2. Insider Look: Co-Founder of Leading Med Spa Franchise, Carlton Washington, Talks Marketing Success

In this insightful episode of The Medical Wellness Podcast, we delve into the journey of Carlton Washington, co-founder of the largest medical spa franchise in the medical wellness space, 4EVER YOUNG ANTI-AGING SOLUTIONS. Carlton shares his inspiring story, from opening a single medical practice to scaling it into a thriving franchise, offering valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs. He candidly discusses the misconceptions around needing a medical background to enter the medspa industry, emphasizing his business acumen as the driving force behind his success.

Carlton walks us through the pivotal moments, including navigating financial crises, the unexpected challenges of rapid expansion, and the COVID-19 pandemic. He highlights the critical importance of marketing, team unity, and a relentless focus on goals. For those considering venturing into the medical wellness or franchise space, Carlton offers invaluable advice on financial preparedness, the significance of passion beyond profit, and the necessity of following proven processes for sustainable growth.

Tune in to hear Carlton's firsthand account of building a successful medical spa franchise and gain actionable insights into entrepreneurship, franchising, and overcoming business challenges. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the medical wellness industry or looking to scale their business through franchising. Catch the full episode on our website, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Transcript

Hi, so today we have a special guest, Carlton Washington, the co-founder of the largest medspa franchise in the medical wellness space. We have an opportunity to hear his journey at opening a single office and expanding to multiple locations and eventually franchising. 

And given other entrepreneurs the opportunity to own the medical practice in the anti-aging space. I want to start with the misconception that you have to be a medical professional to open the medspa and I know Carlton, you are not. 

You're more of a business person. So if you can take us back to 2014 and kind of walk us through what inspired you to open a medical practice? Yeah, well, first and foremost, thanks for allowing me the opportunity to come speak to you today. 

And yeah, I tell this story a lot and I like to tell this story because I like to try to give people some kind of hope and some kind of truth and clear direction in terms of what their journey could look like versus what mine did. 

I think a lot of times, like you said, people assume that you have to have XYZ degree background credential and that wasn't the case for me. I never really was an academic, even though I did go to grad school, I struggled through school all the way, but the consistent theme there was business. 

And business just made sense to me because it just seemed exciting in terms of the way we grew up in America and playing Monopoly and all of this opportunity and growing up and watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and all those cool things that we used to have in the 80s that to me were extremely inspiring. 

And so, but. But like you just said, I think a lot of us get bad information. And I think going through public school systems, going through college institutions and being told that a job was the path to success and that the corporate ladder was your opportunity for success and that you had to have a suit and a tie and that you had to go into the office and you had to take that path. 

And I did that. And I struggled there because that is a very restrained and constrained environment in which you're playing a game and many of us are not taught how to play that game. I wasn't taught how to play that game. 

And so I always struggled in that game because I was I was always a top performer, but it never seemed to be getting me to where I wanted to be. And I had a really eye-opening experience when we had the financial crisis and I filed bankruptcy in 2008. 

And it really just woke me up. The retirement calculators never worked. I was an investment advisor. I was in the banking system. I also worked in private equity and helped build a REIT. And I was just noticing there was a huge discrepancy between where I want it to be, how to sustain that life and the best possible outcome of what I was gonna be doing at the time. 

And it didn't make sense. And so I was kind of forced to move from Atlanta, Georgia at the time where I was working in a private equity company. I was a little complacent in my career and my wife wanted upward mobility. 

And so I agreed to follow her down to South Florida. And I took a step back in my career and into a corporate job and I woke up and I tell people, it really looked like those commercials that you would see on television for like Lexapro and Sarah Quill and all of the site meds for depression. 

And I would wake up in my underwear, sit on the side of my bed and put my hand over my head and really be on the verge of crying pretty much every other morning, if not every, less being my son came in and made me laugh. 

And at that time I knew that I was desperate and I would have done anything to get out of that situation just about anything. And so the one thing that I thought about was that I had been impacted by hormone replacement which I know is something you know a lot about and it worked around and that made such a profound impact on my life in terms of improvement and other people's lives that I saw that I was like, 

this is something I could get behind. Let me investigate how you can do a business like this. And so I went down that road and I spent all the time in my banking job basically interviewing all of my clients and they got the best customer service ever or at least that's what they thought but I really just wanted to pick their brains for as long as possible. 

And so every client that I had that had anything to do with any kind of small business any kind of medical business, any kind of anything that related, I sat. there and just took notes and notes and notes and notes and notes and lunches and everything I could to figure that out and at the time one of my mentors that was coming in the bank he told me he's like look I've been in this industry before with what you're trying to do and if you want to be successful I'm telling you right now you need to have at least 50 patients that are going to support you out the gate or you're going to struggle and I just moved to South Florida. 

