Franchise QB

Episode 42: Courtney Carter Reppert, Development Director- Bumble Bee Blinds

• Mike Halpern • Season 1 • Episode 42

Share episode

Courtney joins the Franchise QB Podcast to discuss the Bumble Bee Blinds franchise opportunity. Bumble Bee Blinds is a window treatment concept that offers both interior and exterior window treatments, as well as repair work. 

Takeaways

The brand has a step-by-step digital sales process that provides a seamless customer experience and allows for accurate quotes on the spot.

Bumble Bee Blinds offers a flexible ownership model, with options for owner-operators or semi-involved owners.

The brand has a strong support team and a positive franchisee community.

The market size for window coverings is large, and Bumble Bee Blinds has seen owners clear over a million dollars in their first year of operation.

The franchise has a turnkey investment range of $169,000 to $196,000, with no inventory required.

The ideal candidate for Bumble Bee Blinds is someone who wants to build a big business and is motivated to succeed.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Bumblebee Blinds
11:41 Seamless Sales Process and Accurate Quotes
15:22 Flexible Ownership Options
19:25 Focus on New Construction and Remodel Opportunities
24:57 Scalable Concept with High Growth Potential
28:40 Ideal Candidate Profile

https://www.bumblebeeblinds.com/franchising/

Free Resource for Franchise QB Listeners:

The Franchise QB Playbook will guide you through the process of finding your perfect franchise fit.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XlbD8oyl3uyeiqaM73poH67BX1jRRyCGR7l7qB-3Nz0/edit?usp=sharing. Also, you can view the Franchise QB podcast at www.youtube.com/@franchiseqb.

Contact me and my team with any questions along the way. www.calendly.com/franchiseguy
Mike Halpern, CAFC
mike@franchiseqb.com

