BUILDING A BUSINESS BACK ON CIVVY STREET

Raymond Finch epitomises everything you expect from someone who has spent his life in command; he is clear, concise and determined. He has to be.

Ray left school without taking any qualifications and joined the British Army. He spent all his adult life in the Forces, serving mainly abroad in Germany, Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Cyprus. He moved up through the ranks and had built a successful Army career, rising to the rank of Sergeant. Whilst serving in Kosovo he was awarded the Queen’s commendation for bravery.

Twenty two and a half years into his Army career, disaster struck. At the time, Ray was in Cyprus training recruits how to be safe on a motorbike. Part of his duties was to find new territory on which to drive to test skills and help recruits gain experience on different terrain. Having survived hostile environments, been shot at and bombed, Ray had a severe motorbike accident whilst on a reconnaissance trip when his bike slipped on spilt diesel. His injuries were severe and effectively finished his Army career eighteen months before his official retirement. He was given a medical discharge from the Army and returned home to Britain with his wife and children with no job and no home.

Ray is the first to admit he faced daunting challenges. “I had never worked on ‘civvy street,” he explained. “In the Army everything is done for you; you are there to do a very important job and you don’t need to be distracted by issues of housing, mortgages, schooling etc. But when I came home I needed to find a way to provide an income for my family which was up to the standard they had been used to, whilst at the same time trying to get over significant injuries which meant I was unable to walk.”

Never having been in commercial employment, Ray knew that he would have an enormous amount to learn about being in business, so he quickly rejected the idea of setting up totally on his own, and began to investigate the franchise route. He says:”I didn’t want to take huge risks by setting up on my own; I was looking for some knowledge and support, so franchising seemed a good option.”

Ray was not looking for any particular type of franchise and investigated businesses from retail coffee enterprises like Starbucks to commercial cleaning operations like Jani-King. Ray continues: “At that stage I was still in a wheelchair, and we were not sure what my prognosis would be, so we were looking for a very flexible model; something that would not tie us down to too much regular work just in case things went wrong. The Jani-King franchise offered that freedom because we felt we could ‘up’ efforts and income if I got better fast, and ‘downsize’ in the case that things did not go as we hoped. Jani-King was prepared to take a chance on me, even while I was in a wheelchair, and that was really important to me.”

In his start up circumstances, Ray expressed his initial aims for the business as being able to provide a stable income for his family, as well as to run a smooth and efficient operation. Keeping customers and staff happy, and of course – making a profit - were key for him in his first year. He named his business Stingray Ltd after his army nickname in the blink of an eye when put on the spot by Companies House.

“One of the key reasons we chose the Jani-King franchise was the level of support and guaranteed income in the first 18 months,” says Ray. “Both paid off for us. I could never have set up the business without the training and support I received at the start of our operation. Although it is true that anyone can learn to clean, the Jani-King model really works, and if you stick to it, there is no doubt that it delivers results.”

Of the partnership that is between franchisee and franchisor, Ray is very clear on the agreement. “There are bound to be rules and regulations when you acquire a franchise. Some people may find this difficult because they get into business based on the idea that they really want to run their own business. Coming from the discipline of the Army, I am very comfortable with this type of structure, and found it to our benefit.”

Ray was also lucky enough to be able to take on quite of lot of contracts early on in his first year as another local Jani-King franchisee was moving on. By the end of their second year of trading they were turning over a huge £40K per month, just under £1/2 million per annum. They are now in their fourth year of trading.

He describes one of the key challenges as being staff recruitment and retention. “Perhaps naively, I believed I could offer people the opportunity to earn an honest living for an honest wage – even if the model is at minimum wage – and they would be pleased to do it. Clearly no-one is going to make a career in cleaning, but I was unprepared for the level of difficulty getting good regular staff.”

“I was staggered to find that people only have to turn up at a number of job interviews to continue to claim job-seeker allowance. So you can never be really sure if someone you interview will actually turn up for work, because they may just be using you to ‘do the numbers’. Coming from the discipline of the Army, it was a shock”.

However, within a year Ray felt he had learned enough about managing staff to recognise the right quality of people. “It’s about a conversation,” he explains. “You’ve got to find out what they want out of it, and sometimes, if you have to, you bend the model a bit to provide enough regular work for a really good sort of person that you can trust to turn up and do the job.”

With hindsight Ray knows today that his initial explosive growth was too fast. Unfortunately his health did not improve in the way he had anticipated when starting the business. He had to undergo a number of operations and the Stingray business started to suffer.

“We couldn’t maintain the peak sales we had achieved as I started having to have more treatment and operations,” says Ray. “I wasn’t able to be the type of hands-on manager I wanted to be, because I still wasn’t mobile.”

Ray’s wife Karoline proved an indispensable support as his health began to deteriorate, taking on more and more work to try to keep the business afloat. She abandoned her plans to qualify as a driving instructor and split her time between the business and care for Ray. Although his wife was able to take on a lot of the work, she was operating as both Franchisee and Area Manager, which put a strain on the successful Jani-King model.

Because Ray was not mobile, his wife was also having to drive him back and forth to the hospital in Birmingham, and inevitably this put a strain on customer and staff relations as she tried to divide her time between the business and Ray.

“We had to downsize – more than we wanted to. We lost some contracts and we transferred some to other local franchisees,” said Ray. “ Jani-King were tremendously supportive through all this. Of course they have rules and regulations, and a format for business which is proven. But they have been flexible with us to help us maintain customers at a level we could do well until such time as we could start to rebuild our business.”

After three trading years, Ray is now in a position to rebuild his business to its original size. Jani-King has already started to provide a new level of contracts for Stingray and he is optimistic about the future. He attributes his survival in business to the partnership between Stingray and Jani-King. “After the initial growth burst, my business was in a downward spiral because my illness had forced us to take our eyes off the ball. Jani-King supported us through a difficult time; we have proved we can do the job and are worth supporting, and now I am looking forward to rebuilding the franchise to the half million mark. We’ll go steadily this time, with controlled growth, but I am confident we can get there.”