What makes a business “sexy”? Is it in how you can pride yourself with being a business owner? Or does it have more to do with what business you’re engaged in? Maybe it’s the perks of providing a luxury service, and getting invited to fancy business meetings and stakeholder parties? To some people, it’s these superficial characteristics that make them want to go into business. But more often than not, finding out there’s more grease that gets under the nails than the number of fancy business meetings you get to attend is a turn off. And so, not many people last as entrepreneurs, and become successful ones at that. For people like Pat Hyland and David Flax, they equate “sexy” with a business that puts food on the table through multiple streams of consistent income by offering services that are perpetually relevant to society. Running a business that is steady and needed is what makes it work for Pat and David. Pat was named Vice President of The Grounds Guys in 2011 after joining Neighborly as a franchise developer in 2010. Since his promotion, Pat has also led teams of franchise developers for Rainbow International, Window Genie, and Mosquito Joe. Since joining the company in 2010, Pat has seen the Neighborly brands grow from 1,300+ franchise locations to over 5,000 franchise locations today. David has over 12 years of experience in franchising. A serial entrepreneur who has owned 3 businesses prior to franchising, he moved from being a millionaire to bankruptcy during the 2008 market crash. With what little money he had left, he opened Window Genie in Atlanta, GA, in 2010. In 4 years, David grew his franchise into the largest in the country. He currently serves as Window Genie’s President, effective last January 1, 2022. Together, they are on a mission to educate new franchisees and entrepreneurs about how powerful branding and marketing efforts bring in a consistent flow of income – the best description of a sexy business especially in today’s financially stricken times. Tune in to our Podcast to learn more about everything you WANT and NEED on franchising, investment, financing processes and options. This is Eye On Franchising, where we share our vision for your franchise future. https://www.facebook.com/lance.graulich https://ionfranchising.com/
What makes a business “sexy”?
Is it in how you can pride yourself with being a business owner? Or does it have more to do with what business you’re engaged in? Maybe it’s the perks of providing a luxury service, and getting invited to fancy business meetings and stakeholder parties?
To some people, it’s these superficial characteristics that make them want to go into business. But more often than not, finding out there’s more grease that gets under the nails than the number of fancy business meetings you get to attend is a turn off.
And so, not many people last as entrepreneurs, and become successful ones at that.
For people like Pat Hyland and David Flax, they equate “sexy” with a business that puts food on the table through multiple streams of consistent income by offering services that are perpetually relevant to society. Running a business that is steady and needed is what makes it work for Pat and David.
Pat was named Vice President of The Grounds Guys in 2011 after joining Neighborly as a franchise developer in 2010. Since his promotion, Pat has also led teams of franchise developers for Rainbow International, Window Genie, and Mosquito Joe. Since joining the company in 2010, Pat has seen the Neighborly brands grow from 1,300+ franchise locations to over 5,000 franchise locations today.
David has over 12 years of experience in franchising. A serial entrepreneur who has owned 3 businesses prior to franchising, he moved from being a millionaire to bankruptcy during the 2008 market crash. With what little money he had left, he opened Window Genie in Atlanta, GA, in 2010. In 4 years, David grew his franchise into the largest in the country. He currently serves as Window Genie’s President, effective last January 1, 2022.
Together, they are on a mission to educate new franchisees and entrepreneurs about how powerful branding and marketing efforts bring in a consistent flow of income – the best description of a sexy business especially in today’s financially stricken times.
Tune in to our Podcast to learn more about everything you WANT and NEED on franchising, investment, financing processes and options.
This is Eye On Franchising, where we share our vision for your franchise future.
https://www.facebook.com/lance.graulich
[00:00:00] LANCE: Welcome to Eye on franchising. Are you looking for business opportunities? Well, you are in the right place. We represent over 650 franchises and business opportunities. We will help you find your perfect franchise for free. We even have a free assessment on our website that will help us determine what the best businesses for you based on your investment level mindset, skillset and life experiences this is Eye on franchising, where we share our vision for your franchise future. I'm your host, Lance Graulich each week, we will speak to fascinating folks from the world of franchising, franchise owners and founders, franchise, funders, and franchisees are you looking to find your perfect franchise or perhaps you are an independent business owner looking to grow and scale your business by setting up a franchise, either way, our team can help you. Eye on franchising where you will [00:01:00] learn the A to Z of franchising
[00:01:06] hello everyone. And welcome back to another episode of Eye on franchising. I am your host, Lance Graulich. And today I have of course, another couple of amazing special guests. So our first guest, our first guest. Entrepreneur since 2010, he has been with neighborly brands and we'll talk about neighborly brands. And he was there in the era when neighborly went from a whopping 1300 locations, all the way to 5,000 plus locations today. So my first guest vice president of franchise development for neighborly brands and today. Special brand. We're going to be discussing window genie. So welcome Pat Highland.
[00:01:51] PAT: Thank you for having me, Lance.
