Inside Renew Medic: The Hidden Goldmine In Cabinet Restoration

Ready to rethink what a “niche” franchise can do? We’re joined by Storm Miller, director of franchise development at Rep’M Group, to dig into the surprisingly large world of cabinet restoration and why institutional capital loves this space. Storm explains how Renew Medic spun out of a legacy brand after franchisees found cabinet jobs paid 10x more than typical furniture fixes, then lined up national insurance relationships to feed consistent, high-value work.

We get specific about the numbers. Territories are pre-mapped using owner-occupied homes, with insurance data showing steady demand from everyday water and fire incidents. ITEM 19 data: With average tickets around $8,000 and fewer direct competitors, operators can build multi-million-dollar shops supported by CNC machines, edge banders, and trained techs who restore, store, and reinstall with precision. Storm walks through the ITEM 19 and a Denver operator’s $5.8M revenue and seven-figure EBITDA displayed within, including material costs that can sit near 8 to 10 percent, and payment cycles that land closer to 30 days than 90. It’s a rare three-way win: insurers cut claim costs, mitigation partners speed up cycles, and homeowners stay in their routines without months-long tear-outs.

We also tackle the why behind the investment: 7,500 to 10,000 square feet of light industrial space, scalable equipment that qualifies for Section 179, and a workflow designed to keep jobs moving fast. If you’re a white-collar leader comfortable managing blue-collar teams, this model rewards hands-on ownership early and thoughtful delegation later. We cover real estate as a long-term lever, exit planning from day one, and how Discovery Day in Memphis lets candidates see the operation, training center, and leadership up close.

Curious whether a need-based, B2B engine with national accounts and large territories fits your goals for 2026? Tap play, subscribe for more frank breakdowns of profitable franchise models, and leave a review with your top question so we can dive deeper next time.

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Send us your questions for an upcoming episode at 305-710-0050.
From your pals in franchise ownership, Jack and Jill Johnson.

Chapters

• 0:20 Meet Storm And Renew Medic
• 1:20 Why Cabinet Restoration Isn’t Niche
• 4:42 From Furniture Medic To Renew Medic
• 7:46 Unit Economics And Item 19 Proof
• 11:51 Lean Teams Through Shop Tech
• 14:08 Demand Drivers Beyond Disasters
• 16:44 How Deals And Referrals Flow
• 20:08 Investment, Space, And Equipment
• 23:15 Ownership, Real Estate, And Exits
• 26:28 Territories, Math, And Market Cap
• 29:59 Need-Based Work And Community Impact
• 33:38 Discovery Day And Open Markets

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

Hi everyone, welcome back to the We Bought a Franchise podcast. I'm Jack Johnson. I'm Dale Johnson. And today we are here with a very special guest, a legend in the franchise industry, Storm Miller, who is the director of franchise development for Repum Group. Storm, welcome to the show. It's great to finally have you.

SPEAKER_01: 0:27

No, I appreciate you guys having me on. Uh it was great seeing you this summer down at conference in Orlando and pleasure to be on the show and talk franchising with some pros. Absolutely. Storm, how many franchises do you think you've awarded in your career? So I have taken three different brands to market now, and I have yet to take a brand to market that has not awarded 150 licenses. Uh now, the brand that I am on to talk to you guys about today is Renew Medic, and we are new. I have awarded 27 units on this brand thus far. We've got some signing dates on the books for some new territory, and we have three more groups coming out to Discovery Day tomorrow and Friday. But I would say I'm I'm probably in the ballpark of 300 plus franchise territories of movement.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10

Well, that's what got our attention, Storm, is that there is a buzz that is starting to happen around Renew Medic, right? I mean, it's it's interesting. We do a lot of work with institutional capital and and they love boring, dirty businesses, right? They that's that's where they go. And as I'm starting to hear, and I don't mean buzz in like a, ooh, it's a hot franchise kind of way. I mean that the the things that Jill and I are hearing, wow, you've got to see what's happening with Renew Medic. Like the Discovery Days are booking up, big territories are being rewarded or awarded. Maybe tell us what makes this franchise what it is, and and why someone should be as we're headed into 2026. And a lot of you who are listening are probably starting to think about maybe there's a next chapter from East Strong. Tell us about Renew Medic and what we need to know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57