I didn't know 50 people but I had been working with a guy at the same time who had been training me for a bodybuilding competition who was respected in the fitness community definitely looked the part. 

He was 5% body fat was you know the peak in fitness in aesthetics and I literally just called this guy up who I just met like a month and a half before and just said hey can you meet me at Starbucks I want to talk to you about something and I presented him with the plan I was like I want to do this I need a partner. 

And I'm ready to go now. And he just said yes. And so the next week, we started going out looking for real estate, completing the business plan. And that was around April of 2014. By May, we were incorporated and by August, our doors were open for business. 

Hey, was the name of Forever Young is the name of the first location? Was it ever? Forever Young Anti-Aging Solutions. And it's funny, I added the solutions part because I just always remembered in my MBA program that my professor told me, if you want to do anything, make sure you're providing a solution. 

What gets people success is providing solutions. And I just for some reason stuck in my head. So I was like, we got to add solutions to this. It's a solution to anti-aging. And so the Forever Young part was there. 

And I wanted to just differentiate that part and added it from a college class. So that was the birth of the first location. It was close to about 2015. 2014. You guys opened the very first location. How did it go the first year? 

So it went interesting, to say the least, we had no idea what we're doing. Our marketing provider actually quit on us two days before we opened, who had done the website, who had our marketing plan, who had our consultant for us, he quit. 

And he told me he quit. Because I was way too frugal and wanted to negotiate everything. And, I did that because we only had $70,000 to open this business. And so every single dollar mattered, and I had to reserve and preserve everything we could. 

So he didn't like that. And so he left us. So we opened with no marketing advice or anything. And we just started figuring it out for ourselves and just walking outside of our office, knocking on doors, introducing ourselves to everybody, asking people if we can pop up, you know, do a demonstration, go to bars, gyms, anywhere we could, I just wore t shirts along my partner that said, ask me for testosterone, 

ask me for Botox. So that anywhere I went, I would just get a tap on the shoulder with anybody who was curious about it. And we did that for months, we tried many different avenues, and we ran out of money quite fast. 

And so by the end of the year, we run out of money, that first four months. And we had a third partner, the third partner never showed up, he was going through midlife crisis. He left his family, beautiful family, wife home to marry some woman, and he was going literally to Jamaica and the islands every single weekend, riding motorcycles with no helmet. 

And he would just pop in the office and to check on us. It was really frustrating. And so we needed to go out and get more capital. And we presented, we're like, hey, look, I need you to fill out this application, we're out of money. 

he didn't like that. He said he didn't want to participate. And so my partner and I were kind of had our backs against the wall were freaking out at the time. And we started to take merchant cash advance debt, which is usually around 30 to 40% interest and the payments are due every single day out of your receivables. 

So we did that he didn't buy on. And so my partner and I said, hey, to each other, maybe we could just offer this guy his money back. And he was he was like, well, how are we going to get the money for him? 

I was like, I don't know. I had a rental property. And he put some of the money on it on a credit card. We just sold I sold the rental property. And he's he did the credit cards. And we offered the guy his money back. 

And he said yes, he was so scared to get out. He said yes. So we bought the partner out. What we didn't know is that there's a compound effect from marketing. As you know, you're a marketer. It doesn't happen overnight. 

And so all the work, all the footwork, all the grassroots, all the digital that we were doing in the advertisements started paying off in February of 2015. We didn't know the seasonality of the business either. 

And so February, all of a sudden, the business went from here like that. And we had patients sitting on the floor, patients standing in the halls, patients standing outside, patients coming from all the way from Key West to Orlando to get our services. 

And that was that was the beginning. That was the beginning of it. And so, you know, it was a compounding effect. And he missed that. And it was a blessing in disguise, because honestly, that business wouldn't have made enough money to support three people anyway, with a three way split. 

So it was the perfect opportunity. And that's really when we started to take off with mostly the same products and services that we have today. And that was through really being very bullish, extremely bullish on our marketing. 

I think we're probably running around a 14% marketing spend, but also giving the same contribution. in time for grassroots. So we did not rely on solely digital marketing. It was a heavy investment in digital marketing and a heavy investment in time and going and walking those consumers across the threshold one by one by one and shaking their hands and giving them wine and remembering their names and throwing events and getting to know these people. 

And that's what really separated us from everybody else. So it seems like the first year was a rollercoaster. I would say like in any business and not give another probably the biggest lesson. Every year was literally a rollercoaster. 

There's no other way to look at it. Ups and downs. And just when you get to the ups, you know, you try to enjoy it because you know right around the corner something's coming next. So at what point you felt like, okay, so this location is doing good. 

