The Franchise Edge | Heather McLeod

This podcast episode with Heather McLeod, Chief Growth Officer at Authority Brands, discusses her career path and the job market challenges in 2008. She also talks about her transition from Waco to Baltimore when she was hired by The Cleaning Authority, which later became Authority Brands. The episode also discusses Heather and Jamie's favorite Taco Bell menu items, transitioning from marketing into franchise sales, and addressing issues franchisees are trying to solve. 

Transcript

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(upbeat music)- Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Franchise Edge podcast. Really excited about the next several of these. We filmed a series of podcasts at the IFA Conference this year, which was in Phoenix, Arizona. This is the first of four that we shot, and this is with my good friend Heather McLeod. Heather is the Chief Growth Officer at Authority Brands. She started her career at Dwyer Group, which later of course became Neighborly. She's a graduate and huge fan of Baylor University. And we talk, this is a great episode, we talk about a lot of things. We talked about how she got started at Dwyer Group, which again became Neighborly. We talk about the transition that she made from Waco to Baltimore when she got hired by The Cleaning Authority, which later became Authority Brands. We talk about our favorite Taco Bell menu items, and then we talk about how she's also transitioned from just marketing into franchise sales as well. And we give a quick shout out to our good friend, my former colleague, and now her colleague, Jordan Wilson. But I think you're gonna really enjoy this episode. Again, this is the first of four that we shot at IFA. So without further ado, I give you our episode with Heather McLeod. So, okay. So we've known each other for a really long time.- A very long time.- Like 15 years, I think is what it's been.- I think so.- Yeah. 2008. Because you were, or 2009 maybe?- '10. Yeah, '10.- '10? Okay. So 14 years.- Yeah. Oof.- You were at Dwyer Group, which became Neighborly.- I was.- I think you were the brand manager for Rooter at the time.- I was, yeah.- So how did you, tell me, just like, start there. How did you end up there? I know you went to Baylor.- I did. So it was actually interesting. So I finished undergrad in 2008, and for everyone who was struggling through the job market in 2008, I could not get a job in marketing. So my undergrad was in marketing. So I moved back to San Antonio. Moved in with my parents. Imagine like, high-achieving kid, who then moves back in with her parents. I'm like, oh my gosh, I've failed across the board.(laughing)- They're probably like, come on back home, honey. Come on back.- Yeah, I was like, this sucks. So I had worked all through college at the Limited Too. So I went back to work at the Limited Too, folding T-shirts thinking, okay, what's my next move? How am I gonna do this? So I actually went back to grad school. I got an MBA. Baylor had a program where if you had a business undergrad, you could do it in three semesters. So I went back, knocked that bad boy out. And then I was very traumatized from my job interview processes in '08, that in '10 when I finished, I took any interview I could get, anywhere. So I was interviewing like, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Continental Airlines, right before the merger with United. And my kind of career counselor at Baylor said,"Hey, I'm friends with this guy Mike Bidwell. He runs this company here in Waco. Why don't you go? He'll get you an interview with the marketing team." And I was like, I don't want to stay in Waco, but you know, I should take the interview. It could be good practice if nothing else. And I ended up having a great conversation with the team that was leading the marketing department at that time, including Lori Johnson, who is still at Neighborly to this day.- I saw Lori a couple nights ago. We're at IFA, by the way, in Phoenix, for all those out there.- I haven't seen her, so I need to go find her. But I just had a great conversation with them. I was like, you know what? I could do this. And so the first job I had at Dwyer Group back then was the brand manager on Rainbow International Restoration. And then I kind of moved through various roles there, including leading Mr. Rooter, leading franchise development marketing, and kinda got to wear a couple different hats on that team.- So what was it about the job interview process at the time that was leaving you traumatized? Was it just like you had such bad experiences in '08 that you were just nervous in 2010? Or was it just the companies you were getting a shot at in 2010 you weren't really happy with? What was it? What was traumatizing about it?- The processes were all very, very long. And there were so many candidates for jobs. Kind of similar to the market that we're in right now. It was definitely an employer's market back then. So I remember at the time I was living in Waco and I was doing the drive up and back to Dallas for a lot of these interviews. And I just kept going. And I remember being at Mary Kay and saying like, how many more rounds are left?- Did you ask the question?- I did. I said, how many more rounds are left until you guys make a decision. They're like, "Oh, four."- Wow.- And Continental was like, case study after case study. They asked me, I remember this really clearly, because this is what traumatized me. They said, "Look out the window." And you're from Dallas. So I don't know exactly what highway I was looking at, but I'm like looking at this highway."How many cars drive by this building every day on the highway?" And I'm like, oh God, mental math, here we go. Challenging. So it was a lot of things like that. It was really challenging interviews.- And you were interviewing for a marketing job, not an engineering job?- Correct.- Okay. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out the relevance of that question, but.- No, I think they just wanted to see how you think on your toes, right? So of course I, you've known me long enough, I concocted some elaborate math scheme of like, okay, if it's this time of day.- But you made deep eye contact.- Yeah. I said it with passion and conviction.- That's right. That's right.- So maybe it sounded a little bit plausible or believable. It was just all really challenging. And so when I went to Dwyer Group, we actually had three of us from my MBA graduating class that all started there all at the same time. Two in operations and then me in marketing. So we were only a graduating class of 12. So that was like a good percentage of us that ended up there. And I think it was really the first time that they as an organization had focused on, hey, we've got this top tier university in our backyard. Maybe we should be pulling in and recruiting from the school.- Why do you think they waited so long to do that? Do you think it had something to do maybe with the fact that it was a blue collar business and they didn't think that they were gonna be able to pull talent from a university like Baylor?- I don't know. I really don't. I really don't know. I mean, I know being an undergrad at Baylor previous to that, right? Like the Waco... Baylor was a bubble within Waco itself, right? Like so much was just on campus versus off. The town is pretty small. When students start in session, I mean, it's very different now thanks to kind of the fixer upper effect. But it was just kind of a different place. So most people graduated and wanted to go to Dallas or Houston. And that's exactly what happened. There was like the mass exodus after graduation. So I think a lot of people just kind of overlooked the fact that there was great business in Waco. And if you go there now, I mean, it is a thriving bustling community. It's significantly larger than what it was a couple years ago. And you have this whole pool of kind of young professionals who've made it a home and made it a really great place, but it was just a little bit before that kind of transformation had happened. So it's probably a combination.- So you started in '04 then? Started school in '04? Okay. So '04 to '08 you're in school.- I don't want people doing the math.- That's okay. Don't worry about it. Hey listen, it's all good. They're just gonna look you up on LinkedIn anyway and see your graduation date, so. But interesting time because like, that was right when this move to digital was kind of happening from a marketing perspective. Because I mean, I started at ReachLocal in '07, very beginning of '07. And the business had started, I think in '05, so not long before that. And they were the first to kind of sell Google ads to businesses, to small businesses. I think the larger, like your Blockbuster, I remember Blockbuster at the time, they were buying Google ads, but they were just this big national brand, right? So you're in school right around the time that there's this transition happening in marketing in general over into this digital world. So was that talked about or taught at all or touched on in your curriculum at all?