The Glass Guru’s Annual Convention Highlights Speakers, Award Winners and More

The Glass Guru held its annual franchise convention at the Westgate Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, taking the time to honor top-performing franchisees, introduce new initiatives and provide franchisees with a glimpse into what 2019 would hold for the brand.

The franchise convention was held in conjunction with the National Glass Association’s GlassBuild trade show, and it featured presentations by corporate team members. The last franchise convention was held in October of 2016.

The Glass Guru has experienced many changes since then, and the convention was an excellent opportunity to review those changes while providing franchisees with the tools they need to succeed in the new year.

“This was a regrouping convention,” The Glass Guru Director of Operations Sean Young said. “We’ve all been really, really busy at corporate and at the franchise level. We’ve had a lot of reorganization, and now franchisees have a better idea of what that reorganization looks like and what the strategy looks like. We have new technology, national partners and learning resources.”

Company Growth

One of the major talking points at the convention was The Glass Guru’s growth.

Major milestones the company has met since its last convention include system-wide revenue growth from $25.8 million in 2016 to $29.2 million in 2017. Also, the average monthly franchise location revenues grew from $30,132 to $35,245.

The Glass Guru also added 13 new locations, bringing it to 89 active locations in 29 states and three provinces.

New Developments

On top of that growth, Chief Operating Officer Glen Greenfelder gave an overview of new developments and plans in the operations and technology departments. The company has a three-year plan to make changes to legal, accounting, human resources, compliance, trademark/copyright protection and product distribution. The Glass Guru, Greenfelder noted in his presentation, wants to establish the appropriate trade-off between offensive and defensive strategies to help franchisees.

Greenfelder’s presentation also went into The Glass Guru’s 18-month marketing, development and franchise recruiting plans. Major plans include growing and evolving the corporate team, implementing technology initiatives, improving organizational communications and maintaining and establishing national accounts.

The Glass Guru Director of Franchise Business Development Rob Lopez presented “Scaling for Success: The Roadmap to Owner Independence” to franchisees. The presentation focused on challenges and solutions for franchisees and ways they can improve their leadership skills.

Young presented on technology, noting that the company is at a critical juncture in its tech journey. The Glass Guru’s technology goals include further defining and organizing stakeholders and committing to a cohesive suite of interconnected solutions.

“We partnered with a company called LumApps, Google’s intranet provider based in France, to help us build on a G Suite enterprise,” Young said. “Everything is in the cloud. If you have access to email, you have access to everything. We provision and deprovision through G Suite.”

The Glass Guru Vice President of Franchise Development Dave Hull also spoke about profitability and learning management systems. The development department, he said, is changing its focus from training owners and entrusting them with the training of their employees to providing standardized training materials and programs for every employee of The Glass Guru network. The Glass Guru is using a software platform to standardize training, which will provide franchisees with 24/7 access.

Hull also gave a presentation titled “The Cost of Chaos,” which identified the major sources of stress in the glass industry and how those stresses could be alleviated. The focus included improvement in areas such as employee engagement, employee performance, employee retention and operational efficiency.

Awards and Recognition

The convention also took the opportunity to recognize and award key performing franchisees.

The Peak Performers of 2017 included Eric Helus of Colorado Springs, Colorado (who also won the Leadership Award), Dale Anderson of Melbourne, Florida and Ben Smith of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The Rising Star of 2017 was Jay Lund of Temecula, California, and the Rising Star of 2018 was Tom Broe of John’s Creek, Georgia.

The 2018 Break-Out award went to Don Dawson of Redmond, Washington, and the 2017 Model Store award went to Tom Rowland of Gurnee, Illinois.

The Glass Guru will hold its 2nd Annual Owner Symposium in Atlanta, Georgia between September 17-19 of 2019.