From A to Franchisee: The Podcast for Smarter Franchise Buying

Industry Spotlight: Child Enrichment Franchisees

• Franchise Business Review • Season 1 • Episode 17

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In this podcast episode, Michelle Rowan hosts a discussion with Vik Sreedhar and Supriya, franchise owners of Amazing Athletes in San Jose. The conversation explores their journey into the child enrichment franchise sector, highlighting their transition from previous careers in pharmacy and tech sales to owning a business that aligns with their family lifestyle. They discuss the challenges and rewards of running a franchise, emphasizing the importance of community relationships, flexibility, and strategic growth. The couple shares insights on balancing business operations with personal commitments, the significance of hiring the right team, and the support they receive from their franchisor and fellow franchisees. The episode provides a comprehensive look at the realities of franchise ownership in the child enrichment industry, offering valuable advice for aspiring franchisees.

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Michelle Rowan (00:52)
Welcome back to our podcast from A to franchisee and today we're going to be looking at Franchises that are in the child enrichment area So we are trying to just kind of give people that have maybe honed in on what area they might be more interested in a better idea of what it's like to actually be a franchisee in that industry or that segment of franchising we're gonna speak to franchisees from all different kinds of brands and industries to tell their story and

Vik Sreedhar (00:52)
Thank

Michelle Rowan (01:20)
and want to give you an idea of what it was like for them to find their franchise and then to be in that business. When you think about the franchise space, if you're like most people, I think our brains automatically go to food, fitness, or services. That tends to be something that we see out on the streets a lot. But one category that makes a very large impact on local communities is around child enrichment. From sports and STEM programs,

Vik Sreedhar (01:22)
Thank you.

I'm kind of worried that makes a large difference.

Michelle Rowan (01:46)
To art and after school activities, these franchises

Supriya (01:49)
you

Michelle Rowan (01:50)
focus on helping kids build confidence, creativity, and healthy habits. Franchisees can make a living while doing something very meaningful in their communities. Today, we're taking a closer look at this space through the lens of Amazing Athletes, a mobile sports and fitness franchise that brings structured programs to schools and childcare centers.

Vik Sreedhar (01:57)
Thank

Michelle Rowan (02:12)
We'll talk with amazing athletes franchisees about what drew them to the child enrichment sector, what their day-to-day looks like, and the realities of balancing business ownership with a mission-driven mindset. Whether you're a parent, educator, or aspiring franchise owner, this episode will give you a behind-the-scenes look at what it's really like to succeed in a world of child enrichment franchising. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Supriya and Vik.

Supriya (02:19)
Good.

Vik Sreedhar (02:28)
episode.

page one. ⁓

Michelle Rowan (02:41)
who own amazing athletes in

San Jose. Welcome to the podcast and thanks so much for being part of the conversation.

Supriya (02:49)
Thanks, Michelle. We're so happy to be here.

Vik Sreedhar (02:49)
Thanks, Michelle.

Michelle Rowan (02:51)
Yeah, so, and we'll start by you are a husband and wife that are in this business together, correct? Okay, tell me about when you became owners of Amazing Athletes, and I would like to know what you were both doing before Amazing Athletes, and then if you can tell us a little bit about how you landed on Amazing Athletes.

Supriya (02:57)
Yes.

Absolutely. So we became official franchise owners in November of 2023. So we're just hitting two year anniversary this month, which is really exciting. Thank you. And time has really flown by. So it's hard to believe that it's, been two years already and we are where we're at at this point in time. So before this, I spent 12 years as a pharmacist. I was a retail pharmacy manager. That was my entire career. My life was built around that.

Michelle Rowan (03:19)
Congratulations! Yeah!

Supriya (03:38)
And in 2022, we had our third child. And so at that point we had three kids under the age of five and managing the pharmacy manager lifestyle at the same time as raising a family became very, very difficult because I did not have much flexibility in my schedule. And so that's when Vik stepped in and he said, hey, we need to make some kind of change. We got to figure out what we're doing next.

Vik Sreedhar (03:56)
Thank you.

And for me, my background is in tech sales and engineering. I was already focused on solving complex problems. But mainly coming from the corporate world, was spreadsheets, building revenue, sales pipeline, and customers. And also being in Silicon Valley, always had this entrepreneurial itch, and finally decided to take a bet on ourselves and said,

we have to take a chance on ourselves to go use that same problem solving spirit to build something meaningful not only for us, but for our families and for kids. And that's how we stumbled upon amazing athletes.

