Franchise Friday: Episode 204 with Colette Bell of Ace Handyman Services

In this Franchise Friday: Episode 204 with Colette Bell of Ace Handyman Services, I understand the hard work, dedication and challenges that one must overcome to build a successful franchise.

I have been a franchisor for nearly 20 years and have been involved in starting up and operating formerly Handyman Matters and now Ace Handyman Services. The acquisition of Ace Hardware on September 4, 2019, will be a tremendous improvement to not only our franchise system but the handyman industry.

Ace Handyman Services provides value, serves people & solves problems.

It didn’t take long in 1998 to see that the home improvement industry desperately needed to change – it lacked ethics and integrity. This is a business that provides honest value, serves people, and solves problems to make customers’ lives better.

This is a values-driven business that’s based in dignity and respect for your teammates and our customers. If that speaks to your desire to get past flowery mission statements and undelivered promises at your work, this might be just the business for you.

When you buy an Ace Handyman Services franchise, you get everything you need – the power of 24 years of experience – to quickly tap into this rapidly expanding home improvement segment.

In the two decades since, The Ace Handyman Services Franchise Organization has expanded from coast to coast while continuing to embrace the same values and concepts. Business should never come at the expense of family life, or of allowing personal time for either owners or their employees. Success is measured not just in financial gain, but also in quality of life.

According to Colette

“I’ll be honest, Andy, and I started this when we were young, we were just two young married kids with a baby on the way trying to figure out what we were going to do next. We were super fortunate to find the business model of franchising, because really, it is perfect for a lot of business concepts. But for handyman services. handyman service is very local, people who are having somebody come into their house, which is a very intimate place, make a repair to the biggest investment that they own, which is their home. People don’t want to call New York, California, you know, if they live in if they live in Kentucky, and schedule, that kind of work. They want to know that who owns this and who’s responsible for this is right there in their own community. So franchising was. That’s the whole idea that you take a business idea, and then you apply it on a local basis with local customizations are super important. That’s what I love about franchising. It’s the same business. But you know, you do things a little bit differently depending upon the part of the country that you’re in. Just the culture around franchising is very inclusive, everybody’s pulling together to help each other be better. We make each other better, which is what franchising is all about.”

According to Melissa

I am now even more excited about franchising after hearing you! When you look at all the different things that are going on and have occurred in the past few years. And a lot of people can have the sky’s falling mentality. But I really truly believe in franchising, you know, in our little corner of the world, there is an abundance mindset, there’s a lot of opportunity. There’s so muc

Franchise Friday, where you can watch or listen as we explore franchising, entrepreneurship, and small business ownership, speaking with the franchise industry thought leaders and subject matter experts that shape the Future Of Franchising. #FranchiseFriday – For more about our podcast, visit our website: https://futureoffranchising.com/ Produced by Franchise Source Brands International and The Entrepreneur’s Source.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:13

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the franchise Friday podcast with the entrepreneur source. I am Melissa Pang lovely to be here with Colette bell of ACE handyman services. Hi, Colette, welcome. I'm Melissa. I'm so happy to be here. I am excited about today's conversation. So let's dive right in. So as handyman services is a member with the entrepreneur resource part of our T s community. And before we start, could you just give a little bit of background on how you got to where you are today some of your experience and what that looks like? Sure, I'd love to. So we have been a part of the TTS world and partnership for a really long time. My history is sort of long and meandering, but the short version of it is back in 1998, in Denver, Colorado, my husband and I started a handyman business. And we really started it because we were starting our family, I was pregnant with our first child. And my husband had been in restaurant management, which was great, but it was a lot of hours. And we wanted to be different parents than what we had, you know, you're always trying to further the ball a little bit. So he Whap wrapped up his work with restaurants and decided to start his own company. And the concept that he started was a handyman business. And really all we were trying to do honestly was pay the mortgage, and take care of the baby. And it became very clear really quickly to my husband, Andy that the handyman industry was sorely in need of customer service and professionalism. And I think we can probably all agree to that. Here we are 24 years later. So the business took off really quickly. In Denver, we did a lot of tweaking with the business model, like you always do when you start a new