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Finance leaders who remain skeptical of the prospects for economic recovery inside the 2020 calendar year may want to consult LYNX Franchising CFO Michael Borreca.
“I don’t think that it’s going to take us to 2021 to get back to March sales levels,” says Borreca, who doesn’t hesitate to credit three nontraditional metrics for influencing his current thinking on the subject.
The first is the volume of disinfectant currently being purchased by franchisees of JAN-PRO—owned by LYNX—which boasts of being the largest commercial cleaning franchiser in the country, with over 8,000 small business owners.
“The more our franchise network is buying disinfectants, the more this means that more businesses are starting to reopen. They are doing a deep clean ahead of time, and then customers are being welcomed in,” says Borreca, who counts the lengthening commuting times surrounding LYNX’s hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, as yet another unconventional metric pointing now toward a recovery.
The third metric influencing Borreca’s upbeat economic outlook is the growing digital sales leads for Intelligent Office, a virtual office business that LYNX acquired early last year. In addition to its à la carte virtual office assistant services, Intelligent Office also provides businesses access to furnished office spaces and meeting rooms. “Folks are looking for private space where they can go to get out of the house and work, but ours is not an open coworking environment,” explains Borreca, who says that as leases expire, the pandemic is already leading many companies to rethink how they use and pay for space. – Jack Sweeney
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Guest: Michael Borrecca
Company: LYNX Franchising
Connect: www. lynxfranchising.com
Headquarters: Alpharetta, GA
CFOTL: What are some of the opportunities that you see taking shape in this new environment?
Borreca: I’m in a very enviable situation in that I have brands such as JAN-PRO and Intelligent Office that all companies of any size can really benefit from. My number one goal is taking advantage of this returning market and adding what maybe would have been, pre-COVID, special services or special items as recurring revenue solutions for our end customers and our businesses. Number two: We acquired Intelligent Office as part of building the LYNX Franchising concept, so we’ll be continuing down the M&A front and looking for the right brands to keep adding to and building the LYNX Franchising enterprise. We’ll be looking for brands that fit our culture and brands that fit our other brands for cross-selling and added synergies. Last, we’ll be trying to capture new customers who previously would have been dismissive of our offerings prior to COVID. I think that historically we’ve had some customers, such as state governments, who wouldn’t disinfect their subway cars or buses on a daily basis. Now they are interested in doing this, and we can do it at a very cost-effective price.
On the Intelligent Office side, we had historically gone after smaller businesses and entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, but I think that there are midtier companies that are similar in size to LYNX Franchising who can take advantage of our offering from the Intelligent Office side and not have to hire W-2 employees to be customer service representatives or executive admin assistants. We can do this for them at a fraction of the cost and provide flexibility by only working on what they want us to work on. I think that there are a lot of opportunities for us in this marketplace, and I’m excited by it. jb