So it's pretty simple. Renew Medic operates in the cabinet restoration space. And at the onset, you guys probably thought this. We've had other consultants think this, we've had candidates think this. It sounds like it's super niche, right? We are a function of the disaster restoration space, but we are not a disaster restoration company ourselves. What we're seeing in the cabinet restoration space is that we don't have a whole lot of competition there. And the cabinet restoration portion of the DR industry is a much larger component to what goes on in that line of work than most people know. We're capitalizing on a market that others do not know exists. Um, and I think there's a little bit of a paradox with our brand because to your point, Renew Medic is new as a franchise, or we didn't franchise the business until 2024. But the work that we've been doing in the cabinet restoration space, we've been doing it for about a decade. It's just that previously we were doing it under our sister brand, which was Furniture Medic, right? And that's a 30-plus-year-old legacy franchise system uh that was a part of the Service Master portfolio. And what happened in that brand was there were a handful of franchisees that had developed a really strong core competency in woodworking. And, you know, they were doing great, you know, running million-dollar businesses, fixing, you know, tables, desks, and chairs uh that were damaged in water and fire losses in homes and in commercial buildings. Well, some of their local insurance adjusters asked them if they were capable of taking on cabinet work, right? And at the end of the day, cabinets are just wood. So some of those franchisees said, yeah, sure, we could take on cabinet work. And then they got that first cabinet job, right? And the ticket to fix a cabinet was about 10x what it was to fix furniture.

unknown: 3:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 3:41

And they said, wait a minute, you mean to tell me that we could do one of these jobs or we could do, you know, 10, 12, 15 of these? Why are we not focusing on the more profitable piece of furniture in the home? Right. And they started to pivot their business. They started going after cabinet work. They realized that cabinet work due to water and fire losses was a lot more common than most people knew. There wasn't a ton of competition. And pretty quickly some of these branches began running multi-million dollar operations, right? So the team saw what was happening there and basically said, hey, we've got two different businesses under the same brand flag and they're kind of pulling in opposite directions. Why don't we buy for Kate the brand? Why don't we pull out those franchisees that are now focused on cabinets? Let's rebrand under a name that better serves those franchisees. And out of that came Renew Medic. We've gone to market with that, solely focused on cabinet restoration. And it's been a great business for us to build.

SPEAKER_02: 4:31

I imagine.

SPEAKER_01: 4:32

Yeah. What do you guys show in your item 19 an average, average job? Yeah. So in terms of what people will see in our item 19, we've actually got a full PL uh in there from a franchisee out in Denver, Colorado. Uh, and his name is Joe Steffens. Joe has some podcasts that are floating around out there on LinkedIn. Some of our candidates know who he is before they even come into our process. But he was a furniture medic franchisee for a couple of years before he converted over to Renew Medic. Last year in the 2024 calendar year, he was just servicing two territories in Denver, Colorado. Um, and he ran a business that did just shy of$6 million in top line revenue. It came out to about$5.8 plus. Uh, he did over a million dollars in Ebita. And his salary, his draw is actually baked in as an expense in that PL. What he's doing this year is pretty impressive. The team's pretty excited about it. Uh, at the end of the year, he actually came back and purchased the last territory in Denver. And then he also bought Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, right? So was looking to kind of scale the operation, knew he needed to uh to chew up some more ground in order to get there. He now controls everything east of the Rockies and what he's doing this year, and the team's very happy with. I think Joe's very happy with. Uh he's one of our validators, makes himself available to our candidates.

SPEAKER_00: 5:46

Yeah, I mean, that's a heck of an asset he's grown. I mean, if that that kind of EBIT, you know, that's that's a that's a big business.

SPEAKER_02: 5:52

That's a huge business.

SPEAKER_00: 5:53

And what's so funny is again, it's it's that businesses that people really wouldn't think about on a day-to-day basis. And and look at the the the size of that asset. And that's what's so great about businesses like this. And you say limited competition, you can do big jobs. Man, I I I think that's just it's it's so great to hear. How many, how many employees does he have at this point? Do you know?

