Mark Kushinsky, MaidPro & Threshold Brands Founder/CEO

“There are a lot of things people misunderstand about franchising. People tend to think that if they buy a franchise, their success is going to be guaranteed.”

It took Mark Kushinsky a year and a half as a department store manager to realize he didn’t want to be an employee. He started his own residential cleaning business, then "ran into” franchising and founded MaidPro, which he grew to more than 400 units. Today he’s on the board of Threshold Brands, a 7-brand platform of vastly diverse service-oriented businesses he founded in 2020.

Mark visited with Ab and Vini in studio and shared his insights on the differences between “entrepreneur entrepreneurs” and “franchise entrepreneurs.” Why daily execution of the core business matters more than “the next big thing” -- and why culture and connection matter even more. Why managing two brands is 10X harder than managing one. How private equity is changing the franchisee experience. And what prospective ‘zees MUST do before signing on the dotted line. 

Transcript

 Hi everyone, welcome and thanks for joining us for Stars of Franchising. Get ready for a roller coaster ride through the world of franchising as we bring you the best stories of inspiration and entrepreneurial grit and turning dreams into franchise realities. That's right Vinnie. From emerging to global brands, we'll chat with the genius minds behind the magic. All brought to you by the Tariq Farid Franchise Institute at Babson College. I'm Ab. And I'm Vinnie. Now buckle up for some serious inspiration.



 We're so excited and honored to have our guest in studio today, Mark Kaczynski. Welcome Mark. Mark is founder, CEO, done so much more of MayPro and Threshold Brands. So welcome to Babson, Mark. It is great to be here. Well we're so excited Vinnie and I have had some great discussions and we always like to start with the question of what calls you to do what you do. Mark, a little bit about your story and your why.



 Yeah, thanks for asking that. I wish there was this pre-planned thing that I had when I was younger. Like I was going to start a business and franchise it but that wasn't the case. I was an employee at Jordan Marsh. You familiar with Jordan Marsh? It was a department store in Boston. That's the job that I got out of school being a department manager and after about a year and a half I knew I didn't want to be an employee. And so I was searching for a business to start that I had very little money as well so I was looking for a business to start that I could operate and I came across residential cleaning and that's when I just made the leap to entrepreneurship, ran that business for a number of years and stumbled across franchising and then franchised MadePro and over the years we got to about 400 odd units throughout the US and Canada and I guess here I am that's the short version. In that case you talk about starting a business you stumbled on this and then now we're talking of hundreds of units out there. What would you say people misunderstood the most about franchising?



 I think there's a lot of things people misunderstand about franchising so I'm not sure what's the most but I do think people tend to think if they buy a franchise their success is going to be guaranteed. I don't know if it's a myth but it's certainly I don't think people understand that it is their business and they themselves are going to, it's a system in which they operate in but they're going to have to make it successful. It's not just going to be handed to them so even if you buy a franchise you're going to have to work hard and be a smart business person.



 In that case if I turn it over to Ab that's the case if someone tells you Mark that franchising and entrepreneurship don't go together because you get a blueprint so you just buy it and then run with it right therefore you're not an entrepreneur. What would you say to that? I think people define entrepreneurship differently.



 I would always say that there's an entrepreneur entrepreneur and there's a franchise entrepreneur and it was very important when we would select people to become franchisees that we made sure that they were franchise entrepreneurs because they are slightly different right and if you're I'll say a pure entrepreneur if you want to change the golden arches green



 you can change them green you can do anything you want to operate within a franchise you are under a sort of a control structure and a lot of I'll say business people people in general just can't live with that they need all the freedom they need to change those golden arches green if they wanted to so I think there is a difference but you do have to operate your business you have to create a culture within your business to watch the numbers you know you got to execute on what they're telling you and that's not easy so they're both in for a lot of ups and downs maybe less if you're franchising because you got someone helping you but it's a lot of it's it's a lot of work and you got to be you got to be focused on it it's not again and besides you're still filled with so many uncertainties that any entrepreneur we have to deal with on a daily basis as well so exactly okay well I love that franchise entrepreneur term and we've talked a lot about that in the past mark how you have the guardrails maybe for some of the entrepreneurial risks but you still have to execute so so that's great insight let me follow up a little bit about you you mentioned it the franchisees selection so we'd love to hear from your perspective



