Lavahot Entrepreneur Podcast - Business, Marketing, and Personal Development

Welcome Back to the Lavahot Podcast | with special guest Carnie Fryfogle of CR3 American Exteriors

• Joseph Connell

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Carney Freyfogle, CEO of CR3 American Exteriors, returns to the Lava Hot Podcast with a powerful story of transformation and growth. Since his last appearance, CR3 has evolved from a fledgling franchisor with six locations to a thriving enterprise with 15-16 active locations across 14 states, earning recognition as #65 on Entrepreneur's list of top new and emerging franchises.

Behind this success lies a fascinating journey of reinvention. Freyfogle candidly shares how they discovered that what works for a single location doesn't automatically translate to franchise success across diverse regions with franchisees of varying skills. This realization triggered a complete system overhaul, with CR3 investing "almost every single dollar" back into infrastructure—rebuilding their foundation to support current franchisees while positioning for future growth toward 100+ locations.

The conversation takes a deep dive into CR3's approach to franchise culture, where they balance system compliance with allowing franchisees (whom they call "strategic partners") to put their personal stamp on the business. "Take things away from this, but make it your own," Freyfogle advises during training, fostering authenticity while maintaining brand integrity.

Perhaps most compelling is CR3's pioneering integration of artificial intelligence. They've developed an AI chatbot aptly named "Rufus" that's been fed their 400-page operations manual and years of training videos. This innovation allows franchisees to get immediate answers without waiting for corporate responses, accelerating business operations while maintaining consistency. Freyfogle shares broader insights about AI's transformative impact on business, noting, "It's not just a buzzword, it's very real," as he discusses how it's reshaping everything from customer support to legal document preparation.

The interview also offers valuable economic insights from someone with visibility across multiple states, noting that while Q1 showed slower activity, recent weeks have brought encouraging upticks. For entrepreneurs considering franchise opportunities in the exterior remodeling space, CR3 presents an attractive option with average ticket sizes exceeding $15,000, with Texas representing a particularly appealing market for expansion.

Ready to learn more about franchise opportunities or CR3's services? Visit CR3Franchise.com or find them across all social media platforms as CR3 American Exteriors.

Speaker 1:

It's the Lava Hot Podcast. Ready to broadcast? Add us to your contacts. Steady your hard hats. We ready for work. We ready for combat. We know our worth. We confetti your contracts. Send them all back. Still no help. Come hang, get trained how to build your wealth. Build yourself a brand or just build your wealth. Toss the cards that you've been dealt. We start over now. Teach you how to feed the wolf. No need to cook we tossin' raw, we'll be right back. Let's get promoted from the undercard. Chase the title. Make you viral. Live life in an uproar spiral, never falling off. You want it all. Dial in, baby, make the call. We all entrepreneurs. We here to take it all, from debtors to creditors, apex creditors Begging us to let them in and vet them. Competitors. Never met a better educator. Ready or not? We on the top floor. Stop, see you in the elevator.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to the Lava Hot Podcast. I'm your host, joseph Connell. First thing I want to hit on. You're probably sitting there wondering, joe, where have you been? Where has the Lava Hot Podcast been? And I'm here to tell you that we are back. Baby, I'm excited to just be back in the studio.

Speaker 2:

We've made a lot of changes inside of the studio and we have a lineup of guests that we're excited to bring onto the show as we got into 2025, content the podcast. At some point I'll give you guys a State of the Union on the agency itself, but I'm just excited to be back in this chair bringing in great guests, and we're kicking off with a guest that we've had on the show previously and I'm excited to have him back to give his State of the Union. So Carney Freyfogle is the CEO of CR3 American Exteriors. When he was here last, he was at about six locations, I believe, and I know that you guys have seen growth all throughout the country over the last two years and I know that you guys are just crushing it and continuing to grow. But welcome back to the show man.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So last time we were here, like Joe said, we had right around six locations plus or minus. We were trying to do a little recon before the show and kind of couldn't really figure out exactly what it was. But since then we've made just drastic improvements. At that time we were a young and early franchisor. We're in the space of franchising, but it's an exterior remodeling company doing roofing, siding, windows, doors, gutters, and we just kind of got into it.

Speaker 3:

Like it's funny, in franchising, the hot topic there is. We all kind of just stumble into franchising. So it's not like people go to school and say like I want to be a franchisor one day. It just kind of. It just kind of happens Right. So we uh, we had that point in business where we had a good model, we had a good concept, we knew that we were built for it and then we took what we did as a singular, singular location, packaged it up and went, went to market, right. So as a young franchisor is somebody who's never been in franchising before you believe that what you have is a foolproof system. But what works for you doesn't necessarily work for everybody and and people all throughout the United States, different geographical locations. Everybody's kind of wired a little bit differently. People have different skill sets. So what it did was it was a quick gut check pretty quick.

