2019: Bought my first franchise in the home service industry at age 20
2020: Worked 60-80 hours/week and was barely profitable. Realized I picked the “wrong” brand.
2021: Finally broke 6-figures of profitability and hired a GM
2022: Bought an existing business in a different
2016: Bought my first 2 franchise locations
2017: Reinvested to buy 2 more
2018: Reinvested to buy 2 more
2021: Reinvested to buy 9 more
2022: Reinvested to buy 11 more
2023: Reinvested to buy 1 more
2024: Reinvested into a new brand
Compounding your business 🚀🚀🚀
Relocating back to Raleigh NC today after a couple years running my franchises in the Midwest.
Grateful for the adventure but excited to be home!
Who from SMB Twitter should I follow/connect with in the greater Raleigh area?
Talked with a franchisee yesterday doing ~4M EBITDA in a service brand.
He’s concerned about his exit options because the franchisor does not allow institutional investment and it’s too big for an SBA loan.
Is there a solution here that doesn’t involved a massive seller note?
Some like to claim that being a franchisee “isn’t being your own boss”.
If that’s the case, shout out to my boss (whoever that is) for letting me work remotely from Brazil this week.
@TRUmav
Futurepedia is the best resource I’ve found. Essentially a directory for AI tools sorted by use cases.
It’s updated daily as new tools are rolled out.
If my brother gets 50k views,
@Autograph
is sending him to the Carolina Duke game tomorrow night in Cameron.
Toss this a like, retweet, and comment and let’s make it happen!
All of our managers have full P&L visibility. I love the transparency and alignment this has created.
I mentioned this to someone yesterday and they thought it was crazy.
Am I crazy? Thoughts on P&L visibility more broadly?
This is important to consider when buying a franchise.
“Downside scenarios” are not limited to burning cash, selling for less than your basis, or shutting down.
Sometimes the greater risk is getting sucked into a full-time job at significantly below your earning potential.
Spoke with a low performing franchisee in a top brand today
By all expectations, he should have been crushing it
Smart guy - $300,000 career
Impressive work experience, degrees, healthy savings, and wanted to build a business for himself
The mistake he made?
Got sold by a
I used to walk around calling myself a “visionary” or “ideas guy”.
Eventually I realized that was my own insecurity trying to justify neglecting areas of my business that needed me.
Ideation is not an excuse for laziness and inaction.
Stop being a visionary.
Stop being an "ideas guy",
Execution. Execution. Execution.
The smaller the company you run, the higher the percentage of time you need to spend on execution.
Vision and strategy are detractors until you reach a certain scale.
Ok. You can spend an
@SullyBusiness
Worst part about this is…Heaven’s Best is a franchise. They have the domain name and the franchisee still opted to use an AOL email address.
Best feelings in the world:
Taking off ski boots after a long day on the slopes.
Firing a customer who has treated you and your team poorly for years.
What am I missing?
@nickgraynews
Respectfully disagree. Chefs don't have to hear hundreds of grocers reject them before one or a few decide to finally agree to sell them ingredients.
We can acknowledge the accomplishment without treating it like the finish line.
A mentor said something to me recently that I can’t stop thinking about.
“I’m building my legacy from 5-9 with my family. Everything I build from 9-5 in business is just icing on the cake”
I’m certainly enjoying my bachelor years, but this made me look forward to chapters ahead
People ask why I got on Twitter
In the last week:
- I spoke to a guy running a 9 figure roofing company for 30 minutes
- I was brought three 1 million plus EBITDA businesses to potentially buy
- I met with a family office who would potentially want to fund future deals with
5 years ago I failed an “Intro to Entrepreneurship” course in college.
Today, at 24 years old - I continue to fail at entrepreneurship every single day.
Take. Risks. In. Life.
@FranchiseMnA
It’ll be interesting to see how weight loss pharmaceuticals (Ozempic, etc) impacts the big box fitness model too.
Highly doubt any enthusiast of a boutique workout will trade that in for a pill, but seems like the less enthusiastic PF-type customer would be more convertible.
Bittersweet day. Moving out of the warehouse that has housed the first business I acquired.
Bitter because I grew as a business owner within these four walls. Sad to see it go.
Sweet because I’ll be saving 5k/month on rent at our new place.
My view on hiring changed my first year in business.
Hired someone with 30 YEARS of window cleaning experience (I was 21).
Terrible attitude, unreliable, and the whole team hated him. My worst hire yet.
The lesson: HIRE for character and chemistry and TRAIN for competence.
Argentina might have 200% inflation, but you wouldn’t know it if you didn’t read the news.
Some of the most active, friendly, and happy people I’ve ever encountered around the world.
Buenos Aires is quickly becoming one of my favorite cities.
This is 🔥
Most of us are probably guilty of assuming employees are motivated by the same factors that motivate us.
