Private Equity, Founder Pressure, and the Myth of the “Billion-Dollar Idea” with Brian O’Rourke

In this episode, I sit down with Brian O’Rourke — a longtime operator, investor, and futurist with deep experience across franchising, fitness, and consumer brands.

We dig into a topic most founders underestimate: clarity. Not more tools. Not more dashboards. Not more noise. Real clarity. Brian breaks down why many companies don’t actually have strategy, how data gets misused without context, and why founders can get pressured into chasing big, flashy narratives that don’t serve the business.

Key Takeaways

• Why “strategy” usually means saying no — and why most leaders won’t do it
• The difference between having data and having clarity
• Why most businesses don’t even understand their core business model
• How founders get pushed into “moonshot” narratives that can trap them
• What private equity pressure can do to long-term decision-making
• The danger of misreading metrics like attrition without context
• Why pilots must run long enough for the “other shoe” to drop
• Why simplicity is underrated — and “new initiatives” can become a trap

Time Stamps

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

01:31 Brian O'Rourke's Background in Franchising

04:44 Understanding Hostile Takeovers

08:47 Private Equity and Founder Dynamics

22:18 The Role of Data in Business Strategy

35:46 Closing Thoughts and Advice

If this episode hit home, do me a favor: share it with one founder who’s drowning in noise and needs clarity. You might save them months of pain.

And if you’re ready to go deeper — whether it’s building your support infrastructure, accelerating territory sales, or preparing for private equity — go to guycoffey.com and book a free franchise growth strategy call. I only partner with founders committed to scaling without losing control.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryankorourke

https://www.vedereventures.com/

Connect with Guy Coffey:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/guycoffey
Website: www.guycoffey.com
Instagram: @guycoffey
YouTube: @guycoffey

Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome back to another show of the Franchise Scale Up Show with me, gee Coffee. And more importantly, my guest today, Brian O'Rourke, who has, uh, a wonderful background in fitness technology. He's a futurist. Um, he has a lot to share, on growing brands that he's developed himself as well as ones that he's invested in and is operationally, involved in at some level. And we're super excited to have you on the show today. Brian. Thanks for being here. Appreciate the invitation. We were talking about one of your recent podcasts. I've been following your podcast for a little while and, you've got some great interviews. So thanks for, uh, doing what you do appreciate, be being here. Thanks. You know, I try to make it interesting and so that it's of value to the listeners who are usually entrepreneurs. They wanna grow a business, whether it's in franchising or not. And there's a lot of information out there that's, you know, bite sized and quick. Quick results and things like that. And I think the best way for people to learn is to actually, to be involved in a conversation, just from a listening perspective to, um, of someone that's gone down the path that they wanna go down. So like the, the pressure's off for even them to have to contribute. They can just kinda listen in and take notes. Yeah, no. Cool. Yeah, I get that. And, and today, uh, more than ever, I think context is what you're talking about and context I think is really, really important, uh, to, to have more of than less. Yeah, absolutely. So let's, let's kick this off. Could you just tell people just a little bit about your background, um, how you started is always of interest, especially to, to this audience and then where you are today so that we have a picture of, you know, Brian and what you're involved in today as well. Yeah, so I actually went to work for a, a very well-known entrepreneur who has passed unfortunately a number of years ago. His name was Al Copeland, who was a New Orleans, uh, kind of a hero. Uh, he was the founder of Popeye's Fried Chicken, and I, uh, completed my studies in financed, uh, at the University of New Orleans. My family's originally from New Orleans. My dad was a military um, officer, so I moved back here to go to college. Spend some time with my grandparents. And so I had a background, uh, in finance, which I had my undergrad in, and then did a lot of work in technology. And, um, decided to go to work for this entrepreneur who was launching, uh, a chain of casual dining, uh, um, restaurants called Copelands. And, and he had a hundred and something, 200 Popeye's Fried chicken. So, uh, I ended up, uh, working for him and becoming his chief financial officer. And so that's why I first got involved in franchising. We did the, uh, largest hostile, uh, acquisition in the food service history when we acquired through a hostile acquisition church's fried chicken. Uh, and so, uh, that was my kind of foray into, uh, franchising. I worked with him for nine years and, um, we had a hospitality business, hotels, food manufacturing, real estate, and other, uh, other related businesses. And we took that company public and did the acquisition. I worked with him for about nine years. And then went on to work in other aspects of franchising and the food business. So I was one of the early partners in Smoothie King franchises, which, uh, we took from a couple, uh, 20 locations to a few hundred of those. And I sold my interest in that, and I've done that for a number of brands. I was one of the original people behind most Southwest Grill. I was very, uh, involved in Outback Steakhouse foray into the franchising. I was the CEO of a number of companies, PJ's, coffee and Tea, planet Fitness, I mean plant a smoothie out of Atlanta. And then I've worked with Gold's Gym and their franchising strategically and a bunch of other businesses. Alloy is one recently that our marketing firm has guided through their launch with Rick. So we've worked with Rick for about five years to launch their franchise. So we advised that group and so, uh, yeah, we have a long history. And then in fitness, I kind of fell into that through our experience at Smoothie King. Square. We were installing kiosks in 24 hour fitnesses in Houston. Al was, uh, Al Copeland was a god rest, his soul was a big avid, uh, Mackey shill stone guy who's a GNC franchisee in New Orleans, well known. And so I got exposed to him and then my wife, who's my business partner, she, uh, got a call from the Francos to turn their, uh, their, uh, health club in Mandeville around. And so I started doing work with her. So I've been in the fitness business now since about 97, 98. So it's been. 20 something years and now you get an idea how old a guy I am when you hear all that stuff. So you're just getting the hang of this, it sounds like. Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe not. Well, well, it's, I have to ask two things that, that came out of that is, when people hear hostile takeover, if they don't know what that means, it's, it's. Sounds angry. Right. So, um, just for clarity, uh, uh, to be honest, mine as well, because I've never been part of a hostile takeover. Sure. And you don't seem like a very hostile guy, you know? So you don't know me that well, so I can be, sometimes if you put me in a court, maybe, but no, it, it's a term, it's a term that, uh, relates generally speaking to a company that's public that doesn't really want to be sold. You, you make an offer to, to, to buy it in the market. And so that's kind of hostile. And in fact the company can do a number of things. They have what's called poison pills and other things in their governance documents that keep them from being acquired by people they don't wanna be acquired by. And so that's where the term generally comes from. It. It's, uh, when you're a public company and you have a, a large swath of different investors and you have a management team. The management team isn't always aligned with the shareholders, so it's, it's a natural thing that can emerge where third parties go into the marketplace and make a tender offer to buy the business. And if it's not invited, you could kind of categorize that as hostile. Thank you. Just got a little, uh, little, little education. It's like you, uh, it's like you being in your living room one night and someone knocks at the door and says, Hey, I'd like to buy your house. And you say, well, it's not for sale, but I wanna buy it anyway. And it's hopefully, it's not like an offer you can't refuse, like Yeah. Right. Yeah. But I imagine the, the shareholders are the beneficiaries of that.'cause obviously Yeah. They're not gonna be selling for less than the, the share price, so, yeah. Yeah. And ultimately, ultimately, in that transaction, uh, they actually put the company up to auction. And we ended up, uh, bidding against sonic hamburgers for the, for the, for the assets. But anyway, that was back in, uh, 1980 what? 7 88? I think. So long time ago. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, you've been part of so many brands, um, that. You like now your focus is on the brands that you have in your own private equity company. Um, but like all those brands that you mentioned, um, are, are really well known. I'm sure everybody's heard of all those brands and I only know that one of 'em, smoothie King came out of New Orleans, right? Yeah, yeah. But's right, but, and, and Popeye's, but the other ones didn't. So how does someone. Working in Mandeville, Louisiana, get on the radar of Outback and, and things like this. And how does, how does that work? Is it just the reputation you had as the CFO for, for ALE and, and all the, and all the successful business interactions that you had over that time? Yeah, generally speaking, you know, the restaurant business, a pretty closed knit community. So you, you know, I knew the guys that were the founders out back worked with one of 'em and a couple of 'em actually. It was natural when you work with teams that they go do other things or you do different work. Uh, you know, I represented, for example, uh, a franchise group of the rally system and, uh, helped them get a successful transaction by rallies and then rallies turned around and hired me, uh, to help them with their checkers integration and some other things there. So it's just a natural kind of thing that happens, I think when you go out in the world and you do. Hopefully good work people notice and they say, Hey, can you help me? So, um, and then Al Al had a pretty, uh, he was a pretty, flamboyant character and so, uh, you know, with his racing boats and yachts and big Christmas, uh, uh, um, light stuff he got and all kind of controversy about. And he was a great guy. Learned from as a young guy and kind of see that, you know, kind of era of, of being. So he knew a lot of people and if you get exposure, uh, like that, you know, I think 10 things tend to spread from there. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. Problem. Going back to founders, you are a founder yourself. You've worked, you just mentioned, Al and obviously you hold 'em in the highest respect and you've dealt with a lot of founders. And now as the head of your own firm, I'm sure that's a, an aspect. A deal or a potential deal that you're looking at when you're working with a company. Maybe they check all the boxes that you have for your investment criteria, um, and then you meet the founder. And is it like one of those things after a meeting you're like, well, now I'm more interested, or now it's like. We gotta do a little bit more due diligence than normal on this. How does that work? Because, you know, a lot of the people listening are entrepreneurs. They wanna build something big or they're, they're already a franchisor, they wanna build something big. And, you know, maybe refute the refute my, my assumption is that like the founder's personality and how they show up and what their roles are and, and. The culture that they've built does matter. So it, am I right in that assumption? Well, you know, and again, we mentioned context earlier, so without blabbering on too much, let me give you a little context to that. This is a quick break to thank you for listening. Every week, we are getting more and more people listening to the show, and this growth is helping me to improve it and make it even more helpful to you. My intention for this show is to help more people win in business and life. To that end, I have a favor to ask. If you know of an entrepreneur that would benefit, please hit the share button and shoot them a text with the link back to the show. Make this a great day. The first thing is, you know, anybody that's a founder, they're starting something and, ordinarily they've gotta have a belief in something before it's there. And so a natural part of that is, not having aversion to risk. You've gotta kind of believe it, things that aren't real. Uh, so that's, you know, to get. From zero to some level of, uh, of, of success or, or bearing out the business model takes a certain orientation in general with the personality. Um, another thing about that though is that has changed quite a bit during my career over the last 40 years. Uh, what was an entrepreneur at the end of the 1980s? If you said entrepreneur, it meant you were unemployed there. That wasn't even a word. You know, when I, when I went out on my own, after working with Al and Le as his chief financial officer in the very early nineties. I went out on my own from there on. I never worked, on a W2 again for the rest of my career. Uh, well, what's changed is, you know, the, the pendulum, one thing was the pendulum really swung, uh, when it came to money. At the time when in my career, the number of private equity firms in the United States, you could have counted on two hands. Um. The, the money in, in finance really drove the decision making behind who got to pursue that founder dream versus who didn't. And that pendulum really swung increasingly to the benefit of the, of the founder in the last couple of decades because of the money, the amount of money, and people in private equity. There are over 8,000 private equity firms in the United States alone right now, and it's. It's, you know, and we can get into all that later, but, so the pendulum really swung and, and I don't think it's for a good thing in a lot of cases, some of the things that are part of the zeitgeist, the today, part of the kind of narrative of today about founders, I think is really disservice to many founders