How did you get into the industry?
In 2020 I was the CEO of a Hospital, and my wife was the pastor of a 1,400 member church. We got married with the intention of always prioritizing family first, but as the demands of our jobs took hold, time became a commodity. My parents recommended I delegate anything that took my time that didn’t absolutely require it, and in one weekend I hired a cleaner, a laundry service, and a food prep service to complete all these chores for me. The next week my wife and I had date night for the first time in over six months. That’s when I knew there was something to this. After a company restructure, my wife and I had our first son, moved to Colorado, and started TidyTask. After doing the research I realized we could save families from 8+ hours of chores per week, and that I could help others get that precious time back that is stolen by life’s menial tasks. That’s when I knew I solved a real problem and had an incredibly compelling business model.
What’s New in the Business or in the Franchise Model?
When doing my research, I found that for whatever reason home services were stuck in the 1900s from a customer service perspective. It was hard to book, get pricing, share important details or preferences, and pay service providers. These services are most compelling when they are saving you time, but it took forever to even find out from companies how much their service would cost. TidyTask is designed to bring the home services industry into the 21st century and to make it as easy as humanly possible to delegate home chores. Through our website and mobile app, customers are never more than 60 seconds away from delegating this weekend’s chore list to an expert service provider, enabling them to spend their time doing what matters.
Where do you See Opportunities or Challenges for the Franchise/Business Moving Forward?
There are all sorts of opportunities in this space, honestly it was hard to choose where to start. But after talking with customers of other companies about their experience it was obvious that step one was to drastically improve customer service. From there the text message concierge was born, and we created streamlined online booking, followed by the TidyTask mobile app. The future is bright with our TidyTask Team app being so well received by our service providers enabling streamlined growth and remote management of all of our services. Over the coming years I see “TidyTask Communities” popping up around the nation that prefer to spend their time with the important things in life.
As far as challenges, in home services you will always have the hyper low quality and low-cost competition that tries to stand up a business overnight and get a handful of customers just by being the lowest cost game in town. However, we are now consistently finding our customers have come from these providers who have left them disappointed and now they are looking for a high value service provider that genuinely makes their life easier.
What is your Goal for the TidyTask Business Moving Forward?
Our goal is to help all our stakeholders spend their life doing what matters:
- Customers: Enable them to delegate 8+ hours of chores in 60 seconds to finally enjoy their personal time.
- Service providers: Give them schedule flexibility they can self-manage so they can build their work life around their personal life.
- Franchise owners: Create, train, and support our owners to run a business that can be managed from anywhere, maintains low financial risk, and ultimately enables them to build the life they’ve always dreamed of.
As we continually deliver for these three stakeholder groups, this business will continue to grow as it already has. I have met a lot of people out there just like me that don’t want their life story to revolve around an office or cubicle, and want their job to work for them, not the other way around.
We project strong demand as we open this opportunity up to franchise owners, but will maintain a steady, predictable, and manageable growth path so that each of our partners gets the support and realizes the success they deserve.
Talk to us About Training and Support, How Do You Deliver?
Our training and support roll out in three phases:
- A visit to Colorado where new franchisee’s see the business model in action, shadow with our service providers, managers, and owners. This is where owners ask all the questions about the model, get a sense for how it all works, and get a high comfort level with what it takes to be successful.
- In-territory support for their first week where we do a deep dive into Operations, HR, and Marketing. Once we complete in-market training the franchisee is ready to start operations the next day.
- On-going training and support calls: Weekly until profitable, then monthly, and finally to quarterly as an owner sees progressive success.
In addition to our robust on-boarding process, we have continually upgraded different areas of the business and plan to continue to do so as technology, operations, and marketing tactics continually improve. We solicit input from all our franchise owners to become our best “collective self” so that all of our owners learn from best each of us has to offer. As each of us upgrades our territory, the collective group learns and improves from each other.