Let's get... additional location? Or what was the decision? How did you make the decision to go to multiple? Many factors. And it was never about building this massive business. It was like, hey, we, my partner got engaged. 

I had a baby. Then he had a baby. Our expenses are going up. Our office is getting busier. And we need more income. You know, quite frankly, we need more income. We're losing patients now because we can't get them in. 

And we're getting a lot of people from the South and Miami. So we just said, hey, let's go get another location. Let's just do it. And so we went to shop and I like to remind people, like, the process was not what it is now. 

So we didn't have data. We didn't know where the best place to go was. We were just like Fort Lauderdale. It's South of here. It'd be convenient. And hey, we just wanted somewhere that has a sign. And so we moved into a newly remodeled medical building, but we thought it was so cool that it just had visibility from the street because the place we started in has zero visibility. 

You can't find it. It wasn't on Google maps, wasn't on Apple maps. And so we thought that was cool. And we made all of the mistakes that you could possibly make. So we financed that bill with merchant cash advance debt, 30 to 40% interest daily. 

We hired people way too soon. We had a really horrible layout, horrible design, and the construction took twice as long as it was supposed to take. And then on top of that, we had a hurricane that came, wiped out the city. 

We didn't get power for two weeks, no business interruption insurance covered it. And so we lost the last $50,000 that we had in the bank and it was a complete nightmare. And so when we opened that center in May of 2017, behind the scenes, we were going out of business and literally had to paint smiles on our faces for the biggest grand opening we had ever had. 

We had like 400 people at the grand opening. It was packed. It was a party. It looked amazing. And nobody knew behind the scenes we were broke. So for those who are thinking, man, I can open the business and be successful. 

If you're looking back on any successful person, there's a struggle for you for first few years. Absolutely. I don't think people can say that enough. If you chop this up for social media or whatever you do, that needs to go on repeat. 

I work in an industry now in franchising and I talk to other small business owners. And these people think that you're supposed to be profitable within a month or two or three or four or five. And I don't even know anybody who's educated in business that would ever even expect that statistically. 

And it's very difficult conversation to have because I don't believe that we get anywhere typically without any kind of struggle. And if you do, I feel like it typically shows up as a trap, whether it's a trap for your children or a trap for you. 

Because if you've been given something, you tend not to appreciate it. and the appreciation was really how we won because every single dollar we appreciated, we needed that money, we accounted for that money. 

And it was such a struggle that it wasn't taken for granted. And meanwhile, we would see other people saying, wow, well, look at these two dumb bodybuilders. These guys are stupid. They have no idea what they're doing. 

They have no medical credential. This has got to be the easiest business ever. And I see them driving nice cars and everything looks sexy because that's the way the business was supposed to look. And let's go ahead and do this. 

We could do it better than them and we'll just take them out or we'll just do just as well. And that was a trap that many people in South Florida and outside of the state fell for, I think directly because of my partner and I because we made it look very easy. 

And it was really interesting because you could see it from a mile away when they start their construction. We can already tell when they're going to fail because if they put in extremely nice fixtures, if they put in marble, if they put in chandeliers, if they bought the best of the best equipment, we knew that that's a recipe for disaster. 

And so we would just wait for them to close. I see it a lot. Medical practices making mistakes, especially medical practices that are led by a medical professional. They see a device like, oh, this is nice and shiny. 

Let me buy it. Boom, $200,000 out and payments need to be made but it doesn't come with patience. It's just a device and then they end up with office with a four or five devices sitting in the corner collecting dust and the high loans to pay back. 

So I see that mistake a lot. Absolutely and again, this is something that if you can get out to people, I think it'd be really beneficial. Nobody gets around this. Nobody survives that unless you have unlimited capital and depending on where you get it from, investors don't have a tolerance for that. 

doesn't help to build a profitable business. You're going to have to take that loss. The equipment immediately is worth 20% of what you bought it for the minute you open the box. Yep. So at what point did you decide that you know what? 

Three locations, good. Now I have to make a decision. Do I stay with three? Do I keep opening more or do I just franchise? So we had two at the time and I like to tell people and I think this is a human nature thing where we have short memories where you go through something really painful and it kind of goes and compartmentalizes itself in the back of your head somewhere. 

And again, so families are growing, school's expensive, life's expensive. And there was a guy that kept on emailing me all the time. And we were so busy because we did everything in the business. that anything that will look like a solicitation I would delete and this guy was so consistent and he was like I want to talk to you. 

