The Franchise Model with Tim Conn

george grombacher 0:00
Tim Conn is the president and founder of image one facility solutions, their franchise commercial cleaning company. Welcome to the show, Tim.

Tim Conn 0:09
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

george grombacher 0:11
Yeah, excited to have you on, tell us a little about your personal life more about your work, why you do what you do.

Tim Conn 0:18
So personal life, my wife Maria and I have been married for 30, a little over 31 years, we’ve got two sons that are 28 and 26 years old, that are both franchise owners in my business, they decided to follow in my footsteps and follow their entrepreneurial spirit. And live in Florida. The business is still located in Chicago. So I travel a little bit, but I’ve got a great team in place that’s that’s able to run it when I’m, I’m out of the office, they’re like 27 days out of the month, and I’m here three to four days a month. So that’s that’s a great thing for any business owner to know is that you want to, at some point, get to the point where the business can run without you being there every day. And that’s huge.

george grombacher 1:01
How’d you get into commercial cleaning.

Tim Conn 1:04
So I got a commercial cleaning, because my parents owned a commercial office building. And as a teenager in high school, like every teenager, he wants to have some money in his pocket to go out and dates or hang out with their buddies or whatever they want to do. And I said, Hey, this is something I can do, I can clean your office building. And they said, Sure. And I was like, betting between 608 100 bucks a month, depending on what their occupancy of the building was, because it was a multi tenant building. And, you know, for the 14 year old kid, that’s real money. So by the time I turned 16, I bought my bought my own first car, you know, used but that was okay. And I immediately started going out and driving around and soliciting other business. And just walking door to door or doing window washing and that kind of stuff. And the business kind of grew from there. I learned about networking, from one of the people that I was doing their windows, they invited me to a networking group, and I said, What’s a what’s a networking group had no clue what that even meant at that point. And so they kind of explained. And I went, and I met someone that worked at AT and T phone stores. And again, this was the mid to late 80s. So we’re not talking to cell phones, you know, those were weren’t even a thing when I started cleaning there. They sold business systems, and exchanged home phones. And so I started cleaning AT and T stores locally in Chicago. And after I got one, they started to fall like dominoes, because we did such a great job was such great customer service. And now here’s a 1718 year old kid, I had credibility from a fortune 100 company. And the business continued to grow through high school through college. And the rest is history.

george grombacher 2:45
That’s awesome. Good for you. Congratulations.

Tim Conn 2:49
Thank you appreciate it.

george grombacher 2:50
Was it obvious? You did such a great job? And obviously you did, because people hired you. And they kept on and they referred you and recommend you at all that was? Is it obvious what it is to do a good job cleaning a commercial building? In when you’re 14 years old? You’re starting? How did you have the work ethic or the attention to detail? How do you how do you think about that,

Tim Conn 3:15
you know, coming from a family that that’s already in business, you have that entrepreneurial spirit automatically, I think, because you see that growing up. And I’d say that followed through with my kids as well. So I didn’t necessarily know how to do the cleaning, per se, but I knew about customer service, I knew that keeping the clients happy was the best thing you could do. And I’ll never forget, Mary Benson was the manager that first agnp started, I started cleaning. And she said to me one time she said, you know, Tim, you know what I really love about you because we used to clean during the daytime, because it was all retail, there’s all this stuff, there she goes, no matter what you’re doing. Because you’re always walking around, you always got a smile on your face, you’re dusting, you’re vacuuming, you’re happy to be doing the work that you’re doing. And she goes and you always do whatever we asked, and she goes on that’s, that’s more than I’ve ever gotten as many of our other cleaning services I learned from a really young age, that cleaning is what we do. But customer service is really what it’s all about. And I think that’s so true in so many different businesses. Whether it’s a restaurant or a car dealer, or a repair shop or janitorial, it’s customer service, you know, at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. And if you have good customer service skills and you take care of your customers, are we going to miss the garbage can now and then absolutely. Are we going to you know, miss some fingerprints on a front door for sure. But if you have good customer service skills and your back really good relationship with the client, they’re gonna overlook those tiny little things. As long as it doesn’t, you know, if it’s the same dark skin every day for two months, well then obviously you have a problem. But the occasional slip up is human nature it’s going to happen. So that’s, that’s the thing is the biggest takeaway that I can give to anybody that’s looking to get into business for them. Bob is customer service. That’s that’s the key. Yeah.

george grombacher 5:03
Amen. is that more true today than it was back then as true, less true?

Tim Conn 5:10
You know, I think it goes through cycles. And I think the pendulum swing sometimes, like in anything else, whether whether it’s politics or relationships or business, you know, that pendulum swings back and forth, I think it does in customer service as well. There’s some, some points where that pendulum swings one way, and people are saying, you know, what, all I care about is the bottom line. And you know, what, I can get someone cheaper, and they switch. And that’s, that’s discouraging. it’s disheartening. It’s like, you know, I give it my all, my franchise owners give their all, and a client, you know, walks away from them to save a couple of dollars a day. And, you know, over the course of the year, sure, that might be a substantial amount of money, and I get it, things are tight, everyone’s looking to figure that out. But more times than not, when a client leaves for price, they realize very quickly that they’ve made a mistake, because they don’t get that customer service, they don’t get the high level of quality service, and they end up coming back. And we’ve got probably dozens of clients have left and then come back, because they realize the value in the customer service that that they get from Image one that they’re getting with a lower cost provider.

george grombacher 6:26
That That makes a lot of sense. All right. So you prove your concept, you get the nod of approval, for lack of a better term from AT and T the business is growing. It’s growing and growing. Walk me through the process of how are we going to grow this thing? And how did you land on franchising?

Tim Conn 6:45
Right, right. Well, like every other entrepreneur, I just woke up one morning today, I’m gonna start a cleaning service and, and then I’m gonna franchise it and then magically, overnight, I’m gonna just have this huge business, right? Isn’t that the way it works?

george grombacher 6:56
Easy peasy.

Tim Conn 6:59
So, so I kind of I kind of just fell into franchising, it was never my plan to franchise. So basically, I think it was because I was having a bad day. And I opened the mail one day, and I think I was having issues with employees and just clients. Because again, business is a roller coaster, you have great awesome days where it’s super exciting. And then you have days that are like super scary, and you don’t know, if there’s gonna be enough money to come in to make payroll or you don’t know what’s going on. And I think it was a bad day, because I opened up a ladder, which I did all the time, I’d get letters from competitors, or other people looking to either to acquire US or to merge with us, you have different things like that I opened the ladder. And it was from someone who was looking to expand into the Chicago market, I thought, You know what, maybe I’m just gonna sell my business, I’m done. I’m just it’s time for change. And I went and went and met with that individual, and he wasn’t looking to buy my business per se, he was looking for someone to partner that that knew the janitorial industry, because he had bought a a master franchise for for the Chicago market. And after discussions we agreed to, to put a deal together, and we did a 10 year agreement. And then after that 10 year franchise agreement, I realized that there was a better way to franchise in the janitorial business, a way that was completely different than what all the big players in the market were doing. And that’s when image one was was founded in the board. And we did it in such a way that it’s completely different, full transparency for our franchise owners, we train them in operations and sales, in marketing, and let them really grow our business any size they want. And, and that’s really what sets image one apart from the at least a dozen other janitorial franchises, is that we give them all the tools, all the training, everything that they need to grow a business to any size that they want. If they just want to do a little part time thing on the side and earn, you know, $5,000 a month in gross revenue, fine, great, that’s not what we’re really looking for. But if that’s what they want, we’ll let them do that. But if they want to really grow a really big business where they’re billing, you know, 50 to $100,000 a month, they can do that. We’ve got several franchise owners that have crossed over that $100,000 A month mark. So they’re doing a million dollars a year in business, emptying trash. I always tell our franchise owners, you know, when you go around in the beginning and you’re doing the work, don’t get frustrated you’re emptying garbage cans, just every time you pick up that garbage can you dump it, just picture that you’re taking a garbage can you’re just dumping $100 bills into this big trash jam, all you’re doing is walking around collecting money. Yeah. And they all kind of laugh, but they’re like, you know, that’s a good way to look at it. Because that’s really what we’re doing. We’re getting we’re trading dollars for hours. And as you’re building that business, that’s what we do, and you’re just pushing a barrel around collecting cash.

george grombacher 9:43
I love everything about that. I love the visual. I love how it makes everybody smile every time you say it. I think that that’s awesome. All right. So you realize there’s a better way to do this I’ve seen from the inside some of the competition and I think that we can do it better. And now it sounds like it’s proving out to that, that that’s the case. How long have you been franchising at this point? Where, how? How many places are you stuff like that?

Tim Conn 10:14
So we started franchising 2011. So we’re about 12 years into franchising, and started in the Chicago market, we’ve got, most of our franchise owners are in the Chicago market, then we started expanding out beyond that market. Like I mentioned, both my boys are involved in the business at a very young age, they were involved. I mean, from the time that they can, before they can even walk, they’re going with me to accounts and meeting clients, you know, nothing, nothing breaks the ice, like breaking into a one year old with you, if you’re, if you’re talking to your your customer service, and people like to see little kids. But so they grew up around, and they got involved in the business to both them run a franchise in southwest Florida, which is where my wife and I said that we wanted to eventually end up and so they said, hey, you know, we’re gonna go down there and run a franchise down there. And then in addition to the two of them in Florida, I’ve got another another franchise owner in Florida, we’ve got one out in Colorado, we’ve got two in Texas, kind of just grow it across the country organically where where people are looking to grow. And so there’s, there’s not a single bad market for cleaning, because every business that has a trash can, and a toilet is a potential client. And last time I checked, every business has those two things. So it’s really, it’s really unlimited. There’s no no place you can go that isn’t a good potential market for janitorial. That

george grombacher 11:39
makes a lot of sense. Yeah, strikes me that the promise of a franchise as a franchisee I’m interested in starting a business with image one partnering with you that I get the playbook, I get everything that you’ve been talking about, you’re going to train me up, you’re gonna give me the systems and processes. So I’m not going to have to think of all that stuff and do all that stuff myself. I’m in business for myself, but not by myself. Your sons are following following the script, it seems like that might be one of the hardest things to actually bring family into the business, but specifically a franchise. It

Tim Conn 12:14
is challenging. You know, because I was the same way growing up, you don’t listen to your parents. So I tell them what to do. And I give them the advice, like I know, but I know better than dad, I can do my own way. But when they hear from other franchise owners, and they see the success that the other franchise owners are having, that’s what they want to follow. And it works really well. So you’re right, yeah, family members are it can be difficult. But my kids knew from an early age, that having a business for themselves, was definitely the direction that they wanted to go. And so you know, they they worked all through high school, as franchise owners doing doing their side things that they could have money for the things that they wanted to do. And then now they’re there. They’re successful, as far as they’re concerned, for 28 and 26. They both own their own homes, they have nice cars, they’ve got nice lifestyle, they’ve built a lifestyle business, they’re still out there doing the hustle and doing doing a lot of the work alongside their employees. But they’re happy with that that’s that’s the level of business that they want to grow at this point. At some point, when they get married, and they have kids, they’re gonna want to have a business built big enough that they don’t have to do all the work that they’re doing right now. So they can kind of take back. But but as kids that are, you know, they’re now they’re 26 and 28. For the last, you know, four or five, six years, they’ve had no problem taking off the time that they want to take off pretty much anytime. In fact, we just got back. Like I said, we all live in Florida, but we’re up in Chicago. And they’re taking they both take about three weeks off. At this time of year. We went out to Colorado last week and you know, took a trip and went skiing. We do that every year since they’ve been to eight and 10 years old. And now we’re up in Chicago for the next two weeks to see family and friends. And you know, most people don’t get three weeks away from their business or even away from their job. But they’ve been able to build enough for the business that they can do that. And we usually do that like twice a year, they’ll come up to Chicago to see people they take like six weeks off a year. And again, they still answer phone calls new emails, but they’re not. They’re not a slave to a job. You know, they’re not chained to a desk where they can’t leave. You know, they’ve got that opportunity and and I think that that’s that’s what a lot of people that want to be entrepreneurs that want to get into their own business, whether it’s a franchise or non franchise, that’s what they’re striving for is that type of freedom and lifestyle. That being said, that doesn’t happen overnight. When you own a business when you own a franchise or an independent business. It takes hard work, you’re gonna work harder than you’ve ever worked for your business. But the benefit of that is you’re doing it for you. So you’re, you’re putting all the effort, but you’re getting the reward. And so I think that’s, that’s an important thing to always remember is, it’s not going to happen overnight. If people ask me, well, it was an overnight success. Yeah, absolutely. You know, 35 years of hard work, and then bam, one night overnight, it wasn’t success. It’s, you know, it takes time, it takes hard work, it takes that effort. But if you put that in, and you do it right, then you’ll get the reward.