 what makes a great franchisee you know for made pro or for other your brands or just in general what characteristics and what should people keep their eye out for I mean yeah it does vary by brand and so forth but in general a lot of things that make a great franchisee make a great business person in general but if you want to isolate it to just franchisees you know we do look for someone that's besides having all the other attributes we want to make sure they're coachable because in franchising if they're not gonna listen and take advice then that can be problematic yeah if they're on their own because they do have to understand they're joining a system I think one of the the biggest traits is self-awareness and this is whether you're a entrepreneur or I'll say an entrepreneur entrepreneur or franchise entrepreneur self-awareness I think is huge in any business because look no no business person or business owner knows everything and you have to like be able to realize where your strengths and where your weaknesses are so I think I think self-awareness is a big one now when you look at all the franchisees you've had over the years what would you say the best ones do well maybe top two or three things they think they do really well and then we're going to flip I'm going to flip the question and ask you if you look at franchisees in general what would you think the best ones do so well yeah the good ones really focus on this use the system and then spend their time executing okay I'll tell you sorry I won't give a name sir but we had a franchisee very smart gentleman and we're in the residential cleaning business so cleaning supplies was a piece of our business ordering and buying cleaning supplies although it was only 2% of our revenue went to cleaning supplies but he spent 30 40 percent of his time looking for a cheaper you know window cleaner so you know the system's already there I think a franchisee shouldn't spend their time tweaking the model they should be using the model and executing on it I think if they spent the best ones the most successful ones are the ones that that focus on executing building a culture you know understanding their KPIs backwards and forward if you don't understand the metrics that lead to success in your business I mean you're just kind of flailing around so to me I mean culture execution and focus on KPIs and I think you're gonna you'll be successful and then now so let's turn it around if you look at franchisees well the best ones what do you think they do so well including you yeah I'm you know when you say best I mean how do you define best you know maybe the outstanding ones the one that I really been yeah yeah because there are bigger franchise ores yeah that they might lose a greater percentage of their franchisees were like made pro we're very small but we lost we had very few clothes even though we didn't grow to so how do you define best biggest I'm not sure if so let's put it this way so the good ones out there that you've seen and I really doing great stuff that are making progress that are growing and they're keeping a hold of on the audio franchisees the number one thing and I this is with it and there's the second is like far distant to me and that is the organization really needs to have what I'll call a franchisee first mindset if you don't understand that your franchisee comes first and that is that the unit economics their profitability their satisfaction you know whatever it is that if if you're not making decisions that are in their best interest it doesn't have to be only there it could help you as well but if it's not in their best interest and you make those decisions you're gonna not be the best so so those organizations that are focused on their franchisees success are usually the best because if they succeed you succeed exactly and some organizations I don't know why they don't get this and how they make decisions that are not in their franchisees maybe it's a short-term decision to increase profits or something along the line but yeah that's that's that's number one to me when what great advice for our audience which includes many potential franchisees and we hope a lot of this sheds light on what to look for when you're doing your due diligence in franchisors and while that some may be the biggest and the fastest growing if as you state mark they don't have their eye and their focus on franchisee profitability then the the pain comes later so to speak that's great one thing I'd love to have you go back to and you stated that you got into the business and as an entrepreneur and then started franchising I'm sure you you know went through a lot of growing pains and made some you know great decisions and pivoted can you talk to us a little bit about those early days mark mark how many units were you at that were company owned even before you started franchising and then help us learn a little bit about when you decided and what those first few days months and years were like yeah I'm I had just one unit when we decided to franchise and the only reason I even came to find out about franchising is I went to a cleaning conference and there were other cleaning companies and and a one of the gentlemen I was speaking with was a franchisee of another brand and when he was showing me his software and his marketing I just sat to myself and he told me about that he was it was a franchisee I'm like ours is we have better marketing than he does we have better software why don't I franchise I don't I do what right that's what sort of triggered me into franchising to your question about like early stumbles and yeah there there's many because I I wasn't a great student I didn't go to a great school like Bapsin and study business so I was everything I was learning by you know fits and bouts but



