From A to Franchisee: The Podcast for Smarter Franchise Buying

Pros and Cons of Franchise Ownership: From a Franchisee Perspective

• Franchise Business Review • Season 1 • Episode 5

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If you're considering buying a franchise, knowing the benefits and drawbacks is important. 

Danielle Chaisson, owner of a Mr. Handyman franchise in Dover, NH (called My Handyman), gives her perspective on the pros and cons of franchise ownership. Danielle gives her perspective as a franchisee but also owns her own consulting business, which offers tax preparation, accounting, and financial services. 

Mr. Handyman is part of the Neighborly Brands family. 

Host: Michelle Rowan, President and COO of Franchise Business Review

Guest: Danielle Chaisson, Owner of My Handyman in Dover, NH, and Dee Business Consultant

Takeaways

  • Franchising offers a structured support system for new business owners.
  • Initial training and established playbooks are significant advantages of franchising.
  • Community among franchisees provides valuable networking opportunities.
  • Operational constraints can limit creativity but ensure brand consistency.
  • Understanding the financial commitments is crucial before investing in a franchise.
  • Royalties can be viewed as operational support rather than a burden.
  • Franchisees should actively engage with their franchisor for better support.
  • Building relationships with other franchisees can lead to shared resources and knowledge.
  • Cultural fit is essential when choosing a franchise to invest in.
  • Long-term commitments require careful consideration and planning.

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Michelle Rowan (00:04)
Hello, today I am joined by Danielle Schezon, who is the founder of Dee Business Consultant, LLC. She provides tax preparation, accounting, and financial services to small business owners and individuals. She has over 25 years of experience in finance and accounting, including a long time at a local wealth management firm. So she has experience in working for someone else, starting her own business,

and she's also the co-owner of My Handyman franchise with her husband Eric. My Handyman is part of the neighborly brands, is 18, 20 brands, I think, parent company of it, one of the largest franchisors in the United States. Together, they have owned and operated their Mr. Handyman business since 2018, and Danielle is managing much of the behind-the-scenes operations that keep it running smoothly.

So Danielle, full disclosure, and I are very good friends. We've been friends for over 20 years, but I think she was the perfect person for us to invite to talk about the pros and cons of franchise ownership because of her experience working for other people, working with business owners and what she does in her business, and then also being a franchisee. So she's got lots of perspective. Danielle, thank you so much for coming and chatting with us today.

Danielle Chaisson (01:04)
So.

Thank you for having me, Michelle. I am happy to do this and share the opportunity and sharing what we've learned.

Michelle Rowan (01:32)
you

are so great about sharing information with others. And so before we start and kind of get into the pros and cons and what you see those pros and cons being, I wanted to talk about Eric's, your husband's kind of start into finding the franchise because for two reasons I want to share it. One, he was really unhappy working for other people. I know that because I was friends with him and he was, I think at the time he was managing a grocery chain. Is that right? Okay. So, ⁓

What I wanna say with that is one, you don't have to have any experience in the business that you choose. I think that's really important is just thinking about the skillset you have in your current role, how that might help you in your business, but you don't always have to be in the field that you choose to franchise in. So that's why I wanted to share that. The second part was Eric and I had been friends for a long time and I got a call from him and he said,

and it was actually a different brand. He wasn't talking to Mr. Handyman yet, but he said, hey, I've been talking to, and I'll say it, Sandler Sales. He was looking at many different options, and they gave me a report from Franchise Business Review, and I said, hey, that's where Michelle works, and so he reached out to me. So the reason I wanna share that is, I think my response to him was, if you bought a franchise and didn't talk to me, we'd be in a fight.

So my point is, if you know people in franchising, talk with them before you invest because they love sharing information. They usually have a lot of behind the scenes information that can help you. So if you know anybody that's connected to franchising, if they're a franchise owner, if they work for a franchise, reach out to them before you make these buying decisions. So those are just my two kind of off topic recommendations for our audience today. All right. So Danielle, common thing we hear in the franchise world.

Franchising is an opportunity for you to be in business for yourself, but not by yourself. That's a really common term. So I want to start by, because I'm a positive person, let's talk about some of the pros of franchising. And I just love to get your perspective on these topics. So we're going to start with the idea of a business in the box. Playbooks and processes. What is your take on that? How much did it support you, especially thinking about the initial training and you opening your business?

to find customers.