SPEAKER_01: 6:17

So based on the size of his operation, I haven't asked Joe how many people he employs, but it's probably north of 20 to 25 employees that are working in the shop.

SPEAKER_00: 6:27

But you know, I mean, if you if you had a six million dollar home health care agency, you would have, gosh, what would you have? You would have 20, let's say 120, you'd have to have about 300 caregivers. So that's a pretty lean operation, actually.

SPEAKER_01: 6:44

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We we can be very specialized with how we utilize labor in our shops because at the same time, we also utilize technology in a way that prevents us from having to overstaff this business. Um, you know, we utilize CNC technology to custom cut every piece of cabinet that we reassemble in the shop. We use edge banders, which saves us a ton of time creating finished edges on these pieces of wood. And by utilizing that technology, not only does it does it prevent us from having to overstaff, it also allows us to be a little bit more efficient with our use of material. Um so we try to keep material cost as a function of revenue under 10%. Joe does a really good job of it in his business. His his PL from last year shows he was hovering around 8%. Wow. So that's a great job. And is it mainly consumer? So, yeah, so uh we're B2B, yeah, right, in in terms of the business itself. But at the end of the day, we're working with homeowners. I think maybe the most common misconception about our business is that because we're a function of the disaster restoration space, that like we rely on natural disasters for this business. And we don't. You know, we'll take on that business, we'll plug in with some of the major players, whether it be SurvePro, whether it be Service Master, whether it be Paul Davis or Pure Clean, you know, brands like that. But a lot of our work comes from everyday failures of technology in the home. It's free. Um, and I think Denver is kind of that market that can showcase that, right? Joe's running a massive business out there in Denver, Colorado. And for those that don't know, it's the sunniest city in the United States, right? They average something like 320 days of sun every single year. It does snow, but there are no natural disasters out there in Denver, Colorado.

SPEAKER_00: 8:28

I know you travel a lot, Storm. Have you ever had it where you go into Denver? I know Joe went to college there, but I'll never forget flying into Denver once and it was beautiful and sunny and 70 degrees, and like two hours later, it's a blizzard.

SPEAKER_01: 8:40

Yeah, no one. But then again, within the next 24 to 36 hours, all that snow melts off because the sun pops up.

SPEAKER_02: 8:46

To your point, the sun is out every day there. I grew up in Seattle where there's no sun, and so I went from Seattle to Denver Boulder, and it blew my mind to see the sun out every day, no matter what the weather was. Warm, cold, the sun, I I loved it.

SPEAKER_00: 9:16

So Yeah, it's it's a very interesting place with apparently a very legit football team at this damn point.

SPEAKER_02: 9:26

We always start talking about football.

SPEAKER_00: 9:28

Well, when your team is good, you talk about football. When your team is not good, then you're on to other things.

SPEAKER_02: 9:33

So so so then how do people get to you guys? So it's is it through like a vota, through someone else that refers? Is there like a extent of damage where you guys need to come in versus you know someone else taking care of it? How does that work?

