Business is a family affair at Signal of Greenville-Spartanburg. Andrew Crisp, owner, and his twin brother, Adam, the Director of Operations have seen exceptional success in their community. In 2020, Andrew, a former Sheriff's Deputy, launched his franchise and quickly realized being proactive was going to be the best way to find success in his market.
“Like any franchise owner at the very beginning,” he said, “your head is spinning. I’ve got to do this and this and the sales cycle says I need to go after apartments, so we went after 50 or 100 apartments but only got two yeses. After that, we were like okay, we really need to figure this out. What are we able to go and get outside of apartments? That really broke our entire franchise open.”
Andrew took a meeting with an assistant superintendent of an area school district about working football games, a service the franchise hadn’t tackled yet.
“We always give a yes, absolutely, we can do that,” said Andrew, “They asked for six people for the game, and I was like six? At the time we had one employee, one vehicle, only two contracts. But I said yes, so we just had to start pulling everything together. I called family and friends and said, ‘This is going to be big for us.’ We showed up that night and rocked it out.”
The school district asked for Andrew’s franchise to work the game again the next week, then for the rest of the season. Andrew started hiring more staff and the rest is history.
“It just snowballed,” he said, “We started training our staff on metal detectors and wands for the football games, then brought those into the schools. We came with the metal detectors and started staffing for the schools. But it all began with a yes.”
In the end, Andrew’s franchise began contracts at elementary schools, middle schools, a freshman academy and the local high school. In November 2022, the franchise was also awarded a contract at Clemson University, putting Signal’s presence in schools at every level in the area. The team’s dedication to their community and incredible growth over the last year are just two of the reasons Signal of Greenville-Spartanburg is Signal’s Franchise of the Month for March 2023.
Andrew, who’s lived in this community for years, said that while relationships may help you get to the table, sustaining his success has been a matter of hard work and commitment to his community.
“The relationships and the partnerships that you nurture and gather through the years, they’re only one piece of the pie. If you don’t actually deliver and uphold what you say you will do, then those relationships don’t mean anything.”
At the heart of the Crisp’s franchise is the people. As much as they’ve grown, Andrew said they’ve never lost that small-town feel.
“We have people beating down the door to come in, not to leave,” Andrew said, “and that’s culture. That’s the environment that our executive staff has created. We want that small-town feel even though we’re getting big-time contracts. We want everyone to know that they can contact us, they can always call us. We pay a good living wage, but you don’t have to pay an outrageous amount to get your people to stick around. You just have to care about them.”
The small-town family feel doesn’t stop with the employees. Andrew and his team make sure to maintain and grow the relationships they’ve built in the community.
“We’re here to make a difference,” he said, “to give back to our community and share our blessings. The money is nice but that’s not what we’re in it for. If you’re in it for that you won’t be able to sustain your success. No amount of money will be enough, you’ll be chasing your tail. But if you do it for the right reasons because you want to give back to your community, you want to show your kids how a business is supposed to be run, how to treat people, you’ll gain the world.”