Jack: Good morning everyone. My name is Jack Findaro. I’m one of the founders and the finance director of Visa Franchise. And today I’m very excited to announce that we will be doing this webinar with Office Pride, a commercial cleaning franchise. They are headquartered in Florida with franchisees operating in states across the U.S.
We specialize in working with foreign nationals seeking the E2 or EB1, EB5 investor visa. Our work is very predicated based on the profile of our client. What we do is we do a very client-specific search in order to find the best opportunities for that specific client. What we do is we take into consideration a number of different factors where the client wants to live, the type of industry that they’re interested in, how much they wanna invest, the type of investor visa they want to go for, etc.
Rich Helm Presenting the Office Pride Franchise Opportunity
Rich: Thank you, Jack and Patrick. We really appreciate you being able to take the time out with us today. What we’ll do is share a good detailed business overview of Office Pride. Our business system supports how it works with E2.
My role with Office Pride is all of our brand new franchise development throughout the U.S. Currently, we only offer franchises throughout the U.S. We’ve got future plans to possibly expand into Canada and Mexico. We’ve got five E2 franchisees on board and look forward to more.
What we do here is just start with the process. We would initially begin with a discovery call. And through that discovery call, we’ll get on to a webinar. And we would go through the details of the business model and make sure you have a clear understanding of everything.
These steps are important for everybody. And as we go through them we mutually go through and agree to go to the next step. We basically take the time that you need with each step. Some need more, others need less. But we have plenty of flexibility there. Once we get through the understanding of how the model works, we would move to step two, which is our franchise application, basic information about yourself, and some real simple financials. And then we also have you complete a spot on assessment, which helps us give better insight for both of us to see if we’re a good fit and a good match moving forward.
The importance of FDD
After, we would read and analyze the Franchise Disclosure Document which is an FDD. In the U.S. we have the Federal Trade Commission that requires all franchises to provide this disclosure document. It tells you pretty much everything about us, how long we’ve been in business, our executive team.
It’s got the investment in a breakdown, all the fees, all of our franchisee’s past and present are listed in there. And a lot of other information. It’s a long document, but it will give you the details that you need at that step. And once that’s complete, we would set up a call, review questions, kind of go through anything that might come up in your FDD review.
Then we would go to next step, which is validation. So, we’re gonna have you reach out and speak to some of our franchisees direct, and hopefully what they can do is confirm all the things we’ve been covering up until that time.
The validation calls are a very important step in the process. It, kind of, gives you a chance to put yourself in the shoes of an owner and talk to them about their business, how long it took them to ramp up, how much money they’re making, what their average account is worth, what kind of support they’re getting, all those kinds of things.
The candidate approval or a mutual validation:
Step five: As you’re checking out us, we wanna check out you. We would do an international background check. In your case, if you had referenced in the U.S., we’d request contact information and reach out to them. And then we have, kind of, an internal pre-approval before you would come in for discovery day, which is step six.
After all, we’ll be partnering for the next 10 years, and we wanna be able to meet with you. You’ll have a chance to meet our entire executive team, and all the support staff, and you’ll meet the actual people that will be working with you as you get started in our business. After this step is really time to move forward to getting your E-2 approval and your interview. And then once you have a date that you would actually relocate here to the U.S., then we could get your schedule for training.
Office Pride: The most admired brand in the commercial cleaning services industry
We were founded in 1992 and started franchising in 1996. So it took us four years to come up with the concept and make sure it was something that was franchisable. And you, as a new franchise owner with us, can take advantage of those 25 years of experience.
Our mission statement and our core beliefs are based on eight important points. It’s about how we treat you as our partner and how you treat your suppliers and customers as a business owner:
1. Honor God.
2. Always do the right thing.
3. Increase brand equity at all levels. You do it as an individual franchise owner. And we do it regionally with other owners. And, of course, nationally with the system.
4. We demonstrate honesty.
5. Integrity and a hard work ethic.
6. Total customer satisfaction.
7. Perseverance with a service attitude.
8. Accountability for commitments made.
Franchise Business Review
We started in ’92. The company was founded by Todd Hopkins, franchising in ’96. In 2008 we were interviewed by Franchise Business Review. What they do is they go into franchises all over the United States, all over the systems, interview the owners and then make those results public in the form of a survey through Franchise Business Review. That’s, in a way, like third-party validation for us. We have great participation among our franchisee base, so the results are pretty encouraging for us.
Since then, we’ve been in the top 50. In 2010, we reached the milestone of 100 franchise units across the United States. And in 2014, we became one of the top 100 for veterans in the U.S. In 2017, we became part of their Hall of Fame. We have about 137 franchises in the United States.
Office Pride: An Established Business
We’re ranked here again by our franchisees in leadership, core values, our community, financial opportunity, general satisfaction, and just an overall score. Our numbers are on the top in color. The benchmark which is on the bottom is the average throughout the franchise industry. So, this is, kind of, a ranking on how we fit in franchising. And we’ve tracked the above in every category here in our most recent surveys.
We’re proud of that. We’re number one among commercial cleaning franchises, number three in the cleaning and maintenance category, and then number six for what we consider large franchise systems, 130 to 300 units.
It’s a $78 billion industry here. It’s a service that businesses can’t give up. It’s recession-resistant and it’s a very established industry. So, as you look at franchising in general, there’s pizza, fitness, and home health care. This space is very established. It’s not going anywhere. You’ll need staff in order to grow and that can never be replaced. That industry is here to stay. There’s some stability to that.
How about competence?
Is it competitive? Yes, we have tons of competitors. As we go through the process, we’ll talk about our unique differentiators and we will actually address your local market concerns as you consider a franchise with us.
A couple of interesting stats here in the U.S. There’s the BSCAI which is our governing body for the service industry here. Their stats show one in three businesses will change their commercial cleaning every year just for the dissatisfaction and the quality of service. So, what we’re supposed to be doing in the first place, the industry bar is pretty low and we know a third of that market is gonna be a bit available every year.
So, we target against that as well as other factors when we look at your market areas. Also, on the retention side, it’s about 6 and 10. So, for every 10 customers you bring on new, the industry average is about keeping 6 of them long term. We’re always shooting for about a 90% retention rate. As our franchises get bigger, that retention rate goes higher. So, just some interesting telling statistics about the industry.
