Surv CEO Patrick Brown - From Water Holograms to a Mission-Driven Franchise

An incredible journey from creating water holograms for the world's #1 DJ to building a mission-driven franchise! Join Giuseppe Grammatico and Surv Founder Patrick Brown as they discuss:

1. The inspiring "Rent Sons" origin story.
2. Surv's mission to elevate youth and serve seniors.
3. The "to-do list partner" business model.
4. A step-by-step playbook for franchising YOUR own business!
5. The power of focus and finding your "why."

This episode is packed with inspiration and actionable advice for any aspiring entrepreneur!

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The Franchise Freedom: Discover Your New Path to Freedom Through Franchise Ownership, Book by Giuseppe Grammatico https://ggthefranchiseguide.com/book or purchase directly on Amazon.

Transcript

Patrick Brown: 0:00

So I just knocked on every door in my town and said, Hey, you can rent me and I'll do whatever you want. That business was called Rent Sons at the time, and the tagline was quality service at the cost and allowance without the complaining of an actual son. ask yourself the life you wanna live and build a business around that. the way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

0:24

Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast, where you can escape the corporate trap through franchise ownership. Here's your host, Giuseppe gr, the franchise guide.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 0:37

Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Zepi Grammatic, your franchise guide, this show where we help corporate executives experience time and financial freedom. Thanks for joining us today. We have an awesome guest today. His name is Patrick Brown from Serve. Patrick. Welcome to the show.

Patrick Brown: 0:52

Yeah. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 0:54

I appreciate you coming on the show. we've been working closely the past month or so, been meaning to have you on and our guests you know, have been just great talking about franchise franchise ownership, what it takes to start a franchise, and, really excited to get your insight. So before we dive in today, if you could give the audience a little bit of background on you know, who Patrick is and how you, how you came up with serve.

Patrick Brown: 1:18

Yeah, sure. My name's Pat Brown. I'm the founder of a company called Serve. I started it in Little Compton, Rhode Island, which is the smallest town in the smallest state. And when I was in college, my family went wealthy to poor, relatively fast. Parents lost their job, we lost their house, our parents split up, I needed a way to pay for school. So I just knocked on every door in my town and said, Hey, you can rent me and I'll do whatever you want. That business was called Rent Sons at the time, and the tagline was quality service at the cost and allowance without the complaining of an actual son. that no complaining guarantee worked did wonders for me. always made sure I never complained no matter how

Giuseppe Grammatico: 1:55

No plane guarantee. I like that.

Patrick Brown: 1:57

Yeah. And so I would generally, as I would knock on these doors, generally the older woman ants the door, you know, delighted to have me come do their to-do list. Well, there's, we at the garden, clean the garage, put up the Christmas lights. You know, I would come over on a weekly or monthly basis. And I loved it'cause I got to pay for school and cash. I got to build out meaningful relationships with people that became like family to me, especially as my home life was a little rocky. I got to learn all these interpersonal skills, these practical skills. I got to work around my schedule when I was gonna college and also when I wanted to go surfing. and they loved it'cause they had a young person come over and do their to-do list projects and allowed'em to just age at home. They got to pour into me, they got to gimme life advice. They got to have sort of a jack of all trades, a one-stop shop for their whole home. And it became like really meaningful relationships to many of my homeowners. Where now, if. I put you in my car and we drove around for a day. I could tell you a story of every homeowner. We can tell you about their kids, their families, people that have passed away. And I can't tell you what that does for my sense of belonging, where I live, where I feel like I've provided a business that's a lifeline for so many people, that if it went away, it would actually be really destructive to the community. So I think that's what I, I built there. And then we repeated it in other markets when we started franchising. And I just love this, this business, and I, and I would love to see people that have the same heart for their community, bring it around where to where they are so that we can really see some like national impact in what we're doing.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 3:30

Awesome. and then that leads us to serve when, so when was serve founded, talk to us a little bit about that and where you are today as far as where you're located.