Speaker 3:

Where we got into it, we had some early adopters that were very thankful for that um, that took a leap of faith on us and just kind of bought into the vision and the dream that we had and once again had a lot of faith in us, both professionally and personally. So those early adopters, they went on a little bit of a rollercoaster ride with us where we were getting our feet wet in the franchising space. We, over the last two years, have invested almost every single dollar probably more than every single dollar, to be truthful right back into the infrastructure of the business. I mean everything that we took to market in the spring of 2023, we just completely stripped down, rebuilt, revamped and almost every relationship and vendor that we had as a singular unit at that point in time. The whole landscape looks completely different, right. So just massive, massive injection of capital to rebuild and solidify the foundation and a really strong structure to help us as franchisors to support 100 plus locations but also help the franchisees that we have now and the franchisees that we're going to have in the future to chase their goals and their dreams.

Speaker 3:

We always say that this is a vehicle for you, as a franchisee, to be able to chase your dreams and your goals, and if this vehicle is not working, then we have a problem Right. So we have to do our best as a franchisor to make sure that the operating system, all the vendors, all the right pieces and parts of this thing are intact and operating the way that they should, because if this vehicle is not running for you, then we have a problem Right. So we spent so much time, effort, energy, money on that, but where we are today is a very, very solid foundation that's primed for some really explosive growth. So I'm very, very, very excited and very grateful for that and to see where the next three to five years look like. I think if I come back here in five years, I think we're going to have a really different conversation.

Speaker 2:

So I'm excited for that yeah, no, and I have a pretty cool perspective as well. After I met you, I started working with a couple of your franchises, just helping and supporting them in some marketing areas, and it's been cool even for markets that, like this market here, when I first started working with Brendan, was a little bit more established and he had things running pretty well, and then he expanded down to Ocala Florida with Jacob.

Speaker 2:

And it's been really cool to see what Jacob's been doing, because he's really started to establish himself down there. I you know a lot of growth, keep in mind. I don't take any credit for what Jacob's doing because you know, I know he's out there grinding.

Speaker 1:

He's hustling he.

Speaker 2:

I know just from conversations with him he's knocking on doors, like he's doing what he can do to like get business, which is, you know, which is awesome, but it does speak to like one. I think that speaks probably to your culture as well. I mean, it seems like at least with the individuals that I've worked with from your company they all seem to have, you know, a large amount of drive and they're hungry and they're wanting to like get into the system. They wear the CR3 proudly. From what I've seen and and I'm thinking that's probably a cultural thing, I'm kind of curious, like for you in the business, like how important is culture and like how important is like just instilling that into the franchises and our franchisees and the future franchisees.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, culture is is an incredible thing. Our goal and our mission is to create that Chick-fil-A culture. You hear about it so much, that consistency from location to location, the fact that you know that every single employee is going to say my pleasure when you say thank you. Right, so that that culture I mean it obviously starts at the top down. But the people at the local level, the, the we call them strategic partners, the franchisees are strategic partners. Those guys have their own little mini culture right. So they they all do wear that that CR3 badge on their, on their polo or on their hat. They do wear it proud.

Speaker 3:

But like we can't take credit for all that, because they're still operating the business, they're still enforcing it from their level and it takes really good people to be able to take an operating system. They have to utilize it, they have to be the enforcer at a local level, but they also have to put their own little spin and their own little twist on it. At the same time, our big thing with franchising is driving compliance. We have an operations manual. It's like 400 pages long. So they have a lot of substance there and a lot to operate and go off of. But at the same time, we want them to put their own little twist on it.

Speaker 3:

It's like sales pitches for me, trainings all the time. I do one biweekly for our entire system and I stress to these people hey, take things away from this, but make it your own. So it's natural, right. You don't want to just simply be regurgitating and be like a robot, because then it's not genuine to you and then you're not doing the things that you should be doing, You're not operating the same way, you don't feel the same way. So when you're able to take a really good system and make minor tweaks that don't jeopardize the customer experience, that don't jeopardize the brand as a whole you've got to be very cautious about that in franchising but you're able to tweak it and make it your own, have your own little culture. It's cool. Lexi's in here with us, my wife, and she's been traveling with me quite a bit.

Speaker 2:

Congratulations by the way.