business, something's worked, lots of them didn't, we stopped doing all the things that didn't work, because we were losing money. And finally fell upon a model where we hired craftsmen, we call them craftsmen, as w two employees, so that we could do background checks, that was really important to me, as a woman. It also allowed us to carry the right insurance, both for our company, but also for the craftsmen and the homeowners to make sure they were carefully taking care of where that was concerned. And we could teach our craftsmen a little bit more about customer service, because they turned out they weren't the best at that to begin with. So we started that way. And then we stopped doing estimates, we really found it was kind of a waste of time, and everybody wanted it for free, which it's really hard to make business sense if something is free. And so we started transitioning to what's called time plus materials. So we send craftsmen out, we work for a period of time in hourly increments, and we build a customers per hour. Pretty easy, pretty straightforward. Try not to make it too complicated. business took off in 1999. It was just crazy. Everybody needed a handyman, everybody was super excited about the handyman business, we grew to three locations in Denver, we felt like we were onto something as a business idea. But you know, Denver might just have been a weird sort of place. So we wanted to try it somewhere else. So we opened up three corporate locations in California. You know, if you can make something work in California, you could probably make just about anywhere. Lo and behold, three locations worked in California, same way. So we knew we were onto something. But we wanted to grow nationally, we just didn't have a lot of financing. We'd made good money. And we'd certainly taken salaries out because we were paying the mortgage and by that time taking care of two babies. But we didn't have a ton of resources when it came to money. So we weren't totally sure how to grow until we were really fortunate that we had a customer call us and he was so excited. He's like, Oh, I love your handyman business. This is great. If you've ever thought about franchising, please let me know I'm a franchise attorney. So we were off and running at that point. So started franchising in 2001. Join the T as coaches group in 2004. That's, you know, took us three years to sort of figure out what we were doing. Saw some great growth, had wonderful franchisees join us from coaches that learn more about us and brought the right people to us. And then completely out of the blue in 2017. We got a phone call from Ace Hardware. And they had been investigating services, they'd come across what was called handyman matters. That was our brand name. They liked what they had seen. They were wondering if we might be interested in a potential partnership. And my husband said yes, and I'll fly to Chicago on Monday. If you're right, yeah, always taking that opportunity, right. And so. So you know, when we've been approached by private equity over the years, there's lots of mergers and acquisitions in franchising, just like other industries. But we were really loving what we were doing. And we were loving who we were doing it with our franchisees are amazing people, some of them have been with us since 2004. So we've got folks that have been with us a long time, we really didn't want to get out of it. But ace was interesting, it's a much bigger, you know, platform to stand on, they had a lot of the same cultures and values that we have. They're an $8 billion business, but the use of the word love in their cultures, which I thought was really endearing. So we had the conversation in late 17, they reached back out to us in 2018. And we went into due diligence, and it took a year and a half. You know, they wanted every piece of paper, and we started in the basement. So it took me a while to find every piece of paper that they were looking for, to be honest. But the summer of 2019, they offered to buy everything outright. And that was the entire franchise system, which we had 119 territories at that time. And it was our local handyman business, which we've always operated. It's really our only non franchise handyman is is here in Denver. So they bought all of that, but they didn't keep just my husband and I they actually kept the entire corporate staff intact in Denver. So they didn't relocate us to Chicago, which is where their headquarters are. And there's nobody from Ace here. So basically, what they said was keep going, just here's a better brand name. Here's a lot more resources for you see what you can do with this. And they've continued to invest. They've you know, we've doubled our corporate staff in the last three years, we've actually doubled the franchise in the last three years. So we started with 119 territories when they acquired us, as of this morning, we're at 327. So it's it's been a wild ride during COVID. But quite an amazing experience. So I know that's history about the company, but it's kind of, you know, personally, it's my history kind of caught up and all that too. So it is definitely intertwined. And you've been there since the beginning, the beginning the birth of this company all the way through to like toddler years, the teenage years and into adulthood, you've really been there the whole time, which is amazing. Like you've seen so many stages of growth. Yeah, I tell people all the time. You're exactly right. Melissa, people will ask, you know, when you first meet them, oh, what do you do? And my answer was always my husband