A Passion for Excellence

It has been 19 years, and just like Wayne & Garth, I've always known that I am not worthy. Thank you for putting up with me, I know it hasn’t always been easy.

My wife and I met in grad school, became best friends and decided to test the real world by opening a business together. So we left the classroom to start on our exciting plan. Some plan. No money, no experience, no contacts, no strategy, and did I mention no money.

So we did what anyone would have done, and got married. About this time I received a letter congratulating me on entering the "real world" and informing me that it was time to start fulfilling my student loan obligations. My financial reality was worse than I thought. I wasn't just broke; I was also deep in debt.

Luckily my young bride didn't abandon me, and we decided to go into the food business. We had loads of experience. My wife had worked as a waitress every summer since high school, and I was real good at eating.

That Christmas my Mom gave us a book that would change our future. The authors, Tom Peters and Nancy Austin, went on and on about Domino's Pizza, and how they were taking exceptional care of its Customers, in their book A Passion for Excellence.

Turns out Domino's Pizzas founder, Tom Monaghan, had reserved the right to own a Domino's Pizza Franchise to his managers. That's right, in order to become a Domino's Pizza Franchisee, one had to serve a minimum of one year as a Domino's Pizza manager. After one year you could apply to become a franchisee, and there was no franchise fee! This was and is still unheard of in the franchise community.

Tom Peters inspired me to apply for an assistant manager position with Domino's Pizza. I almost didn't get the job because I showed up to the interview in a Brooks Brothers suit, but that is another story. 15 years, 4 children and 2 successful Domino's Pizza franchises later, we sold our franchised business.

Domino’s Pizza was great but we wanted to find a franchise with industry leading potential that was in its infancy. Can you imagine how much fun it would have been to be one of Tom Monaghan or Ray Kroc’s first franchisees?

Our orientation was definitely food service, and we selected Donato's Pizza as an up and coming franchise. Donatos is Latin for "to serve the very best" and they had a great story. I went up to Columbus, Ohio and spent 3 months learning their systems, but in the end I had serious misgivings so I walked away...more accurately drove away at a high rate of speed.

At the apex of our decision making process we ran into two different people, at our church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, that had relatives that became franchisees for professional maid services. Supposedly these people were making money and having fun. Perhaps it was a "God thing"( I believe it was), but it definitely helped us make our decision.

At first we were dismissive, but the more we investigated, the more we liked. The maid service industry had some definite advantages. They were not 24 hour operations, they had weekends off to be with family, they were scalable, and they were based on providing outstanding Customer service.

Since we had such a great experience as franchisees we immediately began interviewing the various maid service franchises. Unlike food, we found this industry was far from mature, and there was no market leader on the scale of McDonalds or Blockbuster.

After investigating all the major housekeeper franchises, evaluating existing businesses for sale, and visiting or interviewing 43 independent house keeping service owners over 6 months of due diligence, we found a perfect fit with...You've Got MAIDS™! We hope you will agree with their assessment.