[00:01:53] LANCE: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, pat and next guest. Uh, well, let's see, let's [00:02:00] see how I can go back and give you the best synopsis of this amazing serial entrepreneur. He's owned three businesses. And unfortunately we all remember 2008. It wasn't so good for many of us and he lost it all in 2008, but at this is not a sad story, all the way made the comeback. owned other businesses, 2019, he sold his business for over a million bucks and he is the president of window genie at a franchisee, a former franchisee of window genie and ima let let him tell you the story, the president of window genie, David Flax welcome David.
[00:02:40] DAVID: Thank you Lance and appreciate you having me here today.
[00:02:42] LANCE: Hopefully I did a pretty good job on that. I wanted to have some extra buildup.
[00:02:46] DAVID: I think you did. I'll give you an a
[00:02:48] LANCE: perfect, perfect. Well welcome gentlemen. Uh, so let's start with. I always call it the obvious question. How do two entrepreneurs end up at window window genie? You've had your successes [00:03:00] over the years. So let's talk about that. Uh, who wants to go first? Let's start with how you got into franchise
[00:03:05] DAVID: I'll go first. Perfect. So as you mentioned before, in my story, I have been a former business owner like career right out of college. I was actually an accountant to CPA. Um, Yeah, me too. I'd like to refer to myself as a recovering accountant. So, but I did the right thing. My mom told me to get an accounting degree and I listened to my mother. So I was a good boy. So after, yeah, that's always a good thing. Listening to mom say after about three years, I realized that accounting really wasn't for me or I wasn't for it either way, depending on how you look at it. And I went into sales and became a recruiter or a headhunter after about three years in that business, decided to open up my own business and I owned two different recruiting firms up until. Like you said 2008 and times were great when [00:04:00] they were great, but ultimately I got hit by the perfect storm in 2008 during the great recession, wound up losing my business, losing my house, losing the cars. And I was about 40 years old at the time. And I was left with two choices, either move back home with my wife and two kids and move in with mom and dad or take whatever was left in my 401k. Cash it out and buy a window genie franchise. And that seemed like the logical option to me, it all in all seriousness, what really led me into franchising and led me to window genie was being a former business owner, independent business owner, not being in a franchise. I had, uh, a lot of success. But I also, as I mentioned, had failure and when all of that hit me, my manlihood was crushed and I have no idea how this happened, if it's a God thing or what, but somebody had [00:05:00] recommended to me that I read the book, the E-Myth revisited by Michael Gerber. And that's probably the first book I had read since I graduated college. So I really have no idea what's back why I read that book and listened to ever told me to read it, but I did. and on Doing some self-reflection what I realized is that I was the pie maker, baking pies. I was an excellent recruiter and an excellent salesperson. And I basically, I had for 12 years, the recruiting firm that I was doing the recruiting and I had a revolving door around me, my biggest failure as an owner, there was being able to create systems. And train other people to replicate what I was doing. So there was no way out and it didn't matter how much money I made. Cause I remember days at launch where I would go to a quiet place and think about how miserable I was. All it was, was a [00:06:00] revolving door and I was a sole proprietor. So that would appeal to me about franchising is that the very essence of a franchise is a set of systems that is repeatable and replicable and can be done over and over. So I started doing, uh, some research of franchises came across window genie, and I totally bought into the plan if you will, and believed in myself enough that it would be a good manager and that I could execute the plan I'm happy to say it works.
[00:06:30] LANCE: What a great story. I love it. I love it, pat. What say you give me your, uh, your history.
[00:06:38] PAT: Yeah. Mine's a different journey. You know, I don't necessarily know many people kind of like David's story that ends up thinking they were ever going to finish high school, finished college and ended up in franchisee. I don't think it's ever on somebody's radar, but we in 1993, I moved from Minnesota down to the Dallas Fort worth area and started a manufacturing business, which was, uh, a service business [00:07:00] at that time that we converted into a manufacturing business. So we started manufacturing this equipment, which was ventilation cleaning equipment, air filtration, devices, dryer, bank, cleaning equipment. And along the way, I got to meet the neighborly brands like rainbow international and they are serve. And Mr. Appliance, as well as other franchises and independent contractors. So we started selling our equipment to the franchisees. Lance it's been over 29 years that I've been around neighborly as David was telling his story. I just started thinking over half of my life. I've been around this company and their franchisees and franchising and built the business. And God blessed us in the business. We built up over 30 and a half million dollars a year on revenues. And I had an opportunity to sell my interest in 2010. And I was actually going to go out and be a franchise consultant and represent a lot of the franchise relationships and the brands that I had. And my wife was from a small town [00:08:00] in Louisiana and we were living in the Dallas Fort worth area and she wanted to get out of the Metro mess. So she thought that was Tennessee somewhere. Well, I ended up secure all these relationships and then I talked to neighborly at that time when they said, Hey, we just launched this new brand here at neighborly, which was going to be their seventh brand. And I said, yeah. And I told my wife, she. Waco, Texas is not Tennessee. And she goes, that's gone the wrong direction. A Waco. Wasn't cool. Back then, right? You didn't have chip and Joanna Gaines and the fixer upper thing going on where a non for other things, but we made the move and I've been with the brand since 2010 representing several of the brands in my role. But in addition to that, one of the things that happened was I drank the Kool-Aid like David said I drank the Kool-Aid and said, man, we need to do more of this because we had some personal challenges that happened in our life. After our son suffered a severe traumatic brain injury during a gymnastics accident when it was [00:09:00] 14. And our goal was to make sure that no matter what happened to my wife or I He was going to be able to care, be cared for the way we wanted to the rest of his life. So we went out and we invested a significant amount of our savings at that time to start our first franchise and ended up being a, becoming multiunit, multi concept franchise owners in the space of franchise that we love today. And it allowed us to grow the business. I'm I'm really. Just thankful, but also proud to say my wife ended up taking those businesses was the number one franchisees, uh, out of over 1100 locations with that company and sold her businesses. To a private, a persistent private equity company that pursued her over the last two and a half years,
[00:09:47] LANCE: they love franchises.