I think you should franchise your business and we're talking to one of your competitors to see if they want to franchise and that was the last email that got me because we were so competitive when he said we're going to talk to a competitor of yours that's when I was like I got to take this call and I took the call and he was like look I want to talk to you about your business you have all of the attributes of a business that could be a good franchise and I want to talk to you about it so they talk and I was like man this is going to be really hard to get my you know to get my partner involved in this you know he's going to be very skeptical so I was like let's get a meeting and we get the meeting and we talk to the CEO of the company and he's talking a good game and he's like look I help people franchise their businesses I franchise my own business and that's what I do and I think you guys I think this is a great business and and so I'm like look in order for us to even consider this we have to meet you for dinner and we have to bring our wives because we need to see if there's anything here that looks shady we're in South Florida everything's shady we don't trust anybody and so we meet this guy we spend about three hours with him at the Hard Rock Casino having dinner and everything makes sense and he's like by the way I'm going to make a bet if you guys sign with me he's like you guys are going to you guys are going to sell over 100 units one day he's like I want to make that bet and we're like okay whatever dude like you you really seem like a scam right now and so we did it and we had no idea what we're doing and and we paid the money which again we didn't have the funds to afford this at the time but we we move forward with faith we we won't we my partner and I both share a lack of contentment and and really desire for success and and financial success and freedom and so we gave it a shot and we franchised our business and immediately after doing that we went to a networking event and a patient whose life we had changed He came up to us like hey, 

man, I just want to thank you guys for changing my life He's like can I just like invest in forever young or something and we're like now you can't invest But we are franchising. We just finished our disclosure document. 

He was like, I'm gonna be your first franchisee And we just thought he was BS and and we presented him with him. He's like, where do I sign? So that was our first franchise sale right after that. Now we're in franchising This is very cool We all lived through Covid times to code pandemic. 

That was one of the Challenging times and then you any business a lot of businesses went under How did you navigate through a great question? So we franchised our business late 2018 Sold our franchises and had opened two to three 2019 We had we were selling franchises on our own and opening them on our own. 

And so we were guiding our franchisees to this. We're getting noticed. We're going to conventions. We're selling some licenses. And while all this is happening, we get approached by a developer. The developer flies us up and we're negotiating, getting to be a part of this big group that develops franchises. 

And the sky's the limit and we're excited. We're in Atlanta. We're going back. We made a great pitch and we're thinking, wow, we're going to get this investment to even scale even greater. And by the time we get to the airport, my partner and I and our wives are with us and we're like, is this really happening right now? 

And people are putting on masks and they're shutting down the last of the flights to get back home. And we're like, there's no way, this is not real. There's no way this is happening. This is out of a movie. 

By the time we get back from our great investment pitch and that we're waiting on the phone call to scale, we are now hit with the letter from the government that we have to shut our businesses down. 

And so we just looked at each other and we're just like, I can't believe this is happening right now. Franchises, employees, everyone's confused. And so the cool thing is about all of this is the past experiences and trials and tribulations that we'd experienced all kicked in right there to allow our team to not panic and to unify and to be able to speak to each other in a calm manner and say, you're gonna do this, 

I'm gonna do this and you're gonna do that. We're gonna communicate with our employees. We're gonna overly communicate with them. We're gonna overly communicate with our patients and we're gonna overly communicate with our franchisees and we're gonna give them stipends and we're gonna do everything we can to retain everybody and to make it through this. 

And that's what we did. We did it week by week. by a week and everybody was calm and everybody was diligent. And the cool thing is we were able to service some of our wellness patients. And being that we're in this industry that really is mostly recurring revenue, recurring membership model services, that kicked in as an insurance. 

And so with the overhead down, rent negotiated, all contracts negotiated, and the money that we were able to negotiate with the government plans, we were able to retain all of our franchisees. We were able to retain all of our employees. 

We were able to retain all of our patients. And then what was happening was that people were spending all this time on Zoom, looking at their faces, looking at themselves, saying, whoa, haven't done that in a while, I need aesthetic services. 

And so we opened up to this massive list of people, it was 500 people waiting to get aesthetic services. Business was profitable. And immediately we opened nine weeks later to month over month. year over year growth still. 

And our business took the attitude of breaking all the social norms. So we still had our events, still had our annual holiday party. And I think people really appreciated that because we just pushed against this stay away thing and actually was like, bring everybody together. 

This is, this is, in our opinion, it was, it was bullshit, you know. And we knew that through IV therapy, wellness, healthy lifestyle, all this stuff, that this was nothing more than a cold. And that's how we treated it. 

That was the attitude that we really portrayed to our staff. And so we kind of had a unified culture with our approach to it. And we made it through there, the biggest test that many businesses have gone through in a lifetime, knowing that people really have a priority on these things, whether it's the aesthetic side or wellness side, they didn't cut. 