Michelle Rowan (04:42)
So were you familiar with franchising as a model or did you think you were going to create a business by yourself to start when you were initially?

Vik Sreedhar (04:49)
You know, when we

moved from Michigan to Silicon Valley, had already so many ideas. I had actually launched a book by then. I had written Ketchup and Curry to help people immigrate and assimilate into the country. I working on so many different ideas. I'd start a website called JustMeditate.com to help people meditate and overcome ADHD and find calmness in their lives. There's so many different ideas that I wanted to pursue, but I realized it lacked a little bit of structure.

Supriya (05:14)
you

Vik Sreedhar (05:18)
and process and mentoring. So it was always a lot of zero to one effort, which again, in Silicon Valley, know, a hundred thousand ideas are born every year and 0.1 % survive. So, but it still, it motivated us to move here to pursue something on our own. But the franchise model is when, after leading sales for a few years is when it hit me that, you know, we needed a good product and we can be taking chances on ideas which take a little longer to, you know, build momentum, but.

Also something that's defined as a brand that's personal, that's also meaningful for us and the impact from a combination of us raising kids to creating that opportunity for other families to build that community around us. So all of this came together. So until maybe 2022, it was focused on building our own ideas. But in 23, after going through a lot of startups in the Valley where I was working in a lot of different startups and I realized how it was sometimes painful to get products off the ground, I realized that

Supriya (06:14)
.

Vik Sreedhar (06:17)
going after a known existing model, an existing franchise model that could be successful, has found success in other states, and as a nationwide has already built a brand, has a reputation that we can then build and grow into. That's essentially how that mindset changed. And then once we found amazing athletes, we went all in and then we were able to build that out.

Michelle Rowan (06:39)
So I love this too because I think that a lot of times I get asked the question about an entrepreneur versus a franchisee. And so some people will say you're one or the other. And I do think that you've done a great job of kind of explaining that it really is, it is both. It is both in that you have to have that passion and that drive and you nailed it with you wanted more structure. You wanted that mentorship or that kind of more support along the way. So those were really great. So did you work with a broker or did anyone help you land upon,

athletes or what was your what was your research process like? Did you know from the start you wanted something within child services?

Vik Sreedhar (07:17)
Sue, do you want to take that?

Supriya (07:19)
Yeah, so this is really funny because ⁓ Vik is, when he starts his research, he goes into a rabbit hole. He will do research night and day till he finds the perfect fit. And so ⁓ when we first started talking about, I need to get out of the pharmacy world, we need to find something else, you know, to support our income and for me to continue working, but at the same time, being able to raise our family.

he started doing his research and every day he would come with ideas, know, new franchises, different business startup ideas. Every single night he'd say, ⁓ he'd have a list of 10 to 15 things we'd have to go through, but nothing clicked. I would always play devil's advocate and I say, this won't work. And Vik is a very big risk taker. He's very ambitious. He's all about taking the risks and I'm not, I'm not a big risk taker. And I think that's a good balance for our relationship because he flies away with his ideas and I sort of anchor him down back to reality.

Vik Sreedhar (08:05)
Thank

Thank

Supriya (08:11)
And so when he stumbled upon Amazing Athletes and he talked to me about it, he said, I think I found the one. I think this is it. I think you'll really love it. And the reason that it clicked for both of us was because we already had three young kids of our own. We were always looking for programs to enroll them into and they were at that preschool age where we really couldn't find anything to enroll them into. You had to be at least five or above to join a lot of these sports programs. And we had a three year old who was very athletic and we couldn't find anything to really enroll into besides gymnastics.

And so he said, I have a call set up with amazing athletes, with Youth Athletes United, jump on this call and let's just do the call and see where it goes. within the first call, we were both just so ⁓ interested in the program. We wanted to learn more. We're like, this is amazing. Why haven't we seen this before? Why don't we have this here? We need this in our community. ⁓ And so that's really what kind of kickstarted the process for us to get involved.

Michelle Rowan (08:57)
Yeah.

Vik Sreedhar (09:06)
Right. ⁓

Michelle Rowan (09:09)
love it. Okay, so you knew that you needed something to fit your lifestyle.

So once you kind of started working with Amazing Athletes, how did you vet that this was the right fit because you had such specific criteria of what you were looking to do with how you were changing your lifestyle? How did you go through that and figure out that this was a good fit?

Vik Sreedhar (09:26)
Yeah,

you know California has a high cost of living and also owning running a storefront and being tied down to a storefront, which Supriya already was as a pharmacist. So when coming out of that lifestyle, we knew that we didn't want to be tied to a storefront 12 hours a day opening and closing and managing that end of the the realm. And when we looked at multiple franchise models, we did fitness, education, food and so on.

Supriya (09:53)
.

Vik Sreedhar (09:55)
But what stood out with amazing athletes was how flexible and family friendly it was. And for us as parents, flexibility was huge. And we wanted Supriya to be able to have time for school pickups, activities around our own kids. And how do we grow this business around our family's rhythm and not the other way around? So that kind of worked.

Michelle Rowan (10:05)
Yeah.

Okay, so do you

feel like when you were talking to them and they were telling you about what it was gonna be like to run the business, did they set you up to have a really good expectation of what it would be like once you were up and running the business?

Vik Sreedhar (10:35)
Right. You know, when I was the first to go into training in New York for a week, a couple of years ago, and when I went in, we went in with an open mind saying, OK, you know, and what led to the training was a lot of, know, we both engaged with a lot of ⁓ franchisees in different markets. So we understood their pain points, what worked, what didn't, how they scaled, how they brought in coaches, how do they go to schools. But still, what was different for me personally was

Supriya (11:01)
Okay.

Vik Sreedhar (11:05)
I'm coming in from tech sales, it's solving problems at a, you know, like how urgent is a problem? Are people willing to pay for it? And is it scalable, ubiquitous? And those same models could be applied here, but then it wasn't as, ⁓ you know, it was a lot more soft. The sale,

wasn't, it's not like sales, right? It's more where we're adding value to the schools and creating a benefit for the kids and creating a difference and an impact at all of these schools. So, but going into this training,

doing a lot of role-playing activities and things like that, it kind of first opened our mind into how to communicate with the coaches, how to communicate with the schools, the staff, the directors, and then the kids. But also, what led the whole process was all of the franchisees, told us about their journey and helped us quite a bit on how to frost to scale and learn through the process.

Michelle Rowan (11:56)
Yeah, I think that's really key. I don't know ⁓ how to get a better idea of what it's like to run the day-to-day than to ask the people that are doing it. I love that you talk about, they prep you on how, because you have a lot of people that you guys are working with, making happy ⁓ and selling to, that there's a lot of parts of that. So let's go into what that day-to-day is, it looks like. Do you guys all, do you both do the same thing or do you divide and conquer your?

roles in the business and then tell me what your day to day looks like.

Supriya (12:28)
We definitely divide and conquer. So Vik is actually still working his full-time tech sales job. He still works full-time and helps manage the business. So I run day-to-day operations and we've hired a few wonderful coaches who are our primary one. We promoted him into program manager and ⁓ he leads our staff and trainings and things like that. So he does a lot of the day-to-day as well.

⁓ We work together on sales. So initially we did a lot of our sales together, which we still do business strategy and growth. We work on together. I do a lot of the customer service. talking to parents, sending feedback about the children and how they're doing, managing the coaches, the quality of the program. And then Vik handles a lot of the sales and operations. if you want to kind of get into your role.

Vik Sreedhar (13:00)
Thank

Thank

Yeah, I

do a lot of the backend sales KPIs. How are we building the schools, the programs, new partnerships, marketing, and planning around how do we, know, demos and scheduling demos and essentially looking at, ⁓ you know, quarter over quarter, you know, similar to the sales quotas in tech sales. I'm just bringing that over to amazing athletes to run into that very similar way. But then together, Supriya and I, we do, ⁓ you know, review of the business on a daily basis.

Michelle Rowan (13:35)
Yeah.

Vik Sreedhar (13:47)
And our most important KPI, besides all the sales talk, is going to be the parents' feedback So we always are figuring out are parents happy, satisfied, do they see results, and ⁓ are their kids happy in the program, and making sure that they're growing at the pace that the program is creating, and ⁓ so on.

Michelle Rowan (14:07)
Yeah, I think it's just a unique thing about child services where your customer is the child, but it's also the parent and ⁓ you need to make sure that the happiness or the support they feel in your program is translating to the parents wanting to keep renewing that business with you. So that's interesting. And Vik, you also, I think, really...

Supriya (14:14)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Rowan (14:28)
embody what we keep saying about franchise owners is, you know, I've been doing this for 20 years with franchise business review and 20 years ago, the franchisee that came on board with a brand was really passionate about the service or the product, but didn't have the business acumen that you're speaking to to understand, you know, what does that growth look like for us as far as programs and having a really good understanding of that. So I love that you have both of those aspects where you have more of the day to day operations, but also you're keeping an

Supriya (14:33)
So,

Michelle Rowan (14:58)
on what does it look like to keep growing this? So that's amazing that

Supriya (14:59)
So,

Michelle Rowan (15:01)
you could share that with us. ⁓ How many people, and it sounds like, Supriya, you're really running the day to day, how many coaches are you managing or what did that scaling look like? Were you able to do this on your own at first or did you really need to bring in coaches immediately so you could focus on the business?

Vik Sreedhar (15:12)
Okay.

Supriya (15:18)
So we actually coached ⁓ the first few months on our own because we really wanted to learn the program so that we could train our coaches. So when Vik came back from training from New York in November two years ago,

Vik Sreedhar (15:21)
Thank

Supriya (15:31)
we actually started coaching at my son's preschool. We just asked their school if we could do some free classes for their kids and they said, of course. And so we just went in there with the curriculum and we would do classes on our own. And that's kind of how we started getting experience for the month of December. ⁓ In January, we started at our first school and Vik and I were coaching there and we got very lucky. Within our first month, we found our phenomenal coach, Corey.

Vik Sreedhar (15:55)
right.

Supriya (15:57)
who signed on with

us and he was a former PE teacher and he had brought a lot of great ideas and background to the program. And so he started coaching some of our classes and doing our demos with us. So we would go out and do it together. So was just the three of us for a few months. ⁓ And then within the first six months we had about three coaches that were hired. We were still also coaching and doing sales. And fast forward to today we have 15 coaches on staff.

Vik Sreedhar (16:08)
.

or didn't. Okay.

Supriya (16:24)
Vik and I don't coach anymore. We focus more on the growth and strategy for the business. So we really tried to remove ourselves from being on the field

pretty quickly so that we could scale the business. And that's why we're where we're at today. So if there's one piece of advice that I could give to future franchisees, it's hire the right people quickly and get yourself out of the field so you can really focus on growth. But we got really lucky.

Michelle Rowan (16:47)
Yeah, I think that's a great piece of advice. Great piece of advice, yeah.

Did you have something else to contribute there? Okay, I think that that is a common thing is that you get out of delivering the product or service so you can focus on taking care of your people and growing your staff so that you can grow the business. That's great. ⁓ How about, I think, and I'm gonna kind of lead you, but how about...

Supriya (16:55)
No, that's all.

Vik Sreedhar (17:04)
Okay.

Michelle Rowan (17:13)
the way that you build relationships in your community. How are you going about doing that? And how essential is that to retaining your current programs and customers, but also in finding new ones.

Vik Sreedhar (17:23)
Yeah, so I would say consistency and patience. We want to be dependable, accountable. We show up and not just for classes, but for community events. We do school fairs, parent nights. We sponsor a lot of events at the school because some schools are, you know, they don't have the funds.

And we're already, you know, we see we're in close relationship with all the PTA communities and we see some of the activities that goes on in these schools and we say, how do we help? So that's our first question. We start with how can we help and then everything else follows through. And then we want, and where that leads us to is we want people to see us as partners, not just vendors.

Michelle Rowan (18:08)
Yeah, that's great.

Supriya (18:10)
I agree, think building relationships with the schools is the key to success in this business. You have to show up. You can't just, and when it's a showing up, it's like Vik and I show up, you know, as the owners of the business, we personally go and talk to the directors, we meet with the staff, ⁓ we observe classes, we meet with parents. Yes, our coaches are also there, but for parents to see the owners of the business out there,

They see the passion that drives us day to day and they invest more in our program because of that. So that's the key to this business and being successful is building those relationships and like Vik said, consistency and patience as well.