- No. It wasn't. It wasn't.- Crazy, huh?- It's wild. It's wild. So when I left and ended up at Dwyer Group, I remember being in conversations about SEO, PPC, which back then I remember, Lori Johnson would tell this joke if she was here, that there was a meeting where, and I think it was her, but I won't put it on her in case it wasn't, where someone said pay-per-click and someone in the room thought they said paper clip. Paper clip. So that's how early it was. I mean this was like, we were all kind of learning as we were going. And I think one of the things that really served me well back then, and I think this is part of the reason, and kind of the explanation of how we got to be such good friends back then, is that I knew enough to know that I didn't know anything about this. And so I just asked everybody to help me understand. What's happening in this space, how can we be better? Teach me how it works, right? And it was a moving target back then, right? We were all kind of learning as we went, but it was a challenge to come outta school because here really wasn't a ton being taught about digital. And how to handle that and how to manage that in an organization. But I think taking the time back then to really like, double, triple down to say, I'm gonna learn about this. And I'm gonna understand how this can impact our business and our franchisees business and their local markets. It really helped me kind of separate myself a little bit from others in saying like, okay, I know enough about this to be able to support kind of the senior leadership team around me who had been in business significantly longer. Had a lot to teach me about franchising and relationships and that piece of the business. But I could kind of position myself as, you know, having a certain amount of digital expertise to kind of help move the businesses forward and separate myself from, you know, the rest.- It's so funny because I remember my, around that same time I'd been at, I'd worked for Deloitte for a few years outta college and I decided I wanted to move back to Louisiana to be closer to family. I was in Tennessee. So I was thinking I was gonna do the law school route just because it was safe. And I didn't really know what else I wanted to do. And I met one of the founders at ReachLocal and he was kind of pitching me on,"Hey, you should come work in sales here." And I remember distinctly like being on, they had this really cheesy Flash video, you remember Flash videos back in the day? They had this Flash video that kind of explained the problem that they were solving. And I remember being at my grandmother's house, like on her computer, probably on AOL at the time. This is the second time by the way I've talked about AOL the last two days. I don't know what's going on. But I was on AOL I'm sure because that's how you got on the internet at my hometown. And I watched this video and I was just like, this is gonna change the world. Like this is, forget law school, sounds so boring. Like this is the industry that I wanna be in. And I didn't know anything about it either, other than it just made sense. It's like, why would I go pull out a Yellow Page book to look up a business's information when I can just get on a computer and just type it in? And it's right there. So it's crazy that it was that simple back then. But, yeah. And I think you're right. I mean, you kind of find yourself in this like, interesting place in time where there's this shift in the world, which is probably like, we've talked about this off camera, but like what AI's doing right now. We'll talk about that in a bit. But it was like this shift in the world where you knew this was gonna be like, the next big thing. And you didn't know really what that meant exactly yet, but you knew you wanted to be a part of it and you were interested enough to go dig in and learn about it. And I think you're right. We did a lot of that kind of cutting our teeth at the same time. One of the things that I remember about you early on at Neighborly, or Dwyer at the time, though, is you talked about working with more experienced people who were good marketers, were really good business people, talked to you a lot about franchising, but really had no clue about what was going on in digital. And I remember one of the projects you ran was you were like, going through and like, trying to understand, okay, what does reputation management mean and what do online listings mean? And how do we actually get these things into our franchisees hands? I remember being in a meeting with you and I'm sure Lori was there too, and I can't remember who else would've been in the room. But the things that you were talking about, some of the more experienced people were like, you could tell they were just blinders on. Like, "I don't know what that means yet." And you were leading that project. Do you remember that at all?- Yeah, well, I remember many meetings, thinking through like, how intertwined it all is before I think we all recognized in a broader sense how intertwined it all was. Like all of the offline stuff that drives people online. And then the online things that increase conversion. And that's what I remember being like, this giant light bulb moment sitting in that room was, well yeah, reviews are important, because every other thing you spend money on to drive people online. They're not gonna remember and type in your URL, they're gonna Google you. Or back then maybe Ask Jeeves, you know?(laughing) Or whatever other search engine that now clearly is, you know, defunct and gone. But that all of that offline activity drives to online. And so accuracy of the information. Because that was the big deal back then was like, everything that was popping up online, we were dealing with data issues all over the place. Then also like, okay, well I'm gonna go online, and I'm gonna read some reviews, or I'm gonna look and see what I'm rated, or what this company is rated, and that rating and the volume of reviews and the frequency of reviews is going to significantly impact if someone is clicking to even get to my website. So it was like recognizing in that moment like, oh my gosh, this is all like, going to continue to be more and more and more and more intertwined as we move forward. I just remember it being this big light bulb moment of like, okay, I get it. I get it. I don't really understand it all. But I kind of get it directionally, right? And it was fun to be a part of some of that early on because we were all kind of learning as we went, but just like anything in marketing that's like a new channel or new medium that comes out, there's such huge first mover advantage. If you can figure it out faster than your competitors, you have this period of time, however long that might be, who knows? But you have this period of time when like, your acquisition costs and your ability to really maximize channel performance is just so high because other people don't know how to use it yet. They don't know what's going on yet. So back in those days, I mean, people who were spending the money, the lead costs were, I mean, we would, today right, it's like, oh my gosh, I can't imagine going back to that kind of pricing.- I remember whenever I was, because we were running Rooter's paid search at the time, and I remember like the cost per click target was like $25 and if it was like $25.02, like everybody at Rooter was going nuts. And it was now like, click costs are like, more than that in most cases for plumbers. It's like, it's crazy. Like, at one point that was the lead cost.- Yeah. That was the actual all-in CPL.- You get a phone call for 25 bucks. And now the click costs in some markets are even higher than that. It's insane.- It is wild.- Yeah. It's crazy how it's changed. But the thing that that I think is interesting for people watching this to take notice of is that all this investing that you did and learning these new things that were happening around digital, like trying to become the resident expert, looking for these kind of opportunities where you could really lean in on some of these channels and get first mover advantage and all the benefits that come with that. You know, more efficient and cheaper leads, things of that nature, that kind of set you up to where you ended up with The Cleaning Authority. Because they were trying to, Rob Weddle at the time was trying to figure out,"Hey, how do we take advantage of that?" And so tell me about that process. I remember us talking a lot at the time because you were a little nervous about like, moving from Waco to Baltimore and you were like,"I don't know if I wanna do this."- I know, two really great destination cities, Waco, Texas and Baltimore, Maryland. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was a big change. It was a big change. And it was a different kind of world back then, right? Like Dwyer Group, Neighborly. That was the place to be.- Yeah, yeah, yeah. And franchising for sure, yeah. Especially in the residential services and the trades. One hundred percent.