The Franchise Insiders "Inside Scoop" Podcast
Jack and Jill Johnson are two of the most experienced franchise experts in the industry, and their podcast The Inside Scoop is a must-listen for anyone considering investing in a franchise. Here are five reasons why:1. Jack and Jill have over 20 years of experience in the franchise industry. 2. They sell franchises, so they know which ones are actually making money. 3. They're not afraid to tell it like it is - you won't find any boring interviews on this podcast. 4. Every episode is jam-packed with financials and data that you can use to make an informed decision about which franchise is right for you. 5. Their insights and observations about the franchise industry are incredibly valuable - you won't find anything else like it out there. If you're thinking about investing in a franchise, make sure to add The Inside Scoop podcast to your must-listen list.
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The Franchise Insiders "Inside Scoop" Podcast
Jeff Dudan on Unlocking Growth and Wealth Through Home Services Franchising
Franchising legend Jeff Dudan joins us to share his incredible journey from a young athlete in Chicago to becoming a powerhouse in the franchising world.
Discover how Jeff's entrepreneurial spirit was sparked during his college years at Appalachian State University and how it led him from a humble painting business to the founding of AdvantaClean.
Jeff's story is one of focus, change, and balancing business with family life. He shares invaluable insights on aligning personal values with business goals, offering lessons that are essential for both aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs.
As a successful franchisor, Jeff draws fascinating parallels between coaching youth sports and building a thriving business. He reveals how the lessons learned from the field, such as conflict management and teamwork, are directly applicable to franchising. Jeff also emphasizes the vast opportunities within the franchising sector, highlighting innovative ventures like Window Hero and Top Rail Fence, and exploring financial considerations crucial for franchise owners. These insights underscore the potential for personal and professional growth through franchising, providing a rich tapestry of experiences for those eager to explore this dynamic model.
Discover the power of franchising as a vehicle for wealth creation and personal development. Jeff's conversation touches on the economic advantages of franchising, showcasing how it can serve both seasoned investors and newcomers alike. He highlights the importance of active engagement in your business journey vs a passive income stream. With stories of successful franchise owners, Jeff underscores the importance of aligning business brands with personal values to ensure sustainable growth.
Jeff's insights offer a compelling look into the realities and benefits of the franchising world.
Text: 305-710-0050
Hi everyone. Welcome back to the we Bought a Franchise podcast. I'm Jack Johnson.
Speaker 2:I'm Jill Johnson.
Speaker 1:And we are here today with a franchising legend. His name is Jeff Duden. He is the CEO of Homefront Brands, Jeff. Welcome to the show, Jack.
Speaker 3:if I was a legend. You wouldn't have to say my name, they would already know who I am. I really, really appreciate it. Really excited. You know we worked together. We were we were both presenting at a conference last summer and I really appreciated the things that you shared during your talk. It was great.
Speaker 1:Jeff, let's be clear. I opened up for you, you were the main act, well, and the same is true Like your presentation was great and what I remember from it was that all the equipment like went south on you and you're like you know what, don't sweat it. And you took everything off and you went out to the audience and you've interacted with people and look, I mean, you've been in this franchising world now for 25 some years. You've got an incredible story. I'd love it if maybe you could start us off and just tell us what got you going into the realm of business ownership and let's take it from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. You know, I had forgotten about that, though. Like we're at Disney, right. So it's the magic of Disney, where everything works but nothing worked. The presentation didn't work, it all went down and I and I you know you got 200 people or whatever staring at you and it's just like, well, let's just, let's just go with it.
Speaker 3:So quick background. I grew up in Chicago. I was an athlete, primarily basketball, came to football late my junior and senior year. I wanted to chase it. I thought it was the best opportunity for me. So I chased it up to a university in northern Iowa for a year, dropped back to a junior college in Chicago, got a scholarship out to Appalachian State University, located in Western North Carolina on top of a beautiful mountain. Hurricane Helene has really impacted that area, so we're working tirelessly to support those people up there. It's really rough right now, sitting here in November of 24. But, yeah so.
Speaker 3:But when I showed up there I had a football scholarship, so that takes care of you during the school year, but I couldn't survive during the summer. I didn't have any resources. But I had worked the trades in Chicago and one of the things I had done was I had worked for a painting contractor. So my roommate had a truck and I knew how to paint so we got a ladder and it's a very low barrier to entry business. We got a ladder and it's a very low barrier to entry business and we started the painting business where, started doing some houses for people in the football office but ultimately met the property managers who were running all the student housing apartments. They struggled to get all their apartments painted. They asked us if we could put a crew together. So the next summer, over about a three and a half week period two weeks in May and a week and a half going into August, the end of July we had put together a crew of athletes that were taking classes over the summer. So basketball players cutting in the ceilings without a ladder was great, wrestlers on the base moldings and then football players rolling the walls and we would paint 15 to 20 apartments in a day and my partner and I split about $76,000 in that three and a half weeks and that was $1990, man, so that was twice as much as I could have made as a football coach and so that kind of got me the bug there.