who look at outliers and think that that should apply to them. And it shows up in many different ways, um, because of the marketplace. If you're a founder entrepreneur with a concept. With venture capital and their game and private equity in the game they play, people are often put in a position where they have to overstate their valuations, make it a bigger moonshot when that really probably isn't the right thing to do. And understanding the, the kind of alignment and contradictions that exists between a vision of a startup founder and where they take a business end. What their partners, the market and, and the other people involved, and how they sit in that push and pull, is really not a good thing. Um, you know, and you'll see in, in many cases, when I say that, I don't mean to be negative. It is just that when, when any founder is coach, which a lot of them are to say. I have a billion dollar idea. And to think that building a $5 million company isn't a great achievement. That's one example of the disconnect. It's, it's, there is too much bravado and ego going on in many of these cases that don't do the service to the founders, but they're just doing what they're hearing in the, in the culture of startup. And, uh, you know, and, and there are some wonderful founders and wonderful businesses out there. But they oftentimes get caught in a cul-de-sac because they're trying to do something that they shouldn't have tried to do right away. but when you're, when you're looking to raise a lot of money or you're in competition against other ideas for capital, you're gonna kind of morph your story to fit a certain narrative. I think that there, people should open their eyes more.' cause I think there's more flexibility than the box they put themselves in. Yeah, that, that makes sense. And that, that shift is, I didn't know there was 8,000 PE companies. That's, that's really interesting. Um, obviously various sizes and levels of success. Right. That's interesting. I was, you know, with my, talking with clients and, and at conferences where there's more emerging brands, you know, the talk is, is about the exit, you know, and what it looks like. And then, like you were saying. Someone may not wanna have that, that option, or may not wanna take that option, but they have two competitors that are, and they're just, just getting swamped with, you know, marketing. They're, they're losing because the, the bigger pockets have more to market with. And then their franchisees are like, I mean, heck, I mean we even have that with Anytime Fitness, which is doing quite well, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But there, there are people in that system that are like. How come we don't have big hats at the New York, you know, ball drop like Planet Fitness does, you know? That's right. Great example. Great example. You know? Yep, exactly right. I think Rourke has the money to do it if they wanted to. It's just a different, different ball game, but, um, yeah, different model. Yeah, different game they playing. Yep. Right. And it's, and it's also not like survival mode where, where if someone has. I'm sure my, my definition varies from 19 others, but mine is between one and 50 units basically. I know it used to be a hundred, but I think that's the spot where. A lot of stuff happens, you know, you're starting to get validation or you're starting to stress test your system and things like that. And maybe you have some unhappy franchisees and maybe you have the money to fix those kind of things, or maybe you don't.'cause they, they cost a lot of money. Um, so I think it's like a, a really important part of the growth is in that phase. And it used to be, correct me if I'm wrong, you, you know more than I, but. You weren't even thinking about getting sold as a franchisor, or selling until you had a hundred units. They would say like, that, come back to us when you have a hundred units and now it's going, it's going downstream. Um, you know, the number of transactions that we saw last year and that were way smaller than that, um, is, is kind of astonishing. Do you think that's gonna be a trend that continues? And do you have a hypothesis why that is? Well, I think that the private equity, uh, playbook is broken. Um, and I think that, uh, so I think in the interim, so let me ask, answer your question this way. In the interim, what's happening is the number of firms with cash chasing deals has gone up so much. The only place for them to go is to do what they're doing, which is to take smaller deals because they're just not enough of the larger deals there for valuations that they can just justify. So they've gotta matriculate down. I think that's part of the deal. The other reality is private equities returns used to be justifiable because the outpace the general market, and that is not the case anymore. Returns from private equity who rely on third party limited partners to give them the vast majority of their money. Have come, been coming down, down, down to the mean, uh, over time. In fact, uh, recent, the recent credible reports that show that you could have made more money in the general s and p index than being a limited partner investor in private equity in the last five years. And it's natural, you know, it's like any kinda law of the jungle when you, you know, you know what's going on is the outside returns aren't there anymore because people used to in SMBs and other mid-market companies in particular. You know, the ability to transact amongst that pool of potential acquirers wasn't there before. So. You know, it didn't occur to people. There wasn't as much ready capital. There wasn't as many private marketplaces to do these kind of transactions. So of course the cream got taken off the top. So it's very hard to find these deals where you're gonna get outside returns anymore, and the limited partners are gonna start not supplying capital. Uh, the other thing that's going on, in my opinion, frankly, with private equity is they're holding investments on their books at valuations that are way higher than what their real market value is. And. Because of the lack of reporting requirements in private equity, et cetera, they get to use out outlier, kind of multiples to tell their investors, oh, you made this investment. It's