Danielle Chaisson (03:56)
So definitely ⁓ what happens is, is when you buy into the business, they already have the playbooks established. So you have your training, they've already have vetted software, and there's a lot of people that have been operating and you were able to watch how the operations are and you're given how to do it. So you don't have to sit there and build that time, building it like you do when you have to build your own. I think that's been one of the greatest things is,

Michelle Rowan (04:22)
Okay.

Danielle Chaisson (04:23)
knowing how to answer the phone for the business private and all of that.

Michelle Rowan (04:27)
Yes,

yes. So you sign the agreement, you make the decision, you sign the agreement. What does that onboarding look like? Were you given things to do on the internet? Were you doing anything in person? What did that look like with them?

Danielle Chaisson (04:30)
Yes.

So our onboarding process initially was talking to other owners, other franchisees that have locations. And specifically ones, since ours is a handyman franchise, we specifically also talked to people that would have seasonality, have winter, some more commonalities with our region. ⁓ That was one piece of it. Another piece was they had a program that's called Short Start. So ahead of time, before we actually went into training to the home office,

We were given like a couple of different manuals to read and the Sure Start went over the software programs, how to set up your phone, how to talk to customers. So we had all that information once we had agreed to purchase and signed our contract and put our payment in. So we were able to start doing our due diligence to think about how our office was gonna look like and how to run the brand and do everything. Then they brought us into the home office.

And they had a whole training team there where we spent a week. We spent time at one location after that to see how their location. spent a couple of days with an owner in Chicago as well before we got open so we could see how their day-to-day looks and start going through, you know, what does it look like? You have staff, have somebody answering the phone, you have technicians and seeing more of the reality. So it was kind of a three-step process is what I would say. So first we were given

you know, the online, ⁓ you know, PDFs or everything to read the, I call it an operations manual. Then we were brought into the main office that went through training, that went over the handyman way, that went over the neighborly way. And then the third part was that we actually went and spent time at an office location that was up and running with another franchisee.

Michelle Rowan (06:31)
Okay, I love this. So I also realized Neighborly is a pretty top-notch franchise system. They've got this on lock. And if people are going to explore these opportunities that they have, your franchise is part of the Mr. Handyman brand. There was a naming conflict in our area, so you're called my handyman. But just in case people want to check out Danielle or check out the franchise opportunity, I wanted to clarify that as well. Okay.

Danielle Chaisson (06:54)
Thank

you.

Michelle Rowan (06:55)
So lots of pre-opening help. I love that you got to get into the location with another franchise owner. These are all things that you would not get if you just bought a business or started a business. So we're already off to some good pros here. So let's talk about buying power, which looks different for you because you guys have a service versus a product, but you're using products to do a lot of these handyman services. Have you noticed the benefit of having any kind of buying power by being with Neighborly in a system that's so large?

Danielle Chaisson (07:25)
100%. So for example, in Handyman, you know, we're mostly sourcing materials, whether it's wood or fans or anything for our installs and our builds. So we have buying power with Home Depot and Lowe's the box stores where with the relationships that Mr. Handyman and Neighborly have, they are able to offer us incentives to give us cash back on using them. We have buying power with our phone systems, with our software.

And even as new softwares roll out, we continue to have more buying power. So as we're going down the AI, which we weren't using eight years ago, what's happening is those softwares, as we start to use them and more people within our brand are joining those vendors, our costs go down for utilizing those vendors because now we have a larger buying power. The other ⁓ area is sourcing capital. We're able to source our vans and everything.

through a relationship that they have with enterprise where we don't have to put the capital and the leases on our own social security number or on the EIN of the business. So it allows us to continue to have credit opportunities for other financing and growth, which I wouldn't have.

Michelle Rowan (08:42)
Yeah, okay, so those are really great. One of the things I picked up on what you said, which I wasn't even really thinking about also as a pro, is that because you're part of a franchise system, you have someone else that is thinking about the innovation side. They're testing out these new technologies like AI. They're looking for those, if they're a good franchisor, they are looking for those efficiencies or those things that make you...

⁓ spend less or get more efficient in the way you do things and then they just roll it out to the system. So you don't have to spend the majority of your time making sure that you stay competitive in your market. So I think that's also too worth calling out.

Danielle Chaisson (09:21)
Definitely.

