The Real Franchise – Ep14 – Our Journey to Franchising: Greg & Gina Interior Cleaning Caboolture

Watch the full episode of The Real Franchise Episode 14 – here

Justin Hello and welcome to another episode of The Real Franchise. This is a series designed to give you real answers and insights into franchising and having a franchise. This series is put together by James Home Services Australia, and I’m one of the owners of James Home Services, and we’re joined today by Sonya Kelly, who is one of our business coaches at head office, and Greg and Gina Morrison, who are business owners with us in Caboolture.

And so today’s episode is just having a talk to them about their journey and background and things like that, so that you can get to understand some of the sorts of people that join James. So welcome, Greg and Gina. Thank you for joining us today. So I guess, firstly, would you mind just introducing yourselves? Well, I guess for both of you, what was your background before James?

What were you doing?

Gina I was working in retail part time. The other part time being stay at home Mum.

Justin Okay. Right.

Greg And I did 30 years in IT and just had enough.

Justin Yep, yep.

Greg Yeah.

Justin So what led you, I guess, to look at a franchise? How’d you find James?

Greg Just wanting to do something for myself, but not in an IT field.

Justin Yes.

Greg Looked at several franchise models and availabilities of types of franchises and, decided that this the interior cleaning one was one that suited our lifestyle because it’s interior and not being, as impacted by weather. Yeah. So therefore, once you do an income stream, it’d be a fairly static income stream that would allow you to budget work around.

Yeah. And not not knowing. I’m gonna go to training for three weeks so I can’t move towards or I can’t pressure.

Justin Yeah.

Greg Yeah. So for me, that gave me a bit more comfort.

Justin At the time. Yeah. So did either of you have any previous experience in having a business or having a cleaning business? No.

Greg No, no. Never worked for myself, I never worked as cleaner.

Justin Yep. Okay. Very good. So when it comes to the, I guess, the motivating factor, what was the real thing that made you go, we want to do this. Like you said, we need to change. What what was the motivation behind that.

Greg One of the big ones for me was just the fact that it was an opportunity to not need to commute.

Justin Yes.

Greg My commute was effectively an hour and a half each way every day. Yep. Five days a week. Yep. Leave at 630 in the morning and get home at 630 7:00 at night.

Justin Good old traffic.

Greg Yep.

Justin Yep. Yeah. So do you do that now? In your business?

Greg Biggest commute to come to Bribie Island. Yeah, which is about 25 minutes.

Justin Yep. So much every day. Look like now. When do you start? When would you finish? We’ll.

Gina Start around 815. Yeah. Then home by two.

Justin Brilliant. Okay. And you’re working five days a week. Six days a week. Seven days.

Greg A week. We we have staff as well. So, we run two vehicles five days a week. It’s a tiny little bit of work on a Saturday.

Justin Yeah.

Greg Gina works on tools two days a week. I try to keep mine to 3 days a week. Plus that little bit of work on the Saturday.

Justin Yeah. Okay, great. So what do you do with your extra time off Gina? Family, family Yeah.

Gina Leisure time?

Justin Yep. Good. And for yourself Greg? because you’ve got other days in there.

Greg Yeah. Two days in there. Obviously, one of those days is going to always be wound up with just business paperwork. Gives me a chance for quoting. If we have an overflow of work or one off things that need to be done. Yeah. Or people that are sick, you know, stuff when staff are unavailable. Yeah. It’s means flexibility there

Justin Yep. Yep. Okay. Now, one of the things we do in James is, all of our franchisees have a business coach that works with them. Sonya is one of our business coaches. You have a, different, team with. Stuart is your business coach. So I guess from that, that initial contact with James, your business coach, is really involved from day one.

What sort of things that Stewart do with you before you decided to join James? And then would you mind just sharing briefly, maybe about the sort of training that happened for you back then? Yeah, some of it would be done with you.

Greg So the initial touch base in regards to inquiring about purchasing franchise really came down to what do we want? What do we want to get out of this? You know, what are our aims? Where do we need to be whatever age or requirements? Can we make it happen? Yep, yes we can.

Gina Yeah. I was very hesitant and start.

Justin The extremely yeah

Gina Of buying a franchise. I guess it’s just the unknown.

Justin Yeah, absolutely.

Gina I know what you getting yourself into.

Justin We were the same. I can remember when we. Yeah, I could still remember distinctly the moment we. We posted off our check. That’s how long ago it was to buy a franchise. And I thought, what the heck have I done? Yeah.

Gina But I think where Stuart came into it, I don’t know. It’s just the, the support that he gave us and the reassurance and. Yeah. And just walked us through each step. Yeah. Made it so much easier.

