Sandy Ferrera:

I don’t know if it’s country-wide, but on the radio there is this movement of “I love you, man” and what they’re trying to do is to get the people to say, “I love you back.” And I hear it on the morning drive to work and I laugh. I was not a touchy feely person. Now, with my children, I mean they’re my world. But with other individuals I always had a certain bubble around myself. Franchising, you lose that if you’re really wanting to be part of their lives. You have to earn their trust.

I talk about Lori and Dave Theurer who were our first franchisees in Georgia. They were our first franchisee, let alone out of the state. They bought into Scott and myself. I mean let’s face it, back then we didn’t have the tools we have today. We didn’t have the financial resources, we didn’t have the manpower. It was really a personal relationship. We made a commitment much like a marriage and we committed to their success.

And I look back and I think the first time a franchisee told me, “I love you” I was like … I didn’t know what to say, and “I love you back, I love you man.” So we have a very unique relationship with our franchisees, we are a family. You see, I get emotional.

We had the hurricane that came through. And for those of you who know, it was a monster hurricane bearing down on the south. And I think this is a testament to what we’ve build. We had 15 locations that went down, that didn’t have phones, didn’t have power, didn’t have a source of communication. But all of our west coast franchisees were standing by. They, because we were obviously prepared, had all their phones so they were all forwarded to these franchisees. They had lists of property owners, they had lists of vendors, they had lists of all the residents. They were able to those who had power and cell service or whatever get in touch to make sure they were okay. They communicated with the investors, because a lot of our investors are out of state. So they were able to communicate with the investors that weren’t here in Florida what was going on with their properties. And some of them did it for almost 10 days and they never got compensated. They were glad to be a part of things.

And I think that really tells you who we are. It’s amazing. You put this group together and they get along. They tell each other their business secrets, they share their failures. I mean they’ll tell you if they’ve made a mistake so that you don’t go and make the same mistake. And they really do foster an atmosphere of a family.

All right, I got to go fix my makeup because see, you got me emotional. I may have to see that one before we do it.