Speaker 3:

Thank you Newly with me. Quite a bit Congratulations, by the way. So that was another newly married.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Over the last two years. I guess I should say that not only is Carney married, but if you don't know and you should follow him on on Instagram part time shark wrangler, by the way, like these two sharks out of the ocean, like it's not right back here, which also public service announcement Don't swim down at Assateague. I got some stitches to prove that's a bad idea, but no. Congrats to you both.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, we appreciate that.

Speaker 2:

But no, I'll let you go back.

Speaker 3:

So she's been fortunate enough and fortunately the way that we have things situated at home and in business she's able to travel with me quite a bit. What she's been able to see is pretty cool because we'll go to each location and we'll pick up certain things that we like, we'll pick up certain things that we don't like, and it's cool to see how you go and you visit one of your locations. You have a strategic partner there and they have a team that's decked out in our logo, like we created the logo. You know what I mean. So it's super fun. It's super fun, it's super exciting and the ability to go to these locations and, as a franchisor, be able to learn from them and understand. Ok, this is the operating system that we were in Arizona and they had such a great team atmosphere, like they did a really good job of making sure their culture was intact. So it's just super cool to be able to see that and see how the different strategic partners have a different approach that is for them and their team and most of them.

Speaker 3:

Regardless of that approach, it works right. Regardless of that approach, it works right. But culture is it's that never ending game and that goal line just continues to move, because it's something that you have to work on forever and always, and I don't think any of us will ever be satisfied with the way that the culture is, and I actually was just on a podcast yesterday and we were talking about culture and family, and that's what we're after is that family environment where people are taking care of each other, they feel that the other person has their back, whether it's their direct employee, the franchisee, the franchisor, their employees. We all want to feel that we're included. Our voice and our opinion matters and what we're doing together as a family is meaningful and impactful. So it all starts, obviously, at the top and it trickles down, but I can't take responsibility for it, because the strategic partners are the ones at the local level making things happen For sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that you keep saying operating system, like over the last two years, since we really started expanding our agency, you know, and integrating and putting Slingshot together and all of that, the one thing that we've really centralized our message in on. Our message on is that we are the marketing operating system for local to midsize companies. So like oftentimes, when we step into a company unlike like traditional, like digital marketing agency, so like I came from the world of USA Today where I worked with Local IQ and we would offer digital products and some print products the challenge of that is and it's really how LavaHot started is that local to mid-sized companies all their marketing is fragmented. So you have to billboard people here, you have TV, radio, like all of these things are all over the place and what we do is we act as that central hub to all of it where we help negotiate the rates, make the media buys the placement, and then we centralize everything to one system so that you can track the performance of those campaigns, you can drop them into automations, you can put them into nurture sequences.

Speaker 2:

And I know before this conversation we were talking about AI and like how crazy AI has gotten over the last two years and how important AI is going to be going forward. Like I know for you guys, you have to be investing heavily into AI or even experimenting. I'm sure that you've probably put money towards things that didn't quite pan out, but you're going through that process or learning curve, just getting through, you know, the development of AI and how to integrate it Is that. Has that been a big thing for you guys?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, ai is. It's not just a buzzword, it's. It's very real and I, most people like they on they I don't think most regular people truly understand the power of this type of technology that we're talking about. I don't even use google anymore. I don't trust google anymore. Oh, me either. So if I want to, if I want to do research or I want the answer to a question, I just go to chat gpt and I ask it the question and if I want more information or I wanted to dig deeper, it'll go cross-reference different things. It'll do. If I want it to, I can go send it on a man hunt and it'll do a 20 minute analysis and cross-reference stuff all over the internet.

Speaker 3:

It's getting so powerful that you can take a photo of things now and it can analyze the photo. So, like we, we recently bought a property and I just planted fruit trees right, like cherries, peaches, apples, you name it. And the second I planted them, they all looked like they died, like they got brown and crazy. So I took a photo of it in chat, said hey, what happened to my tree? I just planted it two days ago and it starts going through transplant, shock and all this other stuff. And it says do you want me to help you to diagnose this? Say yes, and all this other stuff. And it says do you want me to help you to diagnose this? Say yes. It says do a scratch test with your fingernail. So I do that. Take a photo of it. It says it looks like everything's still green, it's still living. Nurture it. Do you want me to tell you how to take care of it over the next two weeks? Yeah, sure, give me a protocol, right? So it's like a friend or a consultant that you never had, but now it's at your fingertips and it's so powerful. Me and you were talking about using it for that customer experience and communication piece a little bit earlier before the show.