Speaker 3:And then this Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida and a buddy called me and said we need help down here. It was 1992. I went down there, cut my teeth in the insurance restoration business for about 18 months and then moved up to Central Florida to start at Vantaclean, which I would sell some 24 years and 11 months later with 240 locations and 37 states. So started that in 94, 95, moved up to race, start a family and get married in the Carolinas with our second location, became a very sophisticated government contractor, big box contractor, and then also opened up local offices doing things like mold remediation, emergency water damage, those types of things, and then bought out my last partner in 04, 05, responded to Katrina and I was on my way back from there and I realized that history was repeating itself. I was never home.
Speaker 3:So I decided at this inflection point which, by the way, inflection points have three things. Number one they always involve people. You don't always know them when you're in, but they always involve people people that you are responsible for, people you care about, people you want to do something with or sometimes people that you want to get away from. The second thing is there's an adventure or an opportunity at hand and then there's a risk of loss, meaning you've got to give something up to get something better, even if it's you sometimes have to give something up to get just the opportunity for a better life or a better future or a better opportunity. And what I realized driving through Atlanta in the middle of the night that I was missing my kids growing up. And the reason I was driving in the middle of the night was because I was missing my son's first football season.
Speaker 3:So I decided in that moment to sell all of our company stores under a franchise model, which I had tried to get going, but I had not been able to because of the lack of focus of our other business. And any time you have a lack of focus, it will always lead to a lack of greatness, and anytime you have a lack of focus, it will always lead to a lack of greatness. So I sold our company stores under the franchise model in 2006, 2008, 2009,. Launched to the marketplace with AdvantiClean as a franchise offering, and I sold the business January 1st 2019, with 240 locations and it was great and from there got a little more broad across franchising and advisory and investing and consulting capacity.
Speaker 3:And then, about three years ago, my son and my brother and I decided to launch this concept of home front brands. Really, if we were going to do it again and I'm purpose driven so I had to have a reason to do this. And as I was looking across the country and seeing the things that were going on, I just realized that entrepreneurship on Main Street USA, helping families with financial security and economic freedom, was one of the three things that we cared greatly about. The second thing is children and children's literacy. I coached over 30 seasons of my kids sports when I came off the road.
Speaker 3:And then the last thing is transitioning veterans. We're about 60% of where we need to be with our military forces. Patriotism is down from 70% to 30%. So I said you know, I can make an impact in these things by building a great business and helping people, aligning people that are up to something and going somewhere and giving them an opportunity with great businesses to create something meaningful and to impact all of those things. There's been at least one quarter where I think we're the fastest growing franchise platform in North America. We've over a 15-month period, we put about 180 new owners across five businesses and we're launching number six here this quarter and number seven second quarter next year and we have incredible franchise owners. You've helped us so much in finding great people that can join the journey and align with us in building home front brands and all the great brands that we have, so I'm very thankful to be here and to personally get to tell you both. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you're. You're more than welcome, thank you. We have a client who recently, you all awarded a top rail franchise to top rail fencing and uh, to my understanding, he's off to a very nice start. In fact, he added a second unit, um and uh, he's. I mean, from what I understand, he's, uh, he's very happy. So thank you for taking care of him. And also compliments to you. I think it's you that we sound the same. Yeah, I know People always make that mistake.
Speaker 3:Well, we have three great kids, and you know, my wife, we like to kid that. You know, when you multiply two negative numbers together, you can get positives, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, look, you know, I mean, as we look at this journey and I go back to what you said at the beginning of the podcast, when we talk about the event that we were at at FranServe, and when all the equipment goes south and you're faced with a moment right, and I feel like as business owners, we're faced with those moments almost every single day. And it's one of the things that I think Jill and I have come to realize. It used to be when we started as franchise consultants. It was let us help you find the perfect franchise. Right and perfect doesn't exist, but as we've gone along, it's really become more of let us help you identify the right franchise, but more than that, let us help you understand what you're in for.
Speaker 1:And you're going to think I'm crazy, but what I say to people is, six months from opening, you're going to want to quit. You're going to want to quit. It's going to be hard. You're going to still be investing in the business. And they're like why are you saying this to me? Why would you ever say this? And I'm like, because I'd much rather we stop now. Then you come to me in six months and say I'm out of money. I'm scared out of my mind. I'm getting divorced. If we can prepare people so by the time we send them to you guys, that they know what they're in for, that they know they're in for a season of investing in themselves and investing in businesses we can prepare them to be better entrepreneurs. And that's, jeff. Frankly, that's why we started this podcast. Jill and I wanted to share our journey of building our own pinks franchise and, you know, letting people ride shotgun with our ups and downs.
Speaker 3:I can't tell you how much I appreciate that and we are so aligned in that I mean it is, giving people a realistic expectation about what business ownership really is is the very best way to steal their resolve and to get them, you know, get them girded. And I just walked out of two hours and 15 minutes of training. I do our first two hours and 15 minutes of training because I want them first and I want to give them the expectation and I want to give them the tools and I want to give them the perspective about what this is really going to be and then why they should be fearless in doing it. That you know, gun to their head they could do twice as much in half the time that there's going to be some change management that they're going to have to do. But ultimately, you know, if they stay the course and they stay in the game, that this is a game that they can win. But it's going to be up to them to really to execute on the model that's been given to them and everybody's going to approach it a little bit differently and sometimes the more experienced people are in corporate America, the more things they have to change to be an entrepreneur because you've got these hard-coded business systems and beliefs that you have. So but I love it. I mean, I'm a coach at heart.
