Sandy Ferrera:

If you asked me 10 years ago what my vision was it would be very different from today. I probably was a bit unrealistic. Some of the visions are still the same. Yes, I want to be the top notch, front runner, innovator in property management. All County in my heart and soul I believe is the best and I want to continue to be the best, I want to be the one who really sets the pace. When we launched in 2009 – actually we launched in 2008 but in 2009 we awarded our first franchise location – I think we thought it was going to be far easier. I don’t think we knew how much support we were going to have to give of ourselves. If you had asked me back then, 500 franchise locations was the magic number and I would be retired in five years. Well, I’m not retired, I’m still in the business every day and I love it and I wouldn’t change it.

But this is a business that has a lot of working parts and I think that’s what makes it so fascinating for individuals, because it’s not the same day twice. Although we repeat the cycle every 30 days, you get really good at it, it’s not the same day twice and you’re dealing with all types of individuals so it makes it interesting. But there is a lot of support that goes to property management. So I think that back then, yeah, maybe you could call it cocky although we didn’t intend to be. We thought it was going to be far easier.

I’ve been very fortunate with surrounded ourselves with incredible individuals who had a lot of knowledge about franchising in general that helped us build the foundation. We listened to what they had to say, knowing that we couldn’t go it alone, and some of those individuals that helped us franchise all the way back in 2008 are still with us today. So that’s pretty phenomenal. And so I attribute the success that we have had to those people that helped us get there.

And I think that when we look at the future, I’m very excited, we’ve got a lot of amazing things happening. The industry has changed dramatically in the last five years. I mean forget the last 28 years, the last five years the growth has changed so much in how we do the business and technology helps to drive us and we really are this professional organization with lots of tools at our fingertips that we never had before. So the mom and pops, they’re gone. It makes the future look really exciting.