This section exists so the book does not rest on numbers nobody can check. Where a claim is the company's own figure, it says so. Where it is my recollection, it says that too.
Entrepreneur, Fastest-Growing Franchises. Number one in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The 2023, 2024 and 2026 rankings are confirmed on entrepreneur.com, including the company's own directory entry, which now lists it under the StratusClean name. The 2025 ranking is not on any Entrepreneur page I could find. It comes from the International Franchise Association, 14 March 2025, reporting the award for a third consecutive year, and from the company. The description of the 2026 placement as a first for the list is the company's, announced 26 March 2026, and not something Entrepreneur states.
Pew Research Center, on clicks when an AI summary appears. Published 22 July 2025, from browsing data collected in March 2025 from 900 US adults who agreed to share their activity. Google users clicked a result on 8 percent of visits where an AI summary appeared, against 15 percent where one did not. This is the figure in the left panel of the chart opening Part Six, and it is quoted again in The System Was Moving in Part Three. It is the only external measurement in this book that is not mine, and it is one study rather than a body of evidence. pewresearch.org.
Google star rating, 3.4 to 4.7. Internal company data, referring to the average Google star rating across the franchise system. It is a Google rating and nothing else. It has been described elsewhere as a visibility or AI score and that was wrong both times.
Stratus system revenue, roughly doubled over four years. Internal company data, and the chart says so on its face. The label says system rather than StratusClean deliberately: the StratusClean name went live in April 2026 and the growth belongs to the four-year transformation period that preceded it, which The Proof explains at length.
Roughly a hundred locations. Approximate, and it moved during the period described, because franchise systems add and lose locations continuously.
The Google Business Profile suspensions. My first-hand account of what happened while I was responsible for it, including the part where the agency that replaced ours could not solve it either.
Just Stop and Think, at least 2,644,962 views. Counted by hand from the public view totals on twelve uploads across four languages on 2 August 2026. It is a floor rather than a total: two further copies were found and left out rather than estimated, and view counts keep moving, so the figure was true on the day it was read. The 61 percent on a single supporter upload comes from the same count. I describe that copy as outside the official channel rather than as unauthorized, because nobody ever adjudicated its legal status.
Trust-Based Marketing. Not my term and not my idea. It is associated with Glen Urban at MIT Sloan and has an established body of work behind it. Part Two is the story of finding that out. Trust First, as I use it, is a claim about sequence rather than a claim on his work, and I am not claiming to have coined the words either.
The Marketing Helix. My behavioral model, defined in full elsewhere. I have deliberately kept its vocabulary out of this book except where a term genuinely helps, because a short book stuffed with proprietary terminology is a brochure with page numbers.
The redirect incident in Part Six. My own systems, my own instruction, my own property, and no third party involved. The positions quoted are from my own analytics rather than a public source.
The Google refund, over sixty thousand dollars. My first-hand account and nothing else. No documentation exists and I say so in the chapter and again in The Proof rather than letting the number stand unqualified. Not a claim about broad match generally, and Google never characterized the payment.
Dates. The rebrand was announced at the 2025 annual meeting and StratusClean went live in April 2026. Several other dates in my own history are approximate and I have left them approximate rather than guessing at precision I do not have. Where I could not confirm a year, I have not given one. The description of the discovery environment in The System Was Moving is my own account of what changed around the company over that period. It is observation rather than measurement, and the only number attached to it is the Pew figure above.