[00:09:48] PAT: Oh, they do. And, um, they, if, yeah, she, she did very well with that and sold just this last November in 2021.
[00:09:57] LANCE: That's Awesome. Well, congrats to both of you [00:10:00] and getting to where you are today. So let's, uh, sort of unwrap window genie. So let's start with. Describe to me what window genie is and why would somebody want to be a franchisee?
[00:10:13] DAVID: Sure. I'll start off. Pat Is that all right? Yeah. So window genie is a home services company. We have multiple revenue streams. We do window cleaning, pressure, washing, holiday lighting, gutter cleaning, and window tinting. So multiple revenue streams. We're not a fancy trendy. thing, right, this is not a whole new yogurt shop or a, a juice factory with health juice or, you know, something trending, which is actually what, one of the things that appealed to me about it, it's steady, it's needed, right? It is something that's never going away. That's what we, uh, the services that we offer, we are one of the ways that I like to describe window genie is say that we are a [00:11:00] marketing. We are excellent at branding and marketing. Say that our branding and marketing is second to none. And our competition is in the rear view mirror in a distance in the distant rear view mirror compared to our branding and marketing. And I think that that's really one of the things that makes us special. We are, this is not a cold calling business. You don't do cold calls. You're not knocking on doors. There's no retail space at a fortune a month. Um, it can be started from home. If somebody wants a, with small cheap warehouse space, which keeps overhead really low at the beginning, which makes it easier to get to break even. So I like to think that we're a, like I said, a marketing business that just happens to be doing some home services coupled out with, um, some of the things. You could see if you're doing research on window genie, a high repeat business rate, nearly 50% of all of our businesses from [00:12:00] repeat customers, which is, yeah. I mean, that is an amazing statistic and it's something that's just not going away. Interestingly enough, our neighbor Lee's CEO, Mike Bidwell, uh, recently said, and it's pretty true in today's world, especially during, in COVID all of a sudden the home services. We've become sexy. So while I said we're not in today's day and age where the new sexy,
[00:12:27] LANCE: yeah. It's funny you say that. I was telling somebody the other day, he said he was interested in a restaurant franchise, one of my, one of my candidates. And I said, yeah, everybody thinks restaurants are a sexy business. And I said, let's talk home services. Let's talk home care. You know? And it was just funny that you brought that up because we in the business tend to describe certain things as sexy making money is sexy. Let me comment on one thing you brought up, you know, so many people that are listening that maybe have never explored franchises are [00:13:00] still determining, you know, is a franchise, right. For them. And one of the many reasons franchising is right for so many people is exactly what you just said, because sure. You can go start your own best business and sort of risk at all, going into the. The darkness, so to speak, you don't know what's in front of you. You're doing this all by yourself. Neighborly has hundreds of people in the marketing department. There's people doing branding. Um, you have the entire support structure going, uh, you know, to make sure that franchisees are successful. How do you compete with that? And then independent basis, right?