They weren't cutting that. That cuts other stuff, but they didn't cut us. And it was a testament to the industry and a testament to our business. And it was a blessing. And it was something we're really grateful for. 

So we love telling that story. It was not easy, but everything that had happened before made it easier for us than most people because we didn't freak out. And our team was battle tested. So you learn how to push back against difficulties, not take them as is, evaluate, make a decision, move forward and find a way to still service your customers. 

Yes. Yes. It was when you had the teammates that said, we're not going to let this fall. My partner, everybody, we just moved forward together. And I think it was one of the best times I could think of because people kept their cool. 

They kept their cool. And this isn't a time that's whether it's business or just regular, a lot of people didn't keep their cool. A lot of people, in my opinion, have never recovered from that time period, psychologically or in some manner. 

And so I'm very proud of those results. I remember I think in 2022 you made a massive goal, let's go aggressive, let's get a hundred locations in the network and from I remember you accomplished it pretty fast. 

How did you do it? There's some kind of energy that happens, something that's, I don't know if it's, I always say, you know, there's a connection with the mind, body and soul and when it comes to goals and goal setting and visualizing these things and some people may think that this is hocus pocus and that this is some type of, I don't know, comparing it to witchcraft or some nonsense type belief, 

it's, I just haven't seen that I've seen that manifestation of goals is possible when you're actually putting the right efforts behind it. And so at that time, I was telling people, Hey, look, this is our goal, the people that we want to work with, everybody that we want to work with, the focus and the energy is going to be very unhealthy. 

We're in a health care business, but we're going to put an unhealthy level of effort into making these goals happen. And I tell people and it can sound however they want to interpret it. But if you have a goal and you're focused on something, your actions are going to display how serious you are about that. 

And I will tell you that you can ask anybody that knows me, I focus on very few things. And I have a couple of single focuses, and I'll do anything within my power that's legal, or and I'll brush up against that too, to get them done. 

And so it's just a it's a laser sharp focus on getting this done and on holding the team members that we had that were also responsible for accountable, and saying, Look, we're doing our part on your on this side, you guys got to do your part on that side. 

And you communicate to us what it's going to take to get there. And then we're going to do what that takes. And waking up every day to do that. I didn't shave until this goal happened. And people thought that that was silly. 

And that's a joke. But it's a constant reminder. Everything, my body is in tune with this goal. Like I'm not, I'm not grooming myself until this happens. And I'm telling people and speaking it and putting it out there over and over and over again. 

And I've seen time and time again, that when you do this, and it's genuine, a lot of time people achieve their goals. And that's how it's worked for me. You can't lie to yourself. And you can't lie to other people. 

Because if your actions aren't demonstrating the desire to achieve this goal, it's not going to happen. And so it's just maximum accountability. That's something that's really showed up in the business in general. 

That's something that I can see in our franchisees, if they have it, if they don't. Accountability is key and you have to blame yourself for every single thing that's going on. Everything is your fault. 

Everything. Every day, every morning is your fault, whether it's bad or good. And that's really the approach that we would take for this process of achieving the 100 plus soul. So the way I see it is for a visioner, for the leader to set up a goal. 

Then align everyone in the team to follow that goal, to see that goal. And then personally put a commitment to do whatever it takes. So it's not on them, you do it. I tell you how to do it. No, I do it. 

I tell you to do it because I do it myself. Exactly. And that's one of the biggest struggles right now as a franchisor and looking to start other businesses as a team. I have seen CEOs. and leaders who think that being an executive means to alienate yourself from your team. 

I work in a retail industry and business where we build new stores and they're brand new and nice beautiful offices that smell great and look great. And when I see a leader that thinks that their office or that they're planning for an executive office in the back of that office where they plan on working in the back of the office versus them intuitively knowing that they need to be at the front of the office because that's where our patients are and that's where our employees work. 

That's going to tell me their mindset and whether or not they're looking to be successful or not because I've also learned this from other CEOs and just watching them, people that I admire, the guys that get out there on the floor of the factory, that's where their success is. 

That's why those people want to work there. That's why they want to work with them because they believe and you got to give people something that they can believe in and you got to believe in it yourself and it's a natural occurrence. 

It doesn't occur any other way and when you get a good team that believes and you do your best to take care of these people and try to provide some kind of hope and opportunity, that's a winning recipe and that's really what I try to focus on right now. 

It takes a lot of energy. It's unhealthy in today's environment to do this because it takes you taking on all of these people's problems, emotions and feelings when you go home at night. You know somebody just is struggling with a child at home. 

