CONSTRUCTION: Maid Fast Relocates to $3M Escondido Building
Scott Maroney’s Maid Fast Construction has moved into new company headquarters in Escondido. Photo courtesy of Maid Fast Construction
ESCONDIDO – A painting company formed by ex-Marine Scott Maroney has grown so fast that Maroney bought a 14,638-square-foot building as his company’s new headquarters, using a Small Business Administration loan.
Maid Fast Construction, a name Maroney came up with when he ran a one-man cleaning business after leaving the Marines in 1997, has gone from earning about $200,000 when Maroney started it in 2011 to “close to $6 million” in 2024.
Maroney said he came up with the name Maid Fast because he offered cleaning services 24 hours a day, seven days a week and it wasn’t unheard of to go out on a call in the middle of the night.
When he started the cleaning business, Maroney relied on ads in the Yellow Pages to attract customers.
“I put the biggest ad in the Yellow Pages,” Maroney said. “The Yellow Pages for me was the bible.”
That didn’t work once the Internet caught on. The Yellow Pages fell out of favor, and the Internet had a plethora of people offering cleaning services.
“My competition just destroyed me,” Maroney said.
He switched to painting as a skill that he figured that he could easily master.
He kept the name Maid Fast because he said that it brought him good luck.
As disabled veteran, Maroney also got preference on government painting contracts.
When he made $35,000 on his first job, Maroney said that he knew he made the right career choice.
Before he bought the building for his growing painting business, he had been storing much of his equipment on job sites.
“On average, we have 14 projects going at the same time,” Maroney said, and the company’s equipment was “scattered all over these 14 projects.”
“It’s very hard to keep control over who has it and where it is. We had a lot of theft out on the projects,” Maroney said. “This is going to be a lot better now. We’re going to cut the flow of missing items. We can control inventory now.”
Maroney said that he spent about $45,000 renovating his company’s new home and buying office furnishings.
“This place was a carpet seller. You came into this building, and you had all this kind of different flooring installed. You had all this kind of different flooring that you had to scrape off and install new flooring,” Maroney said. “Now that we have this building and we’re going to have a beautiful 12-foot conference table, it’s going to be flawless.”
In February, Maid Fast moved into the industrial building he renovated as its new headquarters at 518 West Washington Ave.
“We were growing fast and needed more space,” Maroney said. “We knew we needed to buy a building that could house everything under one roof and create a workspace that fully supports our team.”
Maroney said that it took him two years to find the right spot.
“A lot of buildings were too big or too expensive or they were crap. They were destroyed,” Maroney said.
Expansion Plans
With a Small Business Administration SBA 504 loan, Maroney was able to buy the $3 million Escondido building with 10% down and a long-term loan that he said was lower than he could get through conventional financing.
As someone with no background in accounting, Maroney said just applying for a conventional loan was daunting.
“If you go to a typical bank and you ask for a loan, they will ask you a million questions and then, they reject you,” Maroney said.
Moroney got the SBA loan through TMC Financing, based in Oakland.
“Scott had a clear vision for his company’s growth and understood the long-term benefits of owning his own space,” said Will Dendy, TMC’s Financing Vice President of Business Development in San Diego.
Maroney said that he got his big break four years ago when he hired a professional engineer, Parth Katrodiya, to prepare bid documents.
“I found my weakness was bidding. I was not good at pricing out projects,” Maroney said.
“By myself, I was making a million a year with the company. The moment I hired Parth, we jumped from $1 million to $4 million in one year. You’ve got to know what your weakness is.”
Much of his business is through referrals from past customers.
“Word of mouth really works when you have this kind of business. When you help other people, they’ll come back to you, and I think that’s one of our biggest strengths,” Maroney said. “When you give, the universe gives back and that’s how we’ve been.”
Maroney that he’d like to grow to have an annual revenue of $40 million in 10 years.
“If that means we’ve got to broaden our services to Texas and Arizona, that’s what we’re going to do,” Maroney said.
Maid Fast Construction
FOUNDED: 2011
HEADQUARTERS: Escondido
FOUNDER: Scott Maroney
BUSINESS: Painting Contractor
EMPLOYEES: 25
WEBSITE: www.maid-fast.com
CONTACT: 760-317-5436
NOTABLE: Maid Fast Construction had an annual income of about $6 million in 2024