 there were there were many stumbles I think some of the earlier ones were that you know you take a franchisee because they were there and they could pay you even though they might not be the best fit for your organization right that was one of the the the earlier stumbles that I would say I made and you know these are long-term partnerships that you're with people for a long time so if if you get into these five ten year relationships and it's not the right person it's not good for anybody so that would be some advice I'd give to the franchisors out there is you know wait don't don't take that even even if it is your first franchisee number second you know you wait you know and we found to your point that businesses and entrepreneurs like yourself that have a great model are going to attract people that want to be franchisees so I'm sure they were knocking on your door and saying hey I saw your business we want to be one too and it's it's resisting that temptation sounds like mark to to not grow too fast without the infrastructure and support in place right yeah well this is back in mid 90s so there was not a lot of knocking on your door because there was really no internet people couldn't search you know that so to get out the word out that you even existed was very different than than today so so those first initial franchisees were hard to come by and and who is the first friend like yeah that person's taking a big leap of faith right because you have no system you have your own systems but can you translate that to others that's that's a big trick and you don't you haven't proven that yet and in mark what were you looking for when i mean the fuel knocked on your doors what were you looking for when you deciding should i go with these people or should i know should i pause or something look were they breathing were they gonna join i'm like i just wanted some like i wasn't even thinking about that i was like well you know you needed to build it yeah so the the first few franchisees we got lucky and we got some but we did take on a few that i learned my lesson the hard way that that you know it didn't work work out very well but i learned that lesson early for your vantage position what do you think uh what were those lessons that you said okay it didn't go well but what were your take away from from those decisions that didn't go well yeah and you know to to take your time and really explain the business like you want the person that's joining you you want to give them enough real information so that they can make a good decision for themselves it's i always look at it wasn't my decision whether you were going to join made pro or one of our brands yeah i'm like i'm going to share the information the real information and some people the good and the bad a lot of franchises don't do that and if i share it all then you'll make a good decision for yourself that was sort of the position that we took versus sell sell sell we never had any of our franchise developers selling it was like explaining the real deal and if you want to want to join then it'll be a good fit and we found out that was sort of the best way to to decide no so mark uh if you have a a room filled with people who are thinking of going into becoming franchisees or even franchises uh what advice would you give them yeah i mean there's a lot of advice i mean i consider for days i consider for days um one i think i would explain to them that they're the difference between being an entrepreneur entrepreneur and a franchise entrepreneur so they know really the framework of what they're getting into and once they understood that then i would focus them in on industry because different industries provide different i'll say business aspect like uh residential cleaning is is a weekday business home health care might be a a seven day night business do you want that do you want a restaurant is that a passion for you there's you know do you want inventory in your business so i'd really focus on letting them understand what industry are they going into um and and then i would have them when they actually found the franchise i would have them speak to a lot of franchisee maybe not a lot five at least five existing franchisees and have deep conversations with them you know what do they like what are they what's their day to day how much money do they spend what are they making because the franchise or often can't tell you and even in the item 19 you can fudge data you know i don't all franchises make their data look as good as they can make them so you really have to talk with the franchisees and not only the existing franchisees in the franchise disclosure document they'll list all the previous franchises that have left the system i would call though a few of those folks as well and do it randomly don't take the list from the franchise or just kind of go through throw a couple darts and and call people up and really find out and then it not only will help you make a decision but you'll make some friends along the way so if you do decide to join right you've got some built-in mentors for it right okay any other advice any other advice apart from this too that you gave uh apart from doing your due diligence uh going out to talk to people is there anything that maybe comes to your mind that you yeah i mean there's a lot of it i mean it's it it does go on and on there's a lot to it so it's hard in a podcast uh but you know you want to make sure that the legal terms and the fdd are i'll say franchisee friendly a lot of you know a lot of private equity firms and larger corporations or bigger corporate are you know as they grow their legal terms get a little tighter and i'll give you an example of something that we used to have in our franchise agreement that up most don't was that was like uh we called it the 90 day out clause that if you did want to shut your business down for whatever reason we had a gentleman that started a maid pro and within six months his wife and his son were diagnosed with cancer and he's like i i need to get out you know we're gonna lock him into a five or ten year agreement where you're gonna pay a minimum royalty or things of that nature and yes some franchisors can do that out of the goodness of your heart but you want the legal agreement to follow suit so that's an important thing another thing i think is going on in the franchise world with i'm not i don't agree with and that is limiting the renewal terms we used to have unlimited renewal terms you know if as long as you weren't in default of your agreement you could renew now people are saying you know you can renew twice you build a business five year ten year yeah what happens at five ten twenty years after you've built this business



 it's up to them whether you can renew it or not yeah those are those types of things so i would really review i'd hire an attorney a franchise attorney not just an attorney right a franchise attorney to review the legal make sure you understand what you're getting into okay that's important so once you've decided you like the culture you like the business you know before you sign on the dotted line you know okay get a franchise attorney to review that's you know all great advice and mark references the you know the franchise disclosure document and that it the devil is in details right and those are two great examples of terms to keep your eye out for which which i hadn't thought of especially if you are doing really really well and maybe the franchise or brand has changed ownership and they want to go in a different direction and you lose that right so two great items there and do your due diligence and the fit is important too it's like a marriage we've heard people say and a partnership so so that's great stuff i'd like to pivot a little bit to to innovation so within the guardrails of franchising as an you know a franchise entrepreneur and following the system we've had some guests and talked a little bit and love your perspective on maybe some innovation that happened during the pandemic that challenged the business model or some of your best franchisees did they come up with some great ideas that were implemented in the system yeah you know that's a great question in franchising it's it's it is interesting that if your system is so tight where does innovation come from yeah if the franchisees can't you know so we always considered ourselves to be franchisee flexible and people would always hear the word flexible how do you franchise or how do you yeah and so we would give people some latitude to make decisions and try some things and so forth so we we wanted innovation as much as we could have in our industry to come from franchisees because we weren't we didn't know everything but uh we did get some pretty good you know innovations that came you know out of out of our franchisees and we incorporated them and we gave them credit for it right because we didn't need to take it over the pandemic i mean obviously that was a really rough spot especially when you're a you know a cell phone brand but you i don't know if this is any different from any other business but you really learn how to operate with with not connecting with people yeah being remote and even our in cleaning we instead of you know people would come in and get their supplies we'd give them the supplies we take their supplies from the previous day and we'd swap that we'd have they just pull up and they'd pop their trunk and we'd do like that's very simple for a residential cleaning service but luckily we had a lot of mobile we had a mobile app for employees already built and so we were kind of ahead of the curve and we'd already had built in integrated texting and and a lot of you know remote dispatching and things of that nature so we were kind of ahead of the curve on that but yeah a lot of a lot of innovation that hit franchising and you know definitely accelerated things so mark during the pandemic i guess you had a lot of back and forth i mean collaboration with your franchisees have you done anything to sort of institutionalize