We’re swinging a baseball bat at a golf ball and don’t even realize it.
Firing 28 employees and deciding something had to change
In the last 6 months I’ve fired 28 employees
Apparently sales reps is the hardest position to hire for, everyone in the industry told me high turnover was normal
But I was tired of it
So I did a deep dive into what
@shawngorham
As a child, I never understood why I couldn’t have candy for breakfast.
As a teenager, I never understood why I had a curfew.
Both had more to do with my lack of perspective than anything unfair or unjust.
I think the same is true for our lack of perspective on this side of
@FranchiseMnA
I bought a resale to get into Smash. Crazy hard to find and I had to overpay as an outside to get them to sell to me.
If I could do it over again, I would have started a new location first and then pursued resales after I was on the inside.
Very verbose way to say “I’m jealous of an adjacent industry with lower CapEx and higher margins disrupting my business.”
Put this take in one of your dumpsters where it belongs.
@kevinjm
and I will give you a free Smash to save you $$ like we do for our customers every day.
Everyone glorifying this post has no idea what they are talking about.
You are paying extra by having someone “crush” your trash.
Every dumpster company charges overage after a certain amount of tons.
You will be paying extra for weight of the dumpster.
Plus any damage
Here’s a new first:
Disgruntled employee leaves without notice, but takes the license plates off of the trucks in the shop with him when he goes.
How would SMB Twitter handle this?
This is the type of system through which I got started (on the Operating Partner side) in franchising at age 20.
It’s also the system that I believe can create wealth in franchising more effectively than “semi-absentee” ownership in the traditional sense.
Great stuff
@TRUmav
How we structure our Operating Partner model & common questions/answers around it:
Why this & not your traditional org chart of Director/VP, DM, GM, etc: The only way we have ever found to make people think & act like an owner is to make them one. We are both working towards the
This guy has been stacking pallets for 10 years and the city is finally cracking down on him.
Probably going to cost him 100k total to clean up.
Would you
A. Take the revenue
B. Host the SMB Twitter Bonfire of the Century
Asking for a friend
One of the most humbling experiences as a young SMB owner has to be applying for an apartment.
Any advice as I explain to a leasing agent what a K1 is?
@AwayConsultant
@jcolesimpson
Next time I post something like this we can set an over/under wager on the amount of time before Cole swoops in with the IOI 🤣
Today I launch Sagan Passport - a new way to hire and leverage global talent.
It's like "Costco for Global Talent".
It is the culmination of thousands of hours of work.
Buckle up - this is going to be a long one, but I think it is worth it:
I left my retainer in South America 2 weeks ago. Went yesterday to get molds and a quote for a replacement.
A replacement is going to cost 1k more than it would cost to fly back to South America to pick it up.
Should we all be investing in the orthodontics industry?
@FranchiseMnA
@jcolesimpson
@PaulTTran
That’s part of what I love about franchising.
How fluidly experience in one franchise brand can translate into success in another even if it’s a completely different industry.
You get the investment advantages of diversification but the operational/strategic advantages of focus
@girdley
I had a moment last year when I realized what a jerk I had been to some outgoing employees in years prior.
Made a list and reached out to all of them to apologize years later. Heard back from about half.
That felt much better than kicking them on their way out.
@jcolesimpson
I thought about buying a Smart Car as a sales vehicle a while ago thinking it would be sure to leave an impression.
Cyber Truck would take that to a whole new level.
@Daniel__McCarty
Can’t explain the amount of anticipated grief I feel ever time my dogs have a birthday.
Sounds ridiculous to anyone who doesn’t have a dog…I know.
Employee called me crying thanking me for their unexpected raise
Turns out my payroll provider paid my employees twice today
Everyone got double their standard paycheck
Entrepreneurship is awesome
I got so excited during diligence when I saw a fax machine and corded phone in the office.
Right after closing, I got rid of the fax machine and converted to a digital phone system.
Turns out, technology wasn’t the value creation opportunity I thought it was.
Too many misguided entrepreneurs say things like:
"We are going to be a tech enabled home service business."
Or this…
"Our competitive advantage is to create a unique software stack in our HVAC company."
Even this…
“Our data aggregation, analysis, and visualization tools
New Franchise Masters episode about rolling up service-based franchises!
@ConnorGroce
is a multi-brand multi-unit franchise owner with Smash My Trash and Shine who is growing through acquisition with plans to roll up more Smash My Trash franchises.
Connor takes us through his
I had to pull 20k out of my Roth IRA to cover payroll when I was 21.
Would’ve probably been 7-figures tax free by the time I retired.
Lowest point indeed.
@CLouvi
Yessir! I have one in Raleigh too that I owned remotely while living in Ohio and Indiana after a couple years as an owner operator.