This is the Franchise QB Podcast, where we empower entrepreneurs to win big in franchising. We huddle up weekly to educate our audience about the most successful small business model ever created. Franchising! Welcome to the Franchise QB podcast. I'm your host, Mike Halpern, a 20-year industry veteran and entrepreneur. My mission is for listeners to achieve their American dreams of creating wealth and independence through franchise ownership. Every week we speak with franchisees, franchisors or vendors that support the industry. Thank you for joining us and let's get started. Joining us in the huddle today is Courtney Carter-Reppert, Director of Franchise Development with Bumble Bee Blinds and HorsePower Brands. Welcome to the show, Courtney. Thank you so get your turn. It's great to see you again. So I'm going to talk you up a little bit. I'm going to share some of your background with the audience and then we'll jump into the brand. So you graduated in the top 2% of the University of Nebraska Lincoln pre-law program. impressive. Collegiate athlete with the University of Nebraska equestrian team. So you actually parlayed that into HorsePower brand. So I see the connection there between the equestrian, multi-state multi-unit franchisee with a brand called Complete Nutrition, which is a weight loss performance, sports performance and endurance products concept. You had a million dollar store first year in sales, really impressive. Franchisee of the year, Community Trailblazer Award, really impressive stuff. Then you took over a location that was owned by a previous franchisee and grew that location over 120% in the first year of operation. You got the best comeback store of the ward at annual convention, which I know is a really big accolade. And you exited from that business in 2020. And with HorsePower, you started with the Blingle! franchise as a director of development. So you got into the development side of franchising and placed 40 franchisees in the first seven months, which was awesome. So I know that's a whole lot to unpack, but I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about your experience when you were doing complete nutrition and how you ended up pivoting over to the development side. Yeah. so I'm super fortunate that, when I was 24 years old, I had just graduated from the University of Nebraska. And I always thought I wanted to be an attorney and I had done all those textbook things to be an attorney. And I think everybody in their professional career has somebody come into their life and totally changed the trajectory of where they're going. And for me, one of those people is absolutely Ryan Zink and Corey Wiedel. So at that time they were just getting ready to start franchising out the complete nutrition franchise. And I was starting to realize having some second, you know, questioning whether I really wanted to be an attorney. was lots of stuff coming out that attorneys weren't getting the job placements. And so the timing was perfect. And I was 24, right? So I'm, I'm super young. I I'd always saved like every little penny just because that's how I was. So I had just enough money to put down the franchise fee and, but Ryan and Corey had seen some of some of my work. and just kind of been familiar with me and basically said like, you know what, you're young, but we believe in you and your work ethic and we want to give you a shot. And so I ended up buying East Lansing, Michigan, then scaled to Roanoke, Virginia, Lynchburg, Virginia, and then went back and also opened up Portage, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek. And yeah, it was, so I'm super fortunate to have been mentored by Ryan and Corey and a few of the other people within that organization. And I always try to say they are the people that put me on the path to success. you know, when you're in your early twenties and you don't really know what direction to go, I think I'm a great example of a really awesome professional mentor that had experience and was able to identify that talent within me and was able to coach. Obviously I purchased a franchise with them, but the mentorship, I flew back to Omaha once a quarter and sat in leadership meetings with them and watched really big decisions get made for the entire company. And I think just being able to be a fly on the wall and be a part of those conversations is really what started my ultimate career in franchising. Yeah, and that's really interesting because as we know, not all franchise systems are created equal and for you to be part of one early on in your early twenties, where you had that kind of mentorship and coaching and belief and having all that support, it's really a huge difference maker. And it sounds like that was the kind of springboard to kind of set you a path in franchising for hopefully, you know, a long time to come. So you're on your way. So let's talk a little bit about your brand, you're working with Bumble Bee Blinds. And for those that don't know, would think they would by now, but HorsePower Brands is a family of premier home services concepts. Bumble Bee Blinds is one you've been working on for a little while. So tell us a little bit about the brand itself. Yeah, absolutely. So Bumble Bee has been a lot of fun to work on. I really enjoyed this brand. So we are a window treatment concept. We do interior window treatments. We also do exterior window treatments. And that's something that I like to highlight because I think what we offer, especially on the exterior side, is a huge differentiator. And then we also do a little bit of training on repair work for some of our franchisees do repairs, some don't, but either way we do kind of touch on that through our onboarding. We've been in franchise development for about 16 months and we've awarded right at about 200 territories with about 150 of those territories open. Yeah, we've definitely, I joke, we've had a busy 16 months in development. It's been a lot of fun so far. Yeah, that's really cool. So let's touch on some of those primary products and services. You mentioned interior plus exterior. What is the exterior kind of suite of products look like? I mean, are we talking commercial applications, residential, little or both? What does that look like? Yeah, so for anybody that hasn't looked at Bumble Bee, I would highly recommend going to... The website is www .usmotions .com and US stands for Universal Screens. It's really cool because as I talk to candidates all across the United States, when they look at what Universal Screens does, it's a huge differentiator. So they do privacy screens, weather protection, insect protection, but the screens, if you go to their website, I mean, what they kind of offer, the product, the material, there's different materials. I want to say bigger from a project perspective. You know, I was just on with a candidate in Florida. He was like, yeah, I think I've seen that. And he pulled up this website and it was just these screens that went on the interior side of residential properties. And I was like, no, no, no, this is way bigger. So if you've ever been to like a downtown district, like a bar venue or a restaurant menu, and you see like these almost clear, they look like plastic, but they're flexible. That is essentially what Universal Screens also does. So they can literally, they can do massive commercial enclosures. There's a big chicken, there's a place called Chicken and Pickle, which is a pickle ball, large pickle ball facility. They do all the screens for that. So I guess they have the capacity to do a much larger type of project, just like these little screens that sometimes you see that would go on like the inside of residential properties. They also can do custom work. So they've done the Atlanta Braves baseball stadium. So if you go to, Baseball stadium or a football stadium and you see the screens that have like a commercial print logo They would also be able to do that as well Very cool. Yeah, it sounds like there's just a huge market and there's a lot of applications for it So what is your typical customer profile? I mean as an owner, are you looking at starting out residential because they're kind of quicker jobs to land and then as you build up a reputation in the marketplace, you start to tackle those relationships where you can do this bigger commercial jobs, or is it kind of like both out of the gate? What is that typically the guidance you give the new owners? Yeah, absolutely. So I will say that I think in the beginning when our owners get open, they are doing a lot of residential work. But as they do ramp up and kind of get a little bit more of a branding in their market, we are seeing them capture commercial activity and opportunities. So we are a B2B and a B2C concept. We have coaching for both residential and commercial work. We focus on new construction, both in the residential and commercial side, as well as remodel opportunities. So typically once properties hit about five to 15 years old, that's when they're going to be the most likely to do a remodel. And so yeah, it's really, it's neat to see people doing both residential and commercial work. The supply chain for Bumble Bee is very strong and very healthy. We have 100 % North American based supply chain. we also own our own independent product line. And I think if I were a free of chai z and I was selling Bumble Bee product, I'm confident I could get some of those commercial jobs because I have a lot of inventory to offer at different price points, as well as just being able to get it in faster because I'm not getting it from China or somewhere overseas where it's going to take longer, especially for a commercial client that wants to get operational and wants to get up and running. Yeah. I can see the time is of the essence there. So what is the typical day in the life like for a franchise owner? How does, I mean, in terms of what their team looks like and what they're doing, and I know it's going to depend on how mature they are as an owner, but let's talk about like they launch and they're in the business for a few months. What's that day going to look like for them? Absolutely. So, you know, we have an owner operator and a semi -involved model. So I would say your day to day really depends on which ownership type you are. If you decide to be an owner operator, we're going to have an operations lead essentially. and a sales leader, a design consultant. And so we allow our owners to kind of pick their strengths. So if you're stronger on the operations side, you can be more of that operational manager of the business. If you're stronger in customer experience, maybe sales, or just love interacting with people, the design consultant position is a great position for you. So as an owner, cool because you can pick which of those kind of areas you feel stronger in, and then you would just hire for the other position. So whichever of the leadership positions. If you are semi -involved, as in you don't have full time to dedicate to the business, we would ask that you fill both an operational, like a general manager role, as well as a design consultant or that sales role. And then for both ownership types, you do just start with one 1099 employee. Okay. So your working capital is really based off of which model. If you're going to do it, fill one of those roles, then obviously you're going to have a little less working capital than if you have to hire both of those positions from the outset. That is correct. Yeah. Very cool. So you mentioned one of the differentiators in terms of the supply chain and your unique kind of product line. Anything else that are like key differentiators for the brand? One thing that's really neat about Bumble Bee is our digital sales process. And this is something that Complete Nutrition embraced and I'm seeing it come back in Bumble Bee and it's really cool. So we have a step -by -step digital sales process on an iPad. And it basically takes away the guess or check work of that customer experience. So we don't have any design consultants showing up to jobs and like winging it, right? They're following this digital sales process and every step of the process is built to answer all those questions on the spot. What we know about our competitor is they kind of show up, they drop off a couple sample books and they leave. They're not really understanding. What we know about the customer is if they're contacting you on Facebook or they found you on Google or anything like that. They're ready to purchase. They already kind of recognize, I don't know how to do this. I don't know anything about product. And so they're ready to buy. They really just need somebody to help them pick out product. So what's in the digital sales process? So we have a visualizer tool. We can actually show product in real time. We have a laser tool that syncs to the iPad and it saves all those measurements in the CRM. So that way our goal is to give a down to the penny quote on the spot. So the visualizer tool helps with product selection. The laser tool syncing the iPad gives us accurate measurements. And then from there, we're just selecting quantities. And that allows us to really give that customer an accurate quote on the spot versus dragging that process out over the course of several days. Yeah. So does the customer interact with the design consultant to see the recommended actual product? mean, obviously when you get the dimensions in with the laser and you can do that augmented reality. Is it like they're scrolling through different colors, different fabrics, different finishings, things like that? Yeah. So the visualizer tool integrates and it kind of shows all the different products. I think that's what you're asking that they would be able to kind of get an idea of. And it's cool because you can literally see, okay, this product in this color, you know, you can go through. So like I said, I want to dual shades or shutters. I can click on that product. And then there's almost like a Rolodex of all the different colors and finishes. that would come in that shutter option. Yeah, that's cool. And I think that when the customer is playing an active role in kind of manipulating that, they kind of subconsciously buy into the process because they're helping design along with the design consultant what their home could look like. And that's really pretty cool. in terms of the labor model, you kind of talked about what the kind of high level team looks like when you hire, do you do any 1099 work or is everyone on the franchise owners team recommended to be a W2? So, you know, as an owner, you get to decide kind of your comp structure and how you pay people. Essentially, most of the installers are 1099. That is how the whole industry is set up. So we just believe if it's not broke, why go fix it. So that works, right? So as a franchisor, we have platforms and portals full of 1099 window treatment installers that have a background in this. And we give those to the franchisees. Now I will say like the design consultant position is typically a base plus commission job. But as you start to build a lead flow and almost a client base, sometimes we'll have designers say, hey, can I go 1099? I'm confident I'm going to get the leads. I'm confident I'm going to get the referrals. I'd rather give up a base salary and go 100 % commission because I'm going to be able to do better financially. I mean, that's kind of a cool part of. Yeah, I think it's like a win -win, right? Because the owner already has confidence in that person and that person has confidence in their ability to succeed. And you know, if they do produce it lightens payroll for the owner and they are paying when the jobs are landed. So it's a pretty good, you know, setup for both sides. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so it is kind of a cool little option there. Nice. So let's talk about, you know, someone likes the brand, they want to be a part of it. Let's talk about some of the training you provide to new owners. Like what's that look like when they come into HorsePower and you get them all ready to go to launch? Yeah. So it's been a lot of fun with Bubblebee, obviously in development. And it's always great when you get the accolades as a developer, but really, When you want to when you want to know why Bumble Bee has been able to do what it's been able to do in the last 16 months, we have an amazing brand support team. I think that they did an incredible job of literally handpicking every single person that supports franchisees. So our brand president has a degree in finance. He's got just about a decade of experience in window treatments. And when he was offered the position, they knew he had a background in window treatments, and they allowed him to basically go handpick his team. And because he has that experience, he knew a bunch of people in the industry. And in my opinion, handpicked some of the best people to come in basically. So every single person was handpicked to work on the brand. director of sales was previously a design consultant managing over a million dollars of a book of business, our director of operation. Like it's just, we have a really great team. And so when you look at, okay, anybody can award a hundred territories, right? Or hopefully get to 100 territories. But if you can't properly support those franchisees and you don't have a brand support team behind the brand that has the intellectual capital and has the execution piece and can coach and mentor people with all types of aptitudes, that brand is gonna stall out pretty quickly. And so I think when you look at our continual growth and expansion, it is heavily to do with the brand support team. They are very organized. would say that's a huge plus for them. If you buy into this franchise, I would compliment them on their structure and organization. I think that comes through in their onboarding. I think they're very solution oriented. They're very encouraging. Something I always compliment Lucas, he's a great problem solver and he's a great leader. He always looks to find a win -win solution. He's a good listener. And so I think a lot of the ultimate growth of Bumble Bee has to do with we have great validation because franchisees feel like they're getting taken care of. They're feel like they're getting supported. Obviously that would be coming through my validation if that was not the case. Yeah, for sure. So they come through training and they launched the business. So I know that HorsePower is known for its ability to get, build the funnel of good customers. Let's talk a little bit about marketing and lead generation. Is it the digital side handled entirely by HorsePower