Jorge Santos: From customer to franchisee
Meet Jorge Santos.
He is a guy of Portuguese descent with a South African soul who made a major career shift after spending many years in the UK. He had been working in the restaurant and nightclub industry for far too long only to know that he didn’t want to be involved in it anymore.
He recently joined Fantastic Services as an Area Development franchisee after being a loyal customer for eight years, and his only regret is that he didn’t make a move earlier. Jorge currently manages several teams providing cleaning services and owns the exclusive rights for Guildford, UK.
“I should have probably made this move (joining Fantastic Services) five years ago, but I’ve been trying to think about what I will do next,” says Jorge.
The challenge
After 30 years in the restaurant industry, Jorge Santos wanted to transition to something less labour intensive, and the coronavirus craze helped him make a move.
“When Covid-19 came along, it made me stop. It made me rethink, refocus, and it has re-energised me. So here I am, at Fantastic Services,” said Jorge when asked what pushed him towards the change.
Jorge always wanted to start his own business, but it seemed like a challenging and even impossible task, considering the required investment in finance and time. On the other hand, joining a franchise would have given him the independence of owning a business but with minimal risk and investment. He had been considering franchising options for quite some time until a fantastic idea struck him.
The strategy
If one of the conditions for starting and eventually running a successful business is knowing the industry inside out, Jorge had unknowingly hit the Jackpot.
Being a Fantastic Services customer himself since 2013, he had always been impressed by the company’s ease of booking and fantastic customer support.
For Jorge, the shift from a customer to Area Development franchisee wasn’t exactly a part of a strategically designed plan but rather a natural sequence of events. Becoming an Area Development franchisee allowed him to bring the Fantastic Services brand into a new area – Guildford, UK, and acquire the exclusive rights to offer professional cleaning services there.
Being a landlord himself, he used Fantastic Services for many years to maintain his properties. As with every business success story, his journey began with a need to be immediately met. Jorge had to react extremely fast when he had some tenants moving out and others moving in the same day. He knew that the only company, which could answer the call in a blink of an eye was Fantastic Services. The carpet cleaner was there within two hours, and it was then that Jorge started seriously considering becoming a franchisee.
Jorge had never thought that he would someday be involved in the home services industry. However, being a customer for so long and the massive demand for home services, especially during Covid-19, made him reconsider.
When asked how he decided to plunge into the home services industry, Jorge replied:
“We all hate cleaning an oven. Nobody enjoys doing the window cleaning because of the smears we leave on, right? So, it makes sense to leave those chores to the people who know how to do them”.
Effectiveness and results
At first, Jorge was drawn by the prospect of becoming a carpet cleaning Working franchisee. Still, he was fast to change his mind after talking to a professional franchise advisor from the company and accepted the challenge to become an Area Development franchisee.
Jorge has a significant expansion plan for his area and is strictly following it, hoping to gain the working franchisees in the region within a year:
“I really feel that the first three Working franchisees might be my biggest challenge, but I’m quite confident that once I get going, we will breed further. I believe our model will be able to produce the results, so although my expansion is a little conservative for year one, I’m investing in the time in setting the standard of attracting the right Working franchisees.”
About Fantastic Services
Fantastic Services is a leading franchise company in the home services industry in the UK.
Founded in 2009, the international company Fantastic Services offers many services in the property management field, including landscaping, gardening, cleaning, waste removal. With a portfolio of over 100 services, provided on three continents – the UK, US and Australia, Fantastic Services is a one-stop-shop for everyone considering franchise opportunities in the property maintenance industry.
There are over 500 in-house marketing, IT, accounting, SEO and customer service experts in the company who take care of every side of the business daily.