Speaker 3:When I came off the road and you know we decided to pursue franchising, I was able to coach 30 seasons of my kids sports, which you know is really meaningful for me, and it's the same. And, by the way, I did that while I was building AdvantiClean as a franchise system, because it was the same messages. How do you get a group, how do you understand that, like, there's only one football and not everybody can have it? How do you get people to play fast and loose and happy? How do you get people to align upon a set of values or a set of principles, or a mutual understanding as to, like, how we're going to resolve conflicts? I mean all of these things, the things that you would work with a 10, 11, 12 year old group of people over a four month season that lead them to success, is the same thing that you would lead a business owner to the first four months of their business, introducing their business to the marketplace. It's just, it's the greatest place I believe I get to operate at, the greatest place, you know, for me anyway in getting to work with all of these franchise owners. You know in that and again it's you know, and then business is full contact and you get out there in the real world and now it's adult stuff, right, it's it's contracts and it's it's employees and it's all of these types of things.
Speaker 3:But, man, if you have the right view and you understand that, like, none of this is fatal, you know, the only thing you're going to have if you don't do it is regret, and the only thing that's going to happen to you is you're going to learn faster from all the experiences and the mistakes and the road rash and the scabs, and you're going to become resilient. You're going to become better than you ever were before and you can take that in a franchise model which are relatively low cost to get in and also an opportunity to transition out. You build a great business for three to five years and then you take everything you've learned. You take what you made along the way and anything that you walk out the door with which, if you do a good job, uh, and then, and then you, you go on to your next adventure as a, as a better operator, a better person, an entrepreneur with, with perspectives you would have never had. I mean, to me that's an exciting opportunity. Agreed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talk about every day how what we're going through is such a learning opportunity for just everything the good, the bad, the ugly. You know everything. We can take something away from every piece of it, and that just ultimately makes us better human beings. You know business people. It's just. And, again, I think what you guys are talking about is this preparation. You know the telling. Whether it's your 11 year olds or your new franchise owner, you know what to expect and getting them where.
Speaker 2:There's something comforting in that too and that's one of the reasons people go with franchising is to have a little bit of that support and that background and to kind of hear that you're not alone. You know this is going to happen within your first, you know, six to 18 months. You know it just kind of gets you out of that hole and saying, okay, we expected this, we know this is happening. So you know it's so important to do that, and I just don't think a lot of people fully understand that. So I love that you do that. I'm, you know, really happy that we do that with our clients. Um, I just think it's something for people to really, you know, latch on to and apply in different parts of you know their business and even their lives.
Speaker 1:It's a great, you know. I mean, of course, all of us are in business to to make money. We want to build something, we want to build a legacy, we want it to be successful and be profitable, but it is um, it's great for personal growth, um, it really is. You know, learning to lead a team, to have urgency, to drive sales, to work with different personalities, it's, it's again it's. It's a whole. It's just a whole other world that opens up.
Speaker 1:But I think to your point, I think having the right mentorship, having the right support you know you talk about, you know, growing up in Chicago, I've been watching a lot of film on the Chicago Bears this week and they've got issues with their quarterback and with their coaching, and really the coaching has put that quarterback in a really bad position.
Speaker 1:You look at the receivers they're not open right, the route concepts are not good, the offensive line is not good, the team hasn't put things together the right way, and to me that is an example of a bad franchise that has not done the right things to help its players. And that too can happen if people choose the wrong franchise that doesn't have all the right support and tools to help them go next level. So I mean again with that. I'd love to just transition, jeff, and talk a little bit about some of your other brands, the brands under the Homefront umbrella. And I do have an interesting anecdote for you. We were working a project with our pinks franchise that was a little too tall for us. Our tallest ladder couldn't get up there, so I actually called your local window hero and said hey, do you guys have your drone?
Speaker 1:Because can we, can we do a deal where we subcontract with you? And I guess the drone was it wasn't yet, he hadn't yet gotten it. But just, I think that's a great story for people to know that just because we might have competing brands, franchising is still a good fraternity, sorority, where we do all help each other. So anyways, I'll kick it over to you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. The franchise you refer to is Window Hero. So it is a exterior house washing, gutter guard, gutter cleaning and also window cleaning business. And that was when we acquired the business. It's a 2006 vintage business with a great founder and he had about 13 locations. And we've augmented that business with really moving it assertively into the commercial space through the use of drones. We have an exclusive with Lucid Bots, who is a drone manufacturer, and these things are great and the franchise owners are taking delivery of their drones kind of on a group-by-group basis for the old people, but the new people all start with one of the commercial drones in place. Then we've also put into place security film and window tint. So commercial buildings.
