Bob Kaufman | Lessons in Global Franchising and Brand Adaptation

In this episode of the Creating Superfans podcast, I sit down with Bob Kaufman, president of international at Xponential Fitness, to dive into the art of global franchising. Bob shares fascinating stories from his career, including the expansion of brands like Club Pilates, Coffe Bean & Tea Leaf, and Tower Records into international markets. We discuss how to balance brand consistency with local cultural nuances and uncover the key traits of successful franchisees. Even if franchising isn’t on your radar, this episode is packed with valuable lessons for any business owner looking to grow, adapt, and create superfans. Tune in for a fun and inspiring conversation!

Connect with Bob on LinkedIn

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About Brittany 

Brittany Hodak is an award-winning entrepreneur, author, and customer experience speaker who helps businesses turn customers into superfans. She’s delivered keynotes to hundreds of organizations around the world, including American Express, Benihana, and Keller Williams. Her trademark SUPER Model™ framework has empowered teams in every industry to transform customer apathy into advocacy. 

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Transcript

Brittany Hodak [00:00:00]:
Hello, and welcome to the Creating Super Fans podcast. I'm your host, Brittany Hodak, keynote speaker and author obsessed with all things customer experience. In today's episode, I'm excited to welcome my buddy, Bob Kaufman, onto the show. He's the president of international at Xponential Fitness. Now Xponential is a fitness company that has brands that you've definitely heard of, like Club Pilates, StretchLab, Pure Barre, Rumble, Cycle Barre, and more, and he's gonna talk about the growth of those brands across the globe. Now what's really interesting to me in franchising is the need to balance what your brand is all about with the needs of the communities that you're opening in. And, of course, that has huge implications when you're talking about working all across the world. I often say that everyone is in the experience department.

Brittany Hodak [00:00:52]:
Every employee is the brand, and that's why it is so critical to have a great model. But let's be honest. Even if you're not gonna franchise your brand, you can benefit from every single best practice franchises have. That's why people wanna franchise brands because they're, you know, really doing a great job of setting expectations and creating brand promises. So today, Bob's gonna talk to us about the global expansion that he's been overseeing for Exponential, and he's gonna share some really fun stories from previous efforts that he's led as well, including for Mathnasium, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and Tower Records. It's a really fun episode. And even if you're just considering expanding across town instead of across the world, there are some great tips that you can use to make sure that every single one of those acting chiefs of experience within your organization is creating superfans. Let's dive right in.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:47]:
Bob, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.

Bob Kaufman [00:01:50]:
Thank you for having me.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:52]:
Now how did you get into the world of international franchising? That seems like such a specific and yet very fascinating career.

Bob Kaufman [00:02:01]:
Well, I kind of had two goals in life when I graduated college. So I'm I'm a son of an of an immigrant. And so my father, was born in Romania. And, when growing up, he, he always spoke many different languages. So whenever we went to a restaurant, we've got great food. And I thought, okay, that that's kind of the key to getting good food is being able to speak the local language in each restaurant you go to. So I've always had a keen interest in international. And so, I was an exchange student in Spain in high school.

Bob Kaufman [00:02:34]:
I was a Chinese language major in college, and I've always had itchy feet. I wanted to travel around the world. And so, that's kind of my international angle, and, franchising kind of found me originally at Tower Records.

Brittany Hodak [00:02:49]:
How many different languages do you speak?

Bob Kaufman [00:02:52]:
Can I bluff my way through? I speak, 4, English, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese.

Brittany Hodak [00:03:00]:
Wow. And how did franchising find you? So Tower Records, let's take it back. I I know, that in college, you had a huge interest in live music and concert promotion. Right?

Bob Kaufman [00:03:13]:
Yeah. And I also had a radio show in college. Anything I was like, I was mixing sound for local bands. I was producing concerts. I was, a radio DJ. I've always been a music fan. So anything to be around music and and, graduating college, my my goals in life were free CDs, free concert tickets, pay rent. And I eventually, started in the music industry at Sony Music, working, originally in the mail room, ended up working for Columbia Records.

Bob Kaufman [00:03:46]:
And then Tower Records found me, and I ended up being based in Tokyo for Tower Records.