You know someone just lost their parent. You know someone is financially hurting and these are the people that work for you. If you cut that off at night, you can't empathize with them and that's why people get pretty crappy results a lot of time out of their employees because is there is a symbiotic relationship here that we need to be in tune with. 

Because employees feel like a number. They don't feel that the owners or the CEOs care about them. You've been talking to hundreds of people who say, hey, no, I want to be a franchisee. I want to buy a franchisee. 

I can do it. What criteria do you look at people who want to open the franchise? So first and foremost now, financials are important. No matter what, capitalization is important. It's key. I don't want to put anybody into financial jeopardy. 

I just don't. It doesn't feel good. It's hurtful. It's not the right thing to do. So first and foremost, we want to qualify them financially to make sure. that they can sustain themselves through the ups and downs that we discussed earlier that can happen in any business. 

You know, we're not in control of the weather. We're not in control of world events and acts of God. So things can happen. You need to have some finances to sustain yourself. From there in our business and industry, I hate it when people come in and we're in a meeting. 

They're like, well, we're like, why did you want to be here today? Oh, the numbers look really good. That is a red flag, red flag. Yes, this is an investment vehicle. Yes, the numbers need to look okay, but I'd rather you say that I like this business because it stands for something. 

I love wellness or I love aesthetics and I'm committed to this and there's a purpose and a reason behind this. Oh, and by the way, the numbers look great and it just feels like it fits my dream or whatever it is. 

You know, this really spoke to me. That's what we're looking for. So we have somebody like that that's passionate about the products and services. We have somebody that's financially qualified to do this. 

That's a great match. And then on top of that, it's mindset, their spirit, their energy. Is this a person that you'd want to have a drink with? Is this a person you might want to go on vacation with or have dinner with? 

We're going to be in a 10-year marriage. So if there's any kind of mental displays of issues, anything that's off that could be, look, we're patient facing business. We got to want to work with you. Patients got to want to work with you. 

Employees got to want to work with you. And we got to be able to trust you. So if any of those things seems off, that's not a good thing. But if we can get past that, that's great. So they have mental fortitude and they're mentally stable, which is very important in franchising. 

And then you get to the other part is like, you know, what's driving you every day and what's your mindset, what's your attitude like? And that mindset of competition, having a competitive nature. is great. 

We had a guy we always tell people when you're coming into Forever Young, you don't have to be a supermodel or a bodybuilder, but you do need to be the best version of yourself. We had a guy who didn't look like the normal profile for for every young person. 

I'm just going to be honest about this. The guy's background didn't have anything to do with it either, but he said something during our discovery process that made me vote for him and maybe a couple other people and it was he came he said I've already identified the three closest storage to me and I'm going to take them all out and this is why and how and I was like oh wow you know he's cocky he's confident this guy's dead serious he's not laughing we gave him a chance this guy's a great franchisee unassuming great franchisee and I'm like a big stickler I'm like not willing to see people take vacations or any of that stuff in the business within the first couple years. 

This guy goes on vacation with his wife. And I just love I love like seeing them on vacation, because he's handled his business, he's done the right thing. And he was just a killer when it came to business. 

And he was on a mission and his mission showed, and people like working for him and people like them. And he's a serious guy. And he would go to all the grand openings, he would go to all our events, he was just sucking up everything. 

And so that type of commitment and obsession with success is something we're looking for. And that's what's consistent in success, if people are obsessed with winning, you know, obsessed with like not being an embarrassment when they walk in to their kids at home and their wives, and they have pride that they're not going to like, have a bad day and want to quit. 

And that's really important. And so those are traits that we look for. And and a lot of times the successful ones don't, you know, they're like me, they're not the rule followers. They're the ones that give you the most stress upfront, but those are the ones that, that put up the numbers. 

And so we want people like that. You have a short with that said follow the process. I've heard it many, many times. And I've seen also how that impact the business. Can you can you explain? Franchising is a very difficult business. 

And I'll give you a quick story really quickly. We got flown up to an event for another investor, one investor in our business. David Goggins was the speaker for this event. So my partner and our wives, we flew up to Ohio to go see David Goggins, the CEO of the company before bringing David Goggins out said, Hey, you know, he gave a spiel and he's like, before I bring David Goggins out, just want to do a quick quiz. 

Does anybody in the audience know what is the number one rule in franchising? Everybody looks around. Nobody knows. Anybody know? No, nobody knows. All right, guys, before I bring David Goggins out here, the number one rule in franchising is to never franchise your business. 

But since you guys are here, it's too late. And I'm bring out David Goggins. And I was like, what's that supposed to mean? We were new franchisors. Well, this shirt represents what that guy was saying. 