- Absolutely, and I'm so grateful for that time that I had there with that crew of people because it was so, I would never be where I'm sitting now if I hadn't have been there first. And had so many great foundational experiences and really, I mean, everything we just talked about about digital, they kind of let me become the resident expert. And you know, I was in my mid to late twenties, right? Like, I was still learning what it meant to work in a large organization. But I had kind of made the decision. I was ready for kind of my next big adventure. I was itching to get outta Waco a little bit. It wasn't what it is today in terms of the city and the area.- Yeah, no Magnolia?- No Magnolia. Free Magnolia. There was a Georgia's though, which I still love.- Oh yeah. A hundred percent.- And I still love to go back and hit all my favorite, gotta get all the good food. Gotta go get the Gut Pak at Vitek's, the whole thing.- Don't forget the Big O at Georgia's.- Big O at Georgia's. Yes. But I was ready for kind of my next adventure. And you're right I had been doing a little kind of digging and research and I knew what I wanted in a brand. I knew I wanted to be in franchising. I knew I wanted to stay in home services. Because I really liked the space. I wanted to direct report to the CEO. So I wanted to be kind of the top of the point of the spear on the marketing function. And so I found this role with The Cleaning Authority very similarly to how I ended up at Dwyer. I went and visited the team and I loved the team. Like, this is a place that is gonna be really great for me from a personality standpoint. I really love to work with people who I love to work with. And so that was important to me. So I made the shift and then spent basically the first kind of two years really getting their digital landscape kind of reinvented. They had built their own website that they managed in house.- Yeah. I remember that.- There was a ton of upside in that business back then. So for me it was just the low hanging fruit of-- How do you unlock this?- Yeah. Like bringing them just in a more modern light. And then we also went through the process of digitizing their booking experience. So, it's a very similar system we still use today. But with The Cleaning Authority, you can go online, get your price and book your appointment.- Yeah, you guys are like the first doing that in that space too.- Yeah and that's the big unlock, right? Is letting people, and it doesn't necessarily mean less phone calls necessarily. It's just giving people multiple channels to choose how they wanna interact with you.- Yeah. A hundred percent.- You know, we're on the phone all day for work. I'm like on meeting after meeting, after meeting, after meeting. And so if I have to call a business between kind of normal working hours in order to get something done, it can be weeks before I get around to it. Versus if I can multitask and do something on my phone, especially now, back then, it wasn't even that. It was, can I do it on the computer? But if I can get something done without having to talk to someone, not that I don't necessarily want to talk to people. But just makes it easier and quicker. So that was kind of the start of, you know, my time at The Cleaning Authority. Which then became Authority Brands.- Yeah. Yeah. Before we jump into the Authority Brands piece though, what was it like, you know, again, you move physically from Waco to Baltimore. You're a younger professional in your career. You are now direct reporting to the CEO. Because whenever they hired, you were direct reporting to Rob Weddle, who was a CEO. What was that first six to nine, maybe 12 months like, cutting your teeth and knowing that there was these opportunities? Like you were smart enough and you understood digital enough to go, wow, if we just do, if we upgrade the website and make it more modern and we make it easier to find on Google, if we kind of expedite this online scheduling experience, like having these ideas that you wanted to drive. Like how difficult, or was it not difficult at all, to kind of convince the other stakeholders on the executive team that these are the investments that need to be made?- So I learned a really big lesson when I was at Dwyer that I tried to use to my advantage when I moved to Baltimore. And I don't think a lot of people necessarily like, put their dirty laundry on the table, right?- Let's put it on. I can take my jacket off if we need to.- So early in my career, and I see this a lot of times even with people on my team now that are greener and kind of early in their professional career, and didn't understand the bigger kind of organizational things that were happening around me, I would just get so focused, like tunnel vision, on this is what we have to do and this is the right thing to do and we have to do it now. And like, I would die on every hill. Basically every conversation, every meeting. I was so passionate that this is what- Bulldog.- Exactly. So I made the conscious decision when I went to Maryland. I was like, you know what? We're gonna take a little bit of a different approach. I'm gonna try things a little bit differently. And so I still had a lot to learn back then. And it took me a little bit, to your point, on understanding how I needed to bring things to a CEO to influence decision and behavior and to get what I wanted accomplished, accomplished. So I had to learn kind of the nuances of that relationship management piece. And I hit some hurdles right out the gate. You know, I had to kind of convince everybody that we're not going to cannibalize all this business from ourselves because phone calls convert at a higher rate than the form, or the booking process online. I had to convince everybody, like, the pie is gonna get bigger, we're gonna see it in the numbers. And so I think, you know, it took a little bit for me just personally to adapt my style to be in a position where I could get some of those things accomplished. But honestly, it was a conscious choice because I realized that, you know, it didn't serve me well necessarily when I was at Dwyer, that I needed to be different, that there were things that I could do to be better and be a better partner for my operations team partners. And a better peer and better employee for my boss. So I tried really hard to work on that, and I think that's a really great skill that just comes for a lot of us in, you know, just organically in professional development. But you don't often hear people-- Talking about it. Yeah, yeah. I know, and I think it's also interesting, a little bit it's based on the style of the person that you're trying to get through and influence. Because I mean, I've definitely seen the bulldog, you know, "Hey, I'm committed to this, this is what we should do. I'm convicted about this." Like there's a time and a place to use that. I completely agree. Like, that's naturally my style as well. And the older I've gotten, the less I find myself kind of gravitating towards that. I do think it comes in handy, but I can just, I know Rob specifically, he's just a very methodical, process-oriented thinker. And he's also very data-driven. He's a numbers guy. So the emotional pull of convincing doesn't really play well for people like that. You actually have to kind of adapt to their style and how they think and show it through the lens of how they view the world. Like, "Hey, by doing this, it's gonna influence this, this and this in a positive impact and it's not gonna influence in a negative impact." That makes a lot of sense. What was the big kind of first, was there a milestone moment where early on like, and I say early on, but in the first year or two, where some of these bets that you were really wanting to pull the trigger on, but took some convincing, but they started to pay off, and there was like this moment of, you know, we did it. Tell me about that.- A hundred percent. So I remember sitting in our office back then, and we were a fierce, but mighty team, but we were a small team. And we had a CFO at the time, his name is Pat. And Pat was very serious. Stoic.- I remember. Yeah. I remember Pat.- Pat was not a emotional kind of guy. Now his wife on the other hand, ball of personality. But they kind of had that dynamic. And I remember Pat coming into this meeting with, you know, his stack of spreadsheets and papers, and he made a comment that I will never forget because it was the first time that I remember the group kind of acknowledging like, the world is different for us now. And he said, "Marketing and lead volume have reached new levels of normal." So enough time had passed that the volume that we saw and the increases in leads from not only kind of digitizing the booking experience but being better advocates and stewards of our national ad fund and spending dollars more wisely, making better choices around our paid search spend. So there were all kinds of little levers and you know, we all know what they are over the years, but that I pulled to optimize that spend performance. And we got to the point where the CFO is saying, this is the new baseline and we're seeing this consistently in the numbers moving forward. And I remember looking around the room like, did Pat just give me a compliment? Did everybody hear that? But you know, it's like, you gotta play cool. You can't overreact, you know? But that was it. It was like, okay, the CFO sees it, and sees it in the numbers and is using this new level of normal to forecast what our year is gonna look like and what our next year is gonna look like. And so that was a big one. We actually, I don't know if you remember this, we launched that booking experience the same timeframe of, at least the first one that I attended, I don't know if there had been one before that, event that you hosted at Google.