Office Pride founder Todd Hopkins said Monday that his vision is more about the journey than the destination.
“It’s about how we do things along the way rather than where we end up,” said the longtime entrepreneur and businessman who created the Florida-based company in 1992 that now offers its commercial cleaning services through 155 franchises in 26 states.
Hopkins, in a telephone interview in advance of speaking at the Chattanooga Area Leadership Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday, said true success is being the person God created him to be and doing what God created him to do.
“You only live life once,” he said. “It seems like it makes sense … that we do what we were created to do.”
Hopkins, 57, who said Office Pride likely will hit between $90 million to $100 million in revenues this year, added that he has been an entrepreneur since he was a youngster growing up in West Tennessee.
“Since I was a kid, I always wanted to be successful,” he said. “When I came to know God and had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, God helped me define what success was like.”
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His vision, he said, is to have a positive impact, perpetuate growth, eliminate vulnerabilities and glorify God.
Hopkins last year gave up the chief executive job at Office Pride and became chief visionary officer at the company he started from a college research paper at Butler University, where he obtained his MBA after earning a bachelor’s degree in management from the University of Memphis.
He said he originally devised a company organizational plan that was “a one-man show” in which his name occupied all the boxes.
“My goal was to replace myself in each of those boxes,” the businessman said, eventually doing so as CEO last year. “We were greatly blessed. I give God the credit. Our focus has been to honor and glorify God with the business.”
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Hopkins said it was time to invest in the future of the Office Pride brand and grow the team at the business that employs 6,000 people through its franchises.
“I’m always trying to think about what’s going to happen,” he said. “I didn’t chase short-term profits or revenues. The focus is on serving customers well and doing what we said we’d do and train people well.”
Strategically, Hopkins said, the company tried not “to get in front of ourselves, to have good steady growth. We didn’t chase carrots.”
When the pandemic struck in 2020, he said, Office Pride became part of the solution.
“We were sending videos to our people on how we interpreted what the CDC was saying,” Hopkins said, referring to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We were made for such a time as this. We saw everybody step up. We continued to grow.”
He said the company’s revenues expanded about 14% in 2020 over the prior year.
Last year, a couple of private equity firms invested in the business, with the idea of potentially having 500 franchises, Hopkins said.
“I wanted to oversee that transition, to help make sure it was done right,” he said. “They’ve let us be us and are providing resources for us to do what needs to be done.”
The prayer breakfast will mark its 44th year Tuesday as Hopkins keynotes the event at the Chattanooga Convention Center.
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T.W Francescon Jr., chairman of the executive committee, said in an email that 1,700 to 1,800 people are signed up to attend.
The first prayer breakfast speaker was Chuck Colson, former special counsel for President Richard Nixon and who later served time in a federal prison camp for a Watergate-related crime.
After his incarceration, Colson started Prison Fellowship, which calls itself the nation’s largest Christian nonprofit serving prisoners, former prisoners and their families.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.