Patrick Brown: 3:39

Yeah, so it's kind of funny story. I, so I built that business to pay for college, which was called Red Suns. And then in college I went off and built the nation's largest water special effects company called Aqua. I like invented a water hologram and it got picked up by the number one DJ in the world for his US tour when I was in college. So I toured around the country and interned for myself. My senior year. I had to still take Spanish. I failed Spanish, but I bribed my Spanish teacher with backstage passes to my concert and got a c plus. So I was able to get outta school. Then I kinda hit it big. I became the water guy from the music industry and had a show at Madison Square Garden new Year's Eve with Fish. and had this moment where I felt like I was living a very flashy life, but I didn't feel like I was living a very fulfilling life of what I really was hoping for. And so just had this very clear moment where I looked in the mirror and go, this is not what I want. And I wanna have something that has like tremendous impact in whatever I'm spending my day and spending my time on. So took a step back, spent some time praying and felt like God gave me like this desire to bring what I did for college but build it around the country. And so that relaunched serve really in sort of 2017 it was called, still called Red Sons and built that up. And then but we were always doing this tech enabled approach with the business and just realized that like. To do this business well, it actually had to have that franchise touch where there's local owners that really care about their community, want to invest in their employees, build the relationships to the homeowners, and see all these relationships come together to benefit their community. so in 2020 four, we actually just started franchising. So we started franchising it and brought on four franchisees so far, and they've just been really impressed and really grateful for how well they've done. And now we're in the process of starting to scale it out nationally with these new partnerships that we've created recently.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 5:41

I love that. before we started recording here we talked with a lot of people, first time business owners. We're exploring different franchises and, you know, we'll talk about their role what's most important to them. And I never assume anything, right? Some people may say, well, the business obviously has to make money. And yes, you know, we want a, a profitable business. But one request that I'm hearing more and more, and I've been hearing this probably since, since COVID, is I want, I want a business to have that, that mission or, or that gi giving back to the community. It's gotta be a feel, feel good business. Because yes, you know, the, the business could be profitable, but I wanna do good for my community. I wanna leave, I wanna leave a legacy, I wanna leave something behind. So, if you wouldn't mind, you know, because serve is definitely, you know, in line with someone looking for that type of business. If you could talk to us a little bit more about the, the mission, the values maybe, maybe even a story if you can even share that of, of a, a current franchisee.

Patrick Brown: 6:37

So, yeah, the the mission of the business is to elevate the next generation through meeting the needs of the community. You know, the real heart that we've had is growing young people that have worked in the field and having go out and serve. the elderly. You know, since we've grown, we've expanded that, you know, we have people of all ages work for us and we're serving all types of ages. But that was like the original heart of that.'cause I, when I was when I had that time between Aqua and er, I had a friend die of drug overdose and a friend die of suicide.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 7:06

Sorry about that.

Patrick Brown: 7:07

people. They weren't people that you would ever expect it And I've had more and more of friends of that has happened to and just realized that there is like a major issue with young people, like a lot of them. They're, you know, the number one killer of young people is suicide. Many, many of them are very disconnected from their generation. I think only 6% of Gen Z know anyone outside of their generation besides their parents. And so, you know, I found that there was this beautiful thing that happens when you take young people serving the elderly, helping with these regular tasks. You know, having this symbiotic relationship where the elderly's benefiting even relationally from the kind of companionship element. And the young person are being inspired by helping older people. It really, I think, does a lot of good healing young

Giuseppe Grammatico: 7:52

Right.

Patrick Brown: 7:52

You know, getting a tip every day, getting a job done, being on your phone all day, interacting with all different types of people, different communication types. And so to me, I feel like when I'm wanting to build a business, like I want something that makes me come alive. You know, I remember with Aqua. Ticket we sold, we gave a month of clean water to someone in Ghana. And so the water crisis was what really killed me.'cause that was the number one killer for I think it was like one in five. I can't remember the fact right now. I think it was like one in five people don't make it to the age of five in a lot of parts of Africa because of unclean drinking water. so this is, this, this c cause of just really young adult mental health. Was what really drove me and got me really excited. And then also what it was doing for seniors that, you know, one fifth of America is gonna be 65 plus by 2030 and one fourth by 2050. And these at home projects are barriers to staying at

Giuseppe Grammatico: 8:49

Right.

