My Franchise Journey…Dog Days of August

Note: Post #34. 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 year of small business franchise ownership. This is my story.

If you’ve been following along, you may have a sense for how this small business first year is dragging on — at least it feels that way at times. It definitely feels that way right now and has for a few weeks. The weather hasn’t helped. Hazy, Hot and Humid have new meaning this summer as we work through the heat. July was one of the hottest on record and it’s been plenty hot in August. In addition to the weather, I’m realizing that in this business you spend the first half of the mosquito season building your client-base and the second half servicing those customers. We’ve added some (more on that later), but what had been a10–15 per week pace has slowed to maybe 1 per week on average. It is easy to feel like you are making progress when you are bringing on new clients seemingly every day. It is much more difficult when you are working to keep customers satisfied when the mosquito population is raging out of control and treatment does not always work the way you want.

I mentioned re-treats in the last post (#33). They have increased in the weeks since that was written. They are not out of hand, but when your mindset is that a single re-treat is one-to-many, this time of year can be difficult. It has been great having a Field Technician in place to handle most of the treatments. This has allowed me time to take a better look at the numbers. That is critical, but not always enjoyable. As I’ve said before, the numbers are not where I had hoped they would be at this point. We have performed in the top-10 of the 21-member new franchisee cohort I’m part of and the sense from all of us is that this year has been different than others. We have all struggled with things beyond our control that have negatively impacted our business growth. Those things are easier to see now that we’ve been treating properties for 4–5 months. As a result of all these things, this time in the business cycle brings new meaning to the Dog Days of August.

The upside is that there has been time to analyze what has been happening and begin to make plans for improvement next season. A significant challenge this year has been my lack of familiarity with my business territory. As a new resident, I have no existing relationships to tap into and no knowledge of the communities we serve. This means not having a network to help with hiring and no idea what community events are available where we can set up our booth and let people know we are here. Building brand awareness has been much more difficult than it would be in areas where I previously worked and in which I was deeply entrenched. I think this is the single thing I underestimated the most and the impact has been significant.

Understanding this now is helping me adjust my expectations to better match my circumstances and is providing me with specific areas to strengthen during the off-season. I am finding existing clients to be great resources for helping me get better connected. They are helping me know community events and making introductions to people and groups who hopefully will lead to a small team of high school/college students to distribute door hangers and lawn signs next Spring as well as find some enthusiastic folks who will act the part of our mascot, Gunther, and others who will be Field Technicians. Solid people in place (and one or two back-up plans) for these areas will make a tremendous difference next year.

The final couple of months of this season and the upcoming off-season also provide a great opportunity to gain more proficiency with the various business tools at my disposal. Like all new owners, I am getting by in the first year with a very basic understanding of my business software. Increase my proficiency and efficiency will increase, not to mention my grasp of the business. I’m also experimenting some more with social media and the use of video in marketing (more on that in an upcoming post). It is also a great time to focus on customer appreciation. Client retention is an essential part of the business model. Now that I have a better handle on what I need in terms of treatment product and marketing material I can better build relationships with vendors and suppliers. The marketing material provided by the Franchisor has been terrific. Now I will be able to supplement it with things more specific to my location. I am also now better able to set and implement pricing strategies for various situations that have come up that were not covered by standard pricing — ie. discounts for non-profits, houses in the same neighborhood, customer loyalty, etc. I have done these this season, but mostly on the fly.

All this to say, the Dog Days can be a bit of a slog, but they don’t lack for things needing my attention. There is plenty to do and the time to think and plan makes me optimistic about next season. I admit, it is not always easy to be optimistic. I said as much last week during my regularly scheduled video call with my business coach. He’s part of the franchise package and has been a great asset. Most of the time he has some type of agenda and provides helpful encouragement and support. This time he mostly just listened to my August lament and gave me some useful perspective. After the call, I felt better about continuing the grind.

My phone rang soon after with a nice dose of Dog Days serendipity. It was a call from a man wanting to sign up for service. Not only that, he also had a few neighbors lined up who wanted service. To date, that call has resulted in 5 clients. And here’s the interesting part. I first spoke with this person 3 months earlier and again about a month ago. Each time it was the same conversation about neighborhood discounts and his agreeing to check with neighbors and get back to me with names/addresses etc. so that I could work up a quote. With it being so late in the mosquito season and with as much time lapsed since last hearing from him, I had frankly forgotten about the possibility. It seemed unlikely that anything would come of it. Yet here we are. We are servicing 5 new clients and already having conversations about getting started much earlier in the season next year.

The serendipity does not end there. One of the 5 new clients is a woman with 4 kids living in a house she bought a year ago. While servicing that house, another woman pays a visit and we strike up a conversation. She looks familiar. Turns out a few months earlier I was treating two houses in a near-by neighborhood when this woman pulls out of her driveway across the street and stops to ask me about pricing. I give her some information and we talk for a bit. She tells me they have a service already, but she may have an interest in switching if the price is right. She also asks me for another set of information for her daughter who recently bought a house. You guessed it. The woman whose property I was treating is the daughter of the woman I had given information to a few months earlier. The mother tells me that her husband had already paid the other company for a full season of service, but they are planning on switching to us next season and she believes her neighbor is also ready to sign on for next season.

Go figure… You need stuff like this to get you through the Dog Days of August!