Michelle Rowan (09:22)
So we know Mr. Handyman's an established brand, Neighborly is an established brand. How do you feel like that impacted when you first went to market to look for customers? Do you feel like people knew who you were or you had some kind of jump in reputation because you were associated with just a more powerful brand that had some national recognition?

Danielle Chaisson (09:46)
There was some powerful, I believe there was. So in our area with neighborly having up to 20 brands under their umbrella, in our area, there's a Mr. Electric, there's Real Property Management. We have some other brands locally. So when I'm describing who we are and he was like, well, who are you? And to say that we're not just a truck and a truck, then many times to give us value, we're able to historically say, well, we're part of the system of Mr. Electric, Mr. Rooter, brands they already know.

So especially initially, that was a great way for us to introduce ourselves to customers and other clients and then to have access to a little bit of their client database to be able to market to it, which the national office helped us with. And I think that was a great advantage. So the brand was known, not necessarily Handyman, but the other parent brand.

Michelle Rowan (10:35)
Awesome, okay, so on the consumer side as well. So yeah, awesome. Okay, so my next ⁓ key benefit or pro on that side is around franchisee community. And I know that you are so good at taking advantage of this. So first, you already brought it up that you have the opportunity to be in a market that was up and running. So right there, you're getting to see how this business runs and connect with an owner that's doing exactly what you are going to be doing in your business.

Danielle Chaisson (10:48)
You

Michelle Rowan (11:05)
So that has huge potential to help you just kind of start by not making a lot of mistakes that you would on your own. How else are you really using your franchisee community or really taking advantage of that network that you have access to?

Danielle Chaisson (11:20)
So a couple of things that we've done, our regional community that's within the Northeast for us, we try to get together quarterly. We come up with our own meeting agendas, all the franchisee owners. We work together and we're like, okay, we wanna work on our marketing. So we all bring it together, we come up with an agenda and we share our ideas and everybody is working together in that way. Another way is just calling somebody at any point.

So throughout the day, you have hiccups in any job you do, but I have somebody to call. So for example, I might kick at the person to do what I want them to do, or how do you handle this? Or do you have something? I just call any owner and you get to know the owners through the reunions, through other events, through other conversations you're having throughout the year that I feel comfortable calling them and just asking them, how do you do this? Or I shoot them a text going,

Hey, do you have this kind of form made up? And then I can customize it for ourselves. We're big on sharing, ⁓ you know, because why should somebody else have to go do all the legwork when somebody else has created a template and we can formulate it to customize it for our location? So we're constantly talking to the other owners. Yes.

Michelle Rowan (12:33)
⁓ I

love that. so, and I want to clarify for our listeners that aren't really in this and understand this yet, your reunion. So that is also sometimes called an annual conference. The franchisor puts it on. It's usually annual. Some do it depending on the size. Some do it every other year. Some will do a virtual one. But that is really...

Danielle Chaisson (12:40)
Yeah.

Michelle Rowan (12:54)
A very important part, I think, of being a franchise owner. Usually it's mandatory. They'll, in your franchise agreement, tell you you have to be there. They'll sometimes charge you if you don't go there. There's different ways that they kind of engage you to get there. But tell me when you're in person with these franchisees, what is that experience like for you? And how much do you take away from it? Because I just want to really encourage people to attend these if they are in a network.

Danielle Chaisson (13:03)
Mm-hmm.

If you are in a network, you 100 % attend. The whole reason why you're buying a franchise is to be part of a community, to have people supporting you and to help you grow. I mean, when we are there in person, you're able to kind of really dive in and say, well, this is what I'm doing for my commercial jobs and this is what I'm doing. And then it's a really open forum discussion. ⁓ having gone to all, you're buying the franchise for the community. You want to take a point of it. ⁓

Michelle Rowan (13:50)
Yeah, well, and I also, you're not talking about any of the fun that you have there.

Danielle Chaisson (13:53)
Well, there's a lot of fun in there. You know, the thing is, you're buying something of people that are like you, where however your journey is to get there, you've decided to be an entrepreneur, you've decided to buy an established brand. So you are now in a community generally of like minded people who are all in that. So it's exciting. It's a lot of fun. We've gone to, they become your friends in a different way. ⁓

It's nice. It's like having colleagues but not having bosses. It's so fun. That's the only way I can say it. It's like if we're all on the same playing field when I'm out with the other franchisees. And it's really remarkable in that way. I get the most out of it. Even if you get one nugget of the day, it's just really building the relationships with the people and having the ability to call. And I would imagine even if you're just doing it once a year, if you're doing it every other year, I highly...