Vik Sreedhar (18:46)
I think that's way to show

that.

Michelle Rowan (18:48)
Yeah, I think that ⁓ you can't just rely on marketing or sales. It is that they need to know who you are and what is this business to the community. So that's great. So we've talked about a lot of great things that you guys are doing in the business and what you do day to day. I'd love to hear what's your biggest challenge that you face. And it's not necessarily specific to being a franchisee in Child Services, but just as a business owner, what is the biggest challenge that you guys feel like you're facing this year?

Supriya (19:09)
⁓

I would say probably one of the challenges that's just consistent across the board is staffing. You know, because this is a part-time job for coaches, right? We coach preschools in the mornings from let's say 930 to 1130. There's a break because all the kids take a nap, have lunch, and then we do some after-school programs. So you don't really get a full day.

of an eight hour workday. So staffing is always tricky because you have to figure out how to retain these coaches who may only be working four to five hours a week. And living in the Bay Area, which is very high cost of living, it's difficult to find someone to do that and pay them at a rate where you can still see your profits, but pay them something that they can also be able to pay their bills. So think staffing is our biggest challenge. ⁓

We recently expanded our territory late last year. so staffing was the main thing is just we have all these new schools now. How do we get coaches into these schools? And we want to be dependable. We try to avoid canceling or rescheduling any classes. So we always have backup coaches. And so really, we over hire to overcome that challenge. We over hire. And we double staff at school. So if someone calls off, we have the ability to send someone over to another school.

I would say that's our biggest challenge, Vik. Do you want to add anything to that?

Vik Sreedhar (20:31)
No, I think ⁓ running a business, raising kids and managing staffing and the overall schools that are being brought up and the parent communication. Because when you see each school has tens of kids registered and when some, we hear immediately when the kids not.

you know, joining, attending a class or the kids missing a class or the kids not happy about something and then the parent gets involved, right? Parents are very emotionally charged about this program and we love it. But definitely we're always, you know, managing, time and resilience on, keeping up with all of these different aspects of it.

Michelle Rowan (21:10)
Yeah, and I would say the staffing challenges is something that we hear across the board. It is a hard one to solve. About how many programs or how many kids are you running? I think you said with 15 coaches.

Supriya (21:21)
Yep, so we're in about 80 locations and we probably have around 700 kids enrolled currently.

Michelle Rowan (21:29)
Yeah, that's a lot. are you, do you have tools that you're getting from your franchisor that help you manage those communications and just kind of keep tabs on all of these programs? Okay. So that's an important part of managing all of that. ⁓ The next thing I want to ask is you mentioned expanding into new territory, which is fantastic. Congratulations. Can we talk about what your investment was when you got started and you can share a range? know that amazing athletes is available on our site, so listeners can go there and see that, but you can either

Supriya (21:37)
Yes.

Thank you.

Michelle Rowan (21:59)
to talk about in dollars, but I'm more interested in how long did it take before you felt like you either broke even or that you were stable in the business?

Vik Sreedhar (22:02)
I'm going take a few minutes for you to go back.

Right, ⁓ so the startup costs were reasonable compared to other franchises. ⁓ The reason is a mobile model. So no huge upfront ⁓ cost in terms of a rent or a build out. And we've evaluated a lot of those franchises too. And it's definitely, you know, this is a lot ⁓ lower

Supriya (22:21)
Yes.

Vik Sreedhar (22:28)
upfront costs. So and we started lean focused on quality and relationship building and gained traction because it's a zero to one. We acquired new territories.

And ⁓ we believed in their FDD, where they initially shared some of the projections and they also shared ⁓ all these other owners contacts that we could talk to and we understood how fast an ROI is. In our case, ⁓ we actually won Rookie of the Year for the fastest growing new franchise in the country. ⁓ So for us, that was ROI in itself, but it also showed that... ⁓

Michelle Rowan (23:04)
Yeah.

Vik Sreedhar (23:05)
we were able to recover all our costs in year one. And that gave us a lot of confidence to go add more schools, more staff, buy new equipment, and also expand our territory. We also started buying additional complementary, it's a, know, they say multiple franchises within the brand of Youth Athletes United. So we ended up acquiring soccer stars as well, and started expanding our territory.

Michelle Rowan (23:08)
Wow, that's fantastic.