Speaker 3:

Ai agents now have the ability to not just communicate with people via text message. People are using AI callers, where they're actually calling people and interacting with people, and some of these agents we actually have somebody in our industry right now that has trained agents to go ahead and write estimates for them, but it logs in autonomously in the system and then it goes and it does all the keystrokes like a human. It just does it a thousand times faster. So it has its own unique login, it logs in, it does all the key strokes like a human, and it's very, very, very interesting and very cool, but also kind of scary at the same time, because you start to scratch your head and wonder if, if, if I'm a clerical employee or we have clerical employees, what does the future look like for those people in the next three to five years?

Speaker 3:

For sure, as this stuff matures and it evolves and some of these AI agents have the ability to do that, and I think that that's the thing that we need to really focus on Collectively. I think everybody needs to focus on it, not just the brand leaders, because we have good people who are loyal to the brand, who we care about. If the tasks that they're doing today are going to be replaced by technology in a year, two years, three years, five years from now, and it doesn't matter because, like our, if it's our business, it's going to trickle down to if I'm talking about it in roofing and exteriors I promise it's happened in hospitality, it's happening in medical, it's happening in all the other large corporations.

Speaker 2:

So that's been a crazy thing too, like you know, if you go back 10 years ago and say like, oh, ai is going to be a thing, the first jobs you would think would have been like that physical labor or like manual labor stuff. And it wasn't. It was like a complete opposite. It was your, you know content writers, your copywriters, your, you know clerical staff.

Speaker 3:

It was those people Attorneys man, you can go and you can write an NDA. You can tell chat to write you an NDA and you can send it to a client. It's just as good as if an attorney did it.

Speaker 2:

It's scary, yeah, the other side to it too. But here's what I would suggest is, as quickly as possible, get your employees to be AI capable, meaning because any tasks that they're doing, they can do it probably better and faster by at least leveraging and using chat GPT Does. Is that end all be? All you know is everything you just said probably true, yeah, but in the interim, they're increasing their skillset at the same time, like the craziest thing, just because I have, you know, two, two high schoolers.

Speaker 2:

One's in high school. One is sitting behind that desk right now producing this show for us, right? Because he's my homeschooler and I'm an advocate for teenagers or high schoolers to be able to use ChatGPD. It's crazy to me that they're not encouraging AI, because when they get out of high school and they get into the real world, ai is going to definitely exist and some of the jobs that they may have been considering might not be there or they may be in favor of hiring people that are AI capable, but it's crazy. I don't know if you have the ChachiPT app, but I love this.

Speaker 2:

There's a little feature that you can download or that you could add to it. It's in this menu or this slide down, drop down menu. No, I haven't seen that yet. You can just click on it and I could say hey, can you find me information about CR3 American Exteriors?

Speaker 4:

the CEO, carney Freifogel, I just want some information that we could talk about on the podcast. Carney Freifogel is the CEO of CR3 American Exteriors, a leading exterior remodeling company in the mid Atlantic region. The company specializes in roofing, siding, gutters and other exterior home improvements.

Speaker 2:

I wasn't about to cut off a good promo, right, but no, I mean, that feature is one of my favorite ones, because I will pop on there and I would just say like, hey, I need you to write me an email real quick. And she'll say great, what's it about? And I'll say it's going to be to Carney, it's going to be about making an adjustment to the website or the DNS records. I know that we're going to get that taken care of right away. She'll write it, I'll just copy it, paste it.

Speaker 3:

So it has gotten to the point with us and, like our team of, like I'm not going to lie I was a little reluctant. I'm like chat GPT is silly. Then I started using it and understanding it more, and more and more and now, like our whole team, that's that's how they operate. Like we. One of one of our girls internally asked me a question yesterday and I'm trying to train them how to use it and go to it and I said it's a merchant company that we're working with. I said just go to chat GPT and ask it and it'll tell you how to do that inside of there, cause everybody has these intranets and stuff like that. So as long as it can scan the web, it can look at YouTube videos, it'll tell you how to troubleshoot just about anything that you're that you're up against. So we're training our own team, like our own corporate team, how to go to it to be able to get the help and the resources that they need.

Speaker 3:

No-transcript you, because 95% of the questions that we get asked on a daily basis we have, we have some AI in the company, that is, it's the that the backend data sources are all fed with our operations manual and basically everything that you can imagine that you would need to run a CR three location is fed into this bot. But um, but anything outside of that? You can go to chat GPT and you can get almost anything that you need without having to rely on a third party who is tied up busy on meetings, other phone calls, and it might be three to six hours until that person gets to you. Well, if we can utilize technology and we know how to use it and understand it, it allows us to all just move so much faster.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so like when you said I guess it's pulling information for CRT, would that be like like your operating set? Like your operating set? What's the word?