and I raised two boys and a business. And I feel like everybody went to college in 2019. I've got you know, my boys are in college, the business was sold to Ace Hardware. Everybody sort of went up the ladder a little bit. Yeah, all components kind of went to the next stage. I just think that's so interesting. Because you you have a lot of perspective on a lot of different things out a lot of different points in time, you know. And so I guess one of my questions is, what is it? First of all? Did you ever see yourself in franchising? And what's kept you doing this for so many years? Yeah, that's a great question. I'll be honest, I, you know, Andy, and I started this when we were pretty young, in our really in our early 30s. And so business savvy, we did not have to be honest with you. I mean, we're just, we were really just two young married kids with a baby on the way trying to figure out what we were going to do next. We were super fortunate to find the business model of franchising, because really, it is absolutely perfect for a lot of business concepts. But definitely for handyman services. handyman service is very local, people who are having somebody come into their house, which is a very intimate place, make a repair to the biggest investment that they own, which is their home. People don't want to call New York, California, you know, if they live in if they live in Kentucky, and schedule, that kind of work. They want to know that who owns this and who's responsible for this is right there in their own community. So franchising was perfect because of that, right? That's the whole idea that you take a business idea, and then you apply it on a local basis with local customizations are super important. That's what I love about franchising. It's the same business. But you know, you do things a little bit differently depending upon the part of the country that you're in. Handyman. We can do 1162 different things. But that doesn't mean we do all of them everywhere. You know, we all learned in Texas when they had that Big Freeze, you have to have a plumbing license to even touch anything plumbing in Texas. We don't do plumbing in Texas, but we do plumbing in other states where you don't need a license for it. So franchising was a great model for that. Plus the just the culture around franchising is very inclusive, right you and I both know that we're a part of the IFA being a part of the coaches groups like T EAS, everybody's pulling together to help each other be better. It's not competitive. And I think that's really unique in the world of business and has been so instrumental in helping us get better. I can remember sitting down at the table at an IV meeting with, you know, the, the guy who started Mr. Handyman. And Jeff, who owns handyman connection, and we're still really good friends with those guys, because we're not competing with each other. We all have the same business a little bit differently. And there's plenty of opportunity out there for everybody. But boy, can we make each other better, which is really what franchising is all about. Amen? Like, I need to get the IFA to give you the spokesperson. See, because, well, I just think it's so exactly what you're saying. You know, I think there are a lot of myths around franchising, and I always comes up in every conversation, because once you're in franchising, you're like, wow, it is it's community, people are helping each other people are very open. I would say that's the norm, as opposed to the exception is people are so open to help and especially younger brands are at your different stages of growth. There's people who have been there before, and they are so willing to offer that up because that was one of my other questions. Like, why do you think that you were successful? And I don't know if you want to speak a little bit to that. But um, I think that's a big part of it. It's a huge part of it. I mean, we we, you know, again, really had no idea what we were doing in franchising. The IFA has a mentorship program, which I strongly recommend. I had the opportunity to work directly with Barb Moran from Miranda industries. So another woman in a male dominated industry but running a franchise. And we're really fortunate. Denver's a hotbed of franchisors last time, I'd look, I think there's like 110 of us headquartered. So, very active franchise, business networking groups that are here, other franchisors that are here, and I can remember franchisors calling us and saying come on over, you know, come attend one of our franchise advisory council. So you can see what that is. And here's what we wish we'd done differently. And I mean, it's just, you talk and again, that's what franchising is supposed to be, right? somebody buys a business from me, and I teach them everything I did wrong, and everything to do, right. And that's what it turns out what the whole industry of franchising is, like, it's, it's interesting how it stairsteps up that direction. It just blows my mind. I know, it's just on all levels. You see that level of I talked about collaboration all the time when you see it in franchising as well. And that is something I want to talk to you a little bit about, you know, we're talking about high level, okay, in franchising, there is this level of, again, community network. Collaboration, I want to talk a little bit more about your experience and handyman matters now as handyman services experience with the entrepreneur source. Because I know that for us client experience is massive the clients that we work with, we want them to have a great