SPEAKER_01: 9:48

Yeah, so this kind of speaks to what we were talking about earlier, right? Like the B2B nature of this business. So there's there's really three different avenues with regards to how business comes into a shop. Uh, the first one that I want to speak to is national account program work, right? And this is where we've been able to differentiate ourselves. But when we bifurcated the brand, one of the things that migrated with the bifurcation of the brand were some of the insurance relationships that we had been nurturing over the course of 10 years. So we have national account work with, you know, three, four, five of the 10 largest insurance carriers in the United States who were looking for this service. They send the leads into corporate, and corporate takes those leads and effectively doles them out to the franchisees in the proper market to provide this service. So that's a further hedge against risk for anybody that's looking to get into business for themselves, right? Obviously, franchising in and of itself is a hedge against risk. I think national account work is another. Now, at the local level, we plug in with disaster restoration companies, right? And again, there's a number of them out there in the marketplace. But basically how we work with them is we can act as their cabinet subcontractor. A lot of the guys who are running these disaster restoration franchises, they do not have 10,000 square foot shops with cabinet carpenters and finishers and edge banders and CNC machines. They have a cabinet subcontractor that they're working with. But usually it's a mom and pop independent, and that's fine, right? Like they make great business owners, but they run a pretty lean operation. And most of the time, the work that the independent manufacturers are going after are the luxury kitchen rhinos. All we go after are damaged cabinets, right, due to water and fire losses. So we can plug right in with every single disaster restoration company in a franchisee's respective market. We help them call on these individuals. And every job that we do through a disaster restoration company will have a third-party insurance adjuster that's tied to that job, right? Because they're going to assess damage on behalf of the insurance company. You guys don't know this right now, but I am actually going through reconstruction in my house. Uh, I lost the floors in my basement due to a water loss that occurred the day before Halloween. So I am very, very much clued into this exact process. But those adjusters, right, they're assessing damage on behalf of the insurance company. We want to meet the adjuster tied to every single one of these jobs because when we explain our value proposition to the insurance company and how we could save them five figures on every single one of these tickets, restoring the damage cabinets as opposed to ripping them all out and replacing them, which tends to be a$20,000,$30,000,$40,000 ticket. The insurance adjusters are more prone to work with us and they refer this work to us as well.

SPEAKER_00: 12:32

So with that in mind, and I looking at your guys' investment, look, this isn't like a low investment franchise. This is a$400,000 to$700,000 total investment. What do the accounts receivables look like timeline-wise? Is it the sort of 30 to 60 days type of receivables that a franchise owner would need to be prepared for?

SPEAKER_01: 12:51

No, so I'll be honest with you guys, in this space, checks get cut pretty quickly. Really? As a matter of fact, I have two checks sitting on the desk next to me because of the damage that occurred in my house that I have not cashed yet at all. And it's because things are still being kind of negotiated between Service Master and my insurance company. I have no idea why checks were cut that quickly. So I'm just kind of holding on to them. Typically, you're getting paid within 30 days. Insurance companies, right, if you're being referred work directly by them, that check tends to come pretty quickly. If it's coming through a disaster mitigator, it might take a little bit longer, but to your point, usually payments there within 30 days.

SPEAKER_00: 13:30

It's nothing like medical building billing, which is really so so again though, this is a, I would say, and I don't want to necessarily call you guys home services, but you sort of are, right? But this is this is a higher ticket home services franchise. Now, again, your FDD shows some pretty incredible numbers, as you mentioned, a franchisee doing$6 million. Why is this, you know, compared to some of the restoration franchises out there, or even like say a cabinet IQ, where you're looking at total investment, you know, two to two to four hundred thousand. Why is the investment for this higher?

SPEAKER_01: 14:07

It's mostly the shop space. Okay. Right. So we require at minimum 7,500 square feet of light industrial flex space. And most of our franchisees are starting with shops that are about 8 to 10,000 square feet. The reason we've created that minimum is actually because of one of the corporate branches in Memphis, which is where we host our discovery days. That shop's only about 6,000 square feet. And when people get in there, they're like, this is a little tight. It is. So that's where that 7,500 square foot minimum comes from. Okay. So we need that space because we need space for the equipment, space to actually restore these cabinets, and we also need space to store them. Uh, the ironic thing about the work that we do is like when we pull somebody's cabinets and that cabinet begins its workflow in the shop, we can restore the cabinet in as little as like 48 hours. Um, so the cabinets can be done within 48 to 72 hours. More often than not, we're done fixing the cabinet before the work in the home has all been complete. And then we need a place to store it. So shop space, you know, is part of that investment. You start with about$150 to$250,000 worth of equipment. And again, you don't have to go all in on the equipment package. You can start with a smaller package and scale equipment as it is that equipment as section seven 179? Yeah. So you, yeah, you could take a full depreciation on the equipment of actually working with a couple of candidates right now who are trying to get pretty, pretty creative with, you know, eliminating tax exposure here at the end of the year by purchasing the purchasing the equipment with cash.