[00:13:34] PAT: Yea You can, and that's, that's the beauty of it is the economies of scale. Lance's the way my wife and I even looked at it. How much would it cost to just, you know, hire somebody for marketing at that time, it was $48,200, right out of college with no experience, much less to be an expert in that space. Well, neighborly you have over 150. Experts in their [00:14:00] field, in the brands that they represent to create the value. So if you look at it, all that with all the systems, how much would that cost and independent business owner, you know, do I think my wife's smart enough and could she go out and do it, but how long would that have to take to figure out what works and doesn't work? And I think that's why franchising is becoming so sexy, not just in the service-based, but as David said, but just really appealing to entrepreneurs. Here's the bigger part of it that we realized when we started the business. And we see this even today in all of our brands. Not only does everything change quickly. Okay. But the pace of change. Is changing fast. Meaning, you know, when I got my marketing degree years ago, guess what? The number one medium was yellow pages. Guess what? I don't think you're going to find that anymore, but you, the way you find customers today in the digital world is [00:15:00] not the same as it was two years ago. And it won't be two years from now. So how do you keep up with that? As an independent business owner, it's aligning yourself with a company in an organization. Is that the forefront of that. So you can focus on creating your culture, building out your organization and not all the minutia that has to go along with it, which is important
[00:15:21] DAVID: I was going to add if someone's out there and listening to this and the wondering, you know, why franchising versus an independent business. I mean, pat really just touched, um, economies of scale, but here's another reason that I think is simplified because you're going to be going into business for yourself. But not by yourself. There's a big difference. And I've experienced both in my life where I went into business for myself, but I was all alone requiring myself to create every wheel. The reality is in franchising, you don't need to recreate the wheel. You've got a perfected wheel. If you join the [00:16:00] right franchise, which kind of leads to. W window genie and neighborly and the support structure that we offer. I think you'd be hard pressed to find another organization that could provide operational support the way that neighborly companies and window genie does, you know, from we have franchise business coaches and their role is really well. Defined where they are true business coaches that are in touch with our business owners every day. And if you pulled our owners, I believe that they would tell you that they view the franchise business. As a partner in their business, you don't have a financial partner, but it's kind of like a board of directors. You know, you don't need to make any major decisions on your own. You have other people to bounce the ideas off of.
[00:16:46] LANCE: Yeah. Well, you know what I love because I've owned several franchises over the years in the, on the restaurant side and. You know, the franchise business coach was really when you have metrics, every brand has their KPIs, their key [00:17:00] performance indicators or business metrics. And, you know, alarm bells should be going off for the corporate office. If you're not achieving the sales figures, if you're not achieving, you know, the margins, if depending on how you're reporting and those franchise business consultants are going around and say, Hey, pat, you know, I noticed you're not really. You know, following the new protocols, whatever, whatever it is, and they're there to help they're there to police the brand and protect the brand. So that's the thing that a lot of people don't, you, you said it perfectly David, the old, you know, you're in business for yourself, not by yourself and it's not just a corporate staff. It's other franchisees. You have best practices that. If I've said it once I've said it enough times now the filet of fish at McDonald's was not invented essentially by corporate. It was a franchisee that gave the recipe to corporate. And so we need this sort of fish sandwich, same thing as the, as the big Mac, I think it was as well. So. It's working together that makes [00:18:00] franchising, you know, so effective. Right? Absolutely. So, so I want to get to, what is it costs David wanted to actually, either one of you take this what's the investment in a window genie franchise
[00:18:11] DAVID: yeah, to open up a window genie franchise, the all-in investment, including franchise fee, all the tools, equipment necessary and working capital to get off the ground, which is designed to be enough to get you to break even typically ranges from that 85,000 to I think it's 87,000 to $187,000. And that's just varies depending upon the size of the territory.
[00:18:37] LANCE: Right. And do you have a lot of people that are multiunit that have multiple territories?
[00:18:41] DAVID: We do not. What we do, depending on how you look at it, that your answer is no, we don't, but we have some people. That owned territories of 50,000 households and their income goals may be a lot less than someone who owns a half a million households.
[00:18:58] LANCE: Right. Got it. That makes sense. [00:19:00] That makes sense. So let's talk about David, uh, or I should say pat, when you're recruiting. For, and you're speaking to candidates that want to join window genie. We, we all know us three that it's a two-way street, you know, you're, you want to find the right candidates and, and, you know, you want to make sure they fit. So how do you know somebody fits with window Janie? And when do you know they don't fit?
[00:19:23] PAT: Oh, that's great. And it's probably the reason I joined neighborly. It's because of the culture. When neighborly goes out and looks, you know, I shared with you that we were the seventh brand at that time, when I started with neighborly back in 2010, and mind you, it took over well over 30, some years to get to that point today we have 29. Brands internationally and doing a, you know, just over $3.3 billion in 2021. And so when you grow, we look at growing in three ways that neighborly and this ties into your question, but I think it's important. Number one, we look at unit level economics, [00:20:00] always improving our franchisees unit level economics. That's critical from a neighborly standpoint, from, from our seat, uh, growth team that. Second of all we look at in, and the white space. When we go into an area where we don't have a window genie, but we have a Molly maid and Mr. Handyman, the grounds guys, we'd go in there and we bring that in because then we can leverage the customers within those other brands. And the third area is really looking for acquisitions of other brands that compliment our services. Well, even when we look for brands to come into the neighborly fold, they have to match our culture you wouldn't believe how many franchisors are out there. That may be a good business model for this reason or another, but they don't align well. And our code of values, Lance, isn't something, we just hang on the wall. It's something that we live every single day when we have two, three or more team members in a meeting and, you know, virtually today, how many times that can happen weekly cite our code of [00:21:00] values before every meeting and it's really the foundation. So as we're looking for this, when we're looking for people, what happens is we start attracting people that like a great culture that have a very good value set for them and really integrity and, and the things that people are looking within a business, they start coming to us. And the other ones that aren't, that way honestly start selecting themselves out of the process. They don't like to be happier to have that positive culture and, and they see that that's who neighborly is. So we take them through a quality decision making process, ultimately to help them determine if it is the neighborly brand or one of our brands that that would be a good fit for them. And if not, We point them in a different direction that we feel may make better sense for them. And we do that in a very consultative way that we, if neighborly today does not have to award one more franchise to be very [00:22:00] successful and profitable because our franchisees and our basis, which is different than we were decades ago, by the way, as an up and coming franchise or who add to sling franchises. Right. So today we're looking for the right thing. Because my belief is that we can help anybody become successful in business today as a coach and align them and help them. But we'd rather do it with the right people that align with us.