experience, regardless of who they're talking to, whether it's a coach, or a franchisor, or funding member. And then the other part is that collaboration between you and the coach. And I know that a lot of your success with our with our network has been because you have been so collaborative, I hear that from coaches. And so what would kind of on that topic of working with the TTS coaches, how why is collaboration so important? And I guess we can start there? Why is collaboration so important? Yeah, I think it's the same idea of a lot of coaches that we've worked with over the years knew way more than we knew in the beginning. And they would take the time to learn about our business model and actually ask great questions like, Well, why are you doing that? Have you ever thought about doing this, and that led us down some roads that I don't know that we would have ever even investigated if it weren't for the coaches taking a true interest, not just in the name of the brand, not just in the category of the industry that we're at, but literally taking time to come learn about then handyman matters now as handyman services, how our business operates, and help us translate that idea into what would be a great candidate. And I tell people all the time, the key to working with groups, like the T as coaches is to take the time to develop relationships and understand that two things are true in life. Not every coach is going to is this business model going to make sense for there's some coaches who just you know, that makes better sense for them because of maybe their own backgrounds or things to work in a retail concept or a few You'd concept or some, you know, service is very different than that. So it's important that you take the time to at least have a conversation with each coach to to figure out whether or not this is a business model that makes logical sense to them. Because we all know you can't describe something, if in the back of your mind, you're like, I don't even understand what, oh, here you go, go look at this. The second thing to understand is not every client that a coach works for is going to be a great fit for our model. Again, their business skills, their backgrounds, what makes logical sense for them. So if you can help the coaches understand better, they will bring more specific clients that are going to have a good opportunity of clicking with the business model. And that's just basic business model stuff, right, Melissa, then the T. S coaches are great about taking that to the next level with their profiling, that they do have their clients to understand behaviors and skill sets, and how to apply that and where somebody is going to spend most of their time, whether it's being a social person or being a directive person, and how does that match with a particular model of the business that's being run by a franchise system? Really, really important to get that deep into it? And it's not going to happen with a two minute drill? Right? I mean, it just, you can't put it all down on a piece of paper like, yeah, you know, and it's person by person, you know, which is why so great to have in person. Conferences, again, where we can spend time, both informal setting, sharing information about our business, but then sitting at lunch and sitting for coffee and sitting for a beverage, you know, an adult beverage after the evenings and talking about the business model. That's really what makes a true connection. So I think if, if, as a franchisor, we can make a better connection with the coaches, they can help us make a better connection with the right clients. And you have to have communication and collaboration to make any of that happen, right. It's just not going to happen otherwise, amen. Couldn't couldn't have said it better myself. And I know you've had real life experience working with the coaches and seeing that kind of come to fruition over the years. As well as I think it's really important, you said the time piece of it. Because I know in our world, it's very easy to get caught up in that, okay, I need more franchisees, I need more franchisees, it's a numbers game, I really have to, you know, I only have so many hours in the day to talk to X number of people. And I think it's on the coach side, the mentality of I don't have enough time. And also on the franchisor side, I don't have enough time, but it's like, you know, what, and also to your point of looking at each person as an individual, whether it's the coaches an individual, the client is an individual, and taking the time looking at it as an investment of time, because in the long run, I mean, you know, this it, it does, it does pan out, maybe not unlike my timeline that I originally had in mind. But like, listen, wow, that four weeks really stretched into the, you know, four months. But then you get a great franchisee at the end of it. And you know, isn't that worth it? That's right. That's right. And people who, you know, the the game, the game of franchising is a long game. Yeah, right. There's a lot of concepts out there that are trying to play a short game. And we've all seen that, you know, fizzle out and, and sometimes explode in people's faces. The idea is that you find the right people, you take the time, like you were saying, and it is a lot of time you take the time and energy on the front end, to make sure that the person has a right fit a good cultural fit financially prepared for the business, they're going into the right market, they're going to have the right training and support and then they're going to be there for a really long time. And