and the local Bumble Bee Blinds owner is responsible for getting in their community, knocking on doors, building relationships. What does that lead gen and marketing piece look like? Yeah, absolutely. So while the candidate is going through onboarding, we do set up their entire online platform. We set up their Facebook, their Instagram, their ENG's list, their thumbtack, all their review sites, their Google accounts. So that way when they're going, they can just focus on learning how to be a Bumble Bee Blinds franchise owner and their entire online platform is set up. Once they go live, all any inquiries that would come from the online platform go to our call center pro nexus. And essentially there's call center agents that are rated on a conversion of how many of those leading queries they can take and book appointments on behalf of the design consultant. And so that is obviously a big part of helping to assist in filling, they have access to the design consultants calendar and they're taking leads and booking appointments. The second thing that we really like about the window treatment industry is most new construction sites do not come with window treatments. So contractors obviously have their list of stuff they do. Window treatments is not on that list. And so we do kind of coach franchisees to go out and create relationships with realtors, contractors, interior designers, because those are all people that, you you think about how many real estate closings happen in a market. Some of the things in home services already are coming with that new construction property, but we love that window treatments is not one of them. It gives us an opportunity to do new construction as well as the remodel versus battling against that contractor or trying to get in that contractor's portfolio. We don't even have to really compete in a lot of cases against the contractor. So we do coach them on creating those relationships with realtors because a lot of times I mean, my husband and I just built a new house four years ago. That's literally exactly what we did. We moved in. I guess the good or bad news is, is moving wears you out. You're tired. You're exhausted. You move into a property, you set up your utilities and your appliances. And then the next thing you're saying, if you don't have window treatments is you're saying, all right, I need to get, I need to get window treatments. Yeah. And like you said, those trusted advisors that you kind of coach the owners to build those relationships. That's exactly who these homeowners are going to, because they don't want to have another thing they have to go figure out. It's like if they have a relationship with a realtor or they have an interior designer they trust, they're going to go with who they recommend in most cases. So it's really good to build those relationships, especially with realtors. I can see how that's helpful, because you spend so much time with them in terms of evaluating properties and going through the process of closing and everything like that. So let's talk about like once the owner's in, they go through training. Is there, is it encouraged for kind of seasoned owners to kind of collaborate with new owners? Do you have any kind of mentorship or, or is that kind of up to the franchisee to say, okay, I want to talk to the best people in the Bumble Bee Blinds Network and figure out their best practices and that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, what's kind of nice is we do have a Rolodex of a lot of franchisees that are willing to do validation. And that's a really great thing because I can put on a different franchisee every Tuesday for validation to hop on and answer questions. The other thing that's really nice is I do have a lot of franchisees that are very gracious. I mean, even on validation, they put in the group chat, they'll put their email and their phone number and they're like, Hey, yeah, it's I have had multiple franchisees do that. So like, they'll take that full hour to answer questions and then they'll put, you know, here's my cell phone number, here's my email address. Call me email me, you know, I want to make sure that I know what you're going through. went through the discovery process. I want to be a great resource for you. So I definitely think we have created a really positive franchisee community of support people that are excelling and also want to see other people excel. And it's just really, really cool to see. So I have a lot of confidence and faith that if people get in the discovery process, they're going to meet a lot of friendly faces. They're going to receive a lot of positivity and encouragement and Transparency to write just you know a bunch of people that want to see everybody succeed. So yeah Yeah, that culture like is so relevant like if you have that coming in It's a huge advantage for new franchisees that are trying to figure out You know the best way to spend their time and their resources and it's great that that's encouraged their HorsePower So let's talk a little bit about like the market size I mean how big is the market size for window coverings and what's the growth potential? Yeah, so, you know We've had owners clear a million dollars their first year in operation, which is really exciting. now that's another really great thing about where the brand is, is we now have data of a full fiscal year. you know, so we had owners that cleared over a million their first year. We feel like the window treatment industry, you know, I, I'm never going to say business owners that ownership is like super simple or easy, but out of some of the grand scheme, like I was a fitness owner that had a little bit more to it, right? I was broken more, right? A bunch of inventory, lots of W2 employees. So For me, at least I'll say it for me, like Bumble Bee is more. Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is a little bit more simple than a brick and mortar with all that stuff going on with it. But yet we see that it is scalable. We like the margin in the space and we do see it's a very scalable concept. And I think, you know, that is where we do attract, I would say a higher quality candidate because when they, you know, I deal with a lot of C -suite executives that maybe they want to take a break from corporate America, but they're not a hundred percent sure that they want to retire. So they're a little bit hesitant to hitch their wagon to something that's like a crazy investment or something that's like lots of moving parts because some of them have had so much success in corporate America that ultimately like hanging up that hat for good and really buying something that's a lot bigger is kind of scary to them. Right. And so Bumble Bee, think makes them feel a little bit more comfortable to get into franchise ownership or business ownership in that way. Yeah. And I do want to get into the item seven in a minute, but that you raise a good point. mean, it's like, you know, just because you invest in your first franchise doesn't mean it's the only thing you're ever going to do for the rest of your life. Right. And a lot of people have that mindset, but you might get into Bumble Bee and operated for a couple of years and decide you want to scale it by adding more territory and adding more vans and more employees. Or you might decide you want to exit and do something that's a little bit bigger because now you love business ownership. Or you might want to keep it and do something else also and bring in a team. So I think it's good to kind of walk through because I do get a lot of people, they come to me and they're like, I want a restaurant. I'm like, OK, well, you know, let's talk about that because they're not for everybody, right? They're expensive. Margins are tight. There's problems. But for the right owners, there's phenomenal rewards in that model. So yeah, that's good advice for you to give them. So let's talk about revenue streams. How does a Bumble Bee Blinds owner generate revenue? mean, I'm sure it's a majority tied to the window treatments. You did mention repairs. Is that like a 90 -10 split? mean, what's that look like? Yeah, absolutely. So I do think in the beginning, a lot of the work is going to be in the residential space, right? So I think a lot of the volume, I would say, of the business is going to be in the residential space. And then obviously adding in You know, what's cool about a commercial job is you'll probably do more volume in the residential space. But if you get a couple of commercial jobs from an average ticket perspective, those are going to be much typically much larger average ticket. and so again, we, when we develop territories, we're looking for new construction residential. We're looking for new construction commercial. And then we strategically target neighborhoods and business districts that are five to 15 years old, because those are going to be the most likely to do a remodel. good for. I guess all spanned for others is a lot of the mom and pops sell product from China that does not have warranties. was, believe it or not, one of those people that fell victim to that four years ago. And I just, I never thought to ask about a warranty, but when you're writing a check for nine grand, you should probably ask, is there a warranty? So, you know, if there's no warranty, we all know there's a reason for that. And obviously the reason is, is that it's probably gonna break. It's probably gonna break. I mean, we do, you know, we'll show up and stuff is broken down or discolored or whatever the case may be. Another thing that's really fueling the remodel set of our business is the U .S. Consumer Safety Council recently came in and banned the manufacturing of all corded window treatments. They're viewing it as a choking hazard for kids and pets. And so there's been quite a bit of pushback that's been starting, it's been in conversation for probably like the last nine months. But as of I wanna say three months ago, and officially they banned that. So if you're an Airbnb, a Verbo, a hotel, if you're anyone that's housing public consumers, you kinda have to pay attention to that now. So 40 % of what we're selling today is smart home product. And I would say there's a combination of that coming out and people saying, okay, what can I get that doesn't have cords? Well, smart home product fits the bill. And then also, you know, I was just in Dallas not too long ago and the hotel I stayed in, literally you pushed a button, the window treatments went up, you pushed a button, the window treatments went down. So I think you're going to see more and more of that happen just out of efficiency, less breakage, less damage, less liability, all those things. Yeah. Some of those features are really, really neat. I've seen some of those demoed and I'm like, I need that for my house. So you mentioned corporate America. I'm imagining a lot of. candidates that join Bumble Bee come from that kind of profile. But who would be the ideal candidate for you guys to become an owner? Yeah, know, none of the two, so out of the 200 territories that we've had, none of those people have come to us with a background in window treatment. So really we're just looking for someone that wants to build a big business and you know, is motivated to build a big business. Whether you're in the owner operator, type of model or semi involved to somebody that wants to scale and grow the business and be involved enough to make sure that their business is staying on track. know, obviously we have both ownership types. We support both ownership types. Again, just you don't need any window treatment experience. And again, out of 200 territories, none of those people have had a background in window treatments. So it's more just that desire to want to grow and scale a business and be successful with your investment. Yeah, and I can see that this is a business where you get to go into people's homes. So you have to have someone that's very comfortable with that and is a good house guest. there's a lot of jobs out there that are, you're in a comfortable environment, right? I mean, you're in somebody's property and it's not a bad place to spend your time. So I can see that that's an appeal for some people that. want to get into ownership, but they also don't want to get in over their heads in a service that might be super complicated or require special licensing or something like that. So here it seems like, you know, the entry point, you know, with HorsePowers backing and Bumble Bee blinds, like product inventory and support, there's just a lot going for it. And it's probably less scary, like you said, for people to take that leap and join this model. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah. I get a lot of the accolades, really it's, mean, when you look at the model and you look at the item seven and the investment, mean, the brand kind of, it kind of speaks for itself, I think on the opportunity. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the item seven. So what does it cost to get into Bumble Bee Blinds? What's our turnkey range to kind of get this thing started? So the item seven shows 169 to 196 is kind of the range there. What's kind of nice about this brand is Everything is preset negotiating, negotiated pricing. And so we define territory by 200 ,000 in population. And you just kind of decide ultimately how much territory you'd like to purchase. And then everything else is the exact same. So essentially it is not exponentially more expensive to get into Bumble Bee if you want to go to like a three or four or five territory, because it is not like in brick and mortar, every extra location that I open it like, okay, that's double, that's triple, that's quadruple. That's not how this works. So your opening package or a brand opening, advertising your vehicle requirement, everything is the exact same. The other thing I like to highlight, and this has got to be a home run for every single CFO is there's no inventory. Everything's a custom order. So it's not like your housing and having to write a check for $40 ,000 in inventory. you know, it, everything's, do you eliminate the need for any flex warehouse space altogether? Do you still need some of that to run the business? That's a really great question. And another really big thing I love about the brand is as long as you live in or reside in your territory, you get the flexibility to run the business out of your house. You do need to have a space where all those drop ship orders that are coming, we need to have a site where we can drop those to you. Again, our manufacturers do have full warranties on everything, but so they kind of want like a temporary spot until the installer can get out to that site, pick up the product and then go do the installation. because they do have a very, I would say gracious warranty on the product. But yeah, as long as you live and reside in your territory, you do have the option to run the business out of your home. And obviously as a former brick and mortar person, I love that because you may not do that forever, but every business has a ramp up. So for the first four to six months, you can essentially run it out of your house, ramp up. And then at that point, make a decision. Maybe you do it forever. We have some owners, live on... bigger properties with a little bit more space. They're like, I'm forever and always going to run my Bumble Bee Blinds franchise out of my house. And then some of them say, you know what, I'm going to just do it for like the first four to six months. And then some of them do start with like a four to 500 square foot little office or storage unit. It's 500 square feet. It's not consumer facing. You're not really inviting customers into the space. Again, it's more that drop ship site. If you're semi -involved and you need a little office to have your employees work out of as well as obviously service that drop ship site. That's kind of the setup there. Very cool. Yeah, makes perfect sense. So let's talk a little bit about Item 19. What kind of financial performance representations from '24 FDD can you share with us? Absolutely. our founding location is in Omaha, Nebraska, heated just under 1 .6 million. Again, now we have several owners that have a full fiscal year of data. So our next refile will not only probably have our Omaha franchisee, but other owners just because we've got Owners that are now getting at a year and a half and you know, are circling headed towards that two year market operation. but he did 1 .6 million in revenue, $4,500 average ticket, 70% close ratio actually. does super impressive numbers. mean, doing 1 .6 and a window treatment business in Omaha is pretty, pretty great. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. So, I mean, we've covered a lot of ground here, Courtney. Anything else you want to add to the mix before we wrap up? No, I mean, I think my goal, I think one of the best things that I ever did was become a franchise owner and a multi -unit franchise owner because I can appreciate and respect what it means to invest your money, your time, and make sacrifices in order to be a business owner. I think that comes through in the discovery process, that authenticity of understanding that this is a huge decision for you. I want to make sure that you feel comfortable. I want to be a great resource for you. And so obviously I pride myself on that. Other than that, I'm having a ton of fun working on the brand. It's been a lot of fun and obviously we continue to expand and grow. So. Well, congrats on your success. Sounds like you guys are doing really well and the brand is growing and you're launching these units. So. If anyone listening would like to connect with Courtney to discuss Bumble Bee Blinds, contact me at FranchiseQB.com or on Twitter @QBFranchiseQB. I'll get you connected with her and her team. Thank you so much Courtney for taking the time to get in the huddle and speak with us about Bumble Bee Blinds. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Franchise QB Podcast where you're at the helm of your future as a franchise owner. If you enjoyed the content, please rate the show and recommend it to anyone that might be interested in franchising. Make sure to visit FranchiseQB.com to subscribe to my newsletter and for an actionable playbook to go from walk -on to legend in your new business. Follow us on Twitter @QBfranchiseQB and join us every week for a new episode. See you next time. FranchiseQB.com to take the next step of your journey towards wealth, independence and franchise ownership. And remember, When working for the man gets old, you must do something bold. Thank you for listening.