Michelle Rowan (14:24)
Yeah.

Danielle Chaisson (14:49)
suggest making it a priority. We have prioritized always going to anything they invite us to. So I fly everywhere and feel like you're always on vacation. like, no, I was asked to go to something and I'm going to go because I want my kids to succeed. If I don't go, I don't know what I'm missing. And at least there, when you attend something, you have a voice. And to say something's good or bad and meet others.

Michelle Rowan (15:12)
That first of all, one, it's a tax write-off. So always go on the trip.

Danielle Chaisson (15:16)
That too. Well,

of course I could go back. I mean...

Michelle Rowan (15:19)
⁓ Yeah, but

two, you make a really great point about if you're showing up, if you're engaging with the brand, the franchisor is going to tap you when they want to talk about things or you have that credibility when you want to bring up issues. I know that you guys, and we don't have to go into the specifics, but you guys went through a change on the website. It was a neighborly change. It did not go well in your market and it really impacted your business. You guys worked.

really hard through it together. And I think this is a great way to just kind of show your relationship with your franchisor will ebb and flow. But I think because you had built such a great reputation of being one of the top performers, being really engaged, they took your feedback to heart and made it right eventually. So I think it's also important to point out this is not always rosy and this is not ⁓ always exactly.

Danielle Chaisson (16:10)
No.

Michelle Rowan (16:12)
It is still hard. You sometimes have different interests or you're trying to capture the attention of your franchisor when they're supporting hundreds or thousands of people. So again, being prepared to work through that and how do you really feel heard and move through your issues that you're working with them. So I think that was a really good example of that. I have a question for you. Do you feel like

Danielle Chaisson (16:35)
Okay.

Michelle Rowan (16:38)
that the corporate team is able to or how do they support you with one of the hardest things that we hear for business owners in hiring, retaining, managing employees. Do you get things from your corporate team, from your franchise community to tackle those things?

Danielle Chaisson (16:56)
Definitely. So we have software that helps that all of us use to put out our ads and we get a lot of coaching on how to do better posting our ads through that software onto Indeed. We had a lot of coaching on how to train, how to let them go too, cause we do and you know, how to strategize, how to improve our hiring. And then we also have training when we're hiring people, we do have training modulus to go through.

but I can talk about the corporate culture, the culture of the brand, and then it allows us to talk about the culture of our office, because our office is bred off of the mission of the brand. So I think that's a big piece of it. We definitely have a lot of training on how to teach our people, how to hire them, how to retain them. And that is a constant conversation at all our reunions. It's actually a topic on monthly calls.

Michelle Rowan (17:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's a huge challenge. And also too, I just want to be clear that the franchisor cannot manage your employees. This is your business. You are in charge of hiring, firing, and growing your people. So the franchisor, I just wanted to show that example of how they're helping you tackle those things without directly touching your employee base.

Danielle Chaisson (18:14)
Right. And that's where being part of the community and networking with the other franchisee owners, where the corporate can't really help you so much on the technical HR, you can be supported by your other community of owners and have their network of how they've handled the situation and then look at your state specific roles. And it's the same thing on the financial. You own your business. You still are a small business owner. We need to operate it that way, but you have the leverage behind you.

Michelle Rowan (18:43)
Absolutely. All right, we're going to hit some cons now. You ready? So when you sign a franchise agreement, have some operational constraints. You have to follow their processes, use their vendors, their materials. They expect you not to go rogue because the point is you are providing continuity in your community and that a consumer can expect the same service and product anywhere they go if they choose your brand.

Danielle Chaisson (18:48)
Yes.

Michelle Rowan (19:10)
How do you feel like that's impacted how you run your business? Have you felt frustrated of being kind of boxed in? Have you wanted to go rogue? Have you gone rogue? We cannot tell your franchise or if you've gone rogue.

Danielle Chaisson (19:22)
we started off rogue, you we bought a franchise and then we decided we just wanted to be us. And, you know, the thing to remember is you bought it for those operational constraints, while they can be limiting. I mean, sometimes they're limiting on, know, our guys do wear their technician shirts and what their uniform is and some limits become we have to spend money on our van wrap when I didn't want to spend the money on a new van.