Your most difficult moment at the Franchise Business?
The very beginning of the TidyTask story: when I was told my position was being eliminated at my healthcare job. I had a number of other job options in Central Florida, as well as other positions available within the same company. It would’ve been so easy to accept another soul-sucking office job, but my wife was the continual supporter. Despite being 9-months pregnant and having a stable job herself, she really encouraged me to make the entrepreneurial jump. We had our son, moved across the country, and started this business with nothing more than an idea. All along she has been right by my side with a beautiful, infectious smile. It has been amazing having that support from the person I love most in this world, but it was the most difficult moment in the history of the business because it would’ve been so much easier to just “play it safe”, take the secure job, and let the next 30 years play out as they do for most people.
Define your Franchise Model:
A. Training and Support Model:
- Three phases
- Home Office
- In-Territory
- On-Going Virtual Support
B. What is the Fee Structure?
- Franchise fee: $25k
- Royalty: 8%
C. Territory Definition?
- Typically 50k-100k (up to 250k) people
- 15-20 mile radius
D. Day in the life of a Franchisee?
Leave the alarm clock off, wake up when you’d like to. Jump into the dashboard “list” view to see where in the process of cleaning, laundering, or dry cleaning your service providers currently are. Create your checklist of priorities to complete that day that will most tangibly move your business forward. Answer customer texts/calls about future bookings or day of logistics. Check in on your marketing processes and refine. Do a building visit or two to try and find your next TidyTask community. Hang some door hangers in targeted neighborhoods within your territory. Spend time with your spouse, kids, and manage the business while remaining present with the people that matter most in your life. Check on tomorrow’s services and ensure that your service providers have all the customer information needed to complete their services without any day-of “stress” management.
What does Your Franchisee Do in the Business Every Day?
The franchisee does a little bit of everything in the business. Most days they are engaged in finding their next customers and delivering for their current customers. They are managing service providers so both they and customers feel that things consistently go smoothly on the day of service. They often act as the “text message concierge” that is the customers “friend they can delegate all their chores to”. They lead the sales efforts in finding new commercial business and are often the point of contact for key commercial relationships within a territory. They lead the team with positive energy so that customers feel the difference when a TidyTask service provider comes to their home vs. the standard “not happy to be here” cleaner most customers have been forced to get used to.
Who is the Ideal Franchise Candidate?
Franchise candidates will have high integrity, strong customer service abilities, good with schedule management, and hold themselves to high personal standards to consistently deliver for customers and service providers. If there were to be targeted groups, they would include anyone with a sales background, former managers, former sales people, former leasing agents, former property managers, former hospitality workers, former business owners, former marketing executives, military, firefighters, or anyone with home or commercial services experience.
Success Stories and Failures with Franchisees?
Our first franchisee in Daytona, Florida has tripled his revenue over the last three months. More importantly, he has consistently worked the fundamentals of the business to generate a network within his territory, service providers that are “cream of the crop” and has begun to develop his book of recurring customers that generate consistent long term revenue.
What Goals Do You Have for the Franchise Model in the Future?
I want us to never settle. Both as franchisors and franchisees. Over the past few years, it’s become obvious how successful an owner can be just by consistently doing the fundamentals right. Then when you remain committed to innovating and being a few steps ahead of your competition, you can create a business that genuinely helps customers, service providers, and gives owners a life they once dreamed of.
Over the coming years, I would like TidyTask to be known across the country as America’s most convenient home service provider. The business that went one step beyond what Yelp, Angi, and Thumbtack were able to do for consumers in terms of making it easy to find and book but stopped short of actually providing the service. And the home services business that went miles beyond the customer service that customers have been forced to put up with from “mom n’ pops” until now. I see a world where delegating your chores is so much easier than doing it yourself, that delegating your chores becomes the default choice for America’s busy families.
For more information on the TidyTask Franchise and Mr. Carl Dupper, visit the TidyTask corporate site: