In this episode we explore the world of franchising with Aaron Harper, CEO of Rolling Suds. Aaron shares his journey from development to dominance in the power washing industry, revealing the methods and mindset behind building a thriving franchise. Learn his strategic approach to franchisee success, including securing jobs before opening and the importance of skilled labor. Discover the concept of responsible franchising and its growing significance, highlighting the importance of due diligence and commitment. For those interested in franchising potential and expanding their brand, this episode is packed with firsthand insights and invaluable advice.
📺 You can watch this episode on Moses The Mentor's YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe: https://youtu.be/IWyUZyVZ9lo
🎯Connect with Aaron Harper @aarontharper on Instagram and visit his website rollingsudsfranchise.com
🎯Connect with Moses The Mentor: https://mtr.bio/moses-the-mentor
☕If you value my content consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mosesthementor
📢Support Money Focused Podcast for as low as $3 a month: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2261865/support
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In this episode we explore the world of franchising with Aaron Harper, CEO of Rolling Suds. Aaron shares his journey from development to dominance in the power washing industry, revealing the methods and mindset behind building a thriving franchise. Learn his strategic approach to franchisee success, including securing jobs before opening and the importance of skilled labor. Discover the concept of responsible franchising and its growing significance, highlighting the importance of due diligence and commitment. For those interested in franchising potential and expanding their brand, this episode is packed with firsthand insights and invaluable advice.
📺 You can watch this episode on Moses The Mentor's YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe: https://youtu.be/IWyUZyVZ9lo
🎯Connect with Aaron Harper @aarontharper on Instagram and visit his website rollingsudsfranchise.com
🎯Connect with Moses The Mentor: https://mtr.bio/moses-the-mentor
☕If you value my content consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mosesthementor
📢Support Money Focused Podcast for as low as $3 a month: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2261865/support
🔔Subscribe to my channel for Real Estate & Personal Finance tips https://www.youtube.com/@mosesthementor?sub_confirmation=1
Welcome back to the Money Focus Podcast. I'm your host, moses the mentor, and on this episode I'm joined by Aaron Harper, who's a franchising expert and the CEO of Rolling Suds, which is a pressure washing franchise that's growing really fast. So in this episode, he's going to be helping us understand the steps of acquiring a franchise, growing a franchise and all things franchise related. So you need to make sure that you're listening in attentively. So sit back, learn, grow and pay it forward. Let's go. Hey, aaron, thank you so much for joining Money Focus Podcast. Really appreciate you, and the first thing I would love for you to do is to kind of break down your career journey, your professional journey and, ultimately, how you started your business. So the floor is yours.
Speaker 2:Awesome, thanks for having me on. Yeah, so I've been in the franchise industry for years. My background is working in home service franchise brands. So a lot of people think that franchising is just McDonald's or Chick-fil-A or it's only food or fast food. But it's actually this massive industry that has health and wellness brands, youth enrichment, home services, like there's just. It's just a massive industry. So I didn't know that going into this. Honestly, when I first got my first job in franchise development, someone was like you should get into franchise development and I was like what's that? You mean like McDonald's? And but he goes no, there's like this home service world where you can get in for like under 250 or even $400,000 and, you know, grow a pretty big business based on home services. So he worked at a carpet cleaning franchise. I emailed his boss every three weeks for six months until he hired me and uh, and that was my first job in franchising I helped grow that. We effectively prepared that brand for exit to a private equity backed restoration company. I helped build it to be the largest carpet cleaning company in the world.
Speaker 2:The company I was working for. They wanted to grow multiple home service platform. I wanted to build a home service platform of brands. So they bought a drywall repair brand and COVID put me on that. We did a turnaround of that brand. There were 100 units sold, 40 franchisees and they didn't have really any support. So we hired a brand president and him and I turned the brand around. We launched our first franchisee at the end of 2020. He was profitable his first month, so I knew we were prepared to grow that company. So from October of 2020 to October of 2022, I personally added 223 locations to that business. In two years we were the 13th fastest growing franchise brand in the world. We became the largest drywall repair company in the world and all those franchisees opened with jobs on the calendar and a full time skilled laborer hired prior to going to training Really set those franchisees up for success. Hired prior to going to training really set those franchisees up for success.
Speaker 2:The company that I worked for wanted me to take on a brand that was non-franchised yet and I was like I can do this on my own. So I sought out for a bunch of different businesses across the country that I could franchise, met the founders of Rolling Suds, which at the time was a 33-year-old um doing over $2 million a year. And, um, I knew I could replicate that business hundreds and even thousands of times. So, raise capital, uh, acquired the franchise rights. The business, in January of last year, partnered with the founders to create the franchise business, which is, you know, a different business than the power washing business, which is kind of.
Speaker 2:I'm the CEO and owner of that company. So we did that, we, we, we built a franchise system around it, started franchising end of February of last year and we now have 187 locations in 26 States. So, thank you, I have a team of over 25 people that work for me, um, for direct reports, and an executive assistant. Everyone else reports to them and, um, we have 51 franchisees who have purchased 187 territories. So, uh, the ones who have launched have launched, with um, jobs and estimates on the calendar and two full-time employees hired prior to going to training. So none of them are doing the power washing themselves. They're all here to grow a multimillion dollar business, and so that's kind of how I got into franchising.
Speaker 1:That's my background and then how I got my business launched launched Nice, nice, what, what made you, um, you know pick power washing as your, your next, you know franchise, uh, arena. Like what? Did you do some research to say, hey, there was a need there. Like what? How did how did that come about?
Speaker 2:So I looked at a bunch of different businesses. I looked at HVAC and plumbing and solar and tree care and epoxy coatings and garages and like just a bunch of different industries. So it didn't matter to me which industry, um, as long as it was in the residential commercial services space. Um, however, there were a couple of things that stood out to me about power washing in general. It's a super fragmented industry. It's a lot of high schoolers who decide they want to power wash, or guys that want to do it part time, or they do the power washing themselves. That's majority of the industry, and I saw an opportunity to set standards in an industry by becoming the biggest in the world.
Speaker 2:If you think through like franchises, there's there's no surf pro of power washing. There's no Stanley Seamer of power washing Like it doesn't exist. There's no national power washing company that you can think of, and so I saw an opportunity to build a company and we become that. Also, the founders of the brand have perfected a proprietary way to clean buildings. The founders of the brand have perfected a proprietary way to clean buildings that is faster and better than anyone else and it's proprietary. We build the trucks ourselves. Operator in an industry, along with having kind of a difference in product offering, really allows you to have a competitive edge. And then you know. So I thought about this. Ok, well, what's going to be the thing that accelerates the business the most, or which one, which industry, you know, franchise that accelerates it the most? And power washing was the quickest path to that.
Speaker 1:It makes perfect sense. But you're right, I mean anytime I need power washing and I always need it. You know, if I'm, you know, having an event at my house and I want you know my driveway to look great or I want to power wash the side of my house or something like that, I never think to call a power wash like company, like you said, or serve for a power wash. I typically will ask, like my lawn guy, like hey, do you do your power wash Right? Or something like that, or try to do it myself. It's not like your gold standard company that you go to. Anytime you need power wash and service. So that does make sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:What exactly you know I was doing some research on you. What exactly do you mean by responsible franchising and how does that relate to your current business venture?
Speaker 2:So I've been in the franchise industry for years and part of the reason that I decided to franchise a business on my own rather than work for a company to do it is there are some, some, some ideas about franchising that I'd like to break um and uh and and the franchise industry. There have been some bad actors that have set um, set it on a weird course. To be honest with you, like most people outside of the franchise industry, they either think of like franchising as being like only McDonald's or Chick-fil-A, like I said earlier, or it's a scam. And in my experience, if you find the right brand, I don't believe there's a quicker way to wealth generation. But so many people won't look at franchising because they have these preconceived notions or they don't know enough about it to see it as a good way. You know you said a lot of your audience is looking for opportunities to make more money and put their money to work and hire people and grow businesses. Franchising is a great path to that if it's done properly.