I'll never forget, you know, in the beginning, when we were talking to clients and talking about, you know, it's a 10 year term, and then you can sign another 10 year term, I can remember the back of my head thinking, this is the wackiest idea in the world, like, who is ever going to sign a second? Like I just, I don't, but you know what I've got franchisees that are going to be signing third 10 year terms coming up in 2024. I mean, that blows my mind. And so it really is that long game that you're looking forwards. It's not the short game and time is so valuable, which is why I think that's why you have to be selected. And by selective, I mean, work with the coaches where it clicks. It's not not to say there's anything wrong with people when it doesn't click, it's just not a good connection for you. And also work with the clients that click. It is a numbers game. But I also think, you know, if you're fortunate enough to be in the scenario we find ourselves in, we have plenty of people interested. We just need to make sure there's only eight hours in every day. And so you got to spend that time with the right people, not everybody, right and you can't I tell people this all the time. You know, you can't be a steak restaurant and have a customer come in and say Gosh, I really want sushi and then run around town trying to find fish. I mean, that's just not it doesn't work. that way, right your steak just be the best steak restaurant that you can be. So you have to kind of be the best business, whatever you are that you can be and then make sure the client is a good fit for 100%. And I think it comes back to the collaboration with the coach. So they understand, okay, Who Who are you looking for? And you're understanding Hey, the person you're bringing me, okay, maybe it's not the person I thought right away. But after talking with the coach, and understanding better that person, maybe they are going to be the, you know, the right person. And then also, you know, it's okay, if someone if someone says, You know what this actually isn't, for me, at least now, they've taken time learned about the business on, you know, different levels of that kind of education piece of it. But now you have someone else who's been educated about your brand, knows about it, and has kind of made an informed decision. Like, no, this isn't the right one for me. And that's good for both parties, as opposed to that's, you know, you doing all the qualify now, or the client doing all the qualifying out before they even know it's what it is? That's exactly right. And when a client says to me, You know what, I just don't think I want to hire employees, right? We're an employee base, my model, there's nothing I could do. It was what we are, when somebody comes to that determination, I am absolutely thrilled for them. Because now what they know is an important piece of information to go back to the coach and say, okay, hey, maybe there's other concepts out there that aren't employee base that I should be looking at. Because I think everybody's goal, at the end of the day, and absolutely in the entrepreneur sources is true. Everybody's goal is to find someone the right fit, not ending fit, but the right fit. That's that long term game in franchising, and the sooner they can look at my concept and say, No, I'm just, this isn't a good fit for me. To me, that's great news, because that's more time for them to spend looking at the right fit. And that's that everybody wins. At the end of the day, I want, I'm always thrilled when somebody says I'm going to I'm going to buy something else, for example, I'm gonna invest in something else, because I'm like, Yay, we have another business owner in the world, I don't care that it's not with us, I'm just excited that they're going to have this wonderful experience that my husband and I have had and all of our franchisees have had and everybody in franchising has had, which is control your own destiny through business ownership. That's my goal for everybody. I feel like it ended right here, but that everyone is called an abundance mindset. So thank you, Colette Val. Know, it's so true, like, when you take that approach, it's, um, it just opens up a lot more things because I think to some people can say, you know, the right fit, and they're looking for very specific, maybe it's like financials, like there's these very, very specific parameters. But right fit could mean, you know, we talk a lot, a lot about income, lifestyle, wealth and equity. So it's not always like, hey, it's gonna be the right fit in terms of the like, what it is that we do, like, someone loves pizza, the right fit for them as a pizza restaurant, it could be the right fit for them is your business because they want to be a part of their community, and they love that customer service piece. And they did that in their past. So it's kind of that right fit there. And so being okay, you know, kind of saying, hey, these certain things weren't right for that client. But to your point, so excited that they could find the, you know, what is the right fit for them? That is so true. And I think what I love about working with coaches is their ability to share with a potential client. Hey, I want you to take a look at this concept. It's a handyman business. Now, listen, listen, you and I both know, there is nothing sexy about a handyman, but I've been doing this for 24 years, right? We fix toilets. I mean, I don't there's, but the franchisee doesn't fix the toilets. You know what I mean? So the industry itself isn't super sexy. COVID helped, because essential