Patrick Brown: 8:50

being a forced assisted living. And it's like, how can we do that to our elderly? Like we need to have a solution for them. So those two causes rose up and those just made me like really come alive and I never. like bored or regretting doing what I'm doing because of, I think the deep why that lives with me. So that would be my advice. If anyone's thinking about starting a business or looking for a franchise, like, hey, what is it that makes you come alive? And go do that. Don't, don't just look at you know, the dollar

Giuseppe Grammatico: 9:20

Right.

Patrick Brown: 9:20

cause I think that's an empty road, you know, sort of like this. You know, I'm, I'm a Christian, I'm not, the business isn't Christian, but I have, you know, a lot of ethos in that. But you know, there's this verse that says, what is a profit demand to gain the whole world and lose his soul? It's like if you, if you go out and build a business that's just about money, like sure you gain the whole world. But if it's not like in invigorating your

Giuseppe Grammatico: 9:43

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Brown: 9:44

you've now lost your soul. And what's the win then at that point?

Giuseppe Grammatico: 9:48

Yeah, it's you know, I, I, I talk about sus sustainability in the business, right? PE-people burn out quickly if the match isn't there, if there, there's not this sense of purpose. So, I always talk about sustainability, the match. The purpose in the business itself. So it's that is I think extremely important and it's, it's something that people don't normally think about, right? They go in and just, what's the hot business? How do I get involved? What kind of money I can make? And once they dig a little bit deeper, it's like, wow, there are other options out there. There are better matches for me. I really like that. on serve. if you could run us down the business model, the right fit, you know, essentially you're franchise avatar and, you know, what does that business look like, you know, as far as the team is this, is this a W2 or 10 99 model? What type of tasks are you able to, to handle for both seniors and and busy families?

Patrick Brown: 10:39

It serves a to-do list membership for homeowners. So we do all the low level tasks around the house. Our core four is moving in junk, one category, exterior cleaning, which includes window washing, power washing, and gutter cleaning. Then we have odd jobs, which is a little bit of a catchall that can be general assistance, like you just want help moving a couch, you want help with this, et cetera. and then you have. A to-do list membership for homeowners and we do all of the basic odd jobs around the house to help live fuller lives at home. You know, both the busy family that doesn't have time for it. And also the senior that's trying to age at age at place. So we have core four services we like to think, which is moving and junk removal as one category. That could be moving furniture on the house, a local move down the street, getting rid of some junk decluttering. That's one bucket. Next one is yard work. So that could be like weeding, edging, mulching, pruning this next bucket. The third I would say is the odd jobs, which is. Kinda all of the different catchall bucket you know, general assistance. Maybe just want a helping hand. We like have a do with you model where the homeowner can hire you to help you around the house with projects.'cause many homeowners still want to get their hands dirty and just having an extra hand is all they really need. And then exterior cleaning, which is your power washing, soft washing window, washing, gutter cleaning. So that's just anything exterior to make the house look cleaner.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 12:06

And and are, are, and are these the people doing the actual work, are these, are they W2? What, what does that look like? Does, is the franchise owner hiring these individuals directly?

Patrick Brown: 12:16

Yeah, primarily W2. We start with a really small

Giuseppe Grammatico: 12:19

Hmm.

Patrick Brown: 12:19

You know, it could be as small as you and one other person. We like to have a group of two two to four, but we would talk to you about that with that franchisee when they onboarded. And they can add in as they scale up the model. They can add in some 10 99. But we primarily like to keep, you know, W2 trucks, tools uniforms, like really having everything under control and then not all subbed

Giuseppe Grammatico: 12:42

Gotcha. And, and, and from the, the franchisee standpoint, you know, what is, what is the franchisees kind of, what are they doing on a daily basis and what support are they getting? Is, is, is it marketing being handled at the at the franchisor level? You know, what are they doing to generate leads in business?