Speaker 3:

Ops manual.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, your ops manual. Would it be something like that where they could go there and say, oh, what's the policy on blank, blank, blank, and it will be able to spit out.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so our ops manual is 400 pages and who wants to read that? I didn't even want to read it, but I had to, so we just uploaded it into. We have an AI chat bot that's on our intranet and his name's Rufus. He's a dog, so it's kind of fitting. And, yeah, we just fed him with all of our backend data sources and the ops manual obviously being one of them. But all of the trainings that I've ever conducted in the last five or six years I uploaded into them, because he can scan videos as well.

Speaker 3:

So, really, any question that you could almost possibly have unless it's an anomaly you can go to Rufus to go get your answers, and it's a way for us to help to support our entire organization of right now I think it's like 125 to 130 people, without ever really having to lift a finger, which allows us to focus on bigger opportunities, more revenue generating activities.

Speaker 3:

It allows people at the ground level to operate and move faster, get the same information, if not better.

Speaker 3:

The problem with humans when you come to me or you come to one of my team members, or anybody for that matter is we have the ability to forget that technology is not going to forget the information that's fed into the back end of it.

Speaker 3:

So not only can it get you the answer faster, but it's also more reliable because it's not going to forget, it's not going to confuse this warranty with this warranty, right? So super, super powerful stuff and people are kind of reluctant to embrace it. But if you can learn to embrace it for what it is, it allows all of us to focus our efforts on, in my industry, making sure the customer experience is unmatched, just investing all of that time into acquiring new customers, taking care of existing customers and then those revenue generating activities, versus the minuscule supporting type roles that a lot of us are used to in the past, at least within the last 10 to 15 years of business, for sure, yeah lot of us are used to in the past, at least within the last 10 to 15 years of business, for sure, yeah, and you know from the marketing side endless possibilities there, like one of the things we recently did, is we worked on like really fine tuning a Chachi PT prompt.

Speaker 2:

It was like a two part prompt. So the first one was generate a bio based on this individual. We made it primarily for contractors, since that's who we work with where it would take background information of the business itself from like the website and social media and then input it. The individual input information about themselves, maybe how many years they've been in the industry, something like that, right, so they'll give all of their background which will create like this, like baseline bio for that individual. And then we have this second tiered prompt where you'll drop that bio into it and it's basically a short form video script builder and the way that we have it built out is so that it will create it'll create the scripting, but it'll have like hooks and we've pre-loaded like the hook that we want every single time, the closer that we want like follow for more value, the core of the information just based on the industry, based on the website based on that person's bio, but then it also has like a baseline of like, uh, like content pillars, like a video that's going to be educational, one that might be, uh, able to drive some emotion, another one that might be what's the word I'm looking for Entertainment, and it will come up with all of these different scripts.

Speaker 2:

So at any given time, if a contractor's on a job site, they can go out there and say you know what? I'm just going to film like three or four short form videos I know I'm doing siding, roofing, and we're doing the gutters and drop it in there and just say, give me three different scripts, one for gutters, one for siding and one for the roof and it will spit out different scripts that it can go with. And you know, to go back to what you were talking about with scripting, the way that I, you know, position scripts to people are, use that as a baseline. You know, like, try saying that script, but the way that you would say it, correct that as a baseline. You know, like, try saying that script, but the way that you would say it, correct.

Speaker 2:

And then, um, the other cool part is they'll say, like, say this line and then stop, and then say this line and then stop, and then you know they'll just batch that content, shoot it off to us and we'll take care of it from there. But it's, it's just really cool. Like we're teaching contractors who you know they're they barely know how to log into Facebook. There's a gentleman that came here. He wanted to do a, he wanted to do a podcast. So he came to our studio and he recorded um, he ended up only doing one episode of the podcast and then we chopped it down the short form video and started uploading them to TikTok and one of those videos blew up. It got like 101.6 million views and then I brought him in here and I trained him. Like look, you just got to set your phone up and you're going to hit reply with video and just start replying to these videos.

Speaker 2:

This guy is getting 40,000 views, 200,000 views. Like he went from zero followers and called the app Tic Tac for probably three months he went from like no, no, no knowledge of it at all to um. I think he's up to like 15,000 followers right now, but every video this guy does gets like 10 to 20,000 views. It's the craziest, very cool, but it's just, it's funny One. It's funny that none of these apps are, you know, against age. They're not against skill set. It really just comes down to like just doing it. So my thoughts are if we can simplify the process of like what do I talk about? Well, here you know, you just drop it into this. Say what you want to do a video about.

Speaker 3:

Make it simple, stupid.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly yeah, but I'm actually kind of curious of that side. So, like you know, I know I get a feel for where you guys are on the AI side. You know, new year, new president. You know, definitely a different president than we had the last time you were on the show. Thank God we don't do political talk here, sort of, but I'm curious, like what you're seeing as we've gotten into 2025.

