Breaking the Barrier to Franchise Ownership

There are two main paths to owning a window cleaning home services business. You can go it on your own or buy into an established brand. Both have their advantages. Going it alone actually makes sense for those with sufficient business education and experience in the space. Unfortunately, many overestimate both their knowledge of business and their ability to perform well among serious competitors. Most who do enter the window cleaning business have little more than a strong hunch that they know what to do in any given situation but soon find that is not the case. The truth is almost everyone who begins in business makes many expensive and avoidable mistakes in those first crucial years. The actual earning potential in any business is directly proportional to one’s understanding of the peculiarities of the value proposition, reconciliation with the other important functions of the business, and the rules of the market in which we all operate.

There are things that they know, there are things that they realize that they don’t know, but figure that they can learn along the way, and there are some things that they do not even know that they don’t know. That which they do know tends to be less than they thought and learning usually takes years to master. But that which they did not know that did not know, are the variables that present the greatest threat to their survival.

Hence people favor the existing brand where the playbook has already been written. Objectives are clear right from the outset. The unknown is revealed right from the start. After all most people in the early years waste tons of energy and money since it is difficult to hit targets that haven’t been constructed yet! Existing brands enjoy the competitive advantage of having started with simple systems, and over many years we’ve tested our ideas in the marketplace not just in our minds. The best performers have the habit of measuring their results.

Continuous improvement tends to favor those who’ve been working both on and at their

businesses over time. So far, we’ve addressed problems that lead to failure in new businesses in a very general way. The truth is franchise systems are not perfect either. There is no such thing as a human being who always makes the right decision even when following guidelines set down by concrete metrics. The key to success in business is to have a high percentage of effective decision-making track record, not to make all the right choices but to make a high percentage of the right choices. Having a solid foundation of “do this and don’t do that” guidelines along with effective standard operating procedures gives the entrepreneur benchmark standards to measure his performance along the journey. Such a guiding structure is akin to a captain of a ship having a navigational assistant. You cannot arrive at a destination until you first know what the best locations are, how to prepare the ship for a long trip, and what and how many provisions will be necessary to sustain the crew along the way.

With the Happy Window Cleaning Franchise Opportunity, we’ve identified the key disadvantages of buying into a franchise business model and have developed practical solutions to lessen those barriers to entering the space. It is better for the industry at large that we bring a franchise advantage of professionalism to market, carrying a proven strong contention for sales and profit coming right out of the gate. Similarly, consumers deserve to have well-trained and proficient people in their service.

The first barrier we identified is the heavy burden of franchise fees. Every other reputable franchise brand is requiring 20K or more in franchise fees, alone, just to get in. This precludes a great number of otherwise competent people from ever entering the race. As stewards of our trade, we want so much to help provide the proper training and conditioning needed for people to perform at their very best. In one sense, this truly motivates the new franchise owner to meet the sales targets set by the franchisor, which isn’t all bad. But in practice, some (In fairness to our competitors, it is usually a very low percentage) people become completely overwhelmed by that pressure and wind up defaulting on their obligations and find themselves financially ruined. It is a fact that Just about every franchisor has a few failed franchisees evident on their Franchise Disclosure Documents. You see this information must be disclosed per the Federal Trade Commission’s regulations. Cases like these can be avoided.

So, we decided to take a slightly different approach. What Happy Window Cleaning does is take just $500 upfront and $50 a week with a ten-year franchise licensing agreement. This is the fee for admission into our family. This modest sum allows the new business owner access to the full franchise training and start-up program, and they get the entire brand marketing mix (With a few exceptions, purchased separately) to use for their business. There is a bit more self-study involved in our program, yet we maintain live support, and daily talks, and have the advantages one would expect from a leading franchisor. We believe that our reputation, track record, and the value of our executive team are all the persuasion that our prospects need to ultimately make the best decision for their future.

This new approach is a disrupting factor in the market. lowers the barrier to entry but at the same time, it maintains the high bar necessary to award a franchise. Not everyone who inquires about the business opportunity is awarded a license. We require two written references from nonfamily members attesting to the good character of each applicant. We also require that the references supply a contact number and we do verify those references. Some people are not suitable to be in business, and when this is the case, we tend to find out fairly quickly during the early interview process. Given a full year of documented performance, we will have a good idea of where your strengths and weaknesses are as a new business owner which helps to set realistic and more importantly reachable objectives for the second year in business.

As far as we know, no other company that has invested millions of dollars and years of their lives into building a brand has offered anything similar to the business franchise/license opportunity tailored by Happy Window Cleaning.

We believe that opening up the trade to people who are service oriented yet may not have the resources of generational wealth that some others have will soon be a game changer for the entire industry. In other words, others, who can afford the legal work involved, will copy us.

Happy Window Cleaning is fully aware that as we launch this program it will be a grassroots effort. We won't have the huge intake of revenue that our competitors do charging twenty-five or thirty thousand-dollar franchise fees. So our entry into franchising, although years in the making will necessarily be a slow word-of-mouth start, Our offering is prayerfully given with the vision of helping people who wish to take charge of their futures but the high cost to entry is weighing heavily, preventing them from joining an organization such as ours. Scott Britton at heart is a teacher and he wants nothing more than the chance to be a coach and a good influence on the younger generations. Our vision remains the same. Happy Window Cleaning will become a national brand that honors God seeking every opportunity to be a vocal witness for the Lord! The successful franchisee/licensee applicant of Happy Window Cleaning will be awarded the chance to start a business with terms much less onerous than the other franchises competing in the same space.