Oxi Fresh Carpet Cleaning Featured in Entrepreneur

DENVER­—September 16, 2019—Jonathan Barnett, owner of Oxi Fresh Carpet Cleaning, was featured in the September 2019 issue of Entrepreneur. The article, “How to Find Your Passion (If Your Passion Isn’t Your Product!)” by Hayden Field, tells the story of how Barnett launched his company at age 26 in order to fund the thing he was really passionate about: international outreach through basketball. Along with his company, Barnett created Crossover International, an organization that sent basketball players to other countries to connect with young people and talk about the Bible while playing ball. While Crossover might have been his true passion in the beginning, Barnett worked hard to set himself apart in the carpet cleaning industry, and his innovations helped grow his business to nearly 400 franchise locations around the country.

According to the article, Barnett’s most significant innovation was a new cleaning system that uses just two gallons of water per home and dries in one hour, which he developed with the help of chemists. That new cleaning system ushered in the opportunity to franchise, and business grew from there. Although Crossover is no longer active, many of the players became Barnett’s first franchisees, and this led him to discover a new passion: supporting his owners.

One way Barnett supports his franchise owners is through a system of protected territories where each franchisee is assigned to 110,000 households. “The fact that our franchisees aren’t competing for the same customers makes them want to share what’s working, and that gives us a huge advantage at our annual conference,” Barnett explained to Entrepreneur. “We put the most successful franchisees onstage to talk about what they’re doing, and I get to listen and learn from them. It’s like a big family, and this model is one reason we’re growing so fast.”

Another strategy Barnett has put into place is a centralized call center that fields customer calls for all his franchises across the company. According to the article, this prevents owners from having to stop and answer their own calls, which allows them to focus on the customer and the cleaning at hand. “Our call center is at the heart of the Oxi Fresh business: We answer the phones for all our franchisees across the country so they can prioritize working on their businesses,” Barnett said.

Barnett may not be passionate about carpet cleaning specifically, and he may have had different goals when he first started out, but he found his passion in running a successful business and in supporting franchise owners as they build their own successful businesses and discover their own passions.