Franchising as a franchisor is a very difficult business. You're dealing with not employees, you're dealing with multiple different personalities, families, their issues, their backgrounds. Right now we have, I don't even know the number of franchises we have. 

I know we have 54 open stores, which means we have 54 different people to interact with in a different manner. What? I tell these people this all the time and so is my team. The closer you are to the process, the closer you are to getting the return on investment that you wanted. 

You put in 60% process, you're going to get at best 60% investment. That's not enough for you to succeed. Follow the process. I give you an analogy. It's going to sound stupid. If I tell you every Friday, you got to wake up at five a.m. 

You have to put on a red Santa hat, green shoes and go into the office by no later than nine. And it has to be followed like that. And you say, why would I do that? And I say, look, this is what we do at our franchise. 

This is what success looks like. This is what I committed to you to training you on. Just please follow this because this is what happens. You go to on Friday and you don't have on the Santa hat and you didn't follow these steps and then you call me next week or at the end of the month, say, I didn't get the results. 

Why did you did you put the hat on? Oh, yeah, you didn't. Right. So how do you expect to succeed if you didn't put the hat on? I told you to put the hat on. You bought a business for me. You could have done this yourself. 

Why would you why would you invest seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in something and then not listen to the person you bought it from? It's idiotic. And so to make it so simple, stupid, like for a kindergartner, you have to put these signs everywhere to remind people so that if you fail for not listening, it was remember we talked about maximum accountability, maximum accountability. 

I'm never going to not take responsibility for putting somebody in a bad situation. And we're not going to put people in bad situations. There is a process. You bought the process, follow the process or go do this somewhere else. 

Just don't buy. We don't want to sell people licenses that don't believe that we are the best path to success in this industry. Yeah, you're right. It's a different game. You no longer have to deal with employees. 

You dealing with business owners who have their own employees. And if they don't follow the process and they lead their own that particular location in their own manner, in their own stuff, it's just going to dilute the results and it's going to dilute services, the quality of the services. 

It brings brings a question. How would you as a franchise or? ensure the consistency and quality of the service across all the locations. So we've scaled our team to do that as much as possible. We are hiring more people for compliance, more check-ins. 

We are monitoring everything. The thing I could say about Forever Young franchise, unlike some franchisors, is we really, really care. Everybody here has got their back against the wall for success, including our investors. 

And so nobody here can afford to fail. Nobody can afford to fail. We literally can't. We just can't. And so we take this serious. There is no turnoff. We're stalking our franchisees. We're stalking their reviews, their social media, everything. 

We're watching. We're watching. And then now we're sending more and more people into the field to double and triple check these things. And the cool thing also is that we do have medical professionals in every one of our offices. 

So these are licensed individuals who want to protect their licenses, which is also another... level of compliance. So but it's a full time job. And, and, you know, it's not always 100% perfect. We try to do it as much as possible. 

But the fact that I think everybody actually cares is the is the saving grace here. This is a medical business. So we always cross our fingers and toes that we're making the right decisions with people and bringing the right doctors on who are supervising because we don't want to hurt anybody. 

Going back to when you open your first center, all the struggle you went through, how does it compare to right now when a new franchisee comes on board, don't know anything, and they all and they open a new center? 

What kind of support you guys providing to them not to experience what you experienced when you open the center? So yes, like a parent, who doesn't want their child to suffer, it's the same mindset mentality. 

And so, first and foremost, selfishly without, you know, being empathetic or caring or anything is not benevolence. Selfishly, as a business, we only get paid if they are successful with revenue, we only get paid off their royalties. 

So we want them to grow and make the least amount of mistakes so we can grow the largest royalty possible. And so we have processes that are always being constantly optimized, teams that are going out to train both in person, online, them coming out to train with us, and that cycle of engagement over and over again, to make sure that every step of the way, we can take out as many teams as possible. 

So in their real estate site selection, we're not shooting in the dark, construction, not shooting the dark, best pricing and construction, best pricing and products and services. So we're always beating up the vendors for that, as we scale. 

So we're putting them in the best real estate, giving them the best consistency and construction, giving them the best pricing that they can possibly get in the industry. So they're already starting off with that, giving them scripts to follow, giving them hiring prototypes for individuals to put in these offices. 

So when you do this, and you do it properly, you're way ahead of the game. We're denying equipment. We're denying excess expense, all these things that can take you out. We're gonna say no, do not do this. 

Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Stick with the core services, get to know this business and then scale accordingly. And that's the best that we can do. And so we try to put parameters there to say, hey, look, this is as close to a business in a box you're going to get in the Med Spa Wellness or Vitality Center that there is. 

