Hidden Gems: Meet Annette Mathis of A & J Duct Cleaning

Today we’d like to introduce you to Annette Mathis.

Hi Annette, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started A & J Duct Cleaning back in January of 2008. I had run other duct cleaning companies for about 10 years and decided I needed to start my own company.

I started this company with one weeks pay and lots of hope. Luckily I know lots of people and am very good at promoting.

The beginning was difficult. I call it my beans and rice stage because there was a lot of that.

I worked doing promotions for other companies to make ends meet till I built up enough work to be able to support myself.

We built up a strong base of customers off the premise of great service and good customer service.

We are now in our 10th year. We offer more services and are thriving because of the values we follow.

In the last couple of years, we made some changes. We added an office in the Vallejo area run by Jeff Mathis. We also made the great move of going into partnership with Mark and Monica Hernandez and of course Jeff Mathis.

We expanded our service area to cover parts of Northern California and more of Southern California.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not been a smooth road. As I said, the beginning was very difficult. It took us about a year to get enough work going for me to barely be able to support the business and myself.

I have had several setbacks.

One time an estimator way underbid a job, by thousands of dollars. We accepted the job before we found out the issues. I have a policy of never going back on what we have agreed to. So I was out there doing the work with the technicians. I lost quite a bit of time and money on that job.

For a little while after this, I lost faith in doing this and sold my business. I was on very good terms with all my customers and told them the new person would take very good care of them.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out with the other person and I had a lot of my old customers calling me and asking me to come back to do work for them again. So, I restarted my business…

When I came back, I focused on building up the customer base and actually was thriving.

Just before Covid hit we had decided to expand more into the commercial sector and spent a bunch of money on promotion. Then covid hit. We went almost 3 months with so little work it was a miracle we survived. But we did.

We made some changes and added services and are now thriving.

The road won’t always be smooth but it’s the diversity that has helped us to become the company we are now.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about A & J Duct Cleaning?
We are a family-run business. We take pride in what we have to offer. The first thing I tell everyone who works with us is that our name is very important to us. You can’t thrive by offering subpar service

I like to say we are not the cheapest company out there, nor are we the most expensive. But we never cut corners and we guarantee all of our work.

We offer cleaning services such as air ducts, dryer ducts, trash chutes, gutters / downspouts, window washing & power washing.

We have many different crews that work on everything from residential to commercial and industrial. And each crew specializes in specific services.

For example, we have an amazing crew who work on mainly dryer ducts for us. When you do that service all day long you become the best at what you do.

We also have a crew that specializes in high-end homes and commercial accounts. Those require more of a behind the scenes approach. And they are very good at it.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Right now a big majority of our work is with property management. We do commercial and Industrial projects, but we would like to get more into this sector.

We are also looking to expand all across California. Right now we have 2 locations. We are looking for more crews to cover the rest of California.

Contact Info:

• Website: ajductcleaning.com
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/a-and-j-duct-cleaning-los-angeles-2