Speaker 3:We just did an entire school brand new school for Melissa Gibbs, who's Joe Gibbs' granddaughter-in-law or daughter-in-law, and you know she has turned a huge church, like a 70,000 square foot church, into a school, a trade school, and they wanted security film as one of their fundraisers. So all of our franchise owners came in from all over the region and for no charge at that school we installed security film and of course we gave them a little freshen up on the outside with the drones while we were there as well. So that's a great business. Lots of recurring revenue. About 76% of the clients are recurring, so it's a recurring revenue business. Year after year. You just get them on the schedule and as you build your book of business, yeah, I mean just to jump in on you there.
Speaker 1:I mean I'll agree, you know, being on the window cleaning business ourselves, it's a ton of recurring business thing and I think I was naive to this, and it's a champagne problem.
Speaker 1:But one thing all business owners, franchise owners, need to be prepared for, when you have at least 50% commercial, is that our accounts receivable on some of these bigger jobs sometimes can be four to six weeks.
Speaker 1:And so, again, this is a conversation Like I had someone call me the other day and say, hey, I want to do a pinks franchise and after I pay my franchise fee, I've got, you know, 30 grand. I'm like dude, no, that's not enough, because you need to be able to see yourself, you know, through there's going to be periods where, sure, you've got enough cash, the residential clients pay immediately, but the bigger commercial jobs, like we just had, um, a lot, I mean we've got we just got the checks in today from a ton of just receivables that we were waiting for. So again, for those of you that are thinking about this type of business, window hero is excellent, um, but just remember, anytime you've got heavy commercial, you or you are going to have longer term ar and so you want to make sure you just have the cash to prepare you for it. Okay, jeff, back to you, yeah 100%.
Speaker 3:And then you also mentioned that you play somebody with Top Rail Fence, which is residential, commercial, agricultural fencing business, subcontractor model. So it is employee light, it's a sales game. I mean you're running sales appointments every day. You're selling fences, you're ordering the materials, you know, using the technologies that we've made available to the franchise owners to order the materials and to run the business. It's been generally quick to revenue. You know, in terms of, you know the ability to find customers and to drive leads and to find customers into the marketplace. So you know, and it's a, but you know it's a contracting business, Right, so it's on a project by project basis. You're selling projects, you're having projects done, versus kind of the window hero business where a lot of it's recurring and you're just going back to the same thing. It is a lighter staffing model but again, very reasonable investments on these businesses. I mean they're they're, they're so affordable to get into these service type businesses. I just it's a great place to be.
Speaker 3:And then we have temporary wall systems, which is kind of first of its kind. It is a rentable, high-end containment systems that you might see in airports or hospitals, anywhere that there's a construction site. And we've recently worked with our manufacturing partner to roll out a brand new product which has different features set to it, which expanded our marketplace into many, many new market segments. So it's a lower cost product. It doesn't meet some of the requirements that you need to have in a hospital or an airport or things like that. So we're very agile in terms of that. We've got great alignment with our manufacturing partner. They actually operate 17 temp walls in Canada for us, so company I've worked with almost 30 years. They're a family business. We used to buy our restoration equipment from them, so very, very tight connection with them over decades. Family business, we're a family business, so it just gets along well there and you know that that's a business. That is is fascinating in the way that our franchise owners have been able to really build a market and get into a market and get sharp elbows and get in there and really introduce this product to the marketplace. So we're very excited the way that that brand is rolling out.
Speaker 3:Very sophisticated owners across our whole franchise system Unusually high sophistication, high net worth franchise owners. I think when people come into Homefront Brands and they see the technology, they see the leadership team and then they see how carefully we've picked these brands with certain criteria so that they can build something meaningful inside of these brands. There's lots of great brands out there but they don't all meet the revenue requirements that a sophisticated owner is going to be interested in. So we've been very prescriptive about the inventory, and temporary walls certainly meets that criteria.
Speaker 3:Designery is our retail location kitchen, bath and closet concept, Teledesign functionality flat-packed we assemble through a manufacturing plant and ship the jobs directly to the job site. So it's low inventory model, low staffing model. Does have a retail, very Apple Store-type, little retail location design center, but they only need to come in once and then we have tele design functionality to continue the project with them online. So again, very lean, very slick, very the. You know we one of our mantras is start well and go well. So what we've done is we've moved all of the revenue generation activities even before training so that people are even trading business or winning contracts before they even come to training. And we've done the things to enable that. Because when have you ever been involved with something that didn't start well, that went well?
Speaker 1:Never so starting well matters. Well, you know. I mean, look, first of all, here's the thing I'm amazed about, and it's really come about in the last two years. I'd say fencing is a great business. Fencing numbers are just blow my mind. They really could. For what? I just didn't know that the need was there. I honestly didn't. And you never built it. You're right, Actually, no, we haven't. No, we've never built it. You're right, actually, no, we haven't. No, we've never built. I would know the first thing about building a fence, but but but that's you wouldn't do it I would call top rail, but I'm amazed what a great business it is.