But at the same point, we bought it for those reasons, so it's there. And going rogue does not give value to your franchise. You want to also think about a resale. The part of a franchise is that they're repeatable, they're replicable, and they should be profitable. So while there's the operational constraints, it is a drawback. So if you're not a rule follower, it can be very difficult. And when you talk to Eric, he's not a rule follower.

Michelle Rowan (20:17)
Yeah, I think that's a really great point is that you are trying to build this as something that you sell and get the highest return for. And thinking about that from the beginning is very, very smart.

Danielle Chaisson (20:19)
Bad.

Right.

The other thing is for us operational constraints are we buy our zip codes. So technically we are, we are limited to our territory, but we have territory protection. So there is a positive and a negative on that part of it too.

Michelle Rowan (20:31)
Yes, territory. Yes.

Yeah, that's good. So let's talk about the initial investment requirements. That can be a con because it is not the same as just opening your door. So that usually includes your initial franchise fee, equipment, ⁓ any inventory. It's probably very scary, but let's talk about when you first send that first big check.

Danielle Chaisson (20:54)
Mm-hmm.

⁓

That was a fun one. So it's still like buying a house, you know, always anticipate 20 % additional costs above what you want, because once you start doing something you want more, you know, we realized once we started, we wanted better computers, we wanted to operate a little faster, we wanted better phones. And we hadn't budgeted for certain things like that. And we hadn't budgeted to be able

Michelle Rowan (21:14)
Great advice.

Danielle Chaisson (21:30)
to expand as rapidly as we needed to. Our initial fees, they bought everything in and we thought we'd be up and running. But those initial fees were really to get your door open, to get you at base level, to get you to break even. So we definitely needed to prepare for a little bit more capital or have access to capital. But there's resources if you investigate initially, which we didn't backwards, but I think that's how all businesses.

Michelle Rowan (21:58)
Well, hopefully we're gonna stop some people from doing it that way if they listen to our podcast because that's what we're trying to do. That's what we're trying to do. So we talked about initial fees and then there's your ongoing fees. You are paying a royalty every single month on revenue and not profits. How hard is that especially before you break even?

Danielle Chaisson (22:01)
Yes. ⁓

It is hard, but if you are, it is hard because you're always giving up a certain percentage of that revenue. And it's before profits. So it's not controllable. It's not a controllable expense. It is what it is on every dollar that you are going to bring in. You are automatically going to give these cents off a dollar out. It is hard when you're in the red because you're like, I don't want to pay that bill. But if you don't pay that bill, you're not going to be open either, because you're going to be breaking your agreement. But if you

take a moment and think about royalties differently. I have worked hard and especially with Eric, we think about our royalties as that additional operation person that we would have had to hire in our regular business. So if you think about it differently, it doesn't feel so bad. That's what those royalties are there for. They're there for all that other support, all that due diligence is happening behind the scenes. And as you're growing,

Michelle Rowan (23:01)
Great idea.

Danielle Chaisson (23:14)
Yes, your royalties are going up. The percentage stays the same. It's still the same cents on a dollar. But as you're growing, then maybe you should be calling the franchise and looking for more assistance from them and telling them of things they should look at. And they will. I think you just have to really think about it that the royalties are the operational assistance that you would have to pay for.

Michelle Rowan (23:35)
That's great. So, because we usually hear in the beginning, people understand that they're leaning so heavily on their corporate team. And then there's what's called the fee stage where you are seven years into your business. And so you probably are looking at that amount that you send to them every month and going, what am I getting for this? So great way to think about it is just the amount of work that's being done behind the scenes that you don't see.

Danielle Chaisson (23:56)
And Michelle, will say what I see people getting that way in our brand is because they're not utilizing the relationships that they do have access to because it is still a lot of owner driven. You have the access to those relationships and you're paying for them. So utilize them if you feel like you're getting nothing.

Michelle Rowan (24:13)
That's great. Good point. How about reputation risks? What happens when one of your franchisees in another community underperforms or break rules and that could hurt your business or you see a PR crisis? Do you think about that and has that happened to you or impacted your business in any way?

Danielle Chaisson (24:30)
I do think about it, but knowing that that would be a local operation, the ⁓ national brand would kind of come in and build up our leverage of the community and help with the PR. And if something was going on or if we got in trouble, we could call them and ask for PR support of how do we correct this? How do we say that our reputation is different? ⁓ I think there's a lot of reputation management. ⁓

In general, a franchise should be holding everyone accountable. So if you're buying into it, you want to make sure how are they managing that. And that's a great question to ask them.