- Oh yeah. I do remember that.- I was at the airport on my phone going through, like, all of the emails of lead volume, and here's all the stuff that's happening and, you know.- Yeah, because you know what? I remember we, you and Jordan Wilson and I, had a conversation about it that night at the hotel bar. We were at the, I think the Four Seasons in Palo Alto maybe. And we were talking about because you had been like so nervous about it.- And then in typical franchising story, right, something fantastic happens and we're stoked about it. And we miscalculated some of the communications we should have had with our franchisees. Because they were used to, in that system, we had a call center. Call center answers the phone, books the appointment on their calendar. And then in the instance where someone doesn't book, it kind of went into a bucket of like, warm follow up for the franchisee. But now we had all these people who were engaging with the form and we were saving every step of the way. It's like, you put in your info, onto the next screen, saved. You didn't complete, you abandoned, saved. The volume of those didn't book leads that they saw in the system went through the roof. And they're like,"I don't have time to call all these people back. I don't have time to, what is this? People aren't booking because of the form." And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. The pie literally just went from this to this. Like it got so much bigger, but we didn't anticipate like, how we should have communicated to them. And it was causing friction in the organization even though it was positive. So that's what I remember going through for those first few days was like everyone saying,"Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off. It's too much. The system doesn't know how to handle it." Right? I know. I wish we could have that problem today. But we know, like most things, you know, it's a pendulum. Sometimes we're on the extreme where leads are plentiful and cheaper than other days. And we're struggling to get employees, normally is the trade off. Or sometimes it's easy to get employees and retain employees and getting customers is the challenge. It's always kind of some pendulum back and forth between the two. But that's what I remember is, is Pat telling me new levels of normal? And I was like, thank God.- This is not an anomaly.- This is not a drill. This is real life. But I remember, and it really just goes back to underlining how important communication is in a franchise system. And when you think you've over-communicated, you probably are just starting to scratch the surface. So say it again.- Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned just all the leads, the pie kind of just broadening. How do you as a CMO at the time, how do you kind of hunker down and work with the operation side of the business to make sure that when you're executing, you know, and you're bringing in more opportunity, that those things are being followed up on and that processes are updated so that you can capitalize on stuff? How did that kind of work out early on?- Yeah, so I think it's really, really important that marketing and operations are attached to the hip. Because the success of the marketing team a lot of times is completely interdependent on operations. We can make the phone ring at the call center, we can get people to the site filling out the form, but it's on operations and the service delivery of our franchisees to be able to turn that into revenue. We can't turn it into revenue ourselves. So, it's always been, to me, a really, really important dynamic, not just with operations kind of at the franchisor level but understanding your franchisees and having franchisees who can teach you a thing or two about their businesses, because oftentimes they have a laundry list of ideas and solutions and things that could help them grow bigger, better, faster that you just have to be humble enough to recognize, like, you don't have to have every good idea. Our job sometimes is just to be the executor of the idea or the people to bring scale to it or make it achievable in a system. So I've always really prided myself and my team on trying to be a department that people love to work with, but really a department that operations loves to work with.- Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And I've seen that evolution too. I mean, I feel like early on I felt like there was a little bit of friction in those groups and those personalities. And now it's like, now you're officiating weddings, you know- I know. Isn't that wild? So, Leanne Stapf, who is a very, very dear friend, when I first came to The Cleaning Authority, she was the director of operations. And we did, at the beginning, we had a little kind of push and pull, like a little tug of war of things I wanted to do. They were counter to what the brand had done in the past and what they had been told was the right thing to do. And so really kind of building that relationship and getting to the point where now I officiated her wedding. Which was amazing. I don't really quite know how I was allowed to do that, but it's legal they say, so.- You get your little certificate and you're off to the races.- I should be officiating weddings at IFA. I could get a booth, 200 bucks a pop.- Okay. All right. Maybe that's an idea we throw to Matt Holler next year. Hey, Matt, can we set up a booth for Heather to do weddings?- Yeah. Vow renewals. Right?- That's right.- Not agreement renewals, vow renewals. But no, I think it's so important to have those types of relationships that are really focused on, like, at the beginning it was me understanding the business, help me understand the business. What are the pain points? How can I help, how can my team help, what can we do to make things easier, better, generate more revenue? And then it's, you know, the little wins showing that you're actually doing that. And really treating it like a partnership and a relationship with both your kind of ops counterpart and your franchisees. And it can be a challenge sometimes because franchisees will often bring things to the table that they think are the right thing. And you have to unpack it a little bit. So the classic one that I think we've all heard is like,"Why aren't we doing a Super Bowl commercial?"- Mm. Yeah.- Let's take a step back. So why do you want a Super Bowl commercial?"I don't think anybody in my market knows I'm here." Okay. Let's solve for that. So it's basically unpacking the solution they bring to the table is really just their answer to a problem. What's the problem? And then let me help you solve the problem as a marketer with expertise and a team, let's go about this kind of from maybe a different angle. But let me help you address that issue that you're trying to solve for. And I think that's kind of the thing that often causes friction between operations and marketing is operations is trying to do the whole thing themselves. Here's a solution to this problem that I'm having. And it's our job to kind of say like, okay, well let's talk about the problem. Let us help you, let's work together to find a path forward, or a solution that's gonna address that, versus like, you know, whatever the solution is that they might have solved for themselves or brought to themselves.- Super Bowl commercial would be fun though, right?- It'd be really nice.- It'd be a lot of fun.- What is your favorite Super Bowl commercial? I'm turning, now I'm gonna ask you some questions.- I think the Dunkin Donuts thing, we were just talking about this a day or two ago. Like the last couple years, they've kind of hit it outta the park a little bit.- And that's, I mean, we're at IFA so it's good to give-- Yeah, that's true.- A franchisor a shout out for that.- That's true. No, but seriously. Like the whole Ben Affleck, Tom Brady, Matt Damon, J-Lo thing, like, it's pretty freaking entertaining. And have you looked at the outtakes, like the long form stuff?- No, I haven't.- Oh you gotta go to YouTube and check that out. What's your favorite?- Historically? I'm gonna go historically, because that was also my favorite from this Super Bowl. I miss the fan commercials that Doritos did. I thought those were outta the park. The average person is quite entertaining.- You know, we had a client on one of those a couple years ago.- Really?- Yeah. It was the Texas Law Hawk. He's like a criminal defense attorney. He does these YouTube spoof videos. And he got picked up, I think it was, maybe it was Taco Bell. It was one of those two, though. But like, he made an appearance in one of the, I think it was the Doritos one. Maybe I'm wrong though. But those are great. Those are great commercials.- So Doritos, and then you referenced Taco Bell. What is your favorite thing at Taco Bell? Are you a Taco Bell fan?- So I'll shout out to Patrick Crawford on our team who's like a diehard Taco Bell fan. I am not a huge Taco Bell fan, but my favorite thing there, which I do love, is a chicken quesadilla. That's it. I know it's simple. I know it's not the Cheesy Gordita Crunch or the Double Decker something.- Look, you know your Taco Bell. So that's impressive.- I do. And I always get nachos too.- Mexican pizza all the way.- Is that yours?- A hundred percent.- Okay. All right.- A hundred percent.- Is that one that comes and goes? Or they always have that?- It went away for a while. But they brought it back. They brought it back.- Got it. Got it.- It's good stuff.- All right. Yeah, I mean, look, those are highly influential. I mean, I would say that, you know, a lot of people watch the Super Bowl just to watch the commercials, so.- Yeah, I think so too.- Or, you know, do what I did this year and just go ride a parade in New Orleans during Mardi Gras during the Super Bowl. So, you know, that's how I spent my Super Bowl this year.- I can't believe that.- It was fun. I'll show you pictures later. Yeah. Okay, let's get back in to the marketing speak. So you're there at Cleaning Authority for a few years, then you guys just start going on a rampage and buying a lot of brands. So was Monster the first?- No. Homewatch Caregivers was the first.- That's right. That's right.- And that was the only brand we bought while we were owned by PNC Riverarch Capital. They were our first private equity owner. I came in right after they acquired The Cleaning Authority and then they added Homewatch and then transitioned us over to Apex Partners. And then things started to go crazy.- Yeah.- Absolutely crazy.- So just like high level, what was that period like early on when you guys were just buying? You bought Homewatch, you bought Monster, you bought Stop, you bought The Clockwork Brands. So Ben Franklin, One Hour, Mr. Sparky. I mean, that all happened in a pretty quick period of time, it felt like. What was that like for you?- It was insane. It was absolutely insane. We closed with Apex in September of 18. By the end of the year we had bought ASP and Mosquito Squad.- That's right. Yep.- All based on relationship, relationships that Rob and the organization had formed with those founders over the last 10 years in franchising. So those came fast. And then Clockwork came and talk about a crazy deal. That carve-out was one of the most challenging things.- Because they were Direct Energy owned, is that right?- They were owned by Direct Energy. Which was owned by an even larger UK based organization. And so we had to carve out this tiny franchisor in their minds. Huge franchisor in our world. To them, it was nothing. It was so small. To us, it doubled our business, more than doubled our business overnight. So it was huge. It was significant. And so that carve out was a challenge on that one. Thankfully, Apex gave us some support in terms of this great carve out expert, Julie Canfield, who came along to kind of help us get through that time. But that was, I mean, talk about an exciting time. Every time I turned around we were buying a business. And it was wild.- Yeah. How did you get your arms wrapped around that from a marketing perspective? Because I mean, there's so much going on, right? You gotta deal with like, the change, the people issues of the franchisees now being owned by a new group. There's probably a lot of concern like, what's this mean for me? I'm a business owner. How's this gonna impact the business that I bought at the time that I bought it? There's responsibilities of you now having to market these businesses individually, then also figuring out where the synergies-- I'm tired just you talking through it. I'm ready for a nap.- I'm gonna wear you down here, but just talk about some of the stuff that was going through your head at the time and like what were some moves that you made early on? Even that maybe you looking back, you're like, I wish I'd have done that differently. But what were some things that were happening at that time just tactically in your role that you had to take care of?- Yeah I mean the big easy one is to keep using the Clockwork Brands as an example. So that's three brands, HVAC, Plumbing and Electrical. Which was a space I was very familiar with. So I was really excited about that deal. They historically had all run their own digital footprint. They all had their own independent websites across the board. And then the franchisor ran a website kind of on top of it that had, you know, landing pages for each location. But they were in massive conflict with each other. And so right at the gate, I went and met with that franchisee leadership team along with Mark Dawson. I think it was like, his day one or two. We went to this meeting of the franchisees. And Mark just took over, like other people in the room, he was like,"You know what, I'm gonna run this meeting. Here we go. And this is what it means to be a franchisee and a franchisor. You guys haven't been run like a franchise brand. You've been in this large organization." So he really focused on resetting the relationship. And I just, I mean, I rode his coattails on that. I went to every event I could to get face time with those owners and to really meet them and understand them, to hear what they liked, what they didn't like. And then to start kind of the education process of like, we're gonna have to make a change to the way these sites are set up. But the benefit is gonna be huge. The benefit is gonna be huge. Here's what we've seen, here's what we've seen. So we went through the process of kind of rebuilding that experience. And change was a little bit challenging, but I think right away the franchisees in that system recognized that we wanted to be their partner, and we really viewed the relationship as a partnership. And that we were kinda straight shooters. I mean, you've met Mark, right?- Yeah, yeah, yeah.- Like Salt of the Earth, Tennessee, like they were kind of run very corporately previous. And so we're like, look, this is just who we are. We've made our lives out of franchising. We're here with you. So it was really that focus on the relationship. But it's challenging. Acquisitions and integrations are challenging work because there's spreadsheets that tell you what you're supposed to do and how to do it. And then there's the reality of people. And that makes it more complicated. So I think it's, you know, it's a little nuanced to try to do it in a way that gains you kind of respect and trust, and trying to really build that with your franchisees it can be a little bit of a challenge. But I think that was an example with that system. And they have absolutely thrived as part of Authority Brands, their growth trajectory has been just out of control compared to where they were for the years leading up to that.- Yeah, for sure. Because they were a priority now, right? They were focused.- Absolutely.- That makes a lot sense.- They went from being, and very unlike some of our other deals, we had almost the complete opposite happen. Not in terms of success post, but just franchisee mentality. So those brands were a big fish for us. They were small fish before. So they went from being kind of pushed to the side to being the heroes in our brand. You're the big guys. You're generating all this revenue. Super successful. We kind of had the opposite when we bought Mosquito Squad. They were carved out of, at the time, Outdoor Living Brands. They were the big brand in that system. And then they came into our system and they weren't the big brand anymore. And so some of those relationship dynamics, franchisee dynamics are hard to plan for because you don't always necessarily know how that impacts an owner, how that impacts a network, to go from being the large guy in the system to being kind of midsize in our ecosystem. So some of that stuff doesn't really fit on a spreadsheet.- What was something that happened at that time, or maybe a decision you made looking back, hindsight 2020, you wish, if you could do it again differently, you would've done it differently?- I think some of the same things about being kind of a bulldog on certain things. I was so focused in the first couple brands, on this is the way that we do things, and you have to mold to the way that we do things.- Yeah. Get on board type things?- Get on board. This is how we handle X, Y, Z in marketing. This is the platform we use for creative. This is the way that we handle whatever it might be. And that doesn't always sit well with people. Shocker.(laughing)- It doesn't always sit well with you either, by the way.