 all those collaborative efforts in other words i do have anything in place to just maybe you meet on a regular basis maybe quarterly or two types a year we used to have a lot of in-person uh regional meetings and obviously that shifted to virtual virtual and you know we've we just continued it because people loved it so much we didn't stop we probably reduced the in-person meetings i see but we we definitely increased the the virtual that that stayed in place you know we added a lot of uh you know our mobile app was good but it of course got better because when you're forced to not show up you you start would add just add features a lot faster than you would otherwise so a lot of the you know once you're once you add something to your tech stack it stays there to other universities so if you will tell us maybe what goes on in that meeting for instance who you have an agenda or they bring their agenda or they do they like how do you decide what you're going to talk on what you're going to speak on the meeting i don't say those conferences made pro university or conferences our annual conferences when you bring all your franchises together oh yeah the annual conferences we had an interesting take on the annual first of all we didn't do it annually we did it every 18 months okay we felt like it's a lot of work to put those things together and our staff i didn't want them distracted like as soon as you finished one you got to roll into starting the other one and we weren't that large of a franchisor to have like a conference separate conference team so we went with 18 months and i think our franchisees like that cadence because they got to you know relax come back you know take a little bit more time but we would we would we try to come up with a lot of like what's the new next best thing and we'd always want to deliver that but what was always the most important is the blocking and tackling yeah of the business the core the execution of the core business how you're treating your employees how you're scheduling for us what tools you're using did you know how to use the technology the showing them the shiny new thing that you just developed you want to do that because that's exciting yeah but the predominant push should be doing all the things that you should be doing correctly like that kind of gets lost and then of course it's it's all about culture so when you have all your franchises together are they get you know what are they doing to connect and get along if it's just sitting in conferences the whole time then you lose that that dynamic because it's what you're doing the other 360 days of the year you know the connection the sharing the mentoring that really builds so yeah those conventions are they're a lot of fun they're a lot of work but if you focus on your culture and connection blocking and tackling and you do a little bit of a sizzle you know i think i think you'll be good interesting so so mark again before i come again uh let's talk about uh social issues diversity equity and inclusion uh in your type of business uh you you are you run a business where the model is such that we don't without if you whether you like it or not it's about getting local communities involved the different i.d. said they are local people and they hire people from their from their vicinity so what have you seen over the past few years even though it's just now that people are talking about they need to be more inclusive to be more diverse i guess this is something that you you started working in from day one yeah i mean i don't really know i gave it much thought you know i never gave it much thought i when there were the riots that happened recently a few years back i and everybody was talking about race and diversity and so forth our hr person did a survey you know found out all the you know how many people this race and that race that we had and as employees and franchisees employees employees and franchisees and they said we're



 we have we don't have enough white people you know that was the result like you know and what we didn't even do it was you know just i think just being nice and just being fair and just if you know so it wasn't ever really a thing on our mind you know so we just treated everybody