Michelle Rowan (25:10)
It's a great point to just find that out before you buy. All right, let's talk about the amount of information you share with your network. I know I talked to some franchisees that are uncomfortable. franchise or franchisees ask for different amounts of data. We are of the mindset that you should be collecting every P &L from your franchise owners. You should be very transparent sharing that data across your network. Some will show you full access to everything. You can see your rank in all that order, but

How do you feel about the amount of information that you are sharing with corporate, how they share it with others or how they use it within your particular system? Does it help you?

Danielle Chaisson (25:51)
Yes. So within our system, when we're all sharing our P &Ls, so they'll use a software called Kvinci, which I use in my accounting practice. And what it does is it strips out our names, but we can go by, we can see P &Ls by region or by size of organization or look at it by years in business. So I feel like at least protected as myself when we're really driving down into the P &L and looking at the profitability of the business.

But when it comes to the revenue sharing, that is an open book in our system. We monthly get reports, so we know our rankings. But that is helpful because it helps with penetration rate, helps with all these other benchmarks to see where you are. And it helps open up the conversations of how can you improve or why are you down? ⁓

Michelle Rowan (26:25)
Love that.

Yeah, and I think there's

benefit too if they tell you who those top performers are that you can reach out to them and get insight why are they spending less on their operating costs and dig into that. But I understand it can be uncomfortable opening it up and it can feel a little controlling that they get it every month, but I do think that it can help you.

Danielle Chaisson (27:01)
I think it's great. I have our franchise consultant here today and we were just looking at one of our numbers and she's like, why is this high? But I knew our benchmark was off and we were able to really dive into it, but that I think it's better sharing because that's what they're there for. When we go back and think about why are we paying them royalties, it's right there. So they can catch our anomalies quickly, not a year when you have no money.

Michelle Rowan (27:25)
Yeah, and we didn't even cover this in the pros side, but if your system is large enough and they have field business coaches, they're called different things, that is a person that is spending time with you usually in your market, helping you look at your business and understand where there's opportunity to do better. So that is a huge pro. That is definitely a pro. How often do you see your field coach?

Danielle Chaisson (27:47)
A visit is usually once a year, but we talk to her via video conference calls. It used to be every other week, but she had too many. So now we're every other week. Some other owners do once a month. It is actually up to the owners how often they want to call and as long as the franchise consultant has availability. So we're on every other week, but they're also at our access at any time.

Michelle Rowan (27:58)
Okay.

Awesome, love that. Last con I have on my list is the long-term commitment. You are signing usually a 10-year agreement. It's a long relationship. We hit on just one example of kind of that downside. But how scary was that for you when you first started and now that you're seven years in, how are you feeling about it? What's your renewal term look like? These are long-term commitments.

Danielle Chaisson (28:23)
Yes.

So our renewal terms, ours are 10 years and then we would renew for another 10 years. And you also have to be in good standing to get that renewal and be doing everything per the agreement. It's very scary at first because you're diving into something, it's all new. Usually you've left another job and this is completely new. We knew nothing about Andy Man. I mean, he thinks he could fix something, but we didn't know anything about it. We do executive ownership. So it's scary at first.

But like any business, you take three years before you start seeing your investment coming back. So as long as you understand it's still a small business and you're going in, that commitment isn't as scary. So we knew going into our 10-year contract that the first three years would be nothing for me.

Michelle Rowan (29:20)
Yeah, awesome. All right, we're gonna close it out. I have one more question for you. What's one piece of advice you would give to someone that's considering buying a franchise?

Danielle Chaisson (29:29)
Definitely investigate it. Look at when they sent you all the disclosures. Read them and get to know the culture. The best thing for us is they had invited us to see the culture. We actually went out to the reunion for the timing for our exploratory day. And I think that was the biggest selling point. Once we met the people, we knew we fit in with them. So I think it's like anything culture is important. It's like culture of picking out a university, a community to live in.

So remember, it's a community that you're gonna be part of. So make sure the culture fits your culture.

Michelle Rowan (30:04)
That is an excellent piece of advice. Thank you so much for joining us today, Danielle. We're gonna have you back, we're gonna have Eric on, but thanks for today.

Danielle Chaisson (30:08)
Thanks for having me.

Awesome. Thank you. guys have a great day.