SPEAKER_00: 15:32

Yeah, yeah. So we see a lot of it. Storm, do any of the owners own the real estate? So that's where my mind goes. As soon as I say, oh, I'm gonna have a shop, I should I should probably own the real estate. Has anyone done that?

SPEAKER_01: 15:43

So I have a gentleman coming to Discovery Day tomorrow and and Friday who has real estate picked out. Um as a matter of fact, it's it's in Philadelphia, which is where I live. And uh he will probably purchase the real estate and and he'll lease some of that space and he'll find tenants for the rest. So I think that will become a little bit more common. I also think that could eventually become a component to people's exit strategy. Yeah. And we're not naive guys, like the executive leaders behind this brand, they've been in franchising for decades, right? So our CEO, his name's Chris Gammel. Chris's been franchising for over 25 years now. He actually used to run all of North American operations for 1800 got junk before he left for Service Master, and now he serves as our CEO. Mike Pierce has been in franchising for nearly 40 years, right? He was the uh Chief Development Officer of Domino's, chief development officer of authority brands, service master, retired, came out of retirement to purchase Renew Medic with our private equity partners. So these guys are not naive. They know people are gonna enter this system. They're also gonna exit. Um, they actually put on a presentation at Discovery Day talking about some different exit strategies because people should go in eyes wide open. Is Repum group owned by private equity? We are not. Okay. Renew Medic is, right? Our majority shareholder is Eagle Merchant. And then outside of the private equity group, the the next largest individual shareholder in this business is Mike Pierce.

SPEAKER_00: 17:02

That's really that's really interesting. It's it's interesting to see the multiple sort of layers of private equity in franchising these days, from top down to even rolling up within a franchise. In fact, the the the private equity groups that like to do roll-ups generally like it when private equity is at the top already. So it's it's they speak the same language. Exactly. But what's so interesting in that model is that they they're not looking just to come in and buy a bunch of new units, right? What they want to do is they want to find a really effective franchise owner to effectively to quarterback their units for them. So generally speaking, it's it's finding a franchise owner or a group of franchise owners with, say,$3 million in EBITDA and then recapitalizing them and then going one for one on the units. So in the case of your million-dollar EBITDA franchisee, how many, how many units would you say that they have?

SPEAKER_01: 17:53

So right now, he controls five territories in uh eastern Colorado, but his shop space, he has one shop that services all of that. It's a 22,000 square foot shop now, so it's rather large. And then, you know, he's he's gotten pretty creative with hiring teams of technicians to service, you know, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, even though his shop is actually in dead.

SPEAKER_00: 18:17

And your guys' territories are quite large, right?

unknown: 18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:21

Yeah. So this kind of starts to speak to that niche nature of the business, right? And if people that are listening to the podcast are thinking, hey, this still sounds super niche, the way that we've drawn territory kind of eliminates that niche nature to what we do, right? So this will sound a little unlike what most people have exposure to in the world of home service brands, but our team pre-mapped the entirety of the United States. And when they did that, there are about 347 territories that could be awarded. And between what is owned by corporate branches and what is currently owned by our franchisees, we only have about 260 territories left to sell. And some more of these are about to come off the board. But when we map territory, we map territory around 250,000 owner-occupied homes and multifamily dwellings layer in on top of that. Now, the reason we do that is because we've been able to effectively reduce our concept to a pretty simple math equation. We know from the insurance companies that we've been working with for a decade now that roughly 2% of all homes in the United States have water damage each year. And another four to 500,000 homes have controlled fire damage. And I'm not talking about complete and total burns. We're talking about damage contained in one or two rooms, right? The most common place for water and or fire damage to occur in the home is in the kitchen, right? Because of the appliances that you have there and the plumbing that runs through that room. And outside of water and fire damage in kitchens, the next most common place for water damage to occur in the home is where I have it in mine right now, and that's the bathroom, right? Both are rooms with cabinets. So we know that roughly 50 to 60% of water claims that are submitted to insurance companies, they do involve cabinet damage. So if 2% of 250,000 homes have water damage each year, we're talking about a sample size of 5,000 homes in a given territory, right? If roughly half of those have cabinet damage, we're talking about 2,500 homes that we could service each year. If a franchisee captures 10% of that viable market at an average ticket of 8,000 Grand, that is our average ticket in this business to remove the cabinets, restore them, and reinstall them. That means that a single territory is generating$2 million annually in revenue at only 10% of its market cap. And at closer to 20% of market cap, it's generating three to four million dollars per year. So this was never designed to be a franchise system with 300 franchisees out there that were all trying to do a million to two million dollars. Realistically, when this business reaches maturity, it'll be a system of maybe 90 to 100 unique franchise partners. And the idea was we wanted them all running very comfortable, very strong multi-million dollar operations. That's the way that the executive leadership team is building this. And fortunately for them, and I think fortunately for our candidates and our incoming franchisees, they have the hindsight to do that because this is not the first system that they've built.