[00:22:25] DAVID: Yeah. Pat, I love the way that you answered that question. In fact, culture is critical. I would have answered it virtually the same way. And it's one of the reasons why I actually chose window genie. I knew I wanted franchise. And that was one of the reasons why I went into windows. You need, the culture is second to none, and it's largely important. Because of who each of the individual owners are. We know genie's comprised of a group of humans that are, I don't know how else to describe it except to say selfless. They're extremely giving it's, we're all competitive folks, or most of us are pretty [00:23:00] competitive, but we're not competing with each other. We all have the same end goal in mind. You know, to make window genie a beloved household name, because we're able to do that. The resale value of all of our businesses is worth more money. So, and we specialize in having fun in the process.
[00:23:17] LANCE: Gotta have fun. So if you were going to look at your top 10% of franchises, What do they have in common? I know on the cultural fit, there's obviously a lot in common, but background. What was their career prior? It's probably all over the place, right?
[00:23:34] DAVID: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. The backgrounds are all over the place. We have recovering accountants. We have engineers. We've had veterinarians attorneys, people that count the people that have owned restaurants, marketing people from corporate America, salespeople. It really is all over the place. I think. When we look specifically at the top 10%, it's really more, what are the characteristics of that individual that make them up personality [00:24:00] traits? I don't believe that prior experience is going to dictate your success in window genie. It's what I'll call the X factor. You know, what is the X factor combination of things for one grit you've gotta be gritty. You've gotta be willing to dig in. And let me tell you what I don't mean by that. I don't mean that you should be someone who's willing to go out and clean a window. Well, that's all great. I will tell you that I never cleaned a window and I never did pressure washing and I owned and sold a successful business. That's not what I mean by grit. People that are willing to do whatever it takes. That's what, how I'm going to define grit. Here's another bit. In abundance mindset, you know, there's two different types of mindsets and abundance mindset and the fixed mindset and, um, having an abundance mindset and being open to always finding the [00:25:00] solution, as opposed to getting side railed, when something doesn't go your way is critical because we all know on this call. Former business owners not everything goes your way every day. It doesn't, but how you react to it and how you deal with it really separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls. So an abundance mindset is critical. Good leadership skills. Is something else that's important. You know, we are, it's a blessing. When you think about it as entrepreneurs, how many people we get to employ in the United States? I have employed a ton of people and anytime there's seldom times that I get to look back and reflect on that. But when I do personally, I'm super proud of that, that I was able to help other people make a living, but it's critical to be a good leader because. People quit bad bosses. They really don't quit their jobs. They [00:26:00] quit bad bosses. So being good leaders is a critical skill, um, being good managers of people. And the last trait is we don't need to hire salespeople to be a successful window genie owner, but people that are salesy, meaning it's easy for them to have a conversation with another human being a complete introvert, and there's nothing wrong with introverts, but if you're never willing to be on the phone, talking to people, shaking people's hands and promoting your business, you would struggle in this business.
[00:26:33] PAT: That's so well said, David, and, you know, from the development side, our job is to bring people in front of David, right? That we've got to capture a lot of that through the, through the quality decision making process. But some of the things that also stand out are. Are they well capitalized up front. That is important in any business. I would say, how do our top gun franchisees become top gun within our business. They [00:27:00] came in typically and made sure they didn't overbuy. A lot of times, you know, aspiring entrepreneurs go, I need to buy this market or this whole central Texas or north Texas. And if I don't, I'm losing opportunity later. Right? Well, the problem, when you do that, as you come in on a shoestring budget and you start making decisions that aren't right so making sure that you have the right financing or funding behind you or capital to get there. If you know, the from day one, the other one is there's really two things. And I think if you talk to our top gun franchisees, you find this out is how did you become so successful? I guarantee you within the first two or three sentences, they'd say. Because I did what they told me to do. I started following the systems. That's it nothing more because there's two things we can not control at window genie for any franchise or can control how much of the system somebody implements and how quickly they implement [00:28:00] them. So it's going in there not trying to reinvent the wheel. My wife, like I said, was number one and it was great and they do validation calls. Right. And I re I was walking through the living room one day and she had, I don't know, there was 13 groups on there and they kept coming back saying, how did you become so successful? Yeah. Well, I did what they told me to do.
