Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Jeff Dudan started his first business in college, painting apartments to pay the bills. The business grew beyond his expectations, allowing him to support his younger brother and create jobs for other college athletes. Years later, he moved to South Florida to help with disaster recovery after Hurricane Andrew struck. Having learned to see opportunity in adversity, he started AdvantaClean, which eventually grew into a national franchise. In this episode, Jeff talks to Ilana about spotting hidden opportunities in crises and the mindset shifts that helped him build a successful franchise business to empower others. Jeff Dudan is a franchise executive and the CEO of Homefront Brands. He brings decades of experience in funding, building, and scaling franchises to help others succeed in the industry. As a published author and host of The Homefront Podcast, Jeff also appeared on CBS’s Undercover Boss. In this episode, Ilana and Jeff will discuss: - Starting a business in college   - Pushing past your limitations - Grabbing opportunities as they come - Building Homefront to help franchise owners - Lessons from his father’s business challenges - Setting clear roles to make partnerships work - Creating a unique franchise model - Figuring out the right time to start franchising - Leading franchisees with patience  - Why businesses are high-class assets - Using real estate to fund his business - The CEO’s role in setting standards   - Saying “yes” to chances for visibility - Aligning your values with your business - And other topics… Jeff Dudan is the CEO of Homefront Brands, a published author, and a franchise executive with 25 years of experience building and scaling franchise businesses. He founded AdvantaClean in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, growing it from a disaster recovery business to a franchise with over 240 locations before it was acquired. Jeff is a Forbes contributor and host of The Homefront Podcast, where he explores the world of franchising and leadership. He has also appeared on CBS’s Undercover Boss. He has worked with organizations like Novant Health, the IFA Franchisor Forum, and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Connect with Jeff: Jeff’s Website: https://jeffdudan.com/  Jeff’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffdudan/  Resources Mentioned: Jeff’s Episode on Undercover Boss: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6432766/  Jeff’s Books: Discernment: The Business Athlete's Regimen for a Great Life through Better Decisions: https://www.amazon.com/Discernment-Business-Athletes-Regimen-Decisions/dp/1544508506  Hey, Coach! https://www.amazon.com/Hey-Coach-Jeff-Dudan/dp/1511990570  Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training

Lack of focus leads to a lack of greatness. Many entrepreneurs are screwed into existence by circumstances. Personal brand is valuable to the extent that you're actually willing to live up to the messages that you're saying. Comes down to reach and then it comes down to know, like, and trust. Nobody can buy anything from something they've never heard of. And then there's, okay, well, now that you're reaching people, what are you saying?

What do you stand for? Like, what can people expect? Don't be so afraid of what other people think. Fear is an emotion, and it has no place in wisdom. Jeff Duden, CEO of Homefront Brands. You bring decades of experience funding, building, operating and exiting franchises to help others do the same. And you're also a published author, a podcaster on the Homefront Podcast. You appeared in CBS show, an undercover boss. Oh my God, that is really cool. Highly recommended

to everybody to watch this. Like I was cracking up. But you were driven as a kid in sport right off the bat, right, Jeff? Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Take us back in time. So many entrepreneurs out there, not like you, I don't believe, but I probably suffered from a lack of focus. And when you're growing up, I think you have this entrepreneurial gene that manifests itself in a couple of ways. First of all, you're not a very good rule follower. You want to learn independently.

So I was a voracious reader. I was a Discovery Channel guy. I just, I learned and I learned and I learned, but then when I sat in school, it didn't land on me and I didn't want to conform and I didn't want to comply. And I look back now and I realized that probably maybe things could have been different if I was a better student. But at the end of the day, there's a reason why people like me end up doing what we're doing. I took the standardized testing and I made a really high score and my guidance counselor

called me in and he's like, your grades and your test scores do not match. I was an athlete. I mean, I was a gym rat. I grew up in Chicago land and out there on the playgrounds playing basketball every weekend or in the rec center came to play football. You know, we got a new coach and he wants to throw it and you recruit people. Basketball players have good hands, like we can catch it. So recruited me to the football team and that was great and I loved it but I wasn't very good so I had to walk on to a school that would also

academically accept me which was the University of Northern Iowa. I'm not saying anything about their academic standards. I'm sure they're very rigorous today. This was 1986. Only made it through there one year, dropped back to a junior college. That was an inflection point in my life where I said, I'm going to get out of here and I'm going to have one shot to do it. It's going to be through a football scholarship.