SPEAKER_00: 21:25

Yeah, I mean, it's I love the fact that you've got large jobs. It's clearly high need. The numbers are incredible. That's just what's so cool about franchising. And this, you know, for those of you who are listening, you know, probably many of you started your franchise search by thinking about things like Chick-fil-A. And that's totally normal, right? I mean, that's what people think about. They think about food franchising. But, you know, imagine, you know, this sort of dream that people have about, you know, running a chicken shop. And granted, you can make a lot of money as a essentially a glorified manager. And that's totally fine. I mean, it's totally fine. Some people say it's a bad move. I don't think it's a bad move at all because at the end of the day, if you're making four or five hundred grand a year and you could put some cash away, you can go buy a business. But if you do a business like this and you can build this thing up and have yourself a$5 million business with a million dollar EBITDA, you know, you position yourself for a maybe four or five times valuation. Or even better, if you can grow to a three million dollar, a three million dollar EBITDA, you can, I mean, so that that's what's so cool, Storm, is that this is like you can kind of go into a market where you don't have as much competition. You can work on big jobs, you can own the real estate, you can get the Section 179 benefits. So for those of you listening, this this is the kind of stuff that these are the the, I don't ever want to say shortcuts, but these are the smart ways to make money in franchising.

SPEAKER_02: 22:47

Yeah, we always talk about the need base, and this one's really interesting because you know, need-based is when we've said, you know, like window washing or home services or something like this. That this is a real true and an emotional need-based business. So the fact that, you know, you guys exist and you're out there and you're helping people in these like, you know, times of need where they're, you know, besides themselves maybe not thinking clearly or panicking, um, you know, it's also like it's a need-based, but it's a feel-good too. Like you're really there in these troubled times. And I think that's, you know, amazing.

SPEAKER_00: 23:21

And while the jobs may be one off for the consumer, because you're actually partnering with other businesses, I would actually say you guys are a recurring revenue business too.