Vik Sreedhar (23:30)
where it was initially till only in the Bay Area, till Mountain View and Palo Alto, and then we expanded to Redwood City on one side, and then the other side, we took it from Milpitas, Fremont to the East Bay in Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore and Tracy. So we now have a huge region. Again, now balancing that with commute time, traffic, congestion, and then still managing a wide area is now the new challenge that we're setting up ourselves for.

Back to your question of ROI, it's been definitely cash on cash and return on investment. We were able to recoup most of our investment in year one. And since then, we've actually reinvested those proceeds into buying and building out the franchise and building out the territories to make sure that we found our passion. We found crossroads of form, fit and passion where we're able to serve the community, make an impact and

Supriya (24:20)
.

Vik Sreedhar (24:25)
see a reward for this whole process. we said, this is where we need to place more bets, double down on ourselves and then build more into it. the entire amazing athletes team, John, Jared, Adam, they've been fantastic supporting us in this whole process of expansion. But also they say, sometimes, walk before you run.

Supriya (24:42)
Okay. Okay.

Vik Sreedhar (24:48)
Sometimes they also slow us down and say, have you made sure you looked into a few different areas? That way they're applying, they're just applying a little more speed bumps before we scale or go ⁓ with rapid expansion.

Michelle Rowan (25:02)
Yeah, which is great because they have more experience in seeing this. So I think looking for a franchisor that doesn't push you to overbuy in the

beginning and talks about that kind of scaling is a great indicator that they're really going to be a good partner to help you assess that. And the other side, think sometimes franchisees can get a little nervous about that expansion. So you want to have that balance of like, you guys are running a very great program in your geography. It does make sense to add on. So those are great questions to ask other franchisees how the franchisor is supporting that.

I also too, and I didn't say it when Supriya brought it up, but I think I noticed

Supriya (25:34)
So, thank you.

Vik Sreedhar (25:38)
Thank

Michelle Rowan (25:38)
when I talked to franchisees, most couples have the person that's a little bit more risk averse or conservative and the person that's like, let's bet it all. So I think also a good balance ⁓ for business. Yeah.

Supriya (25:47)
Yeah.

Vik Sreedhar (25:52)
You

Supriya (25:52)
Absolutely.

Michelle Rowan (25:55)
Is there anything that you wish you'd known before buying a franchise that you would share with the audience that advice you would give them or things to think about that you didn't know before you ran the business?

Supriya (26:09)
Honestly, just how rewarding it would be. I mean, it was a big risk for me to take, right? To leave my full-time job, that's all I had known for 12, 13 years. And I was so scared to do that. We went in thinking this will be a fun business, but honestly, it's been life-changing. Seeing your work directly impact kids on a day-to-day basis, that's something really special. And also how powerful the franchise community is.

Vik Sreedhar (26:12)
It was a big.

it.

Supriya (26:36)
Talking to other owners, learning from them early is key. This is a rinse and repeat situation. A lot of the problems that we've faced, other franchise owners have faced in the past and there are solutions to them. So it's really one of the biggest advantages of being a part of the franchise network.

Michelle Rowan (26:52)
Yeah, I agree with that. And some franchisees, I don't think, tap into that network as much as they could. So that's fantastic that you've made those connections in your community. Do you feel like your franchisor has helped you foster those relationships with your franchisees? Are they getting you together, or are you connected virtually?

Vik Sreedhar (27:01)
I'll do possible relationships with your friends and

Supriya (27:09)
Absolutely.

So at training, Vik, when you went to the initial training Vik met a lot of new franchisees there. And then we have a Slack channel that we use that we can connect with other franchisees all the time. And the franchisor is always, always connecting us with people. Whenever we have a question, they say, ⁓ so and so went through this problem. Let me connect you with them. You can talk with them. We have conferences every other year. I went to our first conference in December this past year.

Vik Sreedhar (27:14)
If.

Supriya (27:37)
and met a lot of people at that conference. So they really do a lot to help you connect. And that's one of their biggest drivers. And I think that has helped us succeed as well. They also offer business success coaches. So when you sign on, you can have a business success coach. And shout out to Cindy Taylor, who's our success coach. And she has helped so much in guiding and mentoring and getting us through those challenges. So yes, we do have a lot of support from the franchisor absolutely.

