Most franchisees who buy into janitorial or domestic-cleaning concepts are true mom-and-pop businesspeople. They run their enterprises from the kitchen table and spend countless hours on their hands and knees, earning clients one clean floor at a time.
However, when Harry Young and his wife, Emelie, bought a Molly Maid house-cleaning services franchise in Austin, Texas, in late 1994, Young had no intention of ever touching a mop. In fact, after one day of training in which he had to clean a house, he vowed he’d never do it again.
Instead, Young, who had moved to Texas to soak up the sunshine after decades as an IT guru and CEO of air-defense companies in Washington, D.C., gave his Molly Maid the full corporate treatment. That meant setting up an aggressive business plan and organizational chart, with the objective of growing as quickly as he could. Continue reading this post.