Greg And we’d done a so, so we, I’d done a lot of background checking in regards to things like how flooded our local area was with cleaners.

Justin Yes. Yeah.

Greg A lot more now than they were five years ago.

Justin Yeah.

Greg I had other contacts who were franchises, but not with the James Network.

Justin Yep.

Greg Understanding what their, rate Yep. What their franchises fees were, what the rate then was how much went to marketing, how much was. Yeah, all of those sort of things and very favorable.

Justin Yeah.

Greg For what? For what James charges. What sort of support they got?

Justin Yeah.

Greg Yeah I did a lot of work around just trying to understand the franchise model. Never worked for myself before. So, you know, and therefore never worked in a franchise environment. So, you know, it was. I won’t say we were just throwing the hat in the ring and hope for the best. We. Yeah, we spent a lot of time trying to make sure we were going to do the right thing.

And the reassurance we got from, Stuart and the business was good. The driving factor in why we decided to go ahead. Go ahead. Training back in those days, it literally. It really was someone coming to your house? Yep. For five days.

Justin Yep.

Greg You and your business went into the wild

And you would. Yeah. We were lucky enough. We picked up 3 or 4 jobs. Some of those were things that were, you know, not things that would happen all the time. Things like, my first job was an oven clean. Yeah. Best thing to happen.

Justin Yep yep yep.

Greg Because it’s not a regular occurrence.

Yeah. So it was like Amy was great in regards to out there to transfer knowledge. Yes. And works through the quoting processes and and that sort of stuff.

Justin Yeah.

Greg But and that week was fantastic too. There was business training before that, which.

Justin Yes that’s right.

Greg And I Justin way back in the day. Yeah. And time spent with a bookkeeper and to help set up the invoicing processes and just the steps that you would need to go through.

Justin Yes.

Greg To from the financial perspective, obviously, that is all changed drastically in the last couple of years with the new, new butler software.

Justin And now you’re one of our national trainers for new people starting at a cleaning

Greg Well, lucky me.

Justin Yeah. Very good.

Greg Hopefully, delivering the sort of service that, people are able to, to start to leverage.

Justin Yeah. So launching, you.

Greg Know, I need to get them up and.

Justin Running. Yep. Good. So is there any I guess. And I really like that. A lot of people that I speak to that are looking they’re not just looking at James. They’re looking at a number of franchises. Yeah. So is there any particular things that for you made you go, yeah. Now we’re going this way with James business coaching business.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Greg Just within those first couple of meetings. Had great faith in, the support that James would be able to give us.

Justin Okay.

Greg Yeah. And the guidance. Kind of again, it’s it’s been five years or over five years now. And that guidance still continues.

Justin Yeah. Yeah. It’s to me, it’s it’s one of the things on personalized learning that is really prevalent. Like it’s I think our single biggest expense in running this business is having these business coaches around the country working with our network. Yeah. Yep. And it’s just it’s, important. Yeah. And other networks don’t do that. You know, by brand, you’ve got some training and then.

Gina You’re on your

Justin Own. Yeah. Or you can run head office every now and again. But, you know, they don’t know you that I know the business side sorts of things. So it’s, you know, I think it’s something we’ve really got getting right.

Greg the ability to touch base with pretty much any business coach. Or from the CEO down.

Is amazing to me, having come from a corporate environment where. Yeah, the only reason I knew the CEO of the old business was he happened to be the IT manager at one stage, and I worked in IT

Justin Yep. Yeah.

Greg Yeah. It took 20 years for him get from that position to that position. That’s the only reason I knew him.

Justin Yeah.

Greg Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Yeah. And I is good. Okay. So in operating a business for you, both, what’s been the hardest thing in having a business staff.

Gina Staff?

Justin Yeah.

Greg Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em

Justin Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Nah, staff are great, when you’ve got the right staff.

Justin Yeah. So true.

Gina There’s challenges. You have.

Justin To work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very true. Very true.

Gina But we wouldn’t be where we are without them.

Justin Yeah. And I think any business can probably say the same or should be able to say the same way, not knowing where they are with that stuff.

Greg And the more staff you have, the more that everything from someone day to day off. It’ll mean we’ve got to reschedule whatever. You’ve got to come of that to go to work another day.

Justin Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Yeah. So I always say the the bigger your staff base, the more.

Justin It’s not the.

Greg Like the. No more bigger issues than any other scenario. It’s just the staff. But the people doing the job on the ground. You know, you need to be able to cover that to keep your clients happy. Yes. So yeah.

Justin It’s a such a key part. Yeah. So that’s the hardest part for you. What would be the most rewarding part of having a business?