[00:28:20] LANCE: Everybody wants to know that secret sauce.
[00:28:22] PAT: What elseis there, there is no other golden egg hanging out somewhere secret sauce. It's they've proven the model out. So it's taken that energy, the leadership experience like David said and running with it.
[00:28:35] LANCE: Yeah, no, this is all great stuff. So now let's describe, well, we'll, we'll talk about your, your selection process and how it works from, you know, sort of start to finish, you know, when an average person, uh, I'm on a first call with somebody talking about, uh, franchise opportunities. If they they've never explored franchise opportunities before, you know, some people, not all, some people are a little bit hesitant [00:29:00] like what's this, like, are they going to force me to buy something? And I said, nobody's asking you to swipe your credit card after the first phone call. That's not how this works. It's a, it's a fairly long lengthy process. So let's talk about it, Pat so, you know, you have a lead that comes in and, uh, you know, someone like me introduces a candidate. You have a first phone call with them and let's start with that and go right through validation and, and, you know, I really want to emphasize validation and you know, your FDD and all that item 19. Let's talk about all those pieces
[00:29:31] PAT: yeah, that's great. So w when we receive handed it from a coach or a consultant, we'll get some background typically, but that first initial phone call is to do a couple of things. Number one, for us to share with them a little bit more about us. Right. And they're going to have some high-level questions who we are, what do we do? What's our model look like what's appealing about it, but also for us to learn more about what their goals are and their background. And, [00:30:00] and literally, like you said, uh, Lance, this is a process. It's not anything. When you get involved with us in our process. So that first call is really kind of getting to know each other, what your goals are, where your interests are. Because a lot of times a candidate may not be only looking at us, uh, at our brand, right? They may have two or three other opportunities that they're being considered with, with a coach. Right. Which is good. And everybody it's in everybody's best interest to make sure we're all looking to find out what's best for that case. And their goals. So we kind of match that. And, uh, many times is it, the candidate says, yeah, I'm really interested in going to the next step. Then what we do is we set up another call much more intensive calls, really going through our model, our systems, how do we market our product and services? How do we sell it? How do we lead the teams? How do we, you know, go out there and make sure, you know, the management part of it, the human side of the business is done. How do we go out [00:31:00] there from a technical side and get all the work done? And you go through all that, right. Answering the questions that the candidate has. And if we still have interested with one another, at that point, we will be moving them shortly on after that, to talk to franchisees, to see what their experience is in the field, out there, running their business, compared to. We're disclosing to them and that's a great
[00:31:25] LANCE: Yea reality versus expectations.
[00:31:28] PAT: You've got it. That's exactly right. And just make sure they're right. Sized. Right. And, and the here's, the other thing we do is we mirror and match. We don't always just pigeonholed the same person to the same validator every single time. Cause there are times we want to take somebody maybe that has the same background, same industry. Maybe they, maybe they come from the military and they're a veteran and it might match them or the S the side. Of territory or, you know, you're not going to talk to maybe somebody in a Waco, Texas area, that's looking at a Dallas Fort worth area. Right. Maybe you're going [00:32:00] to match them up with somebody in Atlanta. So we really try to mirror and match them with somebody that really they could relate a little bit better with it
[00:32:09] LANCE: yeah, love it.
[00:32:10] DAVID: I was just going to say. As Pat was talking, I was thinking this it's really not a hardcore sales process. And it does, like you said, it takes time. This is not a decision that somebody should rush into. Um, it's a, it's a life altering and changing decision. It's like getting married, you know? Absolutely. You gotta, you gotta date before you get married. For sure. So interestingly enough, what really sells franchises in my. Oh, the existing franchise owners validation is critical, right? Hearing from them. What's going on is really what dictates whether or not a person would want to do it or not hearing from them because the reality is, and this has nothing to do with window genie or neighborly and franchising. Anybody that tries to sell something is trying to [00:33:00] sell what needs to be sold right by the very nature of it the owners are all independent owners. They don't get compensated to say nice things. So it's super important. I can't stress the importance of, um, uh, validation
[00:33:16] LANCE: yeah. And it's interesting because from my experiences, uh, from my experience validation, it, it's almost like a sorority fraternity type feel. If there is a franchisee of your brand, that's having a conversation with a prospect that maybe doesn't really fit uh, they'll, they'll tend to shake them up a little bit and, you know, rattle the cage if you will, to get to the point and maybe even come back and give you guys feedback that yeah, I don't really think that person's right for our brand or, you know, because at the end of the day, I mean, aren't you awarding a franchise or not at the end of the day it's it's it's not automatic.
[00:33:58] DAVID: That's correct. It's [00:34:00] not something else I think is important. I mean, Cut you off if I did, but you know, throughout the process, each prospect is going to get an opportunity to review the franchise. Disclosure document, right? The FDD and then the FDDs and item 19.
