Enviro-Master Focuses on Franchisee Quality Over Unit Count to Drive Long-Term Growth

Enviro-Master’s growth strategy is rooted in a simple idea: better franchisees build a better system.

For Sean Hart, vice president of franchise development, that starts with resisting the urge to chase unit count for its own sake. He made clear that adding owners who are not the right fit may help in the short term, but it creates real problems later, from weaker validation to a system that starts to drag under the weight of bad matches.

“I really appreciate the understanding I have of that longer-term effect versus fill the funnel, squirt them out as fast as you can and get them in the system,” Hart said. “Bad things happen. I can do that for a year. I might even be able to do it for two. But that third year, I’m going to start getting bad validation. The system starts to struggle. My minimum requirement is this: If I add you to our system, you will make it better. If it falls under that line, then that’s not a good fit.”

Enviro-Master also faces a practical challenge as it grows: people do not always understand the business right away. Hart said the brand is often mistaken for a janitorial service, even though its work is centered on hygiene and sanitization. That distinction shapes how the company talks to customers and how it helps franchise candidates understand the model's value.

“A lot of people don’t necessarily understand what we do,” Hart said. “They think of us as a cleaning or janitorial business, which we do, of course, but we are really more in the hygiene and sanitization business. There are levels of clean, and what we do is that next level of looks clean, smells clean and is clean. We are definitely the ‘is clean’ level of things.”

That clarity has become even more important as Enviro-Master looks to build on the momentum it carried out of the COVID era. Hart pointed to the brand’s recurring revenue model, wide customer base and new leadership team as reasons he sees real upside ahead. With about 100 units in place and a service that applies to virtually any business with a restroom, the opportunity is not hard to find.

The challenge is making sure the next wave of growth comes from owners who can sell the value, lead in their communities and strengthen the brand as they grow.

Hart joined 1851 Franchise publisher Nick Powills on a recent episode of the “Meet the Franchise” podcast to discuss franchise growth strategy and the importance of franchisee fit. A transcript of the interview — editing for brevity, clarity and style — has been provided below:

Nick Powills: How did you accidentally fall into franchising? What’s your franchise backstory?

Sean Hart: It was an accident, if you want to know the truth.

I was lucky enough, when I came out of college 120 years ago, to get a job with Black & Decker, which at the time was a really cool job. I thought every job was going to be that cool and that easy. Then I got recruited to another company that rented trucks. They don’t exist anymore, but it was kind of a reverse franchise model. Whereas a normal franchise takes a royalty and gives the bulk of the revenue there, we paid them 27%, and we took the rest.

It was an interesting model that got me headed in that direction. Then I got super lucky again and was recruited by a wonderful woman named Kathleen Huntsman, who was working at Sylvan Learning Centers. I was off and running from then on. It’s been “franchise city” for me ever since.

I did a little work with her, primarily in operations, but over the years, I transitioned into the development side, and it’s been a journey.

Powills: Does your background in operations give you an advantage in franchise development?

Hart: It is a secret weapon. There’s certainly a huge upside to it in that I understand the results of bringing in a bad fit. If someone isn’t aligned with what we’re trying to do, everybody suffers. It just depends on how long they suffer and how badly I do it.

It can also be a bit of a handicap at times, in that part of being in development is that you’re always optimistic. It’s always going to work. You use your brain, your data and your intuition. But deep down inside, you need to feel like it’s going to work. Every now and then, that ops side will kick in and I’ll go, “Oh, maybe that’s a red flag,” and you have to do a double take.

But overall, absolutely, I’ll call it a superpower. I really appreciate the understanding I have of that longer-term effect versus fill the funnel, squirt them out as fast as you can and get them in the system. Bad things happen. I can do that for a year. I might even be able to do it for two. But that third year, I’m going to start getting bad validation. The system starts to struggle.

My minimum requirement is this: If I add you to our system, you will make it better. If it falls under that line, then that’s not a good fit.