Brittany Hodak [00:03:52]:
Now when you were at Tower, how many different countries did Tower operate in?

Bob Kaufman [00:03:59]:
I think by the end, it was almost I think it was 29 countries, that we were in. I was based in Tokyo for Tower, and at the time, they had, locations in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. And, the guy that hired me, Keith Cahoon, still a very close friend of mine and, you know, one of my heroes of my life, hired me and said, well, you know, you speak Chinese. We we need somebody to manage those, those locations. And so I moved to Japan and, worked for Tower Records, only to discover that the company had no intention to ever make any more investments in Asia again. And so the only way to be able to do that was through franchising. And so we were pretty unsupervised out there. So, you know, we found, the attorney that was representing Burger King in the US and said, well, here's what you need to do to franchise.

Bob Kaufman [00:04:59]:
And we started selling countries and opening up. And within 5 years, we were the majority of the global sales of Tower Records.

Brittany Hodak [00:05:09]:
Wow. What were some of the things that really surprised you early on when you were sort of getting your feet wet and discovering international franchising?

Bob Kaufman [00:05:17]:
What was the Wild West? I mean, you you kind of you're trailblazing. You know, in the case of the music industry, the record label still didn't have distribution in a lot of these countries or didn't have direct distribution. So they were working through local wholesalers. And local wholesalers didn't like Tower Records because we had a direct relationship with the home office so we could report what was really selling out there. And so they didn't meet us agreed us with a lot of, warmth as we were going into these different countries. But we were, you know, exporting, you know, international American culture, you know, and at the same time, we were also discovering k pop and other things. So we were selling sending that to the other Tower Records around the world. So it was, it was really exciting time.

Brittany Hodak [00:06:12]:
Yeah. How different was each store as you looked at not just the assortment of, you know, US CDs versus things that were popping in in local markets, but how much uniqueness had to go into each one of those store footprints to make it viable in each international market?

Bob Kaufman [00:06:30]:
Well, this was kind of a new thing. You know, before Tower had gone into these countries, they had never seen a supermarket sized record store. So they were usually small places. There wasn't a big availability of music. And so here comes Tower Records and saying, well, we wanna sell jazz. Like, let's sell the entire Blue Note catalog, and people are telling you locally, well, jazz isn't popular here. Oh, we're pretty sure it's popular here. So, we're gonna bring the entire catalog in, and people are very excited to, to finally have that selection in the various markets they were in.

Bob Kaufman [00:07:09]:
So we and then again, we were also doing, in store. So as artists were touring around, you know, the region, they come in and do autographs. And so this was the first time that they had an ability to do those types of things in those markets. And as far as adapting tower to each of these markets, of course, we we're not there to be cultural imperialists. We wanna make sure that we celebrate the local music scene and gave them the proper, exposure within the store, did in stores with them as well, and actually promoted and exported from all of our stores, throughout the region. And, you know, even how we laid out the locations. Again, I I can talk for forever about this, but, you know, one of the cool things about Tower Records was, we really had an ability to make the right local store. And so it was no one ever walked into a Tower Records and said, is this some real Tower Records or a fake Tower Record? That was it was a real Tower Records, but they all looked different because we were always about celebrating the local markets.

Bob Kaufman [00:08:22]:
And, so, it it was a really fun time.

Brittany Hodak [00:08:26]:
Well and that's something that I wanna talk about, and we'll we'll get to to to some of the really cool things that you've done in your career. So, in addition to to Tower, you've worked on international franchising for coffee, bean, and tea leaf, and Mathnasium, which is how you and I connected, and exponential fitness, what you're doing now. But for anybody listening to this who maybe doesn't have any aspirations of growing, internationally or who is sort of a a a small operation that's not looking in franchising. I I wanna talk about this because I think this is something that's relevant whether you're opening a second location 12 miles away from your first location or whether you're franchising on the other side of the globe, being able to bring in that local flavor and market and understand those cultural nuances of whether it's a different country or a different neighborhood in the same county, I think is so, so important. So I would love for you to talk about as you were opening each new store, as you were starting to understand what made that location, you know, different and what the vibe was and what was really cool, how you brought some of that in and balanced the need to have it be the tower brand, but also be the tower brand that was gonna work in that particular location.