Speaker 1:And the same is true like window washing. I'll never forget when we invested in pinks and we're having dinner before we open. I'm like, oh shoot, you know, we've never actually paid anyone to wash our windows. Is someone actually going to hire us? And of course, you know you grow and it happens, you grow a business. And now it's like, um, we've got, you know, knock on wood, we've got more businesses we can handle right now. Um, now the challenge is and I'm sure this is what your franchisees face it's, it's finding people, um, finding the contractors, it's finding the employees. Our biggest challenge now is, with as much business as we have on the books right now.
Speaker 1:And you know about south florida, what happened was we. We opened in march, we got off to a really fast start. I'm like, yeah, okay, let's order second band. And then everybody leaves for the summer, right, everybody goes up to new york, and then then business died, right. Then it's like it's so slow and it's so scary and it's hot. Yeah, nobody's here. You know, in South Florida, when you can walk into any restaurant you want on a Friday night and get a table, and it's dead, whereas now you're booking your reservation two weeks in advance. And the same is happening with our business. Is that we're flowing with the seasonality of South Florida? So you know, know, it's interesting. It's all these little lessons you, you learn, right, sure all the fun.
Speaker 2:Jill has thoughts no, but but it's true. I mean like there's a lot that you know and, again, there's a lot that we're prepared for and a lot that we're not ready for. So, um, it's kind of going with the flow and not giving up and, you know, just towering through it. But also you know, like Jackson even reaching out to you guys, you know, when we needed help with the drone, like there's always a solution to something. Yeah, just knowing, you know we may have to think outside the box, which is fine, it's better to do it that way, but it gets you through those harder times.
Speaker 3:Look, you know so, some people get paid by the hour. Look, you know so, some people get paid by the hour. Some people get paid commission. But business owners like us, we get paid by the conversation and our ability to have the right conversations. Look, every business has a dollar per person, right? So it's like if your leadership lid allows you to build a team of 10, that's going to determine the size of your business. Because in our businesses, in our service businesses, it's a function of people.
Speaker 3:I was in a marketing mastermind in Orlando and there was a $35 million HVAC contractor in there and I said, okay, what do you do in terms of do you do residential, do you do commercial? Do you do controls? What's your book of business? And he told me and I said, okay, so you're probably 70 lead techs with 70 trucks and 35 helpers and this many in dispatch and whatever he goes. Yeah, that's exactly Because once you understand the dollar per person in a business, then it's a matter of can you lead in such a way that can align people?
Speaker 3:And it doesn't have to be all employees. Part of it is stakeholders, referral partners, subcontractors, but at the end of the day, everybody has to be on the same page and you've got to create a world and a dream that's big enough for others' worlds and dreams to fit inside of it and make it worthwhile for them, to help you build your vision and your dream. And in doing that, it's aligning them with what's important for them at this phase in their life. So it's a leadership play and every business has those opportunities. You don't have to have a sexy or new first of its type type business. And, by the way, you're in property services, we're in property services. Property services are, of the 72 franchise segments, property services, in my opinion, is the most durable.
Speaker 3:There's going to be 100 million more people in this country by 2050. There's already a housing shortage of types of homes people want to live in in many markets. So there's increased migration through remote work and when somebody leaves a house and moves into a house, there's work that's got to get done. So and the supply and demand curve is in our favor, where there's less kids that are doing these services now. So you know, the people that can actually deliver upon these services are going to get to charge a premium, because that's just what it's going to take for people to get these services done and, like you and I said, we don't do these ourselves. You know, I don't cut my own hair anymore. I threw out my Flowbee. I don't wash my own car. I don't wash my own car, I don't cut my own grass.
Speaker 3:We are a have it done for you society and if so, if you want to get into a business that's going to have a compound annual growth rate assuming that you can lead it and you can attract people and you can staff it and you can sell then you'll never find a home front branch nestled comfortably between a Blockbuster video and a Curbs fitness franchise, because there's no obsolescence in property services. So, if people want to get into something that's going to be here and really, you know, ben Carson said something great. He said the person that has the most to do with what happens to you is you. If you want to, if you want to strap on a business to have personal growth, uh, and and create personal wealth, um, property services is by far, uh, I think, the safest and it has the most tail winds, uh, today in our, in our economy and in our franchise landscape.
Speaker 1:I mean I, I um of all people. Jeff, we were having a conversation with our accountant last week uh, after the election, and we put the politics aside I'm not talking about what side anyone's on but he said the next five years. You look at what's going to happen now with with taxes. He's like go make money you don't know if, if this is just only the next five years, but go build, go open up more locations, go do it now. This your your moment to go do it. And I thought that that I'm like this is. He's like go invest in another unit, go get another van because you got to go build.