- It doesn't. No, it doesn't. I know that I have control issues. I recognize that. So, you know, but at the time we were moving so fast. So fast. It's not like we were doing a deal and then we had nine months to figure it out. We did those three deals, Clockwork, Mosquito Squad, ASP, those all happened within seven months.- God, I can't believe it was that quick.- Yeah, the end of one year, and then into the summer of May of the next year. It was so, so, so, so, so fast. And I think that is just a common thing that happens in our lives in general, right? When things start to move really fast, even though sometimes we know the things that are important from a relationship management side, things even with my own team back then, right? Like I was running around, I was flying different places. Like every week I was in Houston, I was back. I was in Macon, Georgia. I was back. Like all over the place. Sometimes you're just not as sharp as you are under the best conditions. And so I really learned some things early on in that process about what my team needed from me. How to keep them kind of focused and on track and not to let the crazy of what was happening around us kind of impact the team that was really getting everything done on the home front while I was kind of out running around getting those deals done. But I think it all just really comes back to that same kind of thing, like the relationship, how aggressively you're choosing to step on the gas. You know, it's kind of that like, be like water kind of. When are you gonna bend? Pick selectively the moments that you're gonna push really hard for something. Make sure it's the right thing. Make sure it's something important. You can't cry wolf all the time. If everything's a crisis, nothing's a crisis. So I think really trying to, I use the phrase with my team sometimes, like, is this the hill you wanna die on? And if it is, that's great. But if it's not, let's think about like, how could we work around this? How can we make this more manageable for ourselves? Because everything can't be a crisis all the time.- Yeah, and also I think, you know, you're kind of flirting with an interesting point there. I think sometimes whenever things are happening so fast and things are moving so fast, like your natural inclination, especially somebody that's a little bit of a workhorse and a driver already, like your natural inclination is to, well, I'm gonna go outpace the already hectic pace, when the better, smarter thing is really just to kind of slow down and be a little bit more methodical about it, and realize that hey, if I don't get to everything today or in this week's time, then the world's not gonna fall apart. And I don't have to freak out about it.- Well, it ties back really well, I think to what Deion Sanders said the other day when he said, "Be where your feet are." And I think in his context he was saying like, if you're at home, be at home. If you're at work, be at work. But I think in the context of kind of a platform brand going through all these crazy acquisitions, in the early days we didn't know how big we were gonna get. Like is it 4, is it 8? Is it 16 where we're sitting right now? We still don't know how many more are kind of in line. But at those early days, there was so much thinking about, okay, well, what's it gonna be in six months? Is it gonna be 5, 6, 8? What is it gonna look like. And so I think that whole like, be where your feet are, back then it should have been, focus on where you are. Don't get too distracted by, oh, another one might be coming. Oh, another one might be coming. Because then you're kind of just chasing the future-- [Jamie] Something that you can't control anyway.- Something you can't control. And what we look like now versus what we looked like three years ago is still completely different. So you can't necessarily plan and build for the future when you don't know what the future is. It's like, I use the analogy with the team sometimes, it's like moving into a house and you don't know how many bedrooms you have. Like, okay, well we have two bedrooms. That's great. Do we need six? Okay. We bought a house with six. Do we need 16? So you're kind of like planning that and you know that, okay, maybe we should make sure we have some space because we're gonna have to add onto this house. But you don't always know what it's gonna look like. And I think once I kind of got over the hurdle of not obsessing, over just saying like, look, this is what's gonna work for us right now. If we had four more brands, it probably will look different, but I don't have to solve for that today. I just need everybody to understand that it'll probably look a little different.- Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So let's fast forward to more present day stuff. You know, we went through, obviously, you guys, crazy acquisitions, grew like a weed. We went through the Covid years, you know, which were, I think everybody would agree, for residential services were really good years from a revenue perspective for the most part. In the last 18, 24 months, it's tightened up a lot. So like, how are you dealing with the ebb and flow? And you alluded to this earlier, like sometimes things are great and it feels kind of easy and sometimes you gotta hunker down and do things differently or think differently. So how's that been for you and how are you going about that process?- Yeah, I think that's exactly what we're seeing happening in the marketplace. So one of the things that is always kind of like a drumbeat in the background for me, but it becomes even more and more and more important when things get tighter, is what are we doing with the leads we're getting? So it's focusing on things with our ops team around our contact centers and around our phone handling. So, easy enough in theory on a digital trail to try to manage spillage and leakage of the funnel. But what are we doing on those calls and what are we doing around what that means about how we run work? So, great example being, when times are good and leads are plentiful, you can be a little pickier about scheduling, about availability, but now I want open calendars across the board. I want evening appointments, I want weekend appointments. I want everything we can possibly do. So when we're having that conversation with a potential customer, with the lead that we're focused on trying our best to turn that into revenue. And that means sometimes that things look a little different than they do when times are good. So I think it's really just, right now, an effort around the organization across the board, to maximize the leads we're getting. And then to also make sure that, especially in our recurring services businesses, that the service delivery is so high that we're keeping our customers on the books. We're not having terminations, and people choose to move on or work with someone else, that we're trying to keep them sticky and keep them with us.- Do you hear directly from customers? Like, do they talk about, with their technicians or with their cleaning teams or with their pool service team? Do they ever talk about, you know, just personally, like inflation and costs going up, and things of that nature? Like how are those conversations and how do those kind of get back to you guys and what do you do about them when you hear about them?- Yeah, I mean, that's a great point. It's really been an area of focus for us over the last couple years to have more options for our franchisees to use with their consumers from a financing perspective. So consumer financing has become a huge piece of what we're focused on. We actually launched a product with our franchisees called BuyFin that just gives them access and ability to be able to, in-home, basically run-- Like a finance processor.- Yes, exactly. So that they have options. So really it's how are we arming our, not even our franchisees, how are we arming their technicians that are in home to be able to have the tools they need to address that with a customer, because it is a little different now. Things are getting tighter. I know we're not supposed to say the recession word.- Yeah, yeah, yeah.- It's hot. It's gonna get muted out, right?- No, it's not.- But we gotta be realistic about the world that we're living in. And so I think understanding from our franchisees, like how do we better arm their teams to be able to sell more in home or sell more efficiently, effectively in home. And thankfully we have some great franchisees in our system who are doing amazing things to kind of help and support that amongst the team. But really the big glaring one is financing options for people.- Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned like, repeat customers, recurring business. Do you, from a marketer perspective, do you kind of double down on your existing customer base in times like this when it gets, you know, people aren't necessarily looking for new services and it's harder to find those new leads? Do you amp up programs that are designed to kind of tap into your existing customer base? What's that like?- Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So if we switch kind of back over to the trades, which is a non-recurring business, that is when we are super, super, super focused on our maintenance customers. So people who have agreements with us to come out twice a year, then we are proactively booking those, getting those scheduled, getting in homes to have basically an at-bat is what we would call it. So like, to have an opportunity at bat, to check out the system, to see what's happening in the home and make product recommendations or replacement recommendations based on what we're seeing. So if we don't get in the home, we can't do that. So we have to get in the door. So reminding them, you paid for this maintenance agreement. Let us come out. This is already paid for. This is a free service. So, that's incredibly important. And you're right, keeping our customers, and focusing on the existing customers we already have, whether that's running additional promos or things to try to keep them as sticky as possible is incredibly important. Because we don't want, you know, if we're having problems getting people in the front door, we don't want them walking out the back door.- Yeah, sure. Sure. So, here we are in 2024. Again, we talked about earlier, you know, 2004 to 2024. 2004, all this digital stuff's happening. You go to school, you come outta school, and it's like, oh, this thing Google exists. Now, the last couple years we've had this, you know, generative AI, ChatGPT kind of jumping in. How are you thinking about technology like that in marketing and in other parts of your job? Like, how are you using it? How do you think about it? Tell me your thoughts there.- I love it as a space. My headshot is an AI generated headshot.- I remember, I was talking about this.- Why do I always hate my headshot? I don't know. But I do, I do. And so I used AI to help me not hate my headshot. No, I love AI for little things like that. Little hacks to make life easier. I think there's so many parallels between I think how you and I started our careers to what's happening right now. If I was in my mid twenties, late twenties, I mean, really any age. But if I was in a spot where I needed some leverage to help stand me apart from people around me, helping translate AI into practical applications in business that senior leadership understands I think is such an opportunity for so many young people today, because it's exactly what we did with digital. It's the exact kind of same setup. Someone has to learn how to use this in business because what is going to happen? And I mean that in each of our organizations. Because what's gonna happen is top down the pushing starts from private equity, from executive leadership,"Hey, this is a hot topic. What are we doing about it?" And it's a great opportunity to be the voice to fill that gap. So that, you know, there's an answer to that question. And always good to be the one who has the answer to the question nobody else does. But I think interestingly enough, I'm curious to see how it actually all plays out. So I kind of have this theory, back to the pendulum theory, right? Everybody's hot and heavy on AI, ChatGPT, all the things you mentioned, a lot of it in the context right now around going back to calls, contact centers, and automating customer interaction. Can you do it via, you know, a generative AI based chat bot that's smarter than any chat bot that's ever existed, right? Can we train some of these tools to have these conversations? I think there's actually gonna be kind of a swing back the other direction, where people put a premium on extremely high caliber personal service with a human. It's like, if you think about it, I've been a, shameless plug for USAA, I've been a USAA insurance customer for quite some time.- Your parents are Air Force, right?- My parents were both Air Force. They are known for kind of two things in San Antonio where they're based. Being an employer of choice and having amazing customer service. And it's true. You call USAA to make a claim that something happened and you're talking to a retired military professional. And you have a great interaction every single time. I think more focus like that, assuming that kind of AI swings, and a lot of companies make a quick decision to say,"We're gonna sprint at this. We're gonna rip and replace certain things in our organization with tech and AI." I think you're gonna see a premium put on real human interaction.- Yeah, the only thing about that is that I just wonder if these things are gonna be so smart and so good.- That scares me.- I know, but. I mean, it's pretty incredible. Like in just such a short period of time, how you can take these models and you can really craft them to sound as much as you want them to sound like you or a business. And I don't know, I personally, like, that freaks me out too. And at the end of the day, especially for complex questions, or if I'm like in a heightened state of emotion, I'm like mad about something or like a plumbing issue. I'll show you a video in a little bit. But like a few weeks ago I was taking a shower. It was like early in the morning, it was cold. It's like one of the few cold mornings we've had this year in Texas. But I noticed the water pressure in the shower was really low. And I was like, what's going on? It's just weird. But by the time I got outta the shower, I wasn't really thinking anything of it. And I get an Amazon package delivered. So I go outside and I open the door and I hear what sounds like a waterfall. I'm like, what is that? And it's not raining. And I look out and like in my front yard, there's water shooting like, straight up out of the ground. So I'm thinking, okay, well maybe this is a-- Maybe this is why I'm having problems.- Well, I'm like, yeah. But I was like, maybe this is my sprinkler head. But it wasn't a sprinkler. It was a pipe underground had burst and like, so much pressure to like come up through like, and I mean it was like eight feet, nine feet in the air. And I'm freaking out because I'm not the handy guy, right? So I'm like-- You're not?- Oh, you know this already. Come on.(laughing) There's chuckling over here from the fellas, too.- I know. The room likes that one. Thanks guys. Appreciate that.- So anyway, I'm like freaked out. So the first thing I did, turn the water off. I know how to do that. I know how to turn the water off.- After all these years with me being in plumbing, I hope, you know.- I got that done. And as I'm opening it the water thing is just like, spinning like a million miles an hour. But at that point in time when I call a plumber, like that's when I don't want to deal with AI or automation. I do want to talk to somebody because I'm freaking out. Like, I don't know how long I'm not gonna have water. I'm going outta town for the weekend. This was a Friday. I don't know what's, I'm freaking out. So those are the times where I don't want to talk to an AI, but at some point, does it get so good that it handles my frustration better than another human on the other end of the phone?- Maybe.- Maybe. I don't know.- Maybe. I don't know. I think you're right though. I think where we sit right now, especially one of our businesses is in home healthcare with Homewatch Caregivers. I think there's delicacies to certain conversations, at least where we are now, that the empathy that comes from a human is invaluable. So I think you're right. I think we are gonna see these things get smarter and smarter. I listened to one the other day that was a follow up to someone who went to test drive at Tesla and the call to call and say like,"Hey, how was your test drive? Do you have any questions I can answer?" Was all AI.- Yeah. I think I saw that too.- And it's, wow. It sounds like a real person. I don't know. I don't know. But that's the thing, right? I think these are the questions and the types of conversations that if I was back then I would be jumping on this to just have an opinion. To have an opinion, so you can sit and have a conversation like this with someone and really kind of debate and go through it, but also so you could keep your organization educated. And then just like with digital back then, it was an ebb and flow. I mean, what was true one day was maybe not true the next day. And like it was, and then it started moving faster and faster and faster. So like kind of getting in with thoughts and opinions on, hey, how does this help the business? We just did an exercise where we took a bunch of, we exported all of our Google reviews for one of our businesses. Dropped it into an AI tool and said, function like you're the owner of the business. Analyze what's happening in these reviews. Pull out any trends you're seeing. On the negative ones, common themes, how would you address them in the business? Now the how would you address them in the business? Not always useful. But being able to process large amounts of data and pull out things, like an analyst potentially, to flag-- Probably better than analyst, right? I mean.