worth around whatever the number is. But if they really were gonna put the pro, the company to market, they'd find out that that's not the value. So there's a lot of zombie companies on the sidelines that they can't exit right now. And I could name many of them, but, uh, I won't, I don't wanna pick on anybody. But the point being, the, the landmark, I think is changing. Um, and, and I think that the other thing around that that's very dangerous is when you see, that's what I said, cul-de-sac before, don't get caught in a cul-de-sac. If you, if you're a smaller firm and you take a valuation and you do a transaction, you're gonna have a lot of blue sky that's necessary to make that outcome, uh, happen. And, you know, management and ownership and these deals, they will get earn outs and other kickers. And so what starts to happen is that, you know, you're chasing a, a number that gets harder and harder to reach. The other thing is your ability to make the right long-term decisions start getting eroded, uh, because there's a race to take the next bite at the apple. And tho these are examples of things that put a lot of pressures on founders that they, they create their own challenges, you know, where if you didn't have to worry about that and you just focused on the business and you didn't think so much about huge scale. You don't necessarily have to go down that path, so it's hard enough to execute the basics, but when you have third parties putting money in a business and they're pressuring you even more, it makes it even more challenging. Yeah. And, and there's lots of information Exactly. Shaping and Yes. Um, shorter term decisions and things like that, right? Yes. You know, the, you know, the argument on the other side as well. They're professional managers. They're professional leaders. Like they, they're gonna get a better. They're gonna get more out of this business, um, and provide, provide more value and get more out of it on the turn. Right. But if, if you're saying there's a lot of hunters out there and there's, you know, fewer, fewer, opportunities, so yeah, I, I think that's true. And now some people probably equity will tell you that because of the 401k thing and other changes that are happening and availability, there's a lot of power on the sidelines. But, but I just think from a. A founder's perspective, it's more complex than it was 15, 20 years ago. and I would just encourage any founder, you don't, you know, you have more options than what sometimes people present you, you, you don't have to, you know, just pick this one cookie cutter and use that cookie cutter. So, yeah. Yeah, I think that's, um, that's a really good, that's a really good point. Maybe that should be a, a. An episode someday, like the other options that you have besides pe are, other ways of selling equity or raising, you know, debt or whatever the case may be? I'm sure there's more than I can even think of, but, um, when we were doing Frenchies and we, we, we bootstrapped it and we did convertible debt to, to bring more money in. Yeah, that's right. You could, that you can recapitalize the business if you know and take some cash off the table. I mean, there's lots of things that are options that you probably are aware of. And the real thing behind that is you don't wanna put the cart before the horse because in the end, value comes from creating value, and that means operating the fundamentals of the business. The more time you're spending worrying about capitalization and valuation and whatever. The less time you have to spend on actually improving the value of the business. Yeah. It's a different, it's another job, right? Yes. Right. Yeah. Um, so let's go to that. Um, I'm gonna, we're gonna switch gears 'cause we went way far down the path to someone that's listening. I'm sorry. I No, no. That took you, that was, that was me. But I think it's still interesting for people to hear that kind of thing from. In a conversation. Um, but let's take it back to, to someone that's got five or 10 units right now and they're, you know, they're growing and they're bumping up against the normal, maybe they have 50 and they're bumping up against the normal constraints, you know, whether it's support or Fran dev or they gotta improve their marketing or. You know, their, their unit economics need, need help or whatever the case may be. Let's go back to something that I know that, you know, a lot of, um, and that's data like you're a futurist. Um, you, a lot of your companies that, uh, that you have use data to, to manage operations and direct, I imagine direct strategy and things like that. Sometimes when people hear that word, they're like, oh, that's great. Like if you're talking to me about Google or some, some big pie in the sky thing. But I've, I've got a 10, 10 territory home services company that I'm trying to grow. And you want me to be a, a, you know, information technologist too, like can you just talk about like how data. Can help drive daily operations for even like frontline service workers and growing operations that don't have, you know, people, people on board that sit at their cubicle all day and look at the data. Yeah. So, uh, you know, counter, uh, counterintuitive here. Um, I would tell you this, and, you know, I haven't run billion dollar companies, but I've been a part of a number of multi hundred million dollar businesses global in nature. Um. Uh, it's, I remember, I think the, the book, uh, that Obama wrote, uh, when he was president about going into the room, he talks about every time he'd get to another level in government, he'd go into the room and he kept expecting to hear another level of, of discourse and a higher, uh, kind of, uh, bar for conversation. And, and as he says in the book. People are people. It ain't all that. Uh, so one thing I would tell anybody here, and there are always exceptions, but having been around a long time, I'm here to tell you the vast majority of companies do not have a strategy and they don't even understand their core business model. That's the vast majority of companies. And I don't wanna sound that, you know, kind of a, a negative, but it's just true. Uh, and I think today, you know, a lot of what I were referring to earlier and the kind of environment of valuations