businesses certainly started ticking up a little bit. So that was, was helpful. But what coaches are great about doing is saying, hey, I want you to take a look at this handyman business. But let me tell you a little bit more about it. Because our franchisees are not doing the work. They don't need to be handyman. They don't need to know the construction industry. And what people really learn and what I think draws them to our concept is this is oddly enough, this handyman business is an ability to make people's lives better. Now, that's something a lot of people can get behind. It may not be what the first thing they think of when they hear a handyman through the coach is helping them say, you know, keep an open mind, just have a conversation, learn a little bit more about it. Boy, we get some people who, you know, if they were just scrolling through a website, looking at brand names, you just wouldn't be able to capture them, you wouldn't able to capture their interest. Oh, great. Another great point, as well. And I think again, it goes it goes both ways. I think that's really what I find in my conversations is it's not, I think sometimes maybe coaches or people think okay, it's all In the franchisor, you know, you have to really accept the client and do all these things, but also for coaches to also understand, you know that having the open mind and being open to presenting things that's a massive part of our of the entrepreneur source is actually introducing our clients to, to your, to your point to business models and concepts that they would never have looked at, they would have scrolled right past, you know, and that sort of that, but then you take that deeper dive and the coach says, Hey, take some time to talk to Colette and learn this, there's more to it than just the, you know, fixing the pipes. And you know, what's right, fixing the door handles or whatever it is, there's so much more to it, and being able to connect with the client on the things that are important to them. Right? That's exactly. So you bring up a phenomenal point there. Um, I also wanted to i Oh, yeah, we've covered a lot of things here. I want to ask you now, like, if you were speaking to an emerging brand, in any industry, what would you say are some key points, maybe two or three points that are really they're kind of maybe game changing for you, or? Really, I will say, I will say game changing for you either something that you didn't do or something that you did do that you would say, Hey, this is a great, great little piece of advice. Yeah, I got a million things I wouldn't do again. You know, we were all emerging at one time. And it doesn't seem like it was that awfully long ago, to be honest with you. One thing I learned, and I see a lot of emerging brands do this. And it was something we did that I wish I would have changed in the beginning. And that is spending more time when you're formulating the particular details of your franchise model. And in specific that item 12 territory. I would say that most you know, mature franchise systems would tell you boy, we gave away too much territory in the beginning. And I know for sure we did. We we just we did what we thought the competition was doing. My husband who had started it was an entrepreneur who was out to, you know, basically rule the world. So the more territory the better, or as he was concerned. And I think we, we were a little bit short sighted in that particular setup of our model, we had to adjust it as we went forward. And that's hard on everybody. Luckily, we were able to do it in a very positive way. So that franchisees who had, you know, really gone along with us and made the mistake of investing in too much. And that was our fault, were able to keep it all but then resell some of that off. So they could recapitalize their their main business, which is a great way to go about adjusting territories that way. But I wish I wish I had spent a little bit more time on territory I didn't. Second thing is one thing that we did, right that I would definitely recommend is I know a lot of franchise thought for emerging franchisors focuses around growing in concentric circles around your headquarters. And there's a lot of positives to that, right you can drive for support, the demographics are going to be pretty similar to your own business. Lots of good reasons to do that. We of course, had blown that clean out of the water. When we started the California locations. We were like, Oh, I kind of blew that nevermind. But what we ended up doing instead was not so much worrying about where we were growing, but who we were growing with. And, and it's kind of off the cuff statement that we have here at AC handyman services. But the truth of the matter is Melissa, we don't work with me and people seems pretty kindergarten one on one lessons, but there's just not enough hours in the day for me and people. And what I mean by that is we spent a lot of time in the beginning, making sure people were a great vision mission value fit with us. We're very community centered, we asked our franchisees to donate time, once a quarter to their community, do nonprofit work, do volunteer work, that was really, really important to us, because we felt like if you were lucky enough to have a profitable business model, you need to give back to the community. And we wanted everybody who joined us to have that same mindset. And quite honestly, not everybody does. And that's okay. But those were the people that were really important to us. And the reason why I say that was so important is two things. One, those