Powills: Why do so many franchisors focus on bringing in new franchisees instead of the right franchisees?

Hart: I think that’s low-hanging fruit. When in doubt, you can always bring in more revenue through sales. But if you’re not looking at the longer picture, it’s all tactical and not strategic, and you end up exactly where you’re talking about.

When things get desperate and you’re worried about what’s going to happen in the next pay cycle, whatever your worries are, it is the easiest button to press. It can be a way to span a gap that may appear in your success as a franchisor, but it can’t be a long-term solution. That is a short-term solution that becomes a permanent problem, and some folks just never get out of that. I think that’s absolutely the opposite of the approach you ought to take.

Powills: How have you handled conversations with leadership when they want more franchise sales rather than better franchisees?

Hart: It’s tough. I have been really lucky to work with some great people, some really fantastic people. But I will tell you this: Something I’ve seen almost across the board — current CEO excluded, just in case you’re watching, Frank — is that those silos are not always permanent. When a solution seems out there, it’s easy to narrow your vision down to just see that one solution.

I know what five more franchisees mean, but I definitely know what 10 more franchisees mean. You have to be able to step back again. Sometimes it is a tactical decision you’re making, and you always have to consider what that more strategic outcome is going to be.

It’s also something I have to prove I can do. That’s the other side of it. If I’m not bringing in better franchisees, everything I’ve talked about has been about quality. But if I’m not pulling it off, then there’s another problem.

Powills: What have you learned over time about the relationship between the salesperson and the brand?

Hart: Unfortunately, it happens. As a young man, I was often recruited, and it always was greener and always seemed better. In my head, as a 20-something, “Hey, that’s 10% more,” or “20% more. I’ve got this opportunity.” It was really hard to look away from that.

As I’ve gotten older, if I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it really isn’t about the job as much as it is the people you’re working for. The way I benefit from that learning now, as the one who’s probably hiring that person who’s selling, is remembering that this person needs to fit with us and what we’re trying to do.

Not in the very distant past, I hired someone with a great reputation who was supposed to be a great salesperson. Everything I did showed that they had done that. Then, as we worked with them, we found out that with an easy sale, it was fantastic. But when there was something a little more complicated, it was more like a conveyor belt with a cashier at the end of it, and he wasn’t able to get as deeply into the process as he needed to to explain what our business is all about.

As an older person, I look for that and try to prevent it. As a younger person, that would be the note I’d leave myself, for sure.

Powills: What’s the state of the union at Enviro-Master right now?

Hart: A lot of people don’t necessarily understand what we do. They think of us as a cleaning or janitorial business, which we do, of course, but we are really more in the hygiene and sanitization business. There are levels of clean, and what we do is that next level of looks clean, smells clean and is clean. We are definitely the “is clean” level of things.

What’s exciting for us is that post-COVID, as we go into a more normalized world, we were able to demonstrate the value of what we were doing during COVID, and that’s carried forward in some ways to show that there really are different levels of clean.

We’ve got a new leadership team in place almost across the board to move us to that next level. We’ve been a solid brand for years and years and years. I don’t want to say stagnant — that’s not the right word — but solid, and I think we can be a pretty amazing brand.

We’re at about 100 units right now, but with our model, everybody has bathrooms. Literally every business you know of can use us. With the recurring revenue model that we have, I think that’s what really makes the difference. Once you have a client or a customer, you’re going to go back and see them next week and next week and next week. Then you’re going to get two more, and you see that grow.

It’s not sexy, but I have to tell my story. We are not janitorial. We are, like I said, sanitization and hygiene. Many of our clients keep their janitorial for daily cleaning and wipe-downs, but a major U.S. grocery store chain I won’t name — I was training there and went in to clean. I’m literally watching this person roll the cart out where they had just cleaned the restroom, and I was talking to my trainer, like, “Should we come back here? It just got cleaned.” He said, “Watch this.”