So I basically pulled myself out of anything that I was doing. And I just focused on really a couple of things that I needed to do to get that. Some of it was grades. Some of it was working on some speed and things like that deconstructing speed and doing the things I needed to do. And I just was barely good enough to get a scholarship out to Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. barely good enough to get a scholarship out to Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

And got there, met my wife February 2nd, 1989. She took on the project. I attribute our longevity to many things, but we're passionate about similar, but one of which is we're both constantly working on me. Then I started the painting business because I needed the money to stay during the summer. So first of all, what made that shift from, I don't know if I'm good enough in the regular education, my grades are not showing up, and by the way, I'm the same.

My grades never were a good testament to how successful eventually I was. So it was really interesting, there was always a gap. But what made that shift? What made you decide I'm going to be serious about it? Is it your wife? Not to be overly dramatic about it, but the shift really came like, I mean, I failed in my first college and I went back home. And at that point, my parents were divorced. There was always enough, but there was nothing extra. There was nobody at the house.

My parents had kind of moved on. We had the house. I had a younger brother that was there. He didn't have any support. And I'm just like, wow, this is what life's going to be. There was another thing that made impact on me. I've really actually never mentioned it before, but we had a friend that was a couple of years older than me and he got killed.

Being somewhere he shouldn't have been, he wasn't really involved, but he got in the middle of it and he ended up getting murdered randomly. And I was like, wow, if I was there in that group, I probably would have been the one that would have tried to step in the middle and say, guys, we don't need to be doing this. And that could have been me.

So that made an impact. And I'm just like, you know, I really need to think about what I'm doing here. And I also, regardless of the actual performance of the grades and such, I actually had a high opinion of myself that I was smart, that I could accomplish things and that, you know, if I set my mind to it and having some success athletically, I think bolstered a little bit of that confidence. The social confidence wasn't there, the academic confidence, the

rigor wasn't there. But again, I didn't have really a role model or anybody holding me accountable to do those things. I think if somebody would have just said, I'm going to take a look at your report card once in a while, maybe I would have. But I think all of those things combined to a fear of failure, I was staring right at it. I think through reading in books, a lot of fiction, a lot of ink magazine, a lot of businessy type stuff already, but also a lot of fiction. I did seen the world through the eyes of the authors and I knew there was a lot out there

and I just always assumed that I would get to go see it one day. Now, the life I live today, I would have never anticipated. I mean, I'm flying all over the place. And I get to go to great places. And I get to be with some of the top people in the industries. I would have never thought. But I do feel like I belong. And I can walk into a room with people

that you only have seen on television or in the internet and be comfortable in that arena. But it was a shift. We get in our own way with our own insecurities. If we argue for our limitations and we lose that argument, then we get to keep those limitations for our entire life. Oof, that's strong, Jeff. Wow, what a story. So here you are studying and for some reason, maybe to bring some cash in the door, you

decide to start this apartment painting service. Tell us more how this started and what was it? So I had worked all the trades growing up. Chicago's a union town, so concrete construction. I worked for a moving and storage company and one of the summers I worked for a painter and that's a really low barrier to entry business. So, and my roommate had a truck and I'm like, hey, let's start a painting business.

And there wasn't anything more than, we're gonna need money to stay. At that point, it was kind of a low point with my dad's business had been failing and there just wasn't any money. I just didn't have an avenue to get any money. So even to stay over the summer, I had to solve that problem myself. A paintbrush, a small ladder, a deposit on a job, and you're a painter and I knew how

to do it. So it was nothing more than that. It was just, I like to say, you know, many entrepreneurs are screwed into existence by circumstances. And I've got a problem to solve. I want a case of beer a week and I want to eat and I need a roof over my head. It was just that simple. The truth is you seem to always jump on opportunities.