Speaker 2:

I know, you know if you watch the mainstream media, you know they talk about it like the world's ending sometimes, but I think, yeah, just within the last week, I mean it's been win after win. You know, to me I feel like it's been win after win, but have you guys seen any sort of like adjustments, fluctuation Like what, how? How are you feeling? And maybe it might even be regional based as well.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, I would say. I would say, and I have not only do we have strategic partners and locations in like 14 different States right now, so we have a pretty good idea of, like, the lay of the land. That's a pretty, pretty good snapshot, but we, like I, also have buddies that are in the industry as well, and they've been in the industry for 20, 25 years. So just kind of reaching out to those guys, I actually just talked to one here recently and it seems to be a common theme that the first quarter of the year was slower and it was down in comparison to previous years. However, there's been quite an uptick here recently.

Speaker 3:

People were just kind of being cautious with their money. Obviously, you got a new presidential leader at the helm, so everybody's kind of just sit back saying, what are we going to do here? And Trump made it very clear that it was going to be painful temporarily, and that's exactly what it was. It was a very short period in time and it seems like things are trending in a positive direction and I'm excited for it because I think that our economy could use some. I mean, we need some big changes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they're definitely in the process of that happening.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm sure you don't want to get political on your podcast, but the whole thing needs just a whole hard reset. The tax system is crazy. I have some very strong beliefs on who should vote and I don't think that you should have a vote if you don't pay taxes. And I think that that in itself would stimulate the economy like crazy, because if you want a voice, you want to tell us where our tax dollars should go then pay taxes.

Speaker 3:

So, it's a very simple concept and I know Trump wants to reduce taxes and everybody's saying, well, the money's got to come from somewhere. Well, if we were not paying 35, 40% of our income to the federal government that is the worst business in America, that doesn't know how to budget at all and we were able to keep that money, how many more employees could we hire? How much more could we do? How many more lives could we change? So I'm a huge advocate of a lot of the stuff that's going on with this current sitting president. I think there needs to be a hard reset and it's going to be very difficult to accomplish a lot of the things that I'd like to see done, but I'm willing to go through a little bit of pain to know what's going on on what could potentially be on the other side. But at the end of the day, I also still don't care who the president is Like. I'm right.

Speaker 2:

I still, I still got to show up.

Speaker 3:

My team's got to show up. You got to show up. Every single day. It doesn't matter how we feel about who's in there, what they're doing, what bills are getting passed, none of that shit matters, because we still got to go to work and we still got to do. Do what we have to do. Right, right, um, I don't know about you, but a president's not going to keep me from chasing my goals and getting where I want to go.

Speaker 2:

So that's a great topic just on its own. Um, you know, when we first got into the year, I had a meeting with my team and my team there's a mix. It's not like we hire based on political preference.

Speaker 2:

So, we just hire on you know whether people prefer like it's all we care about, yeah, um, but so, yeah, basically. So I I had a meeting with with my people at the beginning of the year, just before we got into to the year, and I said, look, here's what I could tell you. I've crushed it in marketing during Obama, I crushed it under Trump, I crushed it under Biden and I'm going to crush it under Trump. So, like it doesn't matter who the president is, it just matters. Like you know one, are you going to let who the president is dictate, like your ability to get out there and put in work? But it's interesting that you say that, because that's kind of the the, the pulse that we had on like Q1. It just kind of seemed like that.

Speaker 2:

I do want to say look, mainstream media, you guys need to stop like pushing all of this propaganda and lies. I'm sorry I'm not getting political, I'm just saying just stop lying. Like I don't think that that's unreasonable, like I think a lot of it was this fear mongering. Like push, like oh, this is what's going to happen. Every this is what's going to happen. Jp Morgan saying that we're going to go into a recession and then double down on it. And now he's backpedaling Like to me that type of stuff, like you're not serving the country by just putting out these bogus opinions, yeah, so yeah, we, we don't even focus on it, especially me personally.

Speaker 3:

To be truthful, I haven't turned on Fox News, I think, ever in my life and actually sat in front of a TV unless it was playing. So it's just kind of part of it. We just deal with it and whatever comes of it comes of it good or bad. Once again, we still have to do what we have to do every single day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I will say this the mainstream media. Where I do want to thank you is that you've created this whole opportunity for new media, for new voices to be found, and there's a lot of people that are cultivating these enormous following.

