My Franchise Journey…A Day In The Life

Note: Post #31. Imagine being 61 years old with a Ph. D. and 35+ years of non-profit administration experience, most as Vice President or Assistant Vice President of Institutional Advancement in colleges and universities. Now I am in my first few months of small business franchise ownership. This is my story.

It’s been quite a while since my last post. Not helpful for building a blog audience, but I have an excuse. Things have been very busy and I’ve settled into a routine that has not inspired much to write about. That changed yesterday.

I’ll begin with the obligatory rant about hiring challenges. To bring everyone up to speed…the franchise strongly encourages franchisees to hire early in the process. The company mantra is “when in doubt, over-hire.” I took this seriously and posted openings for a Field Tech/Marketing Assistant and a Marketing Intern in February. By early March I had hired a Field Tech/Marketing Assistant who started in the end of March. By mid-April I secured a Marketing Intern who started work in mid-May after his semester ended. I was feeling pretty good about staffing. That is, until it unraveled. First the Field Tech/Marketing Assistant backed out of the Field Tech part of the job, then he left completely when his other part-time job offered him a full-time position complete with benefits. He was gone 3–4 weeks before my Intern started. What had been a strength was now a weakness; one I have battled with for the past two months.

I had a recent phone interview with a candidate for my Field Tech opening and felt good enough about him to invite him to an in-person interview which he indicated he hoped would happen. That email invitation went out 6 days ago. I followed with a text message 3 days ago to ask him if he received the email and to please let me know if he was still interested in the opportunity. Crickets. All I hear is crickets. I put out a Facebook post advertising for someone to help my Marketing Intern distribute door hanger advertisements as an important part of our “ground game” marketing efforts. 3 people expressed some interest. Only one answered my Marketing Intern’s follow-up and he agreed to get to work on Monday. Monday arrived…you guessed it, no show. His response to phone calls, texts, and voice mail to inquire where he was…you guessed it, crickets.

Now, the rant. What is up with people these days??? If these were isolated incidents I’d be surprised. Sadly, this is more the norm than the exception and I am not all surprised. I’ll be more surprised when someone shows up for work.

Thankfully, I hit the jackpot with my Marketing Intern. He’s been a huge asset. Great attitude, strong work ethic, good personality, eager to help, appreciates the opportunity to learn. He will do well in whatever he ends up pursuing. I’m in a bit of an operations hole because of the lack of staffing. If it weren’t for my Marketing Intern, they’d be throwing dirt on me!

Yesterday is a great example of small business owner challenges when you are in the most important days of your start-up and are under-staffed. I left the house at 8:00 AM for a full day of mosquito control treatments. This is something a Field Tech would be doing if I had one. I returned home at 7:00 PM., showered, had a quick dinner, then did paperwork until 10:45 PM. Actually, I opened up the computer again at 11:15 PM when I suddenly remembered I needed to put an important piece of information in a client’s record. Had I not remembered I would have missed treating his property on Friday as we had agreed in an earlier conversation.

And therein lies one of the current challenges. How does one keep all the details in order while you are also driving around and treating properties all day? Between treatments I am answering voice mail and texts left while I am wearing ear protection with the mist blower engine fully engaged. This includes calls to new clients who just signed up, follow-up with vendors, communication with the corporate office, etc. After each call or voice text (always hands-free!) I’m dictating notes into my phone so as not to lose track of what has been communicated. It will all need to be transferred to my data-system later (if it’s not in the system, it does not exist!).

This day was longer than most in part because I needed to fill up the 75-gallon water tank in my van. The water is needed for the mist blower and it is no fun to run out in the midst of a full schedule. Believe me, I know! It is also a good idea to check the inventory of equipment, mosquito control product, gas, signs, literature, business cards, etc. Again, no fun to run out between treatments. Also again — believe me, I know!

Two phone calls from yesterday are worth highlighting. One was from an existing customer scheduled for treatment in a couple of days. She was calling to cancel. We traded voice mail a few times before finally connecting. Initially it was not clear if she was canceling and wanted to reschedule or did she want to cancel treatment completely. I suspected the latter and that was confirmed when we finally did connect directly. I was not disappointed by this. There are those customers who take more energy than they are worth and I feared she might be one. Odds are, I’d have fired her at some point if she had not opted out on her own.

With a nod to Paul Simon, I’ll call the focus of the next text/phone exchange “Al.” It began about 9:15 AM with a text from our Mosquito Hunters call center letting me know that Al had just signed up for service. The next step in the process is for the local franchisee to call, thank the new client for their business, and schedule a date for their first treatment. I called Al about 9:30 and we had a great conversation. He seemed to be a delightful guy. We made a good connection and scheduled his first treatment to happen in a few days. At 6:30 PM, during my last treatment of the day, Al left a voice mail with an unexpected and interesting message. He was cancelling the service we had just scheduled. Turns out, he sold his house during the day. He was not trying to sell his house. It was not on the market. His neighbor’s house was on the market and sold quickly. A potential buyer who lost out on that house and really wanted to be in the neighborhood made an unsolicited offer to buy Al’s house. He said it was too good of an offer to pass up. Al is building a new house in the area that will not be ready until late fall/early winter and his plan was to list his house closer to that date. Instead, he accepted the unsolicited offer and has agreed to be out of the house in about 5 weeks. They will live at their shore house in Stoneharbor full-time until the new house is ready. Apparently it is good to be Al! Consequently, he won’t need mosquito control services. He did tell me he would be calling me next year for service at the new place. If you are keeping score at home… I gained a client, lost that client, gained the promise of a future client, and I think made a friend all in about 10 hours!

Say what you want about being a small business owner. It’s not boring!!!