And I feel like you have also a great story. You started AvantaClean. It's all a kind of pattern of jumping into opportunities, not playing a victim, but actually rolling up your sleeves and saying, what can I do about this? Can you share that story? I graduated college and a buddy calls me, and we had built this very successful apartment painting business.

They had asked us to put a crew together and we recruited all the athletes that were taking classes over the summer and we would do 15 or 20 apartments in a day and we were making real money. I was making more than the football coaches were making. So I got offered a grad assistant football coaching job at the University of South Carolina by one of the coaches that had gone there and he said he called and said would you want to do that and I mean I couldn't afford to live on it. Back in the mid eighties, they weren't paying assistant coaches a whole lot.

So I was making more as a part-time painter and my brother was coming behind me. And if the resources weren't there for me, they really weren't there for him. And he was stuck. He was washing cars at Schomburg Toyota outside of Chicago and going to that junior college. So, you know, I also had an obligation to stand up a household and be able to help them with tuition and get them through school. So this guy calls and he says, hey, this hurricane just hit South Florida. You guys are aggressive.

We need all the help we can. They basically said, call everybody you know and see anybody who wants to work. And so we went down there and cut our teeth in the insurance restoration business for 18 months. Then in 94 moved up to Central Florida to start a business with three partners that I would ultimately over the next 10 years buy them all out We became a national and international government contractor disaster restoration we had offices in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and I bought my last partner out in 04 and South Carolina, North Carolina. And I bought my last partner out in 04 and decided to franchise the business.

So we sold all of our company stores under the franchise model in 2006, 7 and 8. Launched the business in 2009 to the market and we ended up with 240 locations and I sold the business in 2019. Seeing your maybe your dad, business failing, et cetera, how did that not scare you of starting a business with AvantiClean? Or was it just necessity or where did that come from? What I would say is, my observation of it is, my dad was working seven days a week. I was proud of him actually at the time. But when I look at it in hindsight, and I

realized that on client days that he would make me put on a sport coat and go sit in a cube to act like he had employees. I'm looking at it and they were a little overprotective over that snack box that you were supposed to put money in. I mean, if something got gone, somebody was in trouble and I was a kid and I was hungry. But I didn't really realize in a way it was a failure, but in the other way, him and his partner ran that business for probably a decade or longer. And then when he closed the business down, he did work for the clients from home. So he was still an independent contractor.

And then ultimately he took a job with a big company to get benefits and pension and whatever. And that's where he finished his career. But I didn't look at it at the time as a failure. I just knew that he was in business for himself. But that inspired you. I mean, it's incredible to watch. So you're starting this AvantiClean.

You already did the apartment painting. So you have some entrepreneurship in your blood, but again, multiple founders, buying out partners, there's a lot of hard moments through that. Can you share some hard moments that really taught you something? Look, I wasn't a good partner. I didn't understand what partnership was. Good agreements upfront had off bad disagreements down the road. And you need to understand when you enter into a partnership,

are you an investor, an advisor? Are you the operator? Are you going to sign an employment agreement? Are you going to run this business? You have to get absolute clarity around how things are going to go. And I think we went into this business and we started it up. And there was a real this business and we started it up and there was a real interesting negotiation when we started it where these two guys were University of Florida

graduates. They were older than us by a decade or more. They had a lot of experience and we were kind of the young kids, rising stars or whatever in the field. And they wanted 51% of the business. And my sense of it was we shouldn't do that because we're gonna lose control. So I said, look, it's a 50-50 business, it's 25% four ways, and we'll let you brand the company in the Florida Gator colors.

So I traded that for that 1%. But it's actually, now if you think about the succession of the negotiations that went on that was really important percent because it wasn't a year and a half later where one of the partners just wasn't showing up and Was you know one of the older guys and he was getting into it with the other guy and it wasn't working so we had to buy him out and Then my partner that I started with, it was the same thing. It was a lack of alignment, lack of performance, lack of showing up. And the reality of it is we didn't negotiate who was responsible for what before we started.