Bob Kaufman [00:09:40]:
Well yeah. And it's not just tower. I mean, coffee bean and tea leaf, all these other, brands that I've worked on. I mean, you have a solid concept. It comes from wherever it is, the US. This is how the this is the occasion in which a customer comes to the store in the home market. These are the best sellers. And so you have a base of what the brand is, but then you gotta go to the other country and you gotta go to the local market and understand, you know, how you can build a bridge to local acceptance.

Bob Kaufman [00:10:15]:
And so you can't just in general, whoever is listening and wanting to grow their brand internationally, if you wanna control a 100% of what you do and you wanna replicate exactly what you do in your home market, then stay in your home market. But if you want to grow to other markets, you have to be prepared to be outside of your comfort zone. Because, again, you can preserve the integrity of your brand and preserve 70% of what you do, But there's probably 30% of a brand that has to find a bridge to local acceptance. And again, it's not like I'm the one that discovered this or the brands that I've worked on are the only ones that have done it. Everybody does that. And, you know, I always talk about some of the most obvious, examples, at least to me. You know, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is a cafe. You know, it's a Starbucks competitor.

Bob Kaufman [00:11:14]:
Been, started in Southern California in 1963. And as you would imagine, you know, daily commuter, morning caffeine hit, afternoon, treat, The occasion which a customer comes into the store is more, you know, morning rush hour, those types of things. But if you go to the Middle East, people don't really go to a cafe in the morning. They don't have bars, so it's really, you know, the de facto bar. So they're gonna come at night. And if they come at night, well, the you know, nobody's interested in buying a scone at 8 o'clock at night. So you have to have a food program that matches the occasion which they're coming in. If they're coming in at night, you need savories, and then you think about the customs that become so beloved in your, in your cafe.

Bob Kaufman [00:12:09]:
You know? What's your name, Brittany? Brittany, your your mocha latte is ready. Well, in the Middle East, we discovered people were uncomfortable giving their name, but wanted that same experience. So okay. So what's your favorite football team? Man, you, your mocha latte is ready. And so just small things that you probably wouldn't even notice are receptors, are bridges to making sure that you can create that same experience, but, you know, also, make sure that people locally are comfortable.

Brittany Hodak [00:12:44]:
And and does that has that 70, 30 held pretty true across each of your roles? And that if you can maintain 70% of sort of what you consider to be the the brand integrity and then the other 30% having that be localized, is that a pretty good rule of thumb?

Bob Kaufman [00:13:00]:
Well, yeah. I mean, look. 93% of all statistics are made up on the spot. So, like

Brittany Hodak [00:13:07]:
I thought it was 95%. Are you sure it's just 93?

Bob Kaufman [00:13:10]:
Like that. We're gonna have to do

Brittany Hodak [00:13:12]:
real time fact check that.

Bob Kaufman [00:13:13]:
But I I think it's more I don't know if it's 70, 30, or 80, 20. It's more of just you gotta be open minded to, look. I'm in the fitness business right now. Actually, it's not even that much. There's smaller things in that. You know, in the fitness business, you know, whether it's, you know, the hours that you open or, you know, the US happens to be a market that, everyone loves their homes. And so you go work out, then you're gonna go back home, and you're gonna take shower, and then you go on with your day. When you look about look at Japan, people leave their houses in the morning, and they're not gonna go back to their houses till late at night.

Bob Kaufman [00:13:55]:
So if you don't offer showers and things in your boutique fitness gym, people aren't gonna come. And so that's another adjustment that you'd have to make that may not be obvious to to someone of like, oh, this seems like another Club Pilates, or it looks like another Rumble Boxing. It is, but we happen to have more showers, or we have, our lockers are different, or, you know, those types of things that shouldn't even be noticeable to somebody. You know, you go to Rumble here, you go to Rumble there. You know, you probably wouldn't even know the difference.

Brittany Hodak [00:14:31]:
Now is this the first time in your career where you've been doing international franchising for multiple consumer facing brands simultaneously under the exponential umbrella?