and all this exit talk, I think it gets in the way and Myers focus on basic things. And when it comes to data, you know, as I've mentioned before we got on here in the recording, there's an old saying, there are liars. Damn liars and statisticians. So one, one thing. So you can look at data and there's a lot of organizations that have a ton of data, alright? And the challenge is in an information age where we have more data than ever, you know, clarity is a superpower and understanding what is important is a superpower. And this really gets to the culture of organizations where you move companies away from having people in leadership be performative. They're, they're, they're doing a dance and they really don't understand basic things. Uh, and, and, and in many cases, they're may be, um, performing for a founder or for other people to try to show them. Things that aren't really, uh, completely transparent. Sometimes that's not done intentionally. Sometimes it's for a lack of knowledge. Um, a great example in the, in the gym space, which anyone can relate to is when you talk about something like attrition, you know, and you look at data on attrition, you can look at attrition in all kind of ways, but to hear, well, our attrition is, uh, 38% a year. That's a bad number because it doesn't really tell you the story. But if you wouldn't know that, you wouldn't know that. And there are a lot of people in the food business, there are a lot of people in the fitness business who are just, you know, they're just repeating what other people are saying without understanding what the real implications are. So, as you know, in, in the fitness business, as you know, if I say, oh, we have a hundred members and on a year we've lost 38 of 'em out of the hundreds, that tells you what our attrition is. Well, as you know, there's a lot more to it than that. Where, where did those 38 come from? Were those 38 people that had just joined for three weeks and then quit all at the same time? Was it people that had been there for seven years on average and they left? What kind of, you know, there's, there's all kind of ways to look at the standard deviations around the mean and the median to really start deciphering well. How do you look at data like that to figure out what actionable things should you be doing to address the issue? And so I think just like strategy, you know, people don't have strategies. They have plans, they don't have strategies.'cause strategies mean saying no more than anything else and people don't wanna say no. So there are all these kind of muscles we like to exercise that get in the way of our ability to really figure out the data we should be having and what we shouldn't. And I think that's a combination of number one. Having people with enough understanding of the general business and industry to know what that means. Uh, really rolling your sleeve up and, and breaking down the, you know, fundamental KPIs and what those are, and having reliable measurement systems to bring that data in and ask yourself, well, what does it mean? Um, it's not something that, you know, is as easy as people think it is, because. You can be doing that and thinking you're doing that and actually marching yourself right into a, uh, a grave. Mm-hmm. Because you're not looking, you're looking at things in a certain way and not really understanding what that is. And in, in Good to Great. Uh, Collins talks about it being the dune loop, which is reaction without understanding versus the flywheel. Right. And the doom loop is reaction without understanding people. They use their prior experiences to default to decision making. They. They look at data through a certain lens that negates its transparency. Uh, they make conclusions around things, around that data in a way that doesn't really make it actionable. So you've gotta work through all of that before you can get to a place where, you know, these are the key measurements, uh, that we need to drive. And this is why. And in the gym business, as you know, with so many disparate SaaS models. So many different points of data that don't really interrelate and people getting on spreadsheets and keying all this stuff in it, it, it's, it's a real opportunity today to do things better and to understand it better, to do the things you need to do to run a business, you know? Yeah, yeah. And just, you know, being part of a huge system, anytime Fitness, you know, it's one of the areas where in the beginning I. Their design manuals, find 4,000 square feet, buy a bunch of purple paint and make sure one of the bathrooms has a shower. Right. Right now it's, now it's vast, vastly different. And I would say the same thing is true of their data, you know? Um, and there's, you know, they're, they're big systems that cost a lot of money and they, you know, all the integrations and things like that. I just saw one of your recent podcasts, um, and one of the topics of the conversations. Which relates to someone growing a a smaller franchise system is you're gonna be inundated with this tool's the best for you. It's gonna give you this, it's gonna do this, and another portion of the business for marketing. It's like, oh, this is the best for this. And then you're spending money on. Four or five different things and they don't even talk to each other, you know? Um, and that's one of the beauties of, you know, being in a bigger system with, with Anytime Fitness, now we have a, a, a beautiful dashboard and, you know, it's data from all over the world and, you know, and you can compare yourself and rank and stack and, you know, even though they have this thing called the Fab Five and, um, my, we only have one club left. We used to have multiple, but we have one club left and we, we loved this club. Not that we didn't love the other ones, but it's at the base of Steamboat Mountain and it performs really well and we're like top 100 in terms of revenue. And then three of the other metrics were like in the three hundreds out of 2,500. And then in attrition, you would think that we were punching people in the face when they walk in the door because our attrition were like 1300th or something like that. But it's because we have a lot of. Seasonal people. Seasonality coming in. Seasonality. Yeah. You knew it already. That's so funny. It's context, right? It's exactly right. Uh, and another thing around that, another great antidote to back your story up is when, when Popeye's acquired Churches fried chicken, you know, the thesis was, and we did pest on this, we said, Hey, you know, Popeye's, uh, has this more extensive menu. Our average sales volume per location is.