Speaker 2:If it's not done properly, it can hurt a lot of people, and so when I first launched this, I started tweeting about responsible franchising. I started writing about it every single day and that comment or that topic has picked up a lot of steam within the industry. And, um, we had our big like annual biggest conference for for franchising in February and the international franchise association got up on stage and said responsible franchising this is what we're doing now. Um, this is what, this is who we are as an industry. And here are some tenants, and those are the four core tenants that I proposed. So it's really exciting to be starting a conversation that I feel like is honestly overdue, long overdue.
Speaker 2:And the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine reached out to me. He said hey, I hear about this thing in the franchise industry. It's somewhere between called responsible franchising. I feel like it's somewhere between, like a conversation and a mini movement within franchising. We want you to write a 3000 word piece, then we'll pair you up with a professional writer for the magazine, and so this week it's actually being released in the newest issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. Then we'll pair you up with a professional writer for the magazine, and so this week it's actually being released in the newest issue of entrepreneur magazine and that'd be six pages about responsible franchising. So really big. It's very important to me to bring franchising more into the mainstream and highlight some of the bad actors so that you know people that want to get into it and build like considerable wealth, like can do that without being in a bad spot.
Speaker 1:I think it's the right thing to do. It shows that you know you have some integrity about you know growing a business and helping people along the way. So appreciate that. You know personally you're welcome. So appreciate that, thank you. You know personally you're welcome Personally, you know. I think when you mentioned, like your McDonald's and Chick-fil-A's, you know people, you know those staples. They think those are like out of reach. You know as far as oh, it's going to take millions of dollars, right. But when it comes to a more probably attainable franchise, I think the skepticism does start to creep in. Is this a get rich quick theme or is it too good to be true? So are there some ways that a potential investor who may not have millions of dollars to go into a McDonald's, are there some ways that they can vet successfully a franchise opportunity that you would recommend?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I think, first and foremost, there are some people who look to franchising because they want a passive business, or they want something that like they can just put some money at franchise or runs it. They can just put some money at franchisor, runs it, you know, and kind of. That's the thought process. That's not the case. It's not. Franchising is by no means passive. Does it accelerate the path to growth? Yes, but are you still going to be actively involved in growing the business? Yes, it's a business and you scale, you hire other people, then you scale into another role and eventually you have a business that runs without you. But I don't think any business starts like that. So I mean barring, like vending machines or something like that, where you put it somewhere and you go refill it once a week. Every franchise is going to require that you are actively involved, and so if a franchise brand that you're looking at is like, yeah, you can do this, passive or semi-passive, five hours a month, 10 hours a week, whatever, I would recommend that any person who hears that in the vetting process runs the opposite direction. And unfortunately there are people who say that and it's part of the problem, and it's part of the problem. The other recommendation I would make is talk to existing franchisees to ask them about their experience and call all of them, or call you know, five to 10 of them. If it's a brand new brand, you won't have that Like in our case. We've we've launched, you know, just under a year and a half ago and we have a lot of franchisees, but everyone's very early on and very early stages. But I promise you, if you talk to every single one of my franchisees and you ask them if they do it again, they'd all tell you yes, because they made a decision that has resulted in positive benefits in their lives and they see a path to continuing that and continuing to increase their wealth. Um, and I I take a lot of pride in that. If you talk to the people who I franchise their business, they'll tell you that this is one of the best decisions they've ever made and I take a lot of pride in that.
Speaker 2:And so, for an early brand, if you like the concept, talk to the founder of the business or the CEO and make sure that you believe in that leader, because so much of franchise ownership is leadership. At the beginning, it's always leadership. The other thing you want to ask about is capital. So franchising it's hard enough to start one business, let alone two businesses in different locations. So if I'm launching 187 locations across the country, that takes a considerable amount of capital.