george grombacher 15:30
I think it’s really exciting. I like it a lot. We’re in a time, probably over the past 10 years, where entrepreneurship has been really an exciting thing. You got shows like Shark Tank, and lots of public compact entrepreneurs on TV, and obviously, the promise of entrepreneurship on social media. And here, we have you who has done it. And now I’ve demonstrated the ability to grow a lifestyle business, but also to grow a large enterprise where you don’t even need to be there for 27 out of 30 days a month, and you’ve got your kids who are growing their lifestyle business. And if they choose to stay with that, then that’s great. But you have the blueprint for helping them to grow into a larger concern, if that’s something that they choose. So I think that that’s a really attractive thing for somebody who considers entrepreneurship but says, You know what, I don’t have a roadmap for doing that you have that to offer. So how do people get started?

Tim Conn 16:25
Yes, it takes to get started with image one, or with any franchise, there’s a variety of different things you can do. There’s, there’s franchise shows, you can go to you can do stuff online, there’s consultants or brokers that they’re kind of like real estate agents, you know, they’ll help you find the right fit for you. But if you want to come directly to image one, if this sounds like something that would be good for you, you can find an image one and one is spelled out image, one franchise.com. And that’ll give you all the information about the franchise opportunity. Again, if someone’s looking to get into to a franchise, that’s a great opportunity to look at it that way. I’m talking to brokers. I’ve also I wrote a book a couple years ago called no new ideas, and it’s available on Amazon. And that walks you through the process of buying a franchise, because it can be a daunting task, especially people that walk into like a tradeshow for the first time, they walk in not knowing what to expect, and they see, you know, 300 different franchise opportunities, completely overwhelmed, they walk through this booth, or through this trade show. And every booth they walk past, they get a brochure, and they’re told this is the best franchise for you. And at the end of that show, they’ve got a big bag full of materials from the trade show. And they go home and they’re overwhelmed. And what do they do nothing. Because they’re so overwhelmed, they don’t even know where to start. So that’s why I wrote the book is so that people can walk through that process. And, and really learn so if you simply Google no new ideas, and Tim Khan, or go to Amazon and search for no new ideas, it’ll pop up and soft back 230 pages, I think super easy read. It’s gonna be on Audible in a couple of weeks. I’m excited about that. And so if you have people who like to read, they can listen to it. But like I said, it just walks people through the process that doesn’t direct them towards Image one, it just it it explains franchising in a very, very simple, basic level so that they can understand it and if they want to get into business, it’ll it’ll it’ll guide them down the path to get into business. Excellent.

george grombacher 18:21
If you enjoyed this as much as I did show Tim your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to if you’re interested in learning about Tim and his work and potentially partnering with him in franchising, go to Image one franchise all spelled out.com Check out the great resources. If you find yourself feeling a little bit overwhelmed and discombobulated. You need a cure for inaction or you want to learn more about what we’ve been talking about. Pick up your copy of no new ideas on Amazon and soon to be audible and get a little bit of clarity in your life on what your next move is. Thanks again, Tim. Thanks, George. I appreciate the opportunity. Till next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.