Patrick Brown: 12:58

so the community partner franchisee they. It can ha they really take one of two roles, the community manager or the community business developer, so they can either run the day-to-day operations and get their hands dirty in the field and, and make sure everything's running smoothly or they can go out and be the face of the business. networking with a lot of realtors, interior, interior designers, property managers, senior care agencies, like there's many different ways that we generate business and they can really take one of those two seats and we, like, we recommend that they hire, that second position. I. And then Fran, what we provide for as a franchisor, and one thing that I, we've kinda left out is we did this deal with a group called Cornerstone about six months ago, have brought an incredible infrastructure. Our sister company's first flight home care that has 300 franchisees doing. Incredible volume for per franchisee unit volume. They've brought all of our backend support so that make sure that we could really support the franchisees as well. And we just brought on a recently a brand president of a man named David Dunsmore that helped build Home

Giuseppe Grammatico: 14:06

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Brown: 14:07

as like really leading up the charge. And so. We're wrapping, you know, our arms around the franchisee to really give them the business in a box so that they don't have to do a lot of thinking they'll have to do is like follow the playbook. So everything you can think from marketing, from print, digital all your B2B, your third party lead gen, you know your door to doors, the sales to cold call sales, recruiting tools. You know, all the business presentations, like anything that they could ever think they would ever need, we give from a marketing perspective, we bring up the technology to help run the day-to-day operations from their reporting, scheduling, dispatching, quoting, follow up. You know, all the nurturing sequences that need to do with the customer. all, everything with their QuickBooks, their financial tools their projections helping them with recommendations with hr. You know, it's, it's really like anything that they could need in a business. Like we have it for them, but it's them to go out and execute and build, you know, build it locally in their community.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 15:05

Gotcha. So, so you, you had mentioned with Cornerstone. So it sounds, it sounds like, if you're a serve franchisee, you're gonna be, essentially, that's your, that's who you're gonna be working with the, the people at First Lights. So if they have, if someone, a franchisee at Firstlight is taking care of a, you know, mom or dad. Er can act, you know, actively go in there and, and handle the to-do list if, if I'm not, mis, if, if I understood correctly.

Patrick Brown: 15:29

Yeah,

Giuseppe Grammatico: 15:29

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Brown: 15:30

a nice thing about the sister company. Every franchisee from Firstlight has, you know, it's their own

Giuseppe Grammatico: 15:35

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Brown: 15:35

make the strategic introduction and we like to find ways that they can overlap so that we can go out and help the same customers. And also, you know, Firstlight has a lot of referral partners, you know,

Giuseppe Grammatico: 15:46

Right.

Patrick Brown: 15:47

they're, they're getting leads from for their clients that they can be leveraged as well. So we try to find ways between the two that they can symbiotically help each other.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 15:57

Love that. No, that's, that's awesome. Yeah. So, you know, I'm, I'm sure, I'm sure with 300 franchisees, there's probably a franchisee in your market that you can work directly with day one. So. That's a, that's a huge bonus. Any, anything and, and whatever you can share and, and maybe you can't share at this time, but anything new on the horizon with with serve any changes, any additions, anything you anticipate going into into the end of the year?

Patrick Brown: 16:22

Yeah, I mean, we've just brought on incredible talent. You know, people that have built Home Depot, rebath Lumber, liquidators, cer, prop Painters and Service Master. And so we've brought on like centuries of experience to the table of

Giuseppe Grammatico: 16:35

Hmm.

Patrick Brown: 16:36

team. And we're, we've raised a lot of capital to be able to put things, things into place to make sure that the franchisees are getting the support of a seasoned franchise business, but they're getting the attention of a new franchise, emerging franchise. So, there's a lot of you know, great. You know, aspects being rolled out all the time. You know, we're improving our CRM. We're improving new technology. We're improving our digital marketing. We just rolled out a new micro website. Highly check. Highly recommend. Check it out. W-E-S-U-R v.com. you can see how each franchisee has their own like micro site, so it doesn't look like it's just a page on a site that's like kind of. Lackluster, but

Giuseppe Grammatico: 17:18

Right.