People just act in the way that they perceive that they were going to have to contribute and then there becomes these disagreements. So if you want to have a professional outcome, you've got to design professional partnerships. And if you're not going to operate the business, then don't even pretend that you're going to operate the business and make sure that the business has the operators that it needs and the contingencies that it needs. And people are agreeing. Another problem you get into with partnerships is if money needs to be put in, if there's three people, you're reaching for your wallet and they're reaching for your wallet. You know, that's the problem. Like, you know, the rubber hits the road when it's time to write a check. That's when it really, do you really believe in this? Are you

really committed? Are we really all aligned? So now what I'll say is if you forward that to today, I've made a study and I made a point of partnerships and collaborations more specifically. And you know, I have a great friend who has really made a science of collaborations. You don't have to just start a business by yourself to take advantage of a known market opportunity. You can create a collaboration. You can name that collaboration and now everybody gets the benefit. And if you look at it, and I know you were an investor and you made a lot of investments, and I also got

into the after I sold my business, I mean I got very diversified in lots of investments and partnerships, but the challenge was is some of them expected a lot of me because they wanted to trade on my reputation and my background. You can be a partner but you've got to be out front of this business because you're gonna give people comfort that if they join this franchise, then it's going to be built properly. And that was never the agreement. You know, it was like, well, you're going to invest and you're going to advise. So you have to get those clear expectations up front.

And you really have to be careful about the things that you get involved with to make sure it's something that you can carry it through. And then you have to do scenarios that say, if everything goes as worst as it possibly can, who's going to step in? So much learning. I just wanted to grab that because again, that's what you do now and we'll get to that. But you decide at some point to franchise. And it is a very different model. It's very different than all of us rolling up our sleeves and building this thing. Now you're going to a completely different growth model. What made you decide that and what are some of the learning from that?

I hired my first franchise attorney in 1997 because coming out of the hurricane, I realized that it was the franchise businesses that were dominating and observationally the serve pros the service masters the Paul Davis it was really first general services, which was a dealership model Observationally they were the ones that were able to bring the resources and I realized that that industry was very heavily controlled by franchise systems So I'm like well, then we should be a franchise system. We shouldn't join a franchise, we should be a franchise. So I hired our first one in 97, just got some education on it.

I actually created our franchise company in 2000, but lack of focus leads to a lack of greatness. Our company was growing so fast on the direct business side that there was no resources, time or energy spent on the franchising, number one. And number two, there was a lack of alignment with my partners. They were fearful. They were very comfortable building a lifestyle contracting business. And now I was willing to do it for as long as it took to get us where we needed to go. But that wasn't what I signed up for. In our second year, in 1995, I moved to Charlotte by myself

and started our second location. And we became the thought leader. We became the innovator. We actually weren't operating under Advantage Clean at the time. We came up with the brand, we got the trademark. We said, we need to change our name now because we're gonna be a franchise organization.

So all of that started happening around 2000. We said, we need to change our name now because we're going to be a franchise organization. So all of that started happening around 2000. But when you have partners that everybody has to be aligned until I bought my last partner out, we couldn't make any progress on it because there was just too much info. And honestly, the innovations that we came up with in our North Carolina location, which was probably 80% of the revenue coming through there. We created our commercial services group, we created our government contracting division, 90% of the revenues were being generated by our office. And that office, the original office, was having a real hard time making the transformation over to the current business model.

And ultimately, my last partner, who is a wonderful man, he was incredible mentor, but he wasn't one that could deal with a lot of stress. And he ultimately kind of got a little And ultimately, my last partner, who was a wonderful man, he was an incredible mentor, but he wasn't one that could deal with a lot of stress. And he ultimately kind of got a little sick and just was like, you know, I need you to buy me out. So hurricanes hit central Florida in 2004. There was three of them that crisscrossed there. We ended up doing about $4 million worth of water damage in about 90 days.

And that's very high margin work. And that provided cash for me to go to him. And it's funny, I hired a mediator to help us negotiate the sale. We had real estate, we had multiple commercial buildings, we had lots of assets, we had the franchise business, which was nothing at the time. And then we had our operating business, which was significant. And the guys like, I've never been in a negotiation where the buyer was trying to give the seller more than he was asking for, and the seller was trying to take less. So we were inversely negotiating against each other.