Michelle Rowan (28:03)
Love

that. Vik, is there anything else that you'd add to what you wish you knew before you buy or just how your network or how your franchisor is really supporting you in your success that you guys have seen within a child service franchise?

Vik Sreedhar (28:05)
Okay.

You know,

we wish we had started sooner, I think, but also in a positive way coming out of COVID, you know, giving us the time to think through all these ideas we were here in California and Silicon Valley, we moved our entire family, put ourselves in this place to, you know.

Michelle Rowan (28:21)
Yeah.

Supriya (28:22)
Yeah.

Vik Sreedhar (28:39)
really pursue entrepreneurship. So like really going after some an idea where that's meaningful to you. So in this case, I think the structure, the system, the back end, the community that they have and they have tools already in place to it. When they said initially the franchise cost includes tech tech fees. I was concerned because being in Silicon Valley, I'm used to speed. And then the first thing I see in their text tools is slack.

And I'm surprised that a franchisor like is betting on their like, you know, community or their franchisees to make sure they're communicating with their staff in a Slack, which is 24 seven, very quick, immediate messages. It's and they've been very transparent with the whole process. ⁓ John's been amazing. Jared's been such a fantastic, you know, mentor to us because he, these are also people who've been there with their, with amazing athletes for 10 years. They've done.

what we are trying to do in their respective regions and territories, they've already

Supriya (29:42)
Okay.

Vik Sreedhar (29:43)
scaled and there's not a single problem they haven't seen. And when we have such open, you know, the Slack allows us to communicate freely, we then schedule calls on a quarterly basis, we then have meetings, and then we've started building relationships with these others ⁓ in the community. So then we're also like texting, we're having calls with them, hey, you know, how are you seeing in this area? So again, it's essentially...

The franchise model works where there's systems in place, processes in place, and then tools in place, but then the people that come together that allow all of these to be able to easily be fluid and being able to connect everyone at the same time, I think that's what makes amazing athletes a recipe for success.

Michelle Rowan (30:26)
I love that. So just to wrap things up, I'll share some of our franchise business review data around child services and child enrichment franchises. The lowest scores that we see from franchisees that they report when we ask our standard questions are around technology, around marketing and promotional programs, ⁓ the fees that they pay, and innovation. So I think those are some things you could ask. Those also align with what we're seeing across all industries. So this does not sit specifically for child services. We did look at

that. And then the high scores, I think ⁓ they mirror what you guys are saying that they enjoy being part of the organization, they enjoy operating the business, the franchisees are supportive of each other and that they respect the franchisor. So these things are just really mirroring what you guys are saying about your specific brand. And then looking at our overall responses from child enrichment franchisees that report, 100 % of them are likely to recommend the franchise to others. So there's

Vik Sreedhar (31:07)
is a piece work of each other and that is effective.

Michelle Rowan (31:26)
No negative response in child services as far as recommending it to others. And 84 % are likely to invest in the business again today knowing what they know. So just, it's really great to see that. I think it is driven by a lot of passion. You do need to have the business acumen to run the business, but you have to be very connected to your communities and to learn the people that you're supporting and to support the parents of the children.

Vik Sreedhar (31:43)
Bye.

Michelle Rowan (31:50)
It's very complex. ⁓ I thank you both for joining us today. this was such a great conversation. I thank you so much and I also love hearing your success that you're having. It sounds like you guys are growing like hotcakes.

Vik Sreedhar (31:55)
Okay.

Thank you so much, It's not just a business. It's a legacy for us. You're shaping healthier, happier kids and stronger communities. So that's a return on investment that's hard to measure in numbers alone.

Michelle Rowan (32:15)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you both for what you're doing in your communities and also for helping to educate people thinking about buying a franchise to come on into franchising.

Vik Sreedhar (32:29)
Absolutely. I'll tell you the last parting thoughts would be passion, patience, and people skills along with the growth mindset. If you have these four, I would say time to really think about getting into a franchise and amazing athletes has changed our lives and I hope it changes yours too.

Michelle Rowan (32:47)
I love it. I love it. And I always love when I hear, wish we'd it sooner. That's like the best validation you can ever hear from people. So thank you both.

Supriya (32:48)
But.

Vik Sreedhar (32:56)
Thank you so much, Michelle.

Supriya (32:57)
Thank you,

Michelle.