SPEAKER_01: 23:30

Yep. 100%. Right. And and the worst thing that can happen, and this actually happened to our CEO, is for somebody to lose a kitchen or lose a bathroom in a water or fire event and have everything fixed and six months later have the same problem. Chris Gamble speaks about that at Discovery Day that happened in his home. We don't waste that on anybody, but we're there for people uh who have that happen in their own homes, right? But when it when it comes to actually working with homeowners, I think that might be one of the things that I don't speak enough about, right? We kind of get to play the hero in our own local communities, working with people in a time of need, right? And you guys probably understand this. I know you have kids, um, but for a family that's looking at water damage in their kitchen, right? If if a mitigation company is coming in and they're recommending a full tear out of the kitchen, well, your kitchen's no longer functional. You're looking at displacing the family, right? So they're gonna get put up in, you know, hotel suite or an Airbnb, and it might be 10, 15, 20 minutes away from home, right? A full tear out of a kitchen and a rebuild, that's a two, three, four, maybe more month process, right? So they're gonna be out of their house for a while. Well, if their kids are school age and school's in session, they don't have a bus to get their kid to school now, right? So now they have to figure out how to get their kids to school, right? And if they're then in turn making a commute into the office, they have to figure out how to get their kids to school, turn around, make it into the office in time. I've also never met somebody who genuinely enjoys cooking in somebody else's kitchen, right? If somebody says that, they're probably lying, right? So our ability to come into that kitchen, right, properly brace these countertops, right? We do that every 18 to 24 inches, surgically remove just the damaged cabinets and get them out and do that restoration work and keep the kitchens functional and keep families in their homes and then return life back to normal for them within a two to four week timeline. That's a pretty big win for a homeowner. And that's how we've been able to differentiate ourselves in the market, right? We make the mitigation companies very happy because we shorten their cycle times on these tickets, right? Restoration runs two to four weeks, renovations run two to four months. The lower their cycle times are on these tickets, the more likely they are to get referred work by an insurance carrier. So we help them with that. For the insurance companies, you know, the work that we do tends to be somewhere between six and ten thousand dollars per job. And the opposite of that, right? The the rip and replace, that's a$30,000,$40,000,$50,000 ticket that, you know, they're they're looking at if they have to rebuild or foot the bill for rebuilding the kitchen. And for the homeowner, our ability to keep them in the safety and the comfort of their own homes, and really in the safety and the comfort of their own day-to-day routines, right? Like I've got a guys, I've got a 17-month-old in my house. And what makes this house go with a 17-month-old running around is the fact that we have a routine. If you pulled us out of that, it would just be mayhem all day long. But there's a pretty rare three-way win for all stakeholders in water and fire losses. And if we can provide wins for all three of those parties, we went to.

SPEAKER_02: 26:33

Very true. We went through a, well, we did a kitchen remodel and we had to live in a hotel.

SPEAKER_00: 26:39

It was like a hotel.

SPEAKER_02: 26:40

It was like a hotel.

SPEAKER_00: 26:41

What about the time our garage in San Diego flooded? Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_02: 26:45

No.

SPEAKER_00: 26:45

Cardiff. Remember that? No. It was all like wrecked. Anyway. I mean, the point of the matter is apparently was that bad. This stuff happens to everybody, but I think from so many angles, it's such a smart business. And it's nice to have a reputable group like Rep'um Group and Storm having you, who are veteran of, you know, so many franchise transactions over the years. You know, this is a good, good space for someone who's looking, I think, for a multifaceted smart investment on so many, on so many levels. So yeah, it's like I said, the the buzz that's starting to come up around this brand, I understand why. What haven't we asked? What haven't we asked that we should know? We covered most of it. Okay. So you got a big group that that's coming in again for Discovery Day. Do you guys do those Discovery Days on a monthly basis?

SPEAKER_01: 27:33

We do. So every month we fly people in from all over the country to show them the operation right there in Memphis. And they see, you know, our world-class training center down there. Uh we have a test kitchen with all different types of cabinets, all different types of sinks, different types of appliances. So no matter what kind of kitchen they walk into with cabinet damage, they'll have seen it before. Um and then the Memphis service branch is actually built right into the backside of the training hub, right? So we host the events there. Um they're two-day events, but it's really 24 hours or so that you spend with the team. It's just divided uh across usually a Thursday and a Friday, but kind of gives everybody the ability to see, feel, and touch this thing. And then obviously, we want to make sure that you're comfortable with the leadership team, right? Who's going to be working with you over the course of a 10-year franchise agreement, or at minimum from the time you enter the system to the time you exit it. You know, obviously we're in Memphis, right? There's a little bit of that southern hospitality down there. I enjoy flying in every month. Plus, it's warmer in Memphis uh than it is in Philadelphia right now. We're getting, or we're finally on the other side of this little Arctic blast that we've got. And we got, you know, half a foot of snow dumped on us the other day, and it's still all out there on the ground. But yeah, the events are great. And the idea is by the time you come to Discovery Day, right, you should be 80 to 90% of the way there. And by the time you leave, you leave with complete information. And ultimately, we want this to be something that you're comfortable with on the other side of attending a discovery.

SPEAKER_00: 28:59

And you know, I think for this, for you guys, the good news is from what I see, what do you guys have 19 open units? Is that right?