Speaker 1:Now he's like because you're, you're the way the taxes are going to shake out. Is you're going to keep so much more of your money? And that's just a fact. It's not. It's not you know what's side, who did you vote for? It's just a fact. So for business owners and for people thinking about business ownership, put the politics aside, this environment. We already saw a rate, so now SBA loans are coming down. I heard there's going to be another one in December. We are back in favorable territory for investing in businesses.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100% amen. On that. I have nothing to add. I think you said it perfectly. Let's go. You know, and franchising is the greatest wealth creation business model ever invented. I mean it is, it is. It is. Franchising is an accelerating at an accelerating rate, and for people that want to, you know, I mean so many people are finding ways to create online businesses Franchising is just another way for people to participate in the American dream and take control over what happens to them. And now we were going to have real favorable economic climate and tax climate for the next four years to be able to do this. So very, very excited and couldn't agree more. And you know, if you just keep trying hard enough and you live, live long enough, eventually, uh, it's something that looks like luck happens to you and you, you're in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 1:And then it's what you do with it, right, that's uh, you know, and, like you said, you've got to be the one that goes in and makes it happen. And that's the other thing that I'll say to all of you out there that aren't yet clients, that I'll say to all of you out there that aren't yet clients, um, uh, and what we say to our clients is, at the end of the day, we can, we can, you know, connect you with home front brands. You can become a top rail franchise owner, a window hero franchise owner. They can give you all this great training and support, but you, you the business owner, we the business owners, we've got to make it happen.
Speaker 1:And you know it's, it's interesting, um, whenever a client who's been open for business for, you know, a set period of time, messages me and says, hey, can we catch up, there's usually two reasons one, business is through the roof and they want to add another unit, or two, it's not going as well as they want it to, and so what I do before the meeting is I always go and look at their location. How many google reviews do reviews do they have? And if they have two Google reviews, I know what kind of conversation I'm in, but I also know what my role in the conversation is, which is to say, dude, you got two Google reviews, no crying, whereas the other fella or gal has a hundred Google reviews and you're like, I know what kind of conversation I'm going to have. So again, to all of you out there who are thinking about this, it is going to be hard but it's going to be worth it because you're going to build right.
Speaker 1:If you, you, you build a couple of top rail units during the first year or so, yes, you're putting money into the business, you're putting time into the business, but by year three, you're going to see it starts to become easier, more predictable. It becomes that asset that you're going to see. It starts to become easier, more predictable, becomes that asset that you're no longer necessary to the business. And to me, jeff and I don't know about you there's no more powerful feeling on earth than a business that does not require me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is so smart about the Google reviews. I really like that and it's refreshing to hear that you're letting people know that. It's like who starts a business and on day one you're just cash is just raining on you. I mean, this is nobody knows you, you don't. You don't have the referrals Like you. You have to go, introduce yourself to the marketplace. The digital work, the digital is important. Obviously, we all buy on the internet, but the biggest jobs you're going to get are the ones that are going to come from customers or referral partners that know who you are and just say you've got an important job.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't use anybody but this person. If you're going to have a surgery, you're going to have your knees replaced. Are you going to just pick somebody out of the yellow pages and hope that they're good? Are you going to call every doctor you know and say you know who's the best? I mean you can be if you're the last person in your class, uh, in medical school and you barely uh, squeaked by. They still call you doctor, by the way, but but it's probably not the doctor that you want to go through for life-changing or life-altering surgery. So I mean it.
Speaker 3:It. You know being X. You know, your reputation is simply your relationship with people that you have not yet met. And you, as a business owner, have to go out every day and work to expose your brand, your values, your story to people so that they can remember that and they can articulate that and have a real compelling reason to do business with you. And it's so important in our businesses, especially in in in in you helping and me attracting uh, new, new business franchise partners into our businesses. It's, it's absolutely critically important that they know who like. If they don't like me or they don't like something about our brands or homefront brands or our position, then they should, they should join something else Like. You have to put it out there so people can choose whether they want to roll with you or not. The business owner it's not sitting in front of your computer and waiting on a lead to fall into the bucket and watching it happen. You can't be a passenger in entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1:You've got to be a driver. Yeah, you're so right, and I think that's where in COVID, I think franchising really wanted to be absentee. That was a word that was really getting thrown around for a while.
Speaker 3:And we don't use it. We don't use it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it wanted to be right. I think that franchisors thought they could do it, and the issue is this they thought they could hire it. Right, we'll hire someone to run your business for you or help run your business, but the problem is, when you hire someone for 50 grand to run somebody's business, you're not. You're not bringing the urgency and the hustle, and so you're not going to get the same result that you would when your ass is on the line and you've got to make payroll and and you got to make it happen. And that's the part that everybody forgot about.
Speaker 1:Um is that ultimately it it can't be put neatly into an hour a day. I may spend two hours a day on pinks, but it's not in a neat box. Um, you know my GM's blowing my phone up about something right now. It's going to happen at the most inopportune time, um, and that's business. And so that's when people call us and they say listen, I want to, you know, diversify into a business and maybe I could squeeze an hour into it. After you know work hours. I'm like dude, go into real estate no, even you can't.
Speaker 2:You can't even do real estate like that too. I mean, that's the thing with the real business like that it's not. You cannot schedule your time I'll be working on this business from you know two to three. Yeah, it's not going to happen, um, for many reasons right so if you know. Yeah, I guess that's setting those expectations and understanding, and I think straying away from absentee has been key because it just gave everyone the wrong impression of what could be done. But also there's joy in owning and having a part of it too.