Patrick Brown: 17:19

feels like their own living portal. So putting a lot of scale infrastructure in place that, you know, with good security, good backing and good, you know, marketing. So the franchisees do really well.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 17:31

Awesome. I appreciate you sharing that. one thing, you know, we talked about in the beginning of the show, switching gears a little bit, is you know, we'll have. Maybe not necessarily the founders of brands, but you being the founder of the brand, we, we can, we can have this discussion. But you know, there, there are people that I speak with and not an area I specialize in, but we do work with with other partners. You know, advice you would give to someone that maybe has a business, a business that they've launched that they are, are thinking of a franchising. So essentially becoming a franchisor. Any advice that you would give? Because this is an area where I feel like I'm getting about a call a week, someone saying, you know what, I got a great cons concept. I wanna franchise. Where do we start? How much money do I need? And we don't have to get to those specifics, but, you know, do you, do you recommend it and, and obviously everyone's situation is different. Where, where, what kind of advice would you give to someone that's looking to franchise their business?

Patrick Brown: 18:24

Yeah. So it's funny you say that because I had someone reach out recently asking me to take a call with someone that was thinking about franchising their business. And this is really what I told them. So the first thing you need to do is have unit level profitability.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 18:38

Hmm.

Patrick Brown: 18:38

to think that if you were to bake your business down it as a one location franchise, like whatever size territory you wanna sell, whether it's the population, number of households, et cetera, you need to think that whatever that net income is, is that gonna be attractive enough for someone to quit their job? make enough there. So

Giuseppe Grammatico: 18:58

Right.

Patrick Brown: 18:58

that's the first thing, because it's my advisor, Peter Barkman, that helped build cer propane. He says it's the head and the heart, like the heart. They can, they can really get behind it and really want it, but if they can't make enough money, they're never gonna be able to get their head to rationalize making, the impact. So that's, so that's a big one. I would also recommend in that process researching FTDs of comparable businesses that are close to you. So. You know, if you're in the painting business, perhaps look concert a prop painter, easy painting whatever it may be, take their FTDs. I'd recommend throwing'em in chat, GBT and ask the differences between their item 19, their item six, and their item seven. So you can really see what are the differences the startup costs, the ongoing cost, and what the profitability of a franchise may be. The second one is, I would recommend trying to have as low of startup costs as possible. So, but enough where they can get an SBA loan. So. You know, I'm not gonna say numbers, but I would, I would recommend looking up what other startup costs are and try to fall in that

Giuseppe Grammatico: 19:56

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Brown: 19:56

that it's easy for someone to get into, but not so easy that they're not gonna care if they bought a franchise. And I think a target is to really try to get them in this model that you're making to cashflow positive as PO as quick as possible. I think the third thing is they should have a unique concept that's repeatable, ideally with some sort of moat where they can't go and do it on their own. They need to see your franchisor and say, don't wanna do it without them, and I'm gonna be like, way more successful. I do it with them. And the franchise fee and the royalty, fully justify the support that you're gonna get. And I would recommend there are, there's a book called E-Myth. I think that's a great franchise book to read if you're just starting out. the fourth is, I think I would spend a year or two getting those financials to the place where we need to be. I know you may be eager to get going, but if you don't have like a strong item 19, which is your year to date, financials. It's not going to be compelling enough for someone to really wanna buy a franchise. So it may feel slow at the beginning, but just focus on getting your business as profitably as possible. And I would recommend consulting with a f franchise consultant once you do that to build their F-E-D-F-D-D and operations manual which is where everything should come from. You know, that should be how you run your business. Those 2D occupants are really critical. I would recommend s and b franchising if you're looking for someone. And I worked with Inter Law, they were also incredible at getting it going, so I highly recommend those two firms. next I would recommend is getting three to five people that wanna become your beta franchisees and just work out the kinks with them. Give them a good deal. Since they're in the Founder's Club, help them be very successful and just focus all your energy on. Getting them to the kinds of numbers that you want to show in your FDD. After one to two years, I would explore organic paid and broker channels to help scale up your franchise. I recommend going to the IFA and also Springboard Conference to network and learn a lot. I think other founders and even vendors can be some of your best friends in trying to learn. How to franchise Well, especially in like your size area, say the one to 50 units, but then also getting advice from the people in the hundred to 300

Giuseppe Grammatico: 22:11

Right.