Speaker 2:Right, because we get paid on royalties, but we don't get royalties until franchisees are making a lot of money right, so it's like, but you still have to support them in order to get them to make that right. So I raised a lot of money to do this the right way, from investors that have franchised businesses before that I could, um, develop relationships with and get mentored by, so so those are some things that I would look at. A lot of it is gut, though, you know, like the purse first person who signed up with us him and his wife like they didn't have anyone to talk to other than me and they were the first franchisees to sign up, and they're crushing. But they took a chance and uh, they'll tell you it's the best decision they've ever made.
Speaker 1:So I'll tell us about, you know, some of the things you do to support your franchisees. Sure, as far as technology or just help with marketing, you know, walk us through that support.
Speaker 2:So a lot of franchisees or people that are looking at franchising often think that the franchisor is just a marketing company. Like I want to be with a franchise because they're going to give me leads. Well, yes, we have vendors that we work with that do the lead generation for franchisees and we have a really robust customer acquisition strategy. That is only one layer of what we do. We help franchisees get trucks. We help them get physical locations where they can park the trucks. We help them with insurance. We help them figure out how to recruit employees. Like a franchise or a good franchise, you pay an upfront fee and an ongoing royalty, but you get a lot of your time back Right, because it would take a long time to figure all that stuff on your own no-transcript to figure out.
Speaker 1:That is what's presented for you, with that upfront commitment.
Speaker 2:A good franchise turns years into months and months into days and days and hours. That's what a good franchise does, which would take a lot of time and mistakes and all that stuff to figure out on your own.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to flip it a little bit, because you know we talked about, you know, potential franchisees, you know vetting a franchise, or, when it comes to you guys or just other places you may have worked, what is the vetting process look like for potential franchisees? Is it I take, everybody who has money and, you know, do they have to have a certain background? Do you do any type of vetting process to ensure that you have the right people servicing the brand as you expand? Yeah, talk to us about that.
Speaker 2:We do an incredible amount of vetting. We've actually turned away 58 people who wanted to become franchisees, had the capital and were not right for our system, which comes out to about $11 million in revenue that I've turned down. It's the best money I'll never make. We are super, super selective on who comes in. A lot of people end up buying a franchise and they buy a job. They leave one job, they buy another one. We're helping people build assets, not jobs.
Speaker 2:Now, initially, when you start any business, you learn every element. You learn how to hire, you learn how to fire, you learn how to train, you learn how to manipulate your P&L, you learn how to sell, you learn how to like. You do all that stuff. But then you what I like to call fire yourself from roles. So you hire people, you put them in place and then you replace yourself and you go to the next role. So a lot of people that buy franchises just aren't in that situation, and so most of the people I turned away.
Speaker 2:I only felt we're only going to be able to buy a job or they'd get to like two or three trucks and be done with it. We're looking for people who want to build massive businesses and have the capacity, the wherewithal and the grit really is. What we're looking for is grit in order to do that. So, yeah, capital is only one piece of it. I mean, in order to qualify with us, you have to have a minimum of 300,000 in liquid or liquidatable assets. But our trucks are like $150,000. But you can do a 3,000 square foot house in 20, 25 minutes with our equipment. You can power wash five stories from the ground. We're doing 135,000 square foot office buildings, like we're really heavy in commercial. So the math works. But like when you're talking about that amount of liquidity, in order to qualify, like that just is a different category of person is, at least in my experience. Also, they have to align with our four values, who we are, be good at building relationships and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:What about for someone who has, you know, a fairly popular local business? You know they have one, you know storefront and doing well, right. But then you know folks start getting in the air saying, hey, you know, I think you should franchise this, this should be great. Well, what are some? What are some cues? So use me as an example. Let's just say I have Moses popcorn and I sell out every day. You know everyone loves me. I'm making a great impact in my community. Is there ever a certain time where it's like okay, where you should know, like hey, this is an opportunity to take it nationwide? Or do you recommend sometimes local brands just stay local, like if there are certain characteristics of a business that will help it be more successful on a franchise platform?