Bob Kaufman [00:14:41]:
Yeah. It's fun. It's, you know, it is the first time that I've had to work on multiple brands at the same time. But, again, they're all, you know, health and wellness. They're all different modalities, and they actually make good, you know, tenant mix neighbors to each other. So there's a lot of things that you can borrow from one brand to another brand that are still relevant, while making sure that, you know, pure bar may be more appeal to this person. A rumble may have a a younger appeal or, you know, because it's it's or a cycle bar. All of those different concepts, you know, have their own, you know, segment that it really relates to.

Brittany Hodak [00:15:30]:
Now a few weeks ago on the podcast, I had Joe Miceli who was talking about some of the work that he's done with Starbucks and other brands. And one of the stories that he told that I thought was really cool was about how the entire frappuccino business at Starbucks came from an employee at a local restaurant who was playing around, fiddling around with a blender, doing some stuff she probably shouldn't have been doing. But, you know, that idea of iced coffee and blenders led to, you know, I don't know what the number was, but since we're making up statistics, let's call it a multibillion dollar industry with this frozen coffee. I would love for you to talk a bit about when you begin franchising, again, maybe in in your case, internationally, but doesn't even have to be, What are some of the best practices that leaders can do to ensure that innovation that's happening in different locations is being celebrated and making its way back up to the people who can say, how do we replicate this? Rather than just sort of squashing that and saying, well, that's not how we wanna do things, so we're not gonna do it.

Bob Kaufman [00:16:31]:
Well, you know, it's interesting. It's it's easier said than done. Someone who creates a concept here and you've got a franchise, and franchising is all about consistency, and people adhering to system standards in all of that. And that's really, really important. But you also have to have an open mind as you go to different markets to see if it's resonating or not. And big or small, just you you can't if you already know all the answers, then you're never gonna learn anything. And so, you know, I think for me, I have this natural curiosity of, like, I got to step what is what's a better way to do something? How are they doing it there? You know, I look at all of our studios across the world, and I'm, like, looking at the sales trends and, like, why are they doing well? What are they doing differently? What can we learn from them? You know, even if they're not following the system, look, Franchising is all about innovation too. We, we wouldn't have the big mac or the egg McMuffin without franchising.

Bob Kaufman [00:17:39]:
So, and that's opened up all kinds of different dayparts. So, I think it's also my role and the role of my department at Exponential is being that bridge because we want the brands to continue to innovate and have their brand standards, and we wanna adhere to those as much as possible, but also share those observations and kinda be, you know, the the the the bridge between the local people and the brand presidents, the ones that are, you know, where all all of the standards are, you know, created. And and with learning all that and observing all that, you know, that's how we make those changes. So it's not like we go in and say, alright. We've got 70%, which is a 70 percent, but you gotta listen, and you you have to keep your eyes open.

Brittany Hodak [00:18:38]:
Do you feel like in general, franchise brands are faster to be able to spot and react to trends compared to, sort of more localized, wholly owned organizations?

Bob Kaufman [00:18:51]:
I don't know how to necessarily I think it comes down to the individuals that are, operating this. You know, some brands have done really great job in, in finding local acceptance. And some of them have, like, really flopped hard and then learned a hard lesson and then then kind of changed from that as well. You know? Again, don't wanna necessarily call out, a different coffee company, but they, they really struggled for a long time because it was all about the same checkerboard table and the same everything else. And and and if you go to the Champagilise, and it's the same look it's the same look and feel as Vic CLA California. So that was they learned a hard lesson, and they really pivoted and ended up doing an amazing job, localizing that brand that really struggled for a long time internationally.

Brittany Hodak [00:19:53]:
Yeah. In your mind, what are some of the things that make for a really great franchisee?

Bob Kaufman [00:20:01]:
Well, they've gotta live in the local market and know the local market. I know that sounds obvious, but, you know, people are opportunists. And they might say, oh my gosh. I love that country. I wanna go to that country, or I can hire somebody to do that. You want somebody who's gonna bring to the table what you can't hire. What you can't hire is somebody who has decades of local, you know, business experience to how that corner that looks so amazing to you, they can explain to you why for some unknown reason that's a bad location. And, or, you know, because something historically happened there or this was you know, there was something that was whatever the case is, you need somebody who's going to, you know, be your, you know, your local eyes and ears.