I'm like, Dan, you've built this, you need this money. He goes, well, I don't really, you know, that's a lot, you know, you're taking all the debt. And I'm like, so, you've built this, you need this money. He goes, well, I don't really, you know, that's a lot. You know, you're taking all the debt. And I'm like, so it was, it was interesting. And the guy's like, I've never seen anything like it, but I think that's a testament to that partner. His name was Dan and he was just a really good guy, very giving.

And then I'm not the hardest business guy out there. I care deeply about our franchisee's success. Part of being a good franchisor, business is too hard, especially for entrepreneurs and first-time business owners to just go to the contract and beat them over the head with it when they're having a legitimate problem, understanding what they need to do or the stress of it. It's such a shift for them to put that entrepreneurial suit on for the first time. shift for them to put that entrepreneurial suit on for the first time. And you really have to have patience and empathy and a real intent that these people are going to be successful.

And sometimes it's tough love. And sometimes we make mistakes in a program or an advertising thing or something like that that has an impact on them. Sometimes they make mistakes that we've got to parachute in and help them resolve a lawsuit or a problem or something like that. But when your partner's like that, you're real partners and you have to really care. So franchising is difficult for that reason and people that have had a lot of success or maybe they've been a high level executive at a bank and I've hired those people to come into my franchise organization. And after like a year or two, they're like, it's too soft. You can't just fire them. It's a game of influence. And it's a journey and it's an entrepreneurial journey. And so there's a real

nuance to really good quality franchising. And yes, it's execution, it's technical excellence, it's paying attention to the market, it's being agile and bringing new solutions to make sure that your franchisees don't get behind and it's all the good business stuff that's there. But then on the other side of it is you do the sunset rule, answering every call before the end of business, remembering people's birthdays, calling people when they have something that goes well. That stuff too.

It's all mixed in there because it's really, it's a big partnership. Because at the end of the day, you truly care. You have to. And I mean, if somebody gets in trouble and they do, then we will do everything we can, including waiving fees and everything to get them out and get them as not hurt.

The nice thing about service businesses is that the investment's not that high. They don't have a big expensive lease or piece of real estate. So their ability to recover anything that they got into a service business is usually very attainable. So speaking of caring, one of the places where I saw this on you is Undercover Boss. I have no clue how you made it to this show. First of all, how the heck did you make it to the show and what did you learn from it?

First of all, Undercover Boss likes to work in franchising because it's easier for an employee of a franchisee not to know who the CEO is. So they do a lot in franchising and they had somebody that dropped out. A lot of people turned them down. The contracts are like three inches. So, I mean, there's a lot of legal. So I'm going to go out and no matter what happens, you're going to record it all. And the first time I'm going to see the show is when it plays in front of 7 million people on national television and I have no say. And they're like, yeah, that's right. So a lot of people are, they're afraid of it.

If there's not an immediate compelling reason to say no, your answer should always be yes when you're an entrepreneur. Now you could say, well, you know, the things you say no to blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, in an opportunity like this, you can't buy that kind of press. So they had to drop out and they like, if you can film in two weeks and get through the contracts

So what they do is they come out they do a sizzle reel about four hours of filming they put together what they think They send it to CBS CBS turns down nine out of ten of them You got to make it through that round and then you got to make it through contracting and then you got to be willing to give away X number of dollars on the show It's your money and it's a big number and then you got to commit to going and wherever and whenever. So that was how it happened and then the experience was amazing and I would never tell how they do the show even though my confidentiality is long since up. I don't want to ruin it for them but let me just tell you I mean, at first people start sniffing out that is this undercover boss, but the production of it is such that they do a great

job creating the scenario where these very real conversations can happen. And the conversations are all real. They really are. Now how they get those out on time, whatever, that's their little secret sauce. but it is exhausting. The more drama, the better. So if they can wake me up early and say, we want to shoot you getting out of bed and pretending to call your wife and blah, blah, blah, and then they'll take you for an hour and stand you in the rain before you shoot and ask you questions. And then they'll take you at lunch and do the same thing.