Speaker 2:So I think a good franchise can go anywhere. There are certain franchises that might be regional, where they only work in certain markets. I'm personally only interested in franchises that can go anywhere. I think that's the best use of my time. What I will tell you and your listeners most people should not franchise their business and I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2:It's not to be offensive by any means, but it is a completely different business. So in your case, you have a good popcorn stand. You're good at building a successful popcorn business. The franchise business is a completely different business. You're a business coach, you're a therapist, you're a compliance officer, you're, and you can be all those within two hours, in one day, and it's just a completely different industry. It's a completely different business that requires different skills, and one of the biggest challenges with franchising is anyone typically who steps into being a franchisor has to figure out how to be a franchisor, and they're figuring it out while they're launching franchisees. So franchisees are launching and they're figuring out how to support them. So the business owner is figuring out how to be a franchisor and the franchisees are figuring out how to be franchisees at the same exact time.
Speaker 2:And so you oftentimes will hear about lackluster support, and it's because they just simply, in some cases, don't know how to, or they don't have the capital, or someone was like you should just franchise your business because it's so successful, and they went out and got a franchise disclosure document. But that's about it. And they went out and got a franchise disclosure document, but that's about it. So what I would say to you that wants to get into being a popcorn franchisor is go to franchise conferences for at least a year and do serious diligence on it before saying, all right, this is something I want to do, because it's going to cost lots of money it's going to take away from your popcorn business.
Speaker 2:So you have to be comfortable not doing that anymore because you now are opening another business. That business will likely suffer a little bit unless you've got good infrastructure in place to be able to step aside, and you're going to burn cash for years until you get to some type of royalty numbers that are meaningful enough. You'll need at least $500,000 to a million dollars, and it still might not work out. And so if you gather all that information and you're like, no, I really want to do this, tell me how. This is what I want to do, then I think it's a good time to franchise. But until you've figured all of that out, I do not think franchising is a good plan.
Speaker 1:I see, you know freight businesses, that that always comes up like that, that next tier. But you know, you know, like you mentioned, you're becoming this franchisor and you're stretched so thin and it kind of loses the kind of integrity of the business because you don't have the pieces in play to ensure that you know each location is consistent Every, every time I go into a McDonald's it feels like a McDonald's a Chick-fil-A. You have to be prepared to be able to have that type of leadership across the board and that takes a lot, I'm sure, a lot of experience, not only capital, just experience in time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say. Motoi Mentor says there's one major reason why franchisors fail and it's lack of capital. But there's two kinds of capital. There's intellectual capital, which is how to franchise a business and what you need to do and who to hire and when and how to build infrastructure. And then there's actual capital, which is lots of money in order to be able to properly support franchisees. And most franchisors at launch don't have those things. They don't have a lot of capital to burn and they've never franchised before. They don't have a lot of capital to burn and they've never franchised before. So these are questions that someone who's looking at doing diligence on a brand needs to make sure they're fully aware of before they buy a business, before they buy a franchise.
Speaker 1:What about, like emerging trends in the industry? I've seen a lot of, like you know, remote franchise opportunities where people like working from home or something like that. I haven't seen much integration with AI. I don't know if you have anything to add there, but what are you seeing with franchising that excites you or potentially even scares you a little bit?
Speaker 2:Tell us about that. Yeah, so the stuff that excites me is responsible franchising and the conversation around doing things the right way and providing the support necessary for franchisees to be successful. That excites me. What makes me nervous is franchisors saying you can run this business from a different state by sitting on your couch and checking in on your computer once a day.
Speaker 2:That terrifies me because that kind of like promise of a passive business or a semi-passive business it's just in my experience with especially with an emerging brand that doesn't exist. And so I want to make sure that people who come into the franchising world while it's responsible for us to tell franchisees that the franchisees or prospective franchisees who come in, they need to know what's responsible. What they're responsible for, which is making sure that they vet the opportunity enough to say, all right, I believe I can do this. But if anyone's coming to the franchise world for like a get rich quick scheme or like I'm going to run this passive, I'm going to keep my job full time, I just wouldn't recommend doing that In my experience. I'm not saying it doesn't happen ever, but what I'm saying is most of the people who will buy that type of business under that type of assumption, end up having to leave their job anyways to make the business work.
