be able to do like a smiling face that greets you. You take care of those employees and they take care of you. It's a very simple formula for success. If you surround yourself with good people, good things happen to you.”