Speaker 2:And so if you come in and you think I'm just really going to be hands off, I'm going to let someone run it I mean, it's your baby, it's your business and you it is hard to find that unicorn that's going to run your business exactly the way you want them to do. So you are more involved, especially in the beginning, as you're ramping up and they're getting to know you and the business and all of that. It's just it's not. It's not what the expectations were.
Speaker 1:No, and that's why franchising has had such a year of reckoning, because it's it's come back to its roots, which is you get to be an entrepreneur, you get to go, build a business. Yes, as you scale you can start to pull back, but you're you know again, it's never going to be something that completely goes away. Maybe, jeff, if you sell your business and you sell or finance it and you arrange a deal where someone's paying you for it over time, then maybe that can be considered absentee, but you should want to put the time in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I couldn't agree. I couldn't agree more on how refreshing it is to hear you say that.
Speaker 1:Jeff, I know what I want to ask you. You've got an excellent book. Can you tell us?
Speaker 3:first of all, tell us a little bit about the book, and I want our listeners to know where they can go to get it, how they can get a copy of your book, and what it will give you is. It will give you models of thought, meaning situations, and how I resolve those situations, what tools, techniques and tactics I use to resolve those. Because models of thought are simply experienced-based things that we learn over the course of a lifetime applied to present-day. So and that's basically what wisdom is when you say this person is so wise, they're wise because you bring them a problem and they're able to tell you a story and relate that to a situation and share their experience. You never should ask people for advice. You should only ask people for their experiences. If people don't have experience in what you're talking about, they should not give advice.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's amazing how people go to their father-in-law, who worked for the city or somebody like that, to get business advice from somebody that's never owned a business, never run a business, never seen a business. So there's a lot of that in there. And then it's about really you know our the quality of our decisions. It impacts the quality of our life and the velocity of our business. There's there's no neutral decisions and business is about probability. So every decision that you make either increases or decreases your speed and your success. So a bad decision is, you know, going to take away from it and a good decision is going to going, you know, accretive to it. So, basically, you know what are the filters in making good decisions and I go through a series of filters that basically say you know, here's how I made this decision and here's the filters that I applied for, whether it be a set of values or set of principles or things like that. Because the, you know, one of the one of the greatest things, one of the greatest responsibilities in as business builders, is to remove latency from our business, and latency is simply from the moment that you understand an action, that it is apparent that an action needs to be taken or a decision needs to be made, like, how long does it take for that to get implemented?
Speaker 3:From awareness to action, and your ability to to make decisions, and to make good decisions based on things that you already know or already believe, or principal foundations that you have laid, allows you to make those decisions faster, without regret, and to iterate and move forward thing with Elon Musk, right, it's basically launching rockets. I mean, the first 25 or 50 rockets he launched just blew up. But he knew that the faster that he blew rockets up, the faster that they would learn. And the next thing you know, you know he's got a skyscraper landing in a set of pinchers. You know, and, and you know, and reusable. So you know he iterated so quickly through that process. And part of that is, too, is you know how you build a business it's about. It's about really removing hesitation, you know, and creating clarity around what a good decision looks like and then underpinning it with a set of principles and models of thoughts and values and filters for you to make the best decision possible. So that's basically what the book does.
Speaker 1:I love it and can people just? Can they find it on Amazon? Can they go to your website? Where can they go to get it?
Speaker 3:Yes, you can go to Amazon and just put in a discernment by Jeff Duden and it will pop up. There's literally dozens of copies in print. Or you can go to. If you go to my Instagram and go to my link tree and if you give me your email address, I believe is all you got to do and I will actually email you an electric cop, an electronic copy immediately to your inbox of the book. So for free, just cost your email, maybe a phone number, but you know, so it's just Jeff Duden is the Instagram handle, and and then also too, you get these links on our on the home front podcast. We have a great podcast. It's very. I mean, we just had Franklin Graham on. I think I got Bobby Kennedy coming on next month. Wow, yeah, I was just with him in Phoenix so got him coming on. But we've had, I mean, we've had Ben Carson, we've had Andrew Zimmer and we've had Brandon. We've had all the big names on the show. So it's a really good entrepreneurship show. And then in the show notes you can always find a link to, to, to, to sign up and get a copy of the book.
Speaker 3:I like printed copies of the book. It's, it's not expensive. We didn't price it up or anything. So if you want to get one for you or it's really good for like 20 something people, I've had a lot of people come back to me and say I gave it to my son and his business partner. They're just starting a business. And then now they asked me for boxes. Where can I buy a box? Because I want to give it to his whole class or their whole business community or whatever it is they're doing. So if you're new to business and you want to set up an infrastructure that's going to be durable, there's some good stuff inside of discernment to help you do that. It's on our coffee table.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 3:Is it because your coffee table was wobbly and it's under the leg? Is that what it's for?
Speaker 1:No, it's a great looking book.
Speaker 3:I love it. I love the cover.