Speaker 1:Hey, you know I hope the audience is listening in. I mean, you've been doing it for a long time, so talk to us about what's next for Roland Sudge. You did this tremendous, you know transformation of the brand and you're growing it at a rapid pace. But what? What do you have on deck for the company moving forward?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean my, my plan for the rest of the rest of my life is to launch franchise brands that have that lead live by a similar core set of principles that are based around responsible franchising practices, um and uh, and hiring really good people to grow those businesses with me. Um, I'm in the process of um building a C-suite. Right now. A lot of businesses we tell a pretty far down the road to get a C-suite. We're building a C-suite before we need the C-suite. We're building a C-suite before we need a C-suite. Because that's kind of the way I look at business is like let's build the team before you need the team.
Speaker 2:We will have about 300 locations by this time next year and that's really exciting. That very rarely happens. That's really exciting. That very rarely happens. And we're planning our annual convention and we have franchisees that are, like you know, on track to do four trucks within the first two years. Like we have some really aggressive operators coming in to grow really big businesses. So while the first step is selling and awarding the franchises, the next step is helping them all get through those first two years of their business with the support necessary to, to, to be successful, and that's that's really what we're focused on now. My team is. We've got, you know, like I said, over over 25 people on the team that are all supporting franchisees and, and so this is a big deal for me to make sure that franchisees are successful, um, they have opportunities to grow their business, acquire other locations, another, more trucks all those types of things that you do when you want to grow a business and eventually I'll launch other brands, uh, but for now, my primary focus is rolling sets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I mean that's. That's interesting. You said, hey, you know I'm going to be doing this the rest of my life, so it doesn't end with Rolling Suns. You'll, you'll keep thriving and you know, I guess you'll identify some type of successor when you go into a next, your new brand. So kudos to you. Thank you, go ahead and kind of let us know, like, what are your final thoughts or advice for the audience, and also, if someone is interested in rolling sides, you know, let us know how a potential you know franchisee could reach out to you for more information. How can we contact you? Your website, social media. So the floor is yours. Thank you, aaron.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you want to learn more about Rolling Suds and becoming a franchisee, you can go to rolling suds franchise dot com and click get started. Then you'll get paired up with someone from my team. You'll go through a set of stages and the interview process, make sure everyone's a right fit for everyone involved, and then the final approval step would be with me and and so that's the there. If you just want to learn more about franchising because you're interested in franchising, I would follow me on social media. I put out content every single day about franchising. I make it super simple and um really kind of make it easy to understand.
Speaker 2:Um, my, one of my personal goals is to make franchising a little bit more mainstream. Um, so kind of help transform it with from within and then um, bring it, bring it to the rest of the kind of general public. So on my I put a lot of um of the kind of general public. So on my, I put a lot of. I put a lot of content out on Twitter and LinkedIn. So my Twitter's Aaron Harper, ceo, a-r-o-n-h-a-r-p-e-r. Ceo, and then you can just search Aaron Harper, rolling Suds LinkedIn online. You can connect with me and follow me there. And then my Twitter, uh, uh, twitter, uh, excuse me, my Instagram is Aaron T, as in Timothy Harper, um, and so I put video content out there as well. Um, we'll be building a YouTube channel this year and then launching a podcast on the back half of the year, so really I'm excited to continue to build, um, uh, you know, build an audience around, just franchising in general.
Speaker 1:Great and I'll make sure to include all your contact information in the show notes. It was great to hear more information about franchising. It's something you know I wanted to learn about and I'm sure the audience will, you know, be leaning in and listening in attentively and I hope everyone reaches out to Aaron, even if you're not interested in rolling sides, but make sure to follow him on social media so you can learn about franchising, so you can do it the right way. So thank you so much, Aaron, for joining the show. Thanks for having me you.