Bob Kaufman [00:21:02]:
And then, of course, another great thing about a great franchisee is they've gotta love the brand. So if this is just a trophy or this is just another business for them, you need you need to be engaged. Right? You know, kind of what I always thought about, the the 3 big drivers of great franchisees is engage, commit, and trust. Right? Engage in your business, commit the time, efforts, and resources, and then trust the system. You know, we waste so much energy. You know, energy is a finite resource. You only have a certain amount of it. If you're gonna waste any amount of energy not trusting, then don't do the business.

Bob Kaufman [00:21:44]:
Like, you know, that's precious energy. You've just lost not trusting or doubting somebody, and you can't get that back. Let's use that energy. You in a perfect world, franchising is that we can team up together. You're the great local knowledge. We have all these other things. We create extra strength so that we you don't have to look behind you. You've got an army of people behind you that can be that total support.

Bob Kaufman [00:22:10]:
Because the hardest thing when you open up a business is being relevant is be to local acceptance. So being that that, that you can focus just on resonating with your customers, creating super fans. If you're focusing on god, what's the formula? How do I do this? Well, then you're not focusing on the customer. That's why you go into the franchise. We can be that army behind you. You need to focus forward.

Brittany Hodak [00:22:41]:
Yeah. I love that. And, you know, I know the answer to this question probably varies depending on the brand that you're at, but I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the the the the best or most successful international opportunities and the that push and pull between somebody at corporate saying, wouldn't it be great to expand into this market, versus somebody saying, please, please come to my market because they've encountered the brand somewhere else or they're moving from somewhere else and and they really love it. Because I'm sure there's there's a million factors and a, you know, a a a a lot of, specifics that go into the formula of figuring that out. But I would I would love for you to share either kind of some of the secret sauce that you found or some of the things that that that make it apparent from the jump of, oh, this is gonna be a home run. Even though we're going into a brand new market or this is a place that's very different culturally, we know that that this one is probably gonna work. What are some of those those early warning signs or triggers?

Bob Kaufman [00:23:41]:
Well, I mean, look. There has to be all of the stuff you just talked about. You know, the company has to be open to going to other countries. They have to be open to, it may not look exactly the same way. You may have to change how you do certain things. You know? We are very fortunate. I've been fortunate in all the brands that I've worked at that these are popular brands, and so we get lots of franchise inquiries, even if most of them aren't real franchise inquiries because they wouldn't they wouldn't have the ability to open up in a local market. And sometimes people get very upset.

Bob Kaufman [00:24:17]:
I wanna open up a location here. We can't just open one single location in a small town in another country when we have no base of operations, and we've never kind of set up shop. So we need to set up shop and really plan to go into a market in a responsible and comprehensive way. And so there's you know, our franchisees are amazing. You know, they're they're entrepreneurs. They're risk takers. They're believers. They love the brand.

Bob Kaufman [00:24:45]:
I mean, seeing what Club Pilates has been able to accomplish in Japan, we're we're gonna end the year at 70, locations, and we're we're moving very fast in that market. Another brand I work with, BodyFit Training out of Australia, they've done amazing. We're almost at 300 locations outside of North America, and, they're all over the world, circuit training. So they've been able to leverage customers that have had such this great experience where, BFT is gonna be opening up in Qatar in a month. And, you know, the story of the guy who's opening up in Qatar, like, he lives in London, and he's, like, worked out there and said this is the greatest workout I've ever had. And and he couldn't he was an evangelist for the brand. Right? He had to have all of his buddies do it. He said, we absolutely need this in our local market.

Bob Kaufman [00:25:46]:
So you all of those elements together and being able to harness it, and everyone has new ideas. Some of them aren't going to work. Some of them, you have to give some trial to, and and you have to be willing to be a trailblazer if you're gonna go internationally.

Brittany Hodak [00:26:04]:
Well, you said that something that happens that's gonna inevitably happen with brands is people say, I wanna be a franchisee, and you have to tell them no. I would love for you to talk a little about that process and how important that process is because, presumably, this is somebody reaching out not just because they think it's a business opportunity, but because they are a super fan or an evangelist of your brand. So I would love for you to talk a little bit how to manage that because I think it probably has a lot of analogies to when somebody applies to work at your company and you have to turn them down. Somebody says, I would love to join the team because I love your company and for whatever reason it doesn't work, and how you sort of need to manage that so that now you don't take somebody who was an advocate and turn them into somebody who's, you know, the opposite of an advocate. So I would love for you to talk about in the world of franchising, what that is like and how much care has to go into the communication of letting somebody know that for whatever reason, it's not the right opportunity at the time.