are the people still in the system. So it maintained a really long time with us. And really, that's the folks who got us to the table with Ace Hardware. They opened up the bigger door wasn't us. You know, it was nice that they looked at our business model, but you and I both know, they called every franchisee in the system and said how's it going? Would you do it again? Do you like it? Are they supportive? Is this a good business model? And if we'd had mean or unhappy people, you can imagine how that that might have gone. We were really fortunate that that that's what really took us to the table with ace was our existing franchisees. So, I think thinking about those two factors, what's your territory format? Because that's important. And what kind of a person are you going to bring in? Yes, it's important where they are in the United States. Heck, we even went to Ireland at one point, crazy, long story, really the right person, it was a great person, and you asked it all the way through the middle of the recession, but then it was just too hard in Ireland, and they were going through the Euro change, it was just a big mess over there. But what really, really nice, I still talk to him, by the way, we still are in communication with Oh, and from Ireland. So very nice guy. But I would say focus more on the people that you're bringing into your system, they're going to be your shoulder to shoulder partners, they're going to help your system get better get more sophisticated, respond quicker. They're in the field, you know, whatever business model you have, they have a closer relationship to the customer than you do, as the franchisor. And the feedback they bring back can really make the difference between moving fast enough, especially in our world, you know, all these crazy things that we face every day, you've got to be able to shift yourself as quickly as possible. And if you have good communication with your franchisees who care, they are going to call corporate and say, Hey, this is going on, I think you should research it. I'm not sure my area, the rest of the United States, I don't know what's going on. So and the correlation I see between those two, first of all great points that I actually don't hear come up very often like those two specific things, especially, you know, you do hear a lot of times the concentric circles just want to stay more regional, and then grow out. But kind of flipping that into find the right people, the rest will kind of fall into place is Yeah, is a great point there. And the correlation I see between the two is it's looking at your long term, you know, like, you will get your territory at the beginning. Okay, what's that going to look like when I have not just 10 franchisees, but 100 franchisees? What does that look like? And of course, you could take that concept, not just apply to territory, but really anything. And then also long, exactly, to your point long term franchisees, these people, I want them around. And yeah, I want happy people who really become like brand ambassadors, almost your concept, they love the brand, as much as you do. And so they care to, you know, call you, this isn't going right, I have feedback, all these things, you want that long term, not just the person who's like, Yep, I've got 100 grand, here's my check. Right? That's right. And those are the folks who, when you do hit a, you know, a road bump or speed bump or a wall in the economy, those are the ones who come with come to you and say how can we collectively work together and figure this out? You know, we live through the recession, we, we were in business in the heyday, when life was great in 2004, or five and six, where people could get money if they could sneeze, and you know, life was wonderful. And then we turn around and pay for that starting in 2008. And it hit construction really hard. But I credit our franchisees to calling us and saying, Okay, let's relook at our business model, what do we need to change? What do we need to stop doing? What do we need to do more of so that together collectively, we can all still be in business in 2012. And a lot of the great ideas that came out of that came from franchisees. And I feel like that's another beautiful part of franchising is, you know, you, you know, you do have the responsibility as the franchisor. But you have a great team, not just your own corporate team, but all your franchisees in all different parts of the world different backgrounds, it just Are there parts of the country with different backgrounds. And yeah, you can take it to a level you probably couldn't just, you know, with yourself, right, we would have never had the business that you know if it had just been us in in Denver. Yeah. Yeah. I love this. The whole the whole story. Also the fact that you guys like started when when was it back? You started franchising? 