 equally you know if you could do the job great do it you know we didn't care what you look like how tall you were how short you were whatever you know whether you wore glasses or not you know it just you know so it it you know but as a company we did do a lot to give back we started a 501c3 called made pro cares we one of the things i put together to keep the culture really strong at our organization was something called these adventure trips so where we would have our franchisees together for these seminars every 18 months the opposite nine months so every 18 months we'd have a convention and every 18 months we'd have a adventure trip we would go places like Belize Peru went to Croatia we we would we sailed around the Caribbean we did a number of these and any franchisee can go it wasn't just the top 10 i didn't like having the top performers they could go and buy their own trip right it was anybody that wanted to go all inclusive and we went to Belize and somebody on my team said hey if we're going to go to Belize and we're going to have fun there let's let's call and maybe there's a orphanage or children's home we could support so we went to this children's home they had 30 children and everybody that went sort of picked out a child that they would find out what they liked and bring some things for them you know whether it was clothes or books and and we were there for two hours then we left and after that we all sat back and said that was great but now we're gone right how do we keep this going and so we set up this 501c3 called maeprocarus and we helped that orphanage and a few others and uh you know you know gave back visited worked at the orphanages and it was great you know it was they they need a lot of help particularly in some of those other those countries so that was it was a lot of fun and a lot of our franchisees would go with us and we would stay there and talking about building connection and culture so it was it was good for business and it was good for the soul if you will wow yeah and that kind of points back to the attributes of some of the franchisors that that you know that do well that is the franchisees evaluate who they want to partner with that culture isn't so talk to your the franchisees in the system and and you've talked a lot about the reliance on each other in franchisees systems right so it sounds like building that culture but also your franchisees need to put the effort in to to to count on each other is that right oh they do they do it's it's i want to say it's work for them it should be pleasurable to meet a fellow franchisee franchisee if they're you know if you've let the the right ones in and you know everybody's nice and people are caring and willing to share um you know then it's it's a fantastic way and improves your business just kind of like a family like you know my i have a 17 year old son sometimes he doesn't want to listen to me but he'll listen to his peers right so in franchising he's the same like you can tell you can say do this do this but when your fellow franchisees say hey this is working you're you're you're gonna do it so it helps the system overall and it spreads out the you know the the work the support work right right mark mark if you look back i mean this year's decades that you've been doing this what is one thing that franchising taught you that you feel everyone should at some point in one way or the other learn that as well well since i've been in franchising pretty much my whole adult life i mean it's taught me probably every lesson i've had the good ones and the bad ones i don't know is there one thing i do think that the social fabric is in building a high trust culture is is important in life and and in franchising i mean when people connect and that's why we did these adventure trips when they connect outside of work and not just go to a bar for a drink for an hour you know when you travel with people i guess if it was one thing if you travel with people you bond with them unlike anything else so that that's probably my one lesson i've really taken away okay so go on trip maybe you can do that at bat guys take faculty away to to please or something and then so my so my the next question i'm going to add would piggyback on that is to say to ask you uh that is that something you would do differently and why if you look in your rearview mirror i don't know i mean would i do i mean yeah you know you make a lot of mistakes over time in business you're making decisions multiple times a day so i there's decisions i would have made that i but differently i don't i don't really know i mean so we did one of the things we did was we opened up additional brands so i had made pro and then we opened up a mosquito and tick control brand and we opened up a window window cleaning brand i think i would have put i might have purchased the like a brand that may or or bought a company that had been in existence for a number of years first and got a little further along than starting it another de novo brand yeah yeah i would i may have got bought it either a small right i'm building something organically well building it organically is fine i think it would have sped things up okay and we probably would have made you know less mistakes early on that that probably would have helped if i was to give you one but okay you know okay that would have been interesting and then for any any insights into managing multiple brands either for franchisees considering joining a you know a family you know a family of brands what what takes back door yeah i mean there's a lot of pros and cons to it but running it it's in minimum 10 times harder than a single brand when you add your second brand it's it's many many times more difficult because you you you can lose your focus right you have to you have to organize your your business distinctly different yeah i think then you would under you know because when people have focus right they could just do a lot better but if yeah if the head of marketing now has five brands you know at some point you have to grow so every brand has their own head of marketing yeah that takes time so it's it's it's a lot it's a lot of work but there are benefits to it you you have more revenue more synergies synergies right you can you can uh franchisee and one brand can open up you know already knows the system may you may have the same software system you may have the same marketing techniques you may have the same business coach that you can rely on so there's there are there pros and cons like there are with anything in life but so much if you uh if you look at trends in the world today maybe technological or social regulatory name it is there a trend that you think that will shape the future of franchising and the franchising model as we know you today i mean the biggest trend that i see going on right now is the private equity ownership of brands i mean very few brands are now like independently owned other than the smaller ones there's very few larger brands that are getting purchased and i and i think what that's doing to franchising is right it's corporatizing it meaning some of those more stringent terms are going in right as businesses get bigger they have to put in more controls which they do naturally this is inside and outside of franchising and so that's that is happening within within the bit within franchising world you know so less flexibility to the franchise or i mean excuse me less flexibility to the franchise you know things are more like tighter controlled so i think that is a trend that's been happening for many many years and it's probably going to continue i see well great stuff mark we really appreciate your time today lots of great lessons from an entrepreneur who started by launching a business



 in cleaning to deciding to franchise to scaling to over 400 units and multiple brands owned by private equity so lots of great life lessons we appreciate your time in studio today mark and best wishes yeah thank you very much thank you thank you thanks for joining us on this episode of stars franchising stars of franchising was produced at bapsin college engineered by travis gray karen soe is our guest coordinator and music by ralph taylor if you like stars of franchising be sure to review us wherever you get your podcasts and swear the word and share these stories any way you can