General Manager, Team Leader, Cintas Corporation

>> My name is Chase Paterno. I'm the general manager at Cintas Corporation in Savannah Georgia. You know, what I love about Cintas is there's no usual day. There's no norm. Really I try to get to work about ten o clock and leave at -- Joking. I get to work about seven thirty, leave about five thirty or six. I get to lead a team and that's what I love. I have drivers which we call SSRs, service sales representatives. I have a front office staff. And we have guys in the plant that load the trucks, manage the inventory. And so the first part of my morning I always check my emails. Try to make sure all the administrative stuff is done. Strategize. Look at my financials. And then I'll go -- I like to manage by influence and face to face. So I'll get on the plant floor. I'll go out in the office. I might even go out, see some customers, see my drivers, make sure they're doing okay. So I'm not stuck in an office all day and that's really what I like about it is the teamwork, the camaraderie, and the overall leadership. So there's not a normal day, per se, but the hours are more or less seven thirty to five thirty or six, and then I fill it with what I have to do to get the job done. What we do is we provide services where we like to be a one stop shop for companies. So certain projects might be taking a customer from A to Z, meaning we sell to the customer. We make sure that they're set up with their needs. Like it's a partnership. We fulfill their needs from a uniform side of the business, FS, facility service side of the business, from floor mats to hand soap, and we make sure they get set up. And then I'll go later on, maybe 2, 3 months after that account's been set up. I'll go visit that customer, make sure they're happy with our service, make sure that my team, my part -- We call our employees partners. We like to all be one, one team. Make sure that they're doing their job out there and that the customer's satisfied with that. And then follow up on the backend with my team and say, "Hey, guys, this is what we're doing great. Here are certain opportunity areas." So we have a staff meeting once a week in which we'll assign certain projects or initiatives to everyone on our team. And make sure that they adhere to that and follow the schedule. What's great about Cintas is the company's growing. And as we enter new divisions and new product lines and really begin to show that we're the premiere provider for our product, we're growing drastically. We have about 2,000 customers and so as our customer base grows so does our employee base. Right? We need people to manage those customers. Of those 2,000 we have what we call a top 180. And so we'll have certain managers. This manager might have 180 of those 2,000 customers. And then this manager might take 180 of the next set of customer base. But all 2,000 are important. So we try to touch every customer in some way. Our SSRs, our drivers, are out there once a week to meet the customers. So whether you're a small customer or a large customer, we try to treat you equally in that respect. You're going to see a manager. You're going to see a driver. And we're going to make sure all of your needs are fulfilled.