And again, don't buy this if you don't want to follow the process. And so the processes are what are set up and intended to make sure that people do not hurt themselves. And they don't hurt the brand. 

And that we can all grow together. What kind of advice can you give to a Med Spa owner that's considering franchising? is a growth strategy? So that's an interesting question. I think if someone wants to consider that they need to take a hard, hard look at the landscape right now, they need to look at their best opportunity to do what it is they want to do. 

The Med Spa space as you can attest to is a very difficult business. If you don't have the proper guidance, the moment that you franchise your business, you are no longer a Med Spa owner, you are a franchisor that's here to support franchisees. 

So you have to ask yourself, am I good at that? Am I going to be good at that? Do I want to share the integrity of my product and practice with other people? Is that the best route for me to go? So I think people just need to ask themselves a lot of questions to make sure that they're up for it, contact somebody, they can contact me and just have a casual conversation like, what's the worst and best outcomes here? 

And make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. And make sure that you have a brand that's competitive because I'll tell you right now, you've gone through this before with health gains, you've gone through it before with us, you see what's happening to the industry right now. 

The industry is being consolidated. It was delayed by COVID. We're in full swing now. Private equity money is coming into this space. It's competitive. People are looking to scale their offerings in order to get better pricing to get greater margins, which makes them more competitive. 

So you need to make sure that you're going to be well capitalized enough, and that you're going to be working with the best of the best people enough to have a strategy that makes you able to carve out a part of this market for yourself. 

And you got to make sure that there's enough existing real estate out there in the 50 states that we're operating in, because we're all fighting for that real estate right now. And you might be years behind and under capitalized. 

So what I'm saying is it's not impossible. I don't wanna discourage people from following their dreams and from scaling and growing. But I will say that this business has been pioneered. We are in a different phase of this industry right now. 

The industry is consolidating. You are going up against a lot of money, a lot of big money and a lot of big interest. Hey, you're going up against me. You're going up against Forever Young. You're going up against other, you know, some of the other places that I won't mention right now. 

We're playing a win. I'll tell you right now, I don't wanna see anybody else opening or entering the space. So, but I would encourage somebody, there's two different kinds of people out there. There's some people that say, whoa, whoa. 

That sounds kind of intimidating and scary. I don't wanna do that. Or maybe there's somebody watching this that says, hey, screw that guy. I'm better. I have a better product. I have a better offering. 

And I like to go to war and compete with these guys. That's great. That's what business is all about. That's the fun part. And so for that person, I would just encourage you to do your diligence. and like any other business to make sure you're extremely well capitalized and don't lean onto your understanding of the Med Spa business to run a franchise business. 

Smartest person's gonna go out and hire someone who's an expert in that to allow you to really excel in what you do best, which is probably running that Med Spa and then let them help you scale the operations, button that business up and really get your best shot at becoming a franchise. 

Consultancy is key. Having the right minds is key and having the right capital is key because franchising again, what's the first rule of franchising? Don't franchise your business. So I learned that the hard way. 

Well, thank you. That was very interesting, especially for someone in this space who even people who have one location too and just wanna open multiple locations and for businesses, people who want to open medical practice to understand that it's not all easy. 

It's not all flowers. It is a lot of hard work. A lot of money being invested for more than one year until you become profitable. One thing that I will give people to consider is consider being strategic in what you're doing. 

Maybe you don't have to franchise the skill or maybe you don't have to franchise your concept. If you're running a great Med Spa location to offer certain services, what is your way to strategically outnumber or out power your competition? 

Sometimes you're stronger together. Sometimes ganging up is the best way. And so I'll tell people other opportunities for them is to convert and to merge with the franchise system brand because what does that do? 

That brings you into a conglomerate. That brings you into SEO that you can't compete with. That brings you into brand recognition that you can't compete with. And so somebody like that could go in, simply convert. 

their store, buy more territory, and now you're running a four or five store project that just multiplied your results by four to five times, maybe even 10 times. That's what I'm also looking at as well. 

There's a lot of scaling opportunities in franchising because if you buy the right franchise and you scale that, not only do you get great income, great support, better margins, but you also get better upside on your exit, meaning private equity and investors love to come in and buy multiple units and give great multiples on those investments. 

So if somebody comes in and can buy you out for multiple that you never could have gotten just on the trajectory you were before, and that's a great exit. And I've seen people participate in those. It's life-changing, life-changing for you, for your family. 

And so there's many different ways it's gonna cap. And so I think paying a consultant, talking to somebody, getting that help, maybe even it's just an hour. to know what your options are is my best advice and recommendation to somebody. 

Thank you. Thanks for that. No, I think this is where we're gonna end. That was a pretty good man. Thank you, I appreciate it.