Gina Time flexibility.

Greg These days. Absolutely.

Justin Yeah. Yeah. These days I took a little while to get to that point of having that flexible.

Greg Definitely for probably the first three years was nose to the grindstone.

Justin Yep.

Greg Absolutely. Very few. Very, little downtime.

Justin Yeah.

Greg That you can make your business successful if you want to push hard enough.

Justin Yeah.

Greg Yeah. Year four was, where able to start to ease off a bit. Year. Five. Oh, yeah. This year? Certainly. I mean, I will step back a little bit more and it’s been great

Justin Yep.

Greg Yep. Yeah. Getting to that point with mine, too, since day one. Yep.

Justin Yeah. So for I know you get the opportunity a lot of people over the years contact you to about, you know, for advice and what they think of what you would say to them. So my question to you, I guess, is what would you say to someone who’s looking at taking on a franchise or joining James? What are some things that they should be thinking of?

What are some bits of advice words of wisdom that you’ve learned over the time?

Greg Probably understanding financially what your requirements are.

Justin Yeah.

Greg And really understanding where you’re spending money. Your money.

Justin Yes.

Greg Knowing what you need to cover.

Justin Yes.

Greg Knowing how much you need your business to make.

Justin Yes.

Greg So true, you need to be able to plan to get to that stage.

Justin Yeah.

Greg Yeah. If you’re not aware of that, then. And again, that comes down to where we were replacing the major component, in our, income. Yes. This business. So I was very definite in regards to what I, in this business to do for us financially. Yeah. If you’re buying a franchise and it literally is the other income in the house, therefore your financial requirements are going to be much smaller.

Justin Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Yeah. So understand what you want from a business.

Justin Yeah.

Gina And I think also don’t expect it to happen overnight. So true, so many people coming into franchises thinking that this is the be all and end all, but you can put the working absolutely getting what you want out of it.

Justin Yep.

Gina Yeah. It’s not going to happen unless you put the effort in. Yeah.

Justin Such a good point.

Greg And and and I understand myself. Is that I had found it difficult to wind back that. Yeah. That that’s for you. Grind in our case, call it grind, But that three years of hard work. Really hard work. Yep. To get to a point to go. Oh, I’m almost guilty of feel guilty now for not work. Yeah. Like, yeah.

I should be doing more.

Justin Yes. Yes.

Greg This is part of the reward at the other end.

Justin That’s it.

Greg Not needing to do more.

Justin That’s it. And I guess, like, the hard thing. I know you said it before that. You know, through the journey, you were coming from a situation of leaving home at five in the morning and hopefully getting home at 7 p.m. and even though you were working hard in those three years, you’ve been able to have that 8:15 to two, 3:00.

Yeah. Which is such a massive. It’s one of the key reasons isn’t.

Greg That people don’t get me. Even with that, there’s still you still need to do the hours paperwork. Yes. You still know the the being your business.

We still need to turn over vehicles.

Justin And.

Greg Have them fresh and ready to go. We need to contact our clients for the next day. We need to, make sure everything’s right and ready to go. I’m not going to work tomorrow.

We still handle that component.

Justin Yeah. Wash all the

Gina rags. That’s where a lot of misconceptions are I think that once you finish , your days work it. Yes, it’s over I think so. But there’s still a lot more behind the scenes that people don’t realize.

Greg And early in the piece for me to work to say 4:00 run home, contact clients for the next day. Have organized now at 7:00 at night to go to a quote because that person has just come home from work in the city, and you suddenly go in at 7:00 at night. It’s pitch black, it’s winter. I don’t want to go out.

Justin Yeah.

Greg If I want this job, I want an opportunity to get this job.

Justin Yep.

Greg That’s when they’re available.

Justin Yeah.

Greg I want the business to grow. Yeah. Make myself.

Justin Well. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s quite.

Greg There’s there’s there’s work after that that will need to be done. And if you don’t keep on top of that, it will get away from me. Okay.

Justin All right. Well, thank you so much for today. Is there any last words of wisdom that any of you would like to share before we wrap up this episode?

Greg Probably understand and and and continue to understand what your financial requirements are.

Justin Yes. It’s a business.

Greg Yeah, it is a business. And now it’s your business. Yes. That’s not someone else’s business you’re working for. It’s your business. You’re responsible.

Justin Yes.

Greg That’s good work. If you want to work.

Justin Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Well, thanks for joining us today on this episode with Greg and Gina from Caboolture. If you’d like to know if you’ve got questions, feel free to, put them in the comment section below. Or if you’d like us to do an episode on a particular topic. Feel free to throw that in in the comments as well.

So thanks for joining us and have a great day. Bye.