Minority Cleaning Company Opens Before the Pandemic, Obtains DGS Contract

Written By Letty Alvarez

Neither the pandemic nor being an Asian immigrant held Joshua Park back from creating a successful residential and commercial cleaning business as well as obtaining a California State contract. Joshua founded Viruscare Commercial Cleaning in Orange County in January 2020, right before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. He never imagined that within his first year of being open he would get a contract awarded from the California Department of General Services.

Being a sound engineer in South Korea, his expertise was in the creative business, not the cleaning business. With the help of his friend and mentor in Kentucky, Patricia Kim, Joshua was guided on the business aspects of being an entrepreneur. Patricia is very familiar with the PTAC (Procurement Technical Assistance Center) and SBDC (Small Business Development Center) resources since she has been a successful client of the Louisville PTAC and SBDC for over 20 years. She loves the fact that PTAC offers services nationwide and all the offices work together. She accredits her success to the PTAC and SBDC and wanted the same for Joshua. So she introduced him to the San Diego, Orange, & Imperial PTAC.

With Patricia’s help, Joshua was connected to Tanya Counts, senior advisor with the PTAC in Irvine, California. With Tanya’s help, they certified his business, registered Viruscare in SAM, created a capabilities statement, did a marketing overview, and researched government opportunities. Patricia would help Joshua look for opportunities on Bid Match. And Joshua bid on the opportunity with the State of California and landed the four- to five-year contract with CA DGS.

His mentor said, “Joshua is a very good listener and a hard worker.” He wanted to learn about the cleaning business first-hand so for eight months, he was out at the job sites learning and cleaning both with his residential and commercial clients. When he wasn’t cleaning, he was creating his website, learning about the industry and bidding for new projects.

While Joshua is still waiting for the DGS contract to begin, he continues to learn more about the business and is concentrating on obtaining other government contracts. He attends as many PTAC webinars as he can, and he and Tanya continue working together to find more government opportunities.