$700,000 a year. Churches is three 50. So all we gotta do is convert some of these to Popeye's. And, and so you get the data, you run some, you know, some pilots of that. You put in the new menu, you freshen it up, you open the door, and man those sales go up 20,000 a week. They were a 10. And you're watching that. So you might deduce, well that sounds like a winning formula. It's working in these 20 stores. Let's roll out to the entire, you know, another 300 of 'em. Right. Well, we didn't give it a long enough time because what happened is this, the same managers that were running churches were the people running the converted churches into Popeyes. Okay? And so what occurred is the doors open, the sales went up 'cause it was a new menu. And then the managers who had never really experience running that kind of a higher volume. They managed that menu right back down to the comfort zone of where they were before over the period of three to four months. And so great story of why Popeye's for a sub. Several reasons we had to file for reorganization because the business model conversion did not work and, and because the point of data that wasn't assessed was quality of the management leadership in the locations. Which seems obvious in retrospect, but it wasn't considered. So you have, there's so many points that contribute to outcomes and as Deming talked about, you know, uh, profound knowledge is not something that's easy to garner. And we underestimate the value of profound knowledge because you've got a lot of highly paid guys sitting in a room. Modeling all this stuff out, and no one asked an obvious question or even includes it in the strategy around what was trying to be done and it failed. Yeah. What, what are the assumptions that are driving all these conclusions? That's right. Right. Well, yep. Yeah. Hindsight will always kick your butt, right? Yep. You know? Yep. Um, that's good to know. Overall point of that story, but a kernel of that is if you're gonna try something out, um, give it, whether it's a pilot or something like that, give it enough time for the other shoe to drop. Maybe it doesn't, but maybe it does. And you dodge a bullet.'cause coming right out of the gate, you can get some great results, right? Um, people are excited about it and they have the same customers coming in, or whatever the case may be. Like for a much smaller scale, when we were doing new things in, in, in our own system, we would have at least a 90 day pilot. Like we would try everything, um, but for a limited time or a limited quantity. And then that helped. You know, like at one point we were gonna put like. Um, eyelash extensions in, and the first, you know, 30, 60 days, it's like there's tons of new revenue. The margin was great and everything like that. And then after that, it tailed off because, you know, people, people wanted to book it whenever they wanted to book it like their other services. And we only had one or two technicians and they weren't available. And it just kind of had an impact on the brand, brand reputation. So, you know, even though it. It looked great the first 30 to 60 days we like pulled the plug on it. So way smaller, experiment than Popeyes in churches. No. Same. Same principles though. Same principles. Yeah. And I think that in today's kind of, um, I think this kind of part of the whole founder thing, 'cause you see the, you know, the, the, the content being put out there about the grind culture and all the things and you know, that you gotta be doing. And I think simplicity is just getting highly underrated. You know what I mean? You know, 'cause people always feel compelled to do new things, do new things, do new things instead of getting very good at the core things they do. And, and it's just, I think people get bored. I think it's part of, kind of our culture today. You gotta figure out a new way to do something. It's it that's gonna shortcut everything and it's this constant, uh, need to be busy. Uh, you know, that sometimes gets in the way of our ability to breathe and actually think. About what the hell's going on. Yeah. It's, it's always new initiatives, new marketing, new this, new that. And, um, unless everything's going, you know, the, the, there's a saying in marketing, like we get sick of our own marketing long before the market gets sick of it.'cause we hear it every day. We're just hammering it on ourselves and on the team and everything like that. But not everybody hears it every day. And if it's working and it's working. So consistency is it. Well, Brian, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate your insight, um, all the experience that you bring to conversations like this and, uh, I really appreciate you taking the time to share it with us and it's been an absolute pleasure to have this conversation with you. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. And, uh, to your listeners, uh, you'll have show note links. You wanna check Matt or connect with me or whatever. I'll put out content on different things. I'd love to, uh, love to be of help to anybody that would, uh, be seeking any help. Yeah, and I've, I've watched your content, I've looked at your content. There is a lot of wisdom in it. So yeah, plug into that and thanks again, Brian. Take care. Appreciate it. That wraps up today's episode of the Franchise Scale Up Show. This gave you a strategy you can put into play. Please share it with one founder who needs the help. You might save them months of pain. If you're ready to go deeper, whether it's building your support infrastructure, accelerating territory sales, or preparing for private equity, go to gee coffee.com. That's G-U-Y-C-O-F-F. EY and book a free franchise growth strategy call. I only partner with founders who are committed to scaling without losing control. If that's you, I'd love to connect. Until next time, protect your vision. Move fast and scale smart. I'm Gee, coffee Talk soon.