Pete Gazlay grew up in an entrepreneur’s family and caught the bug early with his own lawn mowing and landscape installation company. The road to business ownership was never a straight path. The “five-year plan” got interrupted by children and Pete had to support his family and launched his career as a police officer. He rose rapidly in the leadership ranks but saw his future with bureaucrats and politicians and knew that he was a square peg in a round hole. He did the unthinkable and retired mid-career to launch his speaking career. He wasn’t quite as successful as he hoped and after three years he found a “real job” again.

He worked for an incredible entrepreneur in the Facilities Maintenance industry and was exposed to site operations and Fortune 500 companies and world headquarters in the US, Canada and Costa Rica.

In 2009 he left that company and in 2010 he and Linda started Total Facility Care with zero clients and zero employees. A truly bootstrap company Pete did business development in the days and cleaned buildings at night to get things off the ground. In 2022 Pete and Linda exited the company with sales in excess of $5M and 145 team members.

Pete attributed his ability to exit to two primary decisions. First, he joined an Owners Accountability Group in 2015 that grew his network and gave him a place to process business and marketplace issues. In 2018, Pete lead the self-implementation of the EOS® System in Total Facility Care, and over the next few years the business became less dependent on Pete and more reliant on a leadership team. This increased the value of TFC and enabled Pete and Linda to make their exit.