I’m comfortable with less physical presence after learning the business, management team in place, etc. Still very involved though.
HELLO X!!
I started tweeting more intentionally a few weeks ago and now I have a few new followers. I feel like an intro is in order.
My name is Gabe and I am Cindy’s husband and Daddy to Wyatt, Violet and Blake. Dad to Bronson. I believe in Jesus, plus nothing. I try to make
@jcolesimpson
As a proud Tar Heel who hopes to immigrate to South Carolina one of these days, I agree
Give me Charleston over any other place in America
@jcolesimpson
100%. Hopefully our stories can encourage others to overcome paralysis and pull the trigger.
Even if you start off on the wrong foot (or brand), you learn from it and can work your way out.
@FranchiseMnA
Imagine if Jeff Bezos said he would go for a ride in Blue Origin’s spaceship once it was proven by others riding it first.
Think people would have been quick to sign up?
@chrissundberg
Hell of an idea. Reminds me of the mortgage brokers that specialize in manual underwriting for people with money/income but no credit history.
@_tylerswright
I’ve “self-implemented” twice. Both times only got us probably 75% of the way to where I would’ve liked to be.
Not sure how much of that is a reflection of self-implementation at large vs. my own ADHD🤣
As a young entrepreneur who gets as much dating advice (sometimes solicited, most times not) is I do hiring advice, it’s always interesting to see the two overlap. Perfect example here.
Spend your time becoming a company great employees are attracted to.
Days like today remind me why I love sports.
Memories of this game from my childhood and my time in Chapel Hill will never be erased.
Let’s make a new one tonight, Heels.
GTHD!
@drucarpenito
I will do more of
#3
the next time I buy a new brand.
During validation calls I’ll ask for the names of the franchisees from whom they’ve learned the most.
I’ll pick 2-3 and fly out and spend a few days with them. Can’t beat learning through osmosis.
@SBA_Matthias
As a college football fan I’d love to see him stay. But at some point it becomes hard to justify doing so.
NFL has less drama and a much better quality of life for coaches.
The guy brought his alma mater from the depths of hell to the top. What a way to leave off if he does.
@FranchiseMnA
This falls mostly on the FSOs in my opinion.
Seems like the gatekeepers of the FranDev industry have set an unrealistic standard for Zors (must be semi-absentee, grow by 300+ territories/year, etc) that makes them choose to prioritize EITHER growth OR Zee success, not both.
@bennybentweets
Man…that is a phenomenal question that will probably take a full post to answer adequately.
The short answer is yes, there were some defining moments
I’ll drop a tweet in the next couple days when I have my thoughts together!
@CashFlowCmdr
That’s what I’m working with them on. Always comes back to “why aren’t these deposits reflected in a W2 or paystub from your employer”.
We’ll get there!
@samuelsachss
Best of luck! I was 4 weeks out from my first full Ironman when COVID hit and it was cancelled.
I’ve put off getting back into triathlon for the time excuse. This tweet might have given me the nudge I needed.
@brianbeers
I’ve always thought about a hypothetical situation where an entrepreneur was not ALLOWED to invest. Could only 1) pursue their own ventures and 2) pile up cash.
Would be interesting to see how often the opportunity cost of not investing was outweighed by results due to focus.
@FranchiseMnA
Congrats! Know several Zees of home service brands in the Detroit market. Shoot me a DM if you all would like some intros when the time comes.
@FranchiseMnA
Lack of skillset (not lack of money) is the greatest deterrent to young people getting entrepreneurship.
“If it doesn’t work I won’t have …X,Y, Z… experience to get a job afterwards.”
Skillset hedges risk of entrepreneurship 10x as effectively as $$ (*in most situations*).
@TylerPurcell24
Smart move - I the same thing. I think experience can be a liability instead of an asset for entry-level/front line roles.
Too much baggage from their old employer that outweighs any benefit from having some reps under their belt.
@FranchiseMnA
Agreed - hard to overstate the impact this will have on the industry long-term. Too many franchisees who are sold a “semi-absentee” franchise opportunity walk away with a negative perception of franchising at-large, and might never pursue franchise ownership again. Sad stuff.
@RovingVrain
Personally, I’m not all that concerned with
#1
, but understand why someone might be.
Couples thoughts on
#2
:
Maybe only share the four walls P&L and make clear that the NOI number they see is not what you put in your pocket (debt service, CapEx, retained earnings, etc).
@PublicShellGuy
Didn’t talk about that but I assume not since the Zor would have to approve it. Wouldn’t approve of a family office backing an operator to take it over, I highly doubt they’d approve of taking it public.
Am I the only one who thinks the significance FTC’s ruling on noncompetes is being egregiously overstated?
I personally don’t know any company that was actually enforcing them middle management and below. Still enforceable towards executives due to trade secrets laws & NDAs.