Patrick Brown: 22:12

'cause they can tell you some of the horror stories of that. You know, one of the classic ones I always hear is like, careful of who your first 10 franchisees are.'cause you're always like wanting to get rid of'em. I'm very fortunate. Mine are incredible. So, but I've heard that as a, that's a horror story that people say, and the last one I said is. would get three to five franchise advisors that have been in franchising for over 10 years. Ideally a founder and an operator.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 22:36

Right. Love that. Wow. That's that was very detailed. So I, I actually. While we were talking, you know, right before the, our conversation, I was like, you know what, maybe, maybe we talk about this as well because it, it's, it came up recently on a call. I, I really appreciate the feedback, and that was very thorough because the, the people dunno where to start. There was a, I was just watching it was a, it was a podcast. We were interviews interviewing the president of the IFA and they were saying that, 75% of people that they've interviewed were interested in starting a business. Of that group of people, seven, another 75%, three quarters of those people never started the business because they didn't know where to start. Which I found, I found pretty amazing in this day and age where there's so much information out there and may, and maybe it's because it's information overload, but I kind of, I kind of liked how you, you had utilize a, you know, chat GPT or a Gemini to, to compare, as you mentioned maybe f DDS and things like that. And use technology. You know, you're using it at the franchisor level. Why not use it? In your research. So I, I think that's that's some great advice and I don't know why I didn't think of that. You know, I use it for other things and creating social posts, but that was a very good point. So, I do appreciate that. Well, I was gonna, I always, I always getting towards the end to ask about a fun fact. You already, you already shared that. So, wanted to spend a little time in this topic, but, you know, and, and we touch on it as well. Advice you would give as, as a, as a starting point. So franchise aside, we're just talking about just. Thinking of owning a business, you know, what advice would you give yourself, or what advice would you give that corporate exec that doesn't know where to start? Maybe they just, you know, not happy with their job, they want some type of change or maybe they're liking their job, but the hours are so crazy that, you know, they're missing the, the kids soccer games and events and things like that. What advice would you give as far as general advice and then maybe advice on, on kind of where to start?

Patrick Brown: 24:29

Yeah, I would say, you know, ask yourself the life you wanna live and build a business around that.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 24:34

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Brown: 24:34

That's the big one. And then ask yourself what makes you come alive? Like I mentioned earlier, you know, I built Aqua, that was a really cool business, but I was working 20 hour days. I was living on a tour bus living in Vegas. Like it wasn't exactly the life I really wanted to

Giuseppe Grammatico: 24:47

Right.

Patrick Brown: 24:48

Like I have a much like better well balanced life where I'm getting to pour into young people and talk to lovely old ladies. Like it's a wonderful life, you know? So that is an important one. And I think the why part, you know, like if you. You know, aren't excited about what you're doing and you don't believe in what you're doing. Like, I don't know about you, but I don't, I can last more than a week. You know, I just, I just, I just completely give up and don't care

Giuseppe Grammatico: 25:11

All right.

Patrick Brown: 25:12

I think that's important. And then the, you know, and the third, like, does the business idea you have, like, have the potential to make any money, like model it out? You know, you don't have to be crazy Excel, but just go through it and have some friends look at it and go, does this sound realistic? Is it not? You know, it might be a little crazy, but you know, just make sure that whatever you're building actually has like some opportunity to make real money. And I think that's the nice part of franchising. It's like, it's less of a guessing game. It's like you, you put your fee down, pay royalty, and like get the entrepreneurship, you know, and the lifestyle, but you don't have to like. Risk it all

Giuseppe Grammatico: 25:47

Right.

Patrick Brown: 25:47

on, you know, building your own thing, that it has a probably higher likelihood of failure. And I think, you know, for starting if you're gonna start fresh, like what I did is, you know, I got a notebook I wrote down, I had my business idea, I had everything Oh, that was inspired and I wrote everything I think I could, could ever think of that I would need to do, then I broke it into weeks. And I, and so I was like, okay, this is a marketing week. Everything this week is all marketing. I'm not gonna do anything but marketing next week's sales. All I'm gonna do is sales. Next what you're gonna do

Giuseppe Grammatico: 26:23

Right.