Bob Kaufman [00:26:59]:
It's funny. It's the first time anyone's ever asked me that particular thing, but I we think about that all the time. We're really, really flattered anytime someone took the effort to find us online or to find my name on LinkedIn or whatever the case is and make their case. And so this I think a lot of the time, it just has to be us giving them a real answer and saying, we're excited as you are about that market. These are the types of things that we take to open up in that market. We don't have an ability to open up a single location because we have no way to support it. And, you know, if you go into a market, you need to, you know, get to a certain level just to justify the business getting in there. And even as I'm talking about this, they don't necessarily care.

Bob Kaufman [00:27:51]:
They just want their studio local to them so they can work out there. But usually, it ends up being a pretty nice conversation. They're really excited to talk to somebody about the brand and the fact that we know about their market, and we're like, oh, yeah. Well, actually, we think that market could handle, you know, 60 locations. And we've looked at this city. We've looked at that city. And it's really if you have any ideas of people who could actually do that, you know, we have an idea of the profile of the type of of entity that could bring, a brand in, and we're a master franchise model. So once we have a master franchisee in that market, then they absolutely have an ability to open up a studio.

Bob Kaufman [00:28:33]:
So we keep their names. But a lot of times, it's just more of them understanding that it's you know, that there is thought and the process that goes into opening up in another market.

Brittany Hodak [00:28:45]:
Yeah. Well, that's great. I love that you you handle it in a way that even if it's a no, it probably feels like this is a no today, but not a day forever not a no forever.

Bob Kaufman [00:28:54]:
Well, it's a yes. We wanna be in that market. I don't know if this is the this is the right path for for the brand. And by the way, we don't want anybody to lose money. So if if they're biting off more than they can chew, that's not gonna be a good experience for them either.

Brittany Hodak [00:29:13]:
What is one of your favorite wins from 2024 of either a market that you, you got to go to for the first time or a a a concept that you opened? What what's one of the the most fun things that you've had the opportunity to experience at Exponential in 2024?

Bob Kaufman [00:29:30]:
Gosh. You know, this is my first year at the company, and so we've had lots of, great wins. You know, I keep on thinking about how Japan really turned a corner and, really found their their their sea legs with, with Club Pilates. And by the way, we also, Spain and Portugal are going very strong as is Australia. We, we've launched in several new markets. We opened up in Saudi Arabia, and the numbers have been absolutely incredible, that, it didn't I don't know. I guess I just hadn't anticipated the numbers in markets like Saudi and Portugal in particular to be so, so strong. You know, this week in particular, we've opened up, yesterday, we opened our 1st pure bar ever internationally that was in in Japan, and we opened up our 1st Yoga 6 internationally in Germany, a few weeks ago.

Bob Kaufman [00:30:36]:
And interestingly enough, the Sec and International Yoga 6 is opening up in Tokyo, in a couple weeks. So we've got lots of brands and lots of different places. So we're opening up lots of new countries and signing deals. So, there's been lots of wins, as we are we we have a good amount of momentum. We're about to hit 500 locations internationally.

Brittany Hodak [00:31:00]:
That's amazing. Is there anything that you can share that you're very excited about for 2025 as you look to the year ahead?

Bob Kaufman [00:31:09]:
I mean, there's lots of things. We're we're planning a big launch in Mexico for for Club Pilates, and, I'm really excited because I've had great experience with, you know, Tower Records, with coffee bean and tea leaf. I know what a great market that is. So very excited to see us grow, in Mexico.

Brittany Hodak [00:31:31]:
Do you know off the top of your head how many countries you've visited?

Bob Kaufman [00:31:36]:
Ever? Yeah. Yes. Because my daughter just asked me that. I think I'm at 51.

Brittany Hodak [00:31:43]:
Wow. And do you know how many countries you've helped open franchise locations in?