Speaker 3:

They trust somebody who has a podcast more than they trust the mainstream.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, just look at Joe Rogan like by far the biggest media, biggest name in media today. So but, but yeah, I want to, I I want, as we get like closer to the end of the episode, I want to hear, like you know, I think you guys, you guys had won like some sort of an award, like within your group of franchises, right, or within the the group of like franchises that have cultivated from some group. Am I there?

Speaker 3:

yeah, yeah, I mean, we were very fortunate to be where we are and we we have quite a few awards that we've won in the last two years. Specifically, we were in the top 100 global franchises like new, new and emerging franchises. I think that award came out like last year. We are part of a another like a like a larger group, one of our part like a like a larger group, one of our part like it's a partnership between us and a company called loyalty brands and we were the. We were the top performing location in terms of revenue or top performing concept in terms of revenue, um, which was very cool and a little win for all of us. And then here recently, within the last two weeks, we just found out that we were on the uh entrepreneur franchise 500 list. We were number 65 for top new and emerging franchises.

Speaker 3:

So everybody thinks, when it comes to franchising and franchises specifically, that you're going to open a franchise concept and you're going to grow like a weed and you're going to have hundreds and hundreds of locations, as if just simply saying that you're a franchise awards you a golden ticket right.

Speaker 3:

The overwhelming majority of franchisors never make it. Most of them most truly emerge. There's some stats out there that there's almost always a revolving 4,000 franchisors in the nation, which means there's people coming in every single year. There's not a lot of people. There's people going out and people coming in and there's a lot of churn in that space. So it's very difficult to become one of these brands that has a hundred plus locations and is is really dominant. So, although we beat ourselves up a little bit and we're two years into our journey and we have 15, 16 active locations, that that doesn't sound like a lot when you're comparing yourself to these giants, but when you do the math, I think the average franchisor last year brought in like two locations. So we're definitely above average in that regard, but we are super fortunate.

Speaker 2:

The other thing, too, like when I think of franchises, I've always thought of like you know your standard, like McDonald's type, like where the customer base is a lot larger, Like you guys are in a very specific industry where there's huge upside potential in terms of like revenue, because, you know, doing a roof install is definitely worth more than a burger. Right, you got to crank out a lot of burgers in a day to even get close to what you can do with one roof, or two roofs, depending on how many crews you got. So, yeah, I mean there's that side of it, too where that sounds like really solid, steady, steady growth. I'm curious with loyalty brands, cause it sounds like that's who, like you, work with in terms of like cultivating the franchise. Is that correct, correct? Yeah, they. They've some other notable franchises that they've worked with. What were some of those?

Speaker 3:

So Zoomin and Groomin is one of the brands that they've worked with. What were some of those? So Zoomin' and Groomin' is one of the brands that they have. Now they don't count theirs by locations, they count it by vans because they're mobile. Pet grooming Spa, I guess, is what you would call it. I think I just saw that they have like 230 vans on the road right now and that I mean you're talking about three years or four years. They went from three vans to 230 or 240 right now. So explosive growth there.

Speaker 3:

A-tax is a tax, kind of like an H&R Block or Liberty Tax. So they have A-tax got over 100 locations as well. So they have some big brands underneath their umbrella. And then, obviously, we're like tax returns. I don't know what the average tax return is, probably two to 300 bucks. I don't know what it costs for a dog to get groomed, but the revenue in our space is the thing that attracts everybody is average ticket is 15,000 plus. So it takes quite a lot of taxes or quite a lot of dog grooms to get to that revenue.

Speaker 3:

But those guys are killing it, man.

Speaker 3:

We've gotten very close to the CEOs and the leadership team over there at those other brands and they got some new emerging ones that are growing like weeds.

Speaker 3:

So super cool, because we're kind of like a franchisee under a franchisor but we're a franchisor at the same time. So we're able to group learn, we're able to exchange ideas, we meet with the brand leaders from time to time and we're constantly sharing ideas and innovations and technology and stuff like that. So we kind of have cultivated our own little ecosystem. And then if somebody joins us at CR3 and let's say they open up in Miami Florida well, there's like 30 other franchises that are a part of our network in Miami Florida First thing that you should do is go introduce yourself to those people, because it's our own little BNI network where we can refer people to each other. So there's a tremendous benefit to being a part of a group like that, where we can cross market and stuff like that. So no, everybody over there is doing very well, they're killing it and we're super fortunate to be a part of that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, very cool. Yeah, I was curious to that just because in my head I was thinking that when it comes to franchising, it's equally as important the company that you align with that supports that endeavor of becoming a franchise and all the work that kind of goes into that as well.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, we set out on a mission and we were going to do it, no matter what. However, we got introduced to people that had been in the industry in the space for 50, 60 plus years. So it's a. It's a huge shortcut, right. Like they, they didn't I wouldn't say that they, like, did stuff for us or or did the work for us, but the, the relationships, they cut the learning curve.