[00:34:16] LANCE: And for those of you listening that have never seen a franchise disclosure document, it is the legal document. That's part of the federal trade commission where basically in the government that regulates franchising item number 19 is the earnings claim or the financial representation. So, uh, what is, uh, sorry, David. So take that away on the item 19
[00:34:36] DAVID: yeah. So the reality is in an item 19, anybody could put numbers in there as long as they could claim a source. So it can be hard to decipher with. So again, in our specific item, 19, The, in the one that's currently out there, they're really two numbers that are disclosed. One's our average invoice price I believe was, was using 2020 numbers. So in [00:35:00] 2020, our average invoice across all services was $346. Then it also gives you your recurring or repeat business rate. And ours, as I mentioned before, is close to 50%. I think it's around 48 are going to have a 48% in the FDD. Just because you have numbers in there, you know, what does it really mean? I would encourage somebody who's looking at window genie, take those numbers during validation, talk to a franchise owner out there and say it's 346, an average invoice price. You'll flush it out. Validate it make sure it makes sense and start asking questions. Like how many jobs do you do a day? All of a sudden you could start to put together a prospect and put together on their own how much money this business could generate. And then you start looking at what the repeat business rate is and validate that to ask them, ask an existing owner, how much repeat business do you have and people started hearing that it becomes pretty [00:36:00] attractive. The prospects of owning a window JT can be pretty attractive.
[00:36:03] PAT: The repeat part of it, because one of the things that. I was astounded with when I came to know the brand was, did you know that 90% of all the new customer acquisitions, that window genie gets, have never had their windows cleaned,
[00:36:19] DAVID: That's a critical statistic?
[00:36:23] PAT: Why is that important? Because we will continue to go out with the marketing. That's proven to generate new customers that haven't had the services and 50% of them up towards a 50%. Or having it repeated after that. So think of the book of business and the amount customers that you continue to grow while you're adding new customers that have never had that service done.
[00:36:48] LANCE: So What's prompting these customers to say, I need to hire a window genie
[00:36:55] DAVID: uh, I'll give you what pat was referring to. The 90% specifically relates to window [00:37:00] cleaning. So we've tracked that data 90% of our first time window cleaning customers, which represents about 50. Our overall revenue as a system, tell us they've never gotten their windows cleaned before. When we dig into that and you ask a customer why, what we hear is, I didn't know that residential window cleaning was a thing. I thought it was the guy that cleaned the skyscraper in the building that I work in, or that with a bucket, Bob that cleans the strip mall so people had no idea that that was an actual service that you could pay somebody to do that at your home. What prompts them is. And this is where our marketing strategy really works and where it'll kind of tie in to the beginning of the call. When I said we're a marketing driven company, we happen to be doing some home services. We have it nailed down with specific mediums. I'll give you an example. I call it the two by four. Before I explain the two by four, go sideways for a second. If you don't know that something exists, you're not going to Google. Nobody goes to the Google machine to Google something they don't know exists. So they're not going to Google window cleaning most of the time, [00:38:00] right. That 90% doesn't know that it exists. So we hit them with a two by four, two by four in the form of a tried and true twenty-five year proven direct mail piece with a slogan that we have, that is a registered sales. Dirty windows with a question mark interior and exterior window cleaning up 25 windows, $149. I'm making those numbers up. The customer receives that and they say 149 bucks. That's it I'll take it. And they buy it. There's not even a shopping process that happens not to do it themselves. And most of our customers are middle America. Okay. You have either one working spouse with a stay at home mom or two working spouses that either don't have the time to do basic cleaning and maintenance around the house, or they don't want to with their spare time and they have enough disposable income to do it. The what makes us special window [00:39:00] GD did not invent this. We did not perfect some solution to make windows clean better. What we did perfect is the marketing and branding and the customer experience that comes along with using a service. So. That I'm personally super proud of. If you're listening to this, you don't know what net promoter score is. Google net promoter score that promoter score is basically a measurement that really most large sophisticated companies use to measure brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Okay. You have the likes of really large companies like, uh, Delta airlines app. And their NPS scores. Don't hold a candle to window Genies window. Genie's NPS score. If you don't know what NPS is, look it up and look up. What a good score is. Window genie's. NPS score is an 89. You are considered a [00:40:00] world-class service company world-class at a score of approximately 65. So what we perfected is how to deliver the service. We could take a regular service and tie someone to it emotionally, where they feel like they can't live without it. And that is why we get the repeat business.
[00:40:18] PAT: And why now?
[00:40:19] LANCE: people can't livevWithout dirty windows?
[00:40:21] DAVID: Yeah, that's right. They can't live with dirty windows.
[00:40:25] LANCE: They can't live with dirty windows They need a clean window
[00:40:29] PAT: where that so impressive is because under net promoter score, you can have anyways from a negative 100 to a positive 100, it's not just zero to a hundred. Right? So why that number is so impressive when I saw it was that we have so many more chances to mess it up because we're at a customer's home over and over again. So it shows that the systems and the model works when the owner in.