- It's faster, moves quicker, right? So, the solutioning I think still has some room for improvement, because there's nuances to every business, there's nuances to choice. We chose to do this in this way for a reason. But I thought that was incredibly powerful to be able to turn to the ops team and say like, look, we're getting this constantly that people don't understand the trip charge. We're not selling that well on the phone. How should we script that? Let's take our script and dump that into ChatGPT. Or another tool to say like, give five versions of this script. People are confused about this fee. Let's craft some new ways to talk about it. Let's make sure we're talking about it in a way that resonates and makes sense for our customers. So I think for things like that, there's so much opportunity, but it is kind of like the new great unknown.- It's crazy, I mean, I was talking to, you know, I've been thinking a lot about like, how it will impact search, right? Like Google search, right? And I think one thing that I'm seeing more and more is that the prompts, like GPT, and if you've messed around with Bard, which I guess they just renamed Gemini this week.- You can't even keep up because it's changing so fast.- I know, it's like you can't even like film content or talk about it because like, by the time you release it, it's like, oh, it's not called that anymore. It's called something else.- Have to run a little ticker on the bottom.- Exactly.- Formerly known as. The platform formerly known as Bard.- But what's fascinating about it is like, I do think that those prompts are gonna teach people to actually talk to technology, like talking to a human. Because we've gotten in this habit of searching like, like we Google search "plumber near me." Like you would never have a conversation and say, "Hey, can you recommend plumber near me?" Like, you would never do that. Right? But that's how you type into Google because Google kind of prompts you to do that. You start typing "plumber" and it just says "near me." But I think that these prompts like GPT that teach you that you can actually have a conversation with technology and it actually communicates back, like you're talking to a human being, will actually teach us how to search differently the web. And we'll start asking more specific questions, right? Like, you may start asking questions like, not just plumber near me, but who's the best plumber in my area that's good for drain cleaning that can get to my house today? Right? Like that is a-- Benjamin Franklin Plumbing.- There we go. But that's a game changer. It's a very different query. Right? How does a business respond to marketing in that way? Like what new type of "SEO" do you have to be doing to show up for a query like that?- Right. And can you game it somehow? Like that's the immediate-- And that first mover advantage piece. Can you start doing some of that work before the other plumbers in your area? Those queries may take a while to get there, but at some point they're gonna get scaled and you're gonna be the beneficiary of that. So, I do think though, it's like, I'm the same way. Like if I were in my mid-twenties again, and this were happening, I would be geeking about this stuff nonstop.- Nonstop.- A hundred percent.- A hundred percent.- Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. One more topic and then I'll let you go. Because I know we're running up on time. By the way, we're at IFA 2024, Phoenix, Arizona. On President's day.- What time is it by the way?- It is 10 till noon, so. Gotta get back to the exhibit hall in a few minutes.- I got a board meeting at noon, man.- Oh, okay. All right.- University of Louisville. I can't let you off this for two reasons because one, Jordan Wilson will kill me for not bringing his name up because he is gonna wanna hear his name from both of us.- Yes, he absolutely will.- Hey, we love you, Jordan. But you did take over franchise development a few years ago.- I did.- What was that process like? Is that something that you raised your hand for? Did you get sought after? Like what happened there?- Yeah, I raised my hand for it. So marketing will always be my north star. My love and passion. But at the time, kind of recognized there are really two ways to grow a franchisor. You help your existing franchisees do more in revenue marketing. You put more dots on the map. Franchise development. And so for my kind of continued growth and development, I wanted to do more and that was an area of our organization that we just didn't quite have ironed out right. And so I raised my hand and said, look, like, I have this idea, we combine these two functions. Let me find a really strong leader to come in and help build out this sales team. I'm not a salesperson, but I understand franchising and been around marketing for franchise development for a very long time. I had the experience of being at Dwyer, which is arguably a franchise development machine. And has been consistently over the years. So I had some thoughts and opinions, some right, I'm sure some quite wrong, but perspective, right? I had an opinion. And so thankfully I got the opportunity. So it was a couple months of kind of prep and planning, took over November of '22. So a year and change ago. And then immediately brought on Jordan Wilson.- Yeah, you stole him.- I'm sorry about that.- That's okay.- I'm not really though.- [Jamie] I know you're not.- But if the roles were reversed, you would've done the exact same thing.(Jamie laughing)- I don't know about that, but fair enough. We could talk about that off camera. We've talked about that off camera.- It's touchy subject.- It is a touchy subject.- No, it's good, it's good.- But that's, look, I mean-- I'm super happy for him. He's crushing it too.- He's absolutely crushing it. He's built such an amazing team and really his strengths are many. But his ability to motivate with compassion is incredibly powerful. The team is responding so well to him. They knocked it outta the park last year. 190 new deals.- That's awesome.- Over a historical, I think 119. So significant, significant impact. And this year they are just gangbusters, off to the races, so. He's doing great. And I could not have moved into this role successfully without having him, or someone like him-- Driving that business.- Drive that piece of the business, because you can't drive it all, so you need some strategic strength and leadership.- Yep. All right, last question. I know you're still hunkered down. You're at AB, you're crushing. But what's next for you in your career? Like, what do you want to do next? Like what are you thinking's on the horizon? How do you think about that?- Professor McLeod.- Oh wow. Really?- Yeah. I think so. So I went back to Baylor a couple weeks ago and got to spend some time with the-- Is this breaking news?- No, it's been, I've been, you know, when people ask. But no, it's just relatively new news. There's no real news.- Yeah, I was hoping there was gonna be some that I could break and it would be kind of cool.- No, I'm going to the University of Louisville in two weeks.- I've met a bunch of their students here.- That's where I'm headed after this. That's why I keep asking you to check the time. That's where I'm going after this. So I sit on their board for the Yum Center for franchising at University of Louisville. And I just love, back to the point on digital that you made earlier. Were they teaching you about that at school? They weren't. And I think that, you know, there's ebbs and flows. I know that they are now. People are learning and getting educated. But there's kind of these periods of time where industry is moving so fast that education hasn't quite caught up yet. And I think now universities are doing so much more than they were back then to say, we're gonna bring in people from the outside to come and teach a class, to do a session, to talk on this really specific topic, because they have the freshest, most relevant experience. So I think future for Heather will probably be something connected to higher education.- That's awesome. That's really cool. I could see you in that capacity, for sure. You'd be great there. But would you do that full-time or you just kind of-- No. No, no. Figure out what that looks like. I'm not gonna be a full-time professor. I'm not gonna go get a PhD. That's not gonna happen. No. My textbook days I think are over.(laughing)- Yeah, I wouldn't wanna do that.- School of hard knocks now, real experience, but yeah. So that's something I wanna explore a little more. I wanna write a little bit more.- You've been doing a lot more of that. Like your LinkedIn post and things like that.- Yeah, yeah. So I'm doing something with Entrepreneur for the next little while. So there'll be more from me from a writing standpoint there which is exciting. So I'm just, you know, dabbling in some personal fun areas.- It's been fun watching you kick ass.- Thanks, man.- Yeah, yeah. It's been a good time. We've had a lot of good times.- We have had a lot of good times.- I'm sure there'll be a lot more good times ahead too, so.- Yes, yes. The road is long.- Yeah, it is. Well, thanks for joining today.- Thanks for having me.- It's been a blast. Go to your board meeting.- Thanks.- All right.(upbeat music)