Bob Kaufman [00:31:48]:
It feels like almost 51. So Wow. I think between because lots of different brands and, I think it's around that amount that, that number of countries have, spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia. So, most of the countries in Southeast Asia, including, you know, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, all of those countries have have done business. And right now, we also have, if you think Australasia, Australia, New Zealand. So it's fun. It's it's always an adventure. And, I can't get enough of it.

Bob Kaufman [00:32:30]:
I I wanna go to more countries and and expand in more places.

Brittany Hodak [00:32:34]:
Wow. For anybody listening who hasn't traveled extensively and may be traveling somewhere for the first time, do you have a go to tip or a couple of go to tips for how to maximize experiencing a brand new culture or a new country for the first time?

Bob Kaufman [00:32:53]:
Yeah. Just follow the local people and go where they go. Right? Like, people always ask me, like, because I've spent so much time in Japan. I'm going to Japan. What restaurants do I need to go to? Follow the local salary man, and wherever he's going, that's where you wanna go. Because that's really how what makes traveling fun for me, at least, is getting to know people locally and going to the the local places to eat and the local places to hang out. Of course, I love museums, and I love all that other stuff too. But, there's a tourist side of markets, countries, and then there's the local side, and I've always seeked out the local side.

Bob Kaufman [00:33:37]:
I wanna go to the local night markets. I wanna try you know, I wanna eat the food that you eat. I'm, you know, all of that stuff. I'm I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get dirty.

Brittany Hodak [00:33:49]:
I love it. Well, for my final question, I wanna ask you, what is something that you have experienced abroad? It can be a brand. It can be an individual experience or or or restaurant, that you were a super fan of. And if you could, like, wave a magic wand and have one in your neighborhood, what would it be and why?

Bob Kaufman [00:34:11]:
Well, it is now in the US, but also I have 2 brands that I'm an absolute super fan of. 1 is I love the brand Uniqlo. Yes. Same. Clothing brand.

Brittany Hodak [00:34:23]:
They do so much with the Peanuts licenses, by the way. I would be a fan even without that, but I could always find, like, the cutest Snoopy stuff from from their websites too. But, yeah, I'm so glad they've got some US locations now.

Bob Kaufman [00:34:34]:
I love it. And by the way, I'm I'm such a super fan that every business trip I go to, I have to seek out the local uni cloaks. I gotta see what t shirts they have, what other things I have, what more un, unnecessary clothes that I can add to my wardrobe. Mhmm. So I I love Uniqlo. There's also, a Japanese chain of restaurants that is kind of like a beer house, a Japanese style restaurant called an izakaya, and that chain is called Tengu. And, it's not special to people in Japan. They're like, you you really like going to that place? I'm like, I really like going to that place.

Bob Kaufman [00:35:16]:
I do. And every time we go to Japan, I have to go and have my meal at Tengu and sit around, you know, all the junk, the drunk Japanese businessmen that are pounding beers at the tables and just ordering, you know, fish and fried food and just I love the environment of it. So that's a a a brand that I'm a fan of.

Brittany Hodak [00:35:37]:
Awesome. Well, thank you for the tip. I have not yet had the opportunity to go to Japan. I really want to. Fun fact, Japan was the first country that did a localized version of creating superfans. So my book is in a bunch of different markets around the world, but, the Japanese translation was the first translation to make it local to that market. So I would love to go buy a copy of Creating Super Fans in Japan and have have dinner at Tengu. So thanks for the tip.

Brittany Hodak [00:36:01]:
Awesome.

Bob Kaufman [00:36:02]:
Thanks for having me.

Brittany Hodak [00:36:03]:
Bob, thanks so much for coming on the show. For anybody who wants to connect more with you or to learn more about maybe becoming an Exponential franchisee in a market around the world, where can they find you and get more information?

Bob Kaufman [00:36:14]:
You can certainly find me at, Bob at exponential.com is my email address, or you can find me on LinkedIn.

Brittany Hodak [00:36:21]:
Awesome. Thanks so much for coming by, Bob.

Bob Kaufman [00:36:24]:
Thank you.

Brittany Hodak [00:36:25]:
That's it for today's episode. Please help me out by leaving a review for the show or sharing it with a friend. Until next time, remember, don't settle for standard. Be super.