[00:40:54] LANCE: So in the final moments, guys, what did we miss today? What would you like people out there to know about window genie? We have [00:41:00] not covered.
[00:41:00] PAT: I've got something and then I'm going to let you wrap it up. David, if you don't mind, I think it kind of aligns with neighborly as a whole. Lance. This just was in a meeting yesterday and this came from our growth in down. And, um, and I can share it because it's neighborly as a whole, that in 2020, when COVID hit and the pandemic hit
[00:41:19] our businesses grew over north of 8%. During the pandemic I'll share with you. My wife's businesses, we're in retail strips, strip centers and shopping stores, all of those shut down for months, right? And we still had to pay eight to $10,000 a month and lease while our franchisees businesses continued to grow because they're essential services. And last year in 2021, as we're still working through the recovery, our brands can collectively through neighborly we're just north of 24% in growth. So it's a very strong, as David said at the very beginning of this call [00:42:00] recession resistant model, that is, that is needed and that will continue to grow. And when we look at businesses ourselves, so we've invested, you said David and Lance before, if I might say before the call, you said that there's really three ways to make money, be a great business owner, right? Uh, invest in real estate and invest in the stock market. You know, they don't, I, I think most great business owners ultimately get to that point, but you need to start a business and do those things to be able to diversify because you have many other avenues, but building that successful business. From day one can be the first, you know, catalyst to help you get there
[00:42:40] LANCE: I want, you know, you just inspired a question. Are most of your owners, vulnerable operators?
[00:42:46] DAVID: Not at all. Very few owner operators. Very few. We have less than a handful owner operators. Our owners are typically folks that come from corporate America. Uh, what I'll say mid [00:43:00] management, if you will, we'll never clean a window or climb a ladder.
[00:43:04] LANCE: I believe they're not cleaning windows. You did make that clear on it and I should have phrased it differently as an owner operator having a team. So they're not necessarily even participating. I mean, they're literally hiring a full team, including sales.
[00:43:19] DAVID: Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Love it. When you start day one, you're doing a little bit of everything except cleaning the windows right after that, as you grow, like when I had sold my business, I had two customer service reps and office manager and operations manager, 18 service professionals, somebody that was going out and doing estimates for me. I spent my time really promoting my brand in my local community.
[00:43:48] LANCE: Gotcha. And that's what the majority of your owners are really doing
[00:43:51] DAVID: yeah, I mean it, and it changes over time. Like I said, day one, you start out, you are the person doing the estimates from day one, but it starts to [00:44:00] change really quickly.
[00:44:01] LANCE: Wonderful. David, your final thoughts.
[00:44:03] DAVID: My final thoughts,
[00:44:05] LANCE: if we missed anything other than call us, because you should love us by now because there's a lot of great stuff here
[00:44:13] DAVID: well, of course, that's a given, you know, we talked a lot about window cleaning our names window genie, but I want to emphasize, just put an emphasis on some window. Cleaning only makes up just under 50% of our revenue. That's what makes the phone ring the most because it's 50%. But from there we also do gutter cleaning, holiday lighting, window tinting, and pressure washing. So. We have multiple revenue streams, and here's the ultimate goal with five different service verticals. The goal should be to acquire a customer and then see them twice a year until they leave your area and move someplace else. It is entirely possible to have Mrs. Jones clean her gutters with us in the fall. [00:45:00] And then we clean her windows in the. The following fall, she gets the gutters cleaned and in the summer she pressure washes the house and the following fall, she gets the gutters cleaned and maybe she uses us to hang holiday lights for the next three years. You know, the, the, the, the possibilities are endless, and that is the goal. If an owner can get to the point where they see a customer every two years, we will have very wealthy, wealthy owners and make, um, a lot of Non business owners, wealthy independently, wealthy people over time. So that is, well,
[00:45:36] LANCE: we all, we all know by now that the hardest part about customer service is actually getting the customer in the first place. So with your amazing performance and net promoter score is clearly, you're doing a great job of keeping those customers. So congratulations to all for all that, those accomplishments.
[00:45:54] DAVID: Thank you very much.
[00:45:56] LANCE: And thank you, Pat and thank you David, for being here today. I [00:46:00] really appreciate it. And we'll have a round two at some point in the future.
[00:46:04] DAVID: I love that.
[00:46:05] PAT: Yeah, looking forward to that.
[00:46:07] LANCE: Thanks guys. Have a great day.
[00:46:09] DAVID: Thank you, you too. Bye now.
[00:46:12] LANCE: Thank you very much for listening today, please like follow and subscribe so you don't miss anything here at Eye on franchising visit our website. Eye on franchising.com E Y E O N. franchising.com and complete our free assessments so we can assist with. Finding your perfect franchise this is Lance Graulich until next time.