She Pivots with Laura Spaulding
Originally published in Marie Claire on September 27, 2023.
As soon as Laura Spaulding turned 18, she left home and never looked back. At the time she believed her military service would be her ticket out of poverty. But in 1994 she was dishonorably discharged as a result of the newly passed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. Until it was repealed in 2011, the discriminatory law prohibited homosexuals and bisexuals from serving in the armed forces.
“They stamped my paperwork ‘homosexual’ when I was 19 years old,” says Spaulding. “Little did I realize that that would kind of be the tattoo that I would carry for my life.”
Despite graduating from the University of Tennessee with a degree in criminal justice, the stamp on her discharge paperwork made it impossible to find a job. “The scarlet letter followed me around,” Spaulding says.
Her military-appointed lawyer advised her to withhold the fact that she was ever in the military in order to boost her chances of employment. “And he was right,” she says. “So I started checking no on all the boxes, and all of a sudden, I got hired.”
She moved to Kansas City and joined the police force, working undercover in narcotics. Although she was achieving her career goals, Spaulding was unable to make ends meet. “It came to a point where I was making $38,000 a year, like I was barely surviving.”
After earning her MBA, she was eager to start her own business when an encounter with a victim's mother unveiled a surprising gap in the market. “[The mother] came up to me and said, ‘Hey, when are you guys coming back to clean this up?’ And I was like, we don't clean that up. And she's like, ‘Well, then who does?’”
The aha moment inspired her to invest $2,500 in savings to learn the basics of biohazard cleaning, apply for a bank loan, and start Spaulding Decon. She has grown the company to a multi-million dollar franchise with locations across the country, according to Spaulding.
Recently, the company has found success on social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok, garnering millions of views and more than 1.5 million followers. The move towards social media certainly raises ethical concerns, as they show gruesome crime scenes that are potentially triggering for some. But Spaulding says it is all a part of a larger marketing strategy to expand and help more families and victims.