The things I saw come off the walls and the floor, the things we were able to do, it was pretty amazing. When I say see, I mean literally see it going down the drain. It was clean. I think as far as the rest of the world, it was clean.

For folks like me, maybe that’s not what I’m going to judge everything about a location on, but I can tell you my wife does. My wife comes out of the restroom and tells me how great it was, and I thought it was weird until I started working here, and now I get it. That’s one of her yardsticks. If the restroom is clean, if the kitchen’s clean, if everything’s really clean, then everything is going to be OK.

Powills: Does that lack of awareness create a challenge from a franchise sales standpoint?

Hart: I had that call today, in fact, and the question was, “How do we compete with janitorial?” We’d talked to this guy a few times and explained these things, but there’s part of your brain that sometimes just won’t click. Brilliant guy, super smart guy, and it just didn’t quite click.

The way we ended up explaining it to him was, “How do you sell against them? How would you overcome these objections?” Instead of just talking about what we did, we let him pitch out his hypotheticals and tell us what we do differently and how it compares.

There is a point where you realize there is a difference between spraying Lysol on something and wiping it off and literally taking 130-degree water in a power washer and spraying down the walls and the floor. It’s a whole different kind of scenario.

I think our customers have a gap we have to fill, and sometimes our franchisees aren’t quite sure what those differences are. But they get it.

Powills: Do the financials help validate the opportunity even if the concept takes a little more explanation?

Hart: I think the better we get at explaining our brand, the upside of this business is enormous. As I said, it’s a fragmented market, and our Venn diagram covers a lot of different things that we can do for these different places.

But the problem we have to overcome — and I’ll use an analogy — my wife is in HR, and people call her all the time to sell her solutions, and she swears she does not have a problem. That’s exactly what we do. We are contacting people every day, and they swear their bathrooms are clean. We then have to demonstrate to them — all the way up to “I’ll clean it for you once and let you see what comes out of it if you don’t believe what we’re saying” — that there may be a problem they’re not even aware of.

The scary part for our clients is not everybody has that button in the bathroom. Not everybody has a buzzer to press when things aren’t clean. They just don’t ever come back.

Powills: What was COVID like for the business?

Hart: It’s crazy to say that COVID was good for us, but absolutely, you’re right. Right business for the wrong time for the entire world. We were already doing what we’re covering, and part of our service is that it’s sticky. It stays on the surface, so when we sanitize, we cover it with chemicals that repel germs for a week to nine days. Not only does it help immediately, but it continues to do so.

We are also lucky enough to be able to vaporize and clean an entire room of germs. We were right place, right time. If there was any mistake we made, it’s that we may have gotten overly focused on what we could do for COVID rather than on what we could continue to do afterward. We have to remind people of those things, too, because nobody knew about COVID until there was COVID, and we can stop anything that’s coming that way, at least so far.

That’s another one of those “I didn’t know I had a problem” problems, and it’s our job to help them figure that out.

Powills: How broad is the opportunity beyond the most obvious customer categories?

Hart: Hotels would be a fantastic example of where we could do a lot of good work. What we tend to do with locations like that is it’s not as frequent. Maybe it’s once a month. Maybe it’s once a quarter, when we come in and get the whole place cleaned because they clean to a higher standard than most folks do.

I hope there’s no reason like COVID to ever have to do that again, but I also hope that we’re a little part of making sure that doesn’t happen again.

Powills: What does winning look like for Enviro-Master this year?

Hart: Winning for this year is that we are looking to expand with all those bright franchisees that we talked about. We’ve got the new leadership team in place. It’s a really exciting time to be at Enviro-Master in that leadership is strong, direction is strong, market is strong and opportunity is strong. All the ingredients are there. We’ve just got to get the franchisees in the loop and make it happen.

It’s a great opportunity for somebody who doesn’t mind something that’s not difficult, but it’s hard work. If you’re a leader and you’re into sales and you can go out and be known, loved and trusted by your community, it’s a great opportunity. I think that’s who we’re looking for.

Watch the full webinar here.