SPEAKER_01: 29:04

Yeah, something like that, right? So we've got franchisees that are open and operating in downtown Houston, Las Vegas, Detroit, Denver, and Charlotte, Atlanta. We've got franchisees getting ready to launch in Salt Lake City, you know, Denver, or I'm sorry, uh, Dallas and Austin, Texas, uh, here early in Q1 of 2026. And we'll continue to get these things open all across the country.

SPEAKER_00: 29:29

Storm, you know what's so interesting is Denver's always such a competitive market. Denver always seems to sell out for almost every single franchise. Finding franchises for for, and I don't mean to harp on Denver in this episode, but it's interesting how Denver always, just like Florida, Florida will go quick. For any franchise, Florida's gonna go fast.

SPEAKER_01: 29:47

It's it's now we do have a ton of availability in Florida, though. I I'll surprise you with not after this podcast. We we sold Orlando, right? So we had a gentleman who took the two territories in Orlando and he also took Lakeland. I have a gentleman who we're expecting to close before the end of this year who would take the two territories down in my own.

SPEAKER_00: 30:06

Let me ask you real quick, otherwise I'll forget. Let's just say that the gentleman owns the Orlando territory. Let's say, you know, the yacht club from Disney calls up and says, hey, we need your help. Obviously, you guys can do B2B, right? Absolutely. Excellent. I mean, that see, again, there's so many opportunities for for business. And what you guys are looking for, from my understanding, you guys want someone who's more that that sort of entrepreneurial type person, right? You guys are looking for someone that maybe has some construction background. I don't know if it's a necessity, but it's a nice to have. Yeah. But the nice thing is, this is a Monday through Friday, nine to five business. You can have your weekends free, and you can be working big jobs. You're not having to churn through hundreds of jobs. Honestly, a high-performing business might be working on you know, there's so much that's really great about this storm. And I'm so glad we we had you on to discuss all of this.

SPEAKER_01: 30:56

Yeah, the pleasure was all mine. To that point, I think the buyer archetype for this business, at least what we've been able to create and what we've been able to identify, is somebody with a white-collar background operating in kind of that blue-collar industry, right? Like you will have to be comfortable hiring, managing, and training blue-collar labor, but that buyer archetype's a lot more common than most people know. That's what's worked so far in our system.

SPEAKER_00: 31:24

You know, it's a very different franchise, but it reminds me almost, we have a client that we placed here locally in Gatsby Glass, which does big, big sort of glass projects. Uh, we ran into them at a restaurant maybe last week and they had their Gatsby glass shirts on, and they've really been killing it. But I I saw it in the fact that they're all in, right? Like they're out there wearing their gear. And we we've talked a lot about this recently because, as you know, I'm sure as well as we do, for so many years, people wanted to try and make franchises into passive assets. And franchises are not passive assets. If you want to succeed, you I mean, again, the rewards happen when you go full in, when you go all in and you make this your life, you make this business your life, um, which is not to say you won't have a life if you do it, but but the more you give, the more successful the business is going to be.

SPEAKER_01: 32:15

Yep. Absolutely. And the more effort you pour in early on to getting this thing up and running and profitable, the faster and easier that exit is from a full-time responsibility, right? You you fire yourself, replace yourself, and you train somebody to run the business the way that you've been running it, right? Which is clearly a successful way to run.

SPEAKER_00: 32:38

I mean, Storm, listen to how beautifully you talk about all of this. You know, last year your main franchise you were working on was Milkshake Factory, right? And to go from that brand, which you guys sold, you know, many units, which makes an incredible product. I mean, that to hear, we're affiliated with 700 other franchise consultants, and and those that have actually tasted the product have said it's the most incredible milkshake ever. And that's not why we're on this podcast. But the point of it is that for those of you that end up working with Storm on exploring this brand, you're gonna work with someone that really understands business and franchising and multiple brands. And I think Storm, that's an incredible thing. So for those of you that are interested in learning more about Renew Medic, please do text us 305-710 0050. That way we can have a quick conversation, make sure it's a fit for you to have that conversation. And then when we hand you over to Storm, you guys can get right into figuring out what's right for you. Storm, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. Likewise. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Chim. Happy holidays.

SPEAKER_02: 33:39

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 33:39

You too.