Patrick Brown: 26:23

you know, and what that does is like the power of focus allows you to do exponentially more. And especially when you give yourself like a tight timeframe, your body's gonna be able to complete way more tasks than if you don't. And you gotta jump at some point. You know, and the, honestly, the best times I've performed my business is when I had a fire under my butt, you know, when I really needed to perform. Like that's when I was really successful. And if you think about all like the richest people in the world, all the billionaires, almost all of them dropped out of college or high school and they like had to make it

Giuseppe Grammatico: 26:55

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Brown: 26:56

And sometimes like having too much of a cushion can like be a bad, it can be your detriment. It gets you to be lazy. You don't move as quickly. So the fire's a good thing. And like you don't wanna lose that fire'cause you're, that fire's a good thing. And like you.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 27:10

I, I, yeah, I, I agree. I, I know when I started my first franchise, I signed the franchise agreement February 2nd. Of 2007, and we found out we were ex my wife was expecting three days later, so that was, that was, that was my fire. I'm like, man, I, I gotta, we gotta make, we got, we gotta make this work. We're on one income now. You know, I had left my job. But that's true. The, the, this idea of focus is huge and people are like, yeah, I, I know you have to focus. And then I talked to new franchisees and they're, they got a franchise, they got a side hustle. They have 20 things going on, and it's like. That's, that's fine. You know, you, you want to diversify, but how do you, how do you really go a hundred percent if you have 20, 20 different things you're balancing. So, the power of focus is huge. And the idea, I talk a lot about the idea of owning the calendar, putting your, your personal stuff, your rocks on the calendar, making sure you're focused and, you know, handling all the personal stuff. Like I will never miss a family event for work. Work is always kind of second right? I get everything personal on and then I open up the calendar.

Patrick Brown: 28:11

Yeah.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 28:12

You know, prioritize what's going on in your life. But, but, but secondly, focus on one thing at a time and go all in. Give give it all you got, get that business up and running. You may not need five different side hustles and businesses if when you go all in on one. There, there's some there, there, there's some power there. You, I've definitely seen some magic when I left my job and put aside my, you know, sold my side business and just focused on my one franchise. We grew and it wasn't like 10, 20%. We grew exponentially. So,

Patrick Brown: 28:40

Yeah.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 28:40

that, that is, that is some great advice. So I I greatly appreciate that. Anything else that, that we, we did not talk about as we, as we wrap up the the episode, anything we did not talk about advice or any topic we didn't that you'd like to share or advice?

Patrick Brown: 28:54

Yeah, just maybe a quote I, I love that I was just touching on what you said is Andrew Carnegie,

Giuseppe Grammatico: 28:59

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Brown: 29:00

Carnegie, not Carnegie. Fun, fun fact.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 29:02

Hm

Patrick Brown: 29:03

richest man of all time well, who knows

Giuseppe Grammatico: 29:05

mm-hmm.

Patrick Brown: 29:05

Musk and everybody else. But said the way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket. He says the

Giuseppe Grammatico: 29:13

And, and, and,

Patrick Brown: 29:14

the most baskets end up breaking the most eggs in America.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 29:17

and you said, and you said to, to watch that basket, you said, I'm sorry.

Patrick Brown: 29:21

To watch that

Giuseppe Grammatico: 29:22

Gotcha.

Patrick Brown: 29:23

like focus your energy and your talents and all of your capital and everything on one area and just make it work. You know, don't, don't get too

Giuseppe Grammatico: 29:31

Me.

Patrick Brown: 29:31

Like we, again, like, you know, humans think they can multitask, but it's proven that you can't. So having that focus is gonna propel much more success than being too diversified.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 29:42

I love that. You know, and he has, he is, he is definitely a very, very successful guy. So I, I would definitely, those are, those are words of wisdom. I like that quote. That's something I'm gonna steal and definitely use on a, on a future episode. But couldn't, couldn't agree more. But pat, I, I really I really appreciate your time. This was fun. I'm sure we'll we'll continue this conversation. Looking forward to, to working with you and yeah, we'll we'll let you know. Show, show should go live. Go live here in a few weeks.

Patrick Brown: 30:08

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 30:09

Thanks again. I.