2004 2001 We joined? Yes. Okay. Okay, so we're organized enough and no one all right, there was a franchise there was a franchise. So I want to again, love this conversation. And I could talk about franchising for hours. But when you look at, you know, over the horizon, what does the future of franchising mean to you? What does that look like to you like what can you envision or see? Ya I clearly always been a huge fan and proponent of of franchising as a business model. Love the fact that I think the last statistic I heard was there was over 4000 active franchise concepts in the United States. When I think about the future of franchising, I think about my boys generation. So I've got a 24 and a 22 year old, they're not millennials, right? They're the Gen X or they're young, younger than the millennials but but close enough See that I kind of pay attention to both both of those generations. And one thing that I learned that I think bodes very, very well, for the franchise industry going forward is in my generation. So I'm not baby boomer, but I don't even think they called us anything. They just, we were just the generation after the baby. In my generation, about 4% of us started our own businesses. Right. So you know, we, my husband, and I were part of that part of a very what I would consider a small tight community of people who said, Nope, not gonna play the corporate America game like my parents, I'm going to start my own business. And trust me, my dad thought we were absolutely bananas. I mean, it probably took 10 years before he stopped asking, When are you going to go get a job? I mean, it was he just could not get it through his head that we were starting a business. But I heard a statistic the other day that for the millennial and the Gen X generation, that percentage of people when they were asked, Are you going to someday start your own business was 26%. Six times as many people in those generations are standing up and saying, I can do this. Now, you and I both know. And again, I've been franchising for two decades, not everybody is cut out for starting a business in a basement and making a bunch of mistakes and losing a bunch of money and still having the wherewithal to get up every day and say, Nope, we're gonna make this work. I mean, that's, that's a resilient sort of thing. But a lot of those folks are going to be amazing franchisees, they're going to take a business concept, and especially the younger generation, they're going to figure out how to add more technology, how to streamline things, how to make it more video adaptable, no matter the industry, right? It could be any industry at all that we're talking about. But they're going to bring all that technology that they lived with, that we kindly gave to them, and they were like six years old, and they're going to integrate it into our business models. So I think more and more people are going to be joining the ranks of franchising and all kinds of different models. And I think what they're going to bring to it skill set wise, with technology and a new way of looking at business is just going to it, I think it bodes so well for the industry of franchising going forward. I am now even more excited about franchising after hearing your cola like, okay, things are going well. But I know I feel exactly the same way. When you look at even when you look at all the different things that maybe are going on have occurred in the past few years. And a lot of people can have the sky's falling mentality. But I really truly believe in in franchising, you know, in our little corner of the world, that it's a lot of, again, it's that abundance mindset, but there's a lot of opportunity. There's so much room for growth and innovation and all these things that I am actually hearing you talk about, you know, the generations coming up and looking at business ownership, but through franchising, there's just so much potential. Yeah, yeah, I would say definitely there's the the world is our oyster, it's just a matter of how quickly you can, you know, take advantage of those new opportunities, embrace those new opportunities and, and, you know, for some of us who've been around for two decades, that's harder than others. You know, bringing technology into a handyman business we've been fortunate we've had a lot of technology from the beginning, but boy, there's a lot out there that that you can take advantage of so oh color are you on tick tock funny story. You know, I joined all that. This is terrible. The same illicit people are gonna, like, think for me poorly of me, but I'm gonna admit this. I've never had a Facebook page. Okay. I'm like one of the 300 people in the United States. I just, I don't know it. It hit at a time when I was raising kids and I was super busy and I was doing the business. Honestly, I just missed the boat. I'm not totally sure what happened, but I missed it. When my kids went to college, which would have been, you know, five and six years ago now, a really good way to stay in touch with them was through Instagram and Snapchat and then Tik Tok. And so I'm like, okay, I can do this. I don't post on those mediums. But I I'm at least on it so that they can send me something and I get an alert on my phone. So I know when it's happening. My youngest is actually finding quite a bit of success on Tik Tok. So he's an influencer status. So we try and follow Him and do all those kinds of things. But our franchisees are doing some amazing things. We've got some millennial franchisees in the in I swear they're not even 30 and they're doing amazing things in their markets with tick tock videos and Instagram posts and all that great stuff. So So you're already seeing it like the start of this kind of takeover of the next generation. So and you're part of it, you know, can you miss the Facebook train, whatever. I won't go back. No, we're seeing what we got. So I Love us so I'm going to wrap it up here. Thank you so much Colette, for having taking some time to talk with me today. I absolutely enjoyed this. Thanks for this. I love talking about franchising. I'm really honored to be a part of this podcast with you guys. And we are absolutely thrilled to be a part of the entrepreneur source. It's been a great relationship for almost 20 years now. Hard to believe. Thank you so much.