Speaker 1:You know, and you're right, it is fabulous. And for those of you, by the way, that would like to explore some of the home-prem brands and you'd like our help, you know the drill text does at 305-710-0050. And that way we can help figure out which one of the brands or maybe you want to explore all of the home front brands that's not a bad idea either, jeff. I want to end on one, one last point, which is you know and it's something you kind of pointed us in the right direction of people ask me all the time why shouldn't I just start my own painting business or window washing business versus a franchise? And my answer usually is you absolutely can. But and we own, we own franchise insiders, which we pretty much had to figure out ourselves.
Speaker 1:And when you figure, when you have a business where you figure things out yourself, you're going to make mistakes, and those mistakes are expensive. With a franchise, you avoid those expensive mistakes. Now, the nice thing is just like Elon with the rockets If you learn from those mistakes, you get better, you get smarter, you become better at your craft. But a franchise has already made the mistakes and they can keep you on the right path and believe you know. Again, people say well, what about the royalty To me, that royalty check that we run?
Speaker 1:We don't write a check that you say, see it out of our accountant but every single week, first of all, it tells me how my revenue is doing. Right, if I'm not looking at my sales report I'm like, oh, we're paying a high, it's because we're doing well revenue wise. But it it is so worth it to have that playbook, that support, that infrastructure and it helps you avoid mistakes and it gives you the sounding board which only a franchise can do. So I don't know. That's my perspective on it. I'd love just to hear yours.
Speaker 3:Franchises have certain characteristics and I've already mentioned that it's the greatest wealth creation business model ever invented. I mean, Jerry Richardson was the founder of the Carolina Panthers. He was Johnny Unitas' tight end. They wanted to pay him $250 a game. He wanted $500, so he quit and he bought a Hardee's restaurant. He ended up with 400 Hardee's franchises Wow. He sold that. He got into real estate and insurance and he took that money to basically be the majority lead investor and owner of the Carolina Panthers NFL team, which is also a franchise.
Speaker 3:There's over 880,000 franchise establishments in this country. One out of every nine people almost nine million people work by or for a franchise system. It's amazing. Franchising is a subset of small business. Small business is 46 to 60% of our GDP. Small business implies the overwhelming number of people in this country. It's just. It is a very proven business model.
Speaker 3:And, number one, it's a leverage play, meaning that you don't have to shoulder the whole expense of building a brand. It's shared learning management, shared CRM, shared technology, shared brand, shared customer acquisition, so you're paying a fraction of pennies to get access to things that would take you a decade to build yourself. The second thing is it's a transitional and transformational meaning if you're new to entrepreneurship but, like we have a lot of family office, we have $50 million business owners that have invested in home front brands because businesses are a high class asset and they want to diversify their portfolio. Or you're a first time business owner, transitioning it's a great way to transition into business ownership, with some guardrails up. Then the last thing there's a community of people that are building the same business as you are, just in different markets that you wouldn't have otherwise.
Speaker 3:So I mean it's a whole different business model than building your own business, because you can add businesses, you can add territories, you can buy your neighbors, you can play that monopoly game inside of a franchise system that is well-defined and grow it as big as you decide to. It's only limited by your self-limiting beliefs. So franchising is a great business model and it's successful for all of those reasons. Whatever it is your listeners choose to do, I just encourage them to do it with great focus and great intention and do it with all their might, and I'm sure they will be successful. I think that's perfect, perfect advice.
Speaker 1:I think that's wonderful, very well said, you know. And even if the first one doesn't work, humans are resilient. I mean, we've talked to entrepreneurs that you know people's worst fears, right? What do people say? Oh, what happens if I go belly up? We know successful entrepreneurs that have looked that in the eye and still found a way to succeed. So humans are very resilient, don't you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and I mean sometimes you have to fail a couple of times to really learn and advance and win. So it's okay.
Speaker 1:What did they call that Failing forward?
Speaker 3:fail, fast fail forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and also um uh, in the book discernment you will see, uh, how we use values I have my own personal family values in there and how we use those to to build. You know you mentioned Zach working with him. You know he's a, he's a product of, of, of our environment. He's just a great, great young man, very talented, and all of that. And then our business values and how we use those as a real tool. Your values break your ties, so you're going to be faced with tough decisions that end up on your desk as the business owner, and you have to know what your values are, because it'll inform you as to how to make a decision. Where it's not, may not be clear otherwise.
Speaker 1:Awesome, jeff you're uh, you're a good dude. Thank you so much for being on our podcast and sharing your, your wisdom and expertise. It really is an honor to uh to be here with you and uh to continue to work with you and your family. Again, like you said, I mean we've got a client who recently came on board and is so thrilled with how things are going. So listen everyone, these guys walk the walk and definitely, if you're looking into franchise ownership and if you're looking into home services, Jeff's an OG, he's been doing it for a long time and he's built up a good company, and so if you'd like to talk to them, text us at 305-710-0050. Jeff, thank you so much for being on the show today. We really appreciate you.
Speaker 3:Yep Jack Jill, always a pleasure to see you both. Thank you so much and I appreciate being on. Thank you.