Speaker 3:

I'm able to work with mentors. I was 10 minutes before we walked in here. I was talking to John Hewitt, who's he's an icon in franchising and I just got off the phone with him before I got in here and we're going through some of the exercises that we're going through as a company right now. So, very, very fortunate to be able to want to do franchise and get introduced to somebody in the franchise space, put together a very attractive deal for me and then and then us work together with, with very good, very strong partners and once again, they're they're not going to do the work for us, because they need us to flourish as brand leaders and as our own little franchisor, but the resources, the connections that they have, the fact that I can pick up the phone and call somebody who has 60 years of franchise experience, that's worth its weight in gold For sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I'm curious, as you guys are expanding, are there any markets that you guys have your eyes on? I know I was talking to one of your guys and I can't remember if it was Brendan or Jacob, and I think I asked this was during the wildfires in California. I said I'm curious, is there a location out there? Is there a potential of getting a location out there? But are there any certain markets that you guys have your eyes on where you're really wanting somebody to reach out?

Speaker 3:

By the way, listen if you're in that market reach out I mean basically everywhere on the globe is open. Right now we can even do business in Hawaii, so we'll go wherever, but there's definitely states.

Speaker 2:

The wife said definitely Hawaii, and she wanted to go there for training for three weeks, right.

Speaker 3:

Now any and everybody. As long as it's the right fit, we'll make something work. But there's definitely states that we put our focus on, because in our business with exterior remodeling sometimes there's licensing requirements that are gatekeepers for certain people. For instance, the state of Florida. There's a lot of opportunity there. We're very interested in it, but you have to have five years of full-time experience to be a contractor there. So what that means is that you're working with a very small pool of candidates and then, if somebody doesn't have that, they need to be willing potentially to partner with an operator that has that experience. Sometimes that's going to involve an exchange of equity.

Speaker 3:

So but Texas, texas is like the wild, wild West, and you could put 30 or 40 locations alone just in Texas. So that's somewhere where we really want to focus our energy. So we're seeking the states that have a lot of opportunity but the licensing requirements are somewhat limited, where we know that if we get the right fish on the hook, that we're going to be able to get these people to market without having to go through a tremendous amount of hurdles. Let's focus on those places first and then let's expand outward from there. But if somebody calls us from Hawaii. We'll certainly help to open them up and we'll, if it's the right fit, we'll make it work.

Speaker 2:

For sure. Yeah, no, and it's knowing what I know about home services in the roofing industry. I mean you definitely, just along the East coast, seem to have hit a lot of those pockets that are really important, you know, especially as you get further down south as well. But, carney, I appreciate you, you know, making the trip to come into the studio. It's always my favorite to have guests come into the studio Before we wrap up this episode. Is there anything else you want to share? Like you know where people can follow you if they're interested in learning more about opening a franchise, where they should go.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, customers that are interested in any exterior services, they can visit us at CR3Americacom. That's our customer facing website. Anybody that's interested in the franchise concept can go to CR3Franchisecom. That's for franchise opportunities. And then, obviously, you can follow us on all your social media platforms. I can be found if you just search my name, carney Freifogel. I always joke with people and say I'm one of one, even though I'm Carney Freifogel III. So I'm technically one of three, but I'm pretty easy to find. And then we're CR3 American XT Heroes on any socials.

Speaker 2:

So I want to say so, the funniest thing when I had you on my podcast the last time and I published the episode, I got a text from my uncle and he said is his father's name a Carney Fry Fogle as well? I was like, yeah, well, he's the third, so I'm assuming he probably is.

Speaker 2:

And he was like I went to lacrosse with a Carney. I played lacrosse with a Carney, fry Fogle in high school. It has to be the same one because it's not a very common name. But no, I just thought it was small world. I'm guessing you're. I don't know if that was P.

Speaker 3:

I'm not sure where my uncle grew up, like where he lived then Somewhere in Maryland, because my father played, I think, at like South Carroll or something like that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, maybe Westminster like up towards that way.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, up that way.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yeah, but no, I just thought it was the funniest thing in the world. He was like you know that name. There's no other person that would have that name. It's just too too, too coincidental.

Speaker 3:

But again, I appreciate you coming on to the show making the trip, and I'm looking forward to getting this episode out. Yeah, no, I appreciate you having me. The studio looks great and look forward to tuning in to uh, to all your future podcasts, man. Yes, sir, cool. Thanks, guys.

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Joseph Connell

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