Then they'll take you after the shoot and do the same thing. Then they'll take you after the shoot and do the same thing. Then they'll keep you up till 10. Over the course of time, they're trying to see if they can break you a little bit. I think now that's not what they said, but it was clear that they're really trying to get soundbites. And I went into with the approach, the saying the only way that I can have control over what's said is only say things that I'm comfortable with them using.

And by the way, you probably tell by now, the filter between my brain and my mouth is paper thin. It's like a coffee filter that's been used. So 75% of the things that popped into my head, I'm just like, you're not going to say that. You're just not going to say that. Cause it would have been, they would have put it together in such a way that would have made great television, but it would have made me look like, you know, the worse you look, the probably better it is.

So what happened is we did five segments. I got busted twice. They threw out one that I got busted. And they said at the end of it, they said, you know, you have four segments that are so good. Usually they have to go film an extra three minutes at a dog park because they don't have enough content. at the end of it, they said, you know, you have four segments that are so good, usually they have to go film an extra three minutes at a dog park because they don't have enough content.

They said, you have five segments that people would kill to have. And as a result of that, we had a very positive show and it was very emotional. We had great outcomes with the people that were on it. One of the ladies, Danielle, half the stuff that happened to her and her family, they didn't even show. I mean, they have a psychologist waiting offstage after the reveal and all that, but she really needed the help.

She had kids and a special needs child, and the husband was no longer alive for a really horrible reason. And it was just, and they were getting ready to be homeless. And she calls her daughter on the phone, after the show and she's on speakerphone and the daughter's like, you mean we're not going to have troubles anymore? They were getting ready to lose their place they were living and she ended up, we set her up as a remote call center person so she could work from home, take care of her special needs child

who was near the place where she needed to get him care. They had never been on a vacation, so they rented a van and they drove California. That's all they wanted. We're like, we're going to send you here. And they're like, no, just rent us a van and give us the money. We're going to drive around California together as a family. We're going to see that. She was a top performer.

And for two years in the call center, we paid her rent. We covered her rent so she didn't have living expenses. And at the end of it, two years almost to the day, she ended up getting married and buying a home, which was her goal. So the whole goal was to set her up with income and reduce her expenses so she could save for a down payment on a house and also give her that stability of W-2 so she could qualify for a loan. And it just worked and she was great and she was a top performer.

And so like that's when it goes well. And that's what it's all about. Literally you're changing lives. I can't think of something more incredible, which is also probably a good segue to what you do today, but before that you decided to sell AvantiClean. I'm sure there was some debate, fear. I mean, it's been a long time. It's been your baby.

Take us a little bit to that and then it's going to be a great thing to where you've started to today. People can't make decisions against a framework that they've never seen. The first thing I did was I got into Vistage in 2009. I had an incredible mentor who had built Husqvarna North America from 29 million to 530 million through a dealership network. So he's the perfect coach for me. And then at some point I got into something called YPO, which you're probably familiar

with. And I got into YPO. And as I moved up through leadership in YPO, and I got into a bigger room, I realized that everybody in there had sold a business and that it wasn't that scary and that your identity and your role could be separate. My whole identity was wrapped up in two, really three identities, the founder and CEO of Advantage Clean, father, husband and coach. So that was it.

But the ability to say, you know, I've been running this business for 24 years and 11 months, were one of the largest, what I would consider high quality assets at that point in time that was available for the market because private equity had come in and really gone through the home service space and acquired a lot of businesses.

There just wasn't a lot of inventory out there at the time. So now we're in a space where maybe the demand is exceeding the supply. Multiples were high. I was 50. We were comfortable. We didn't need the money necessarily, but I also knew that the company needed to go through a real investment. It needed some change. It needed some change.

It needed some life pumped into it. And I just said, you know, if I'm going to do something else, I would like to have more capital and I would also like the headspace to be able to do it. And you, you sit in the CEO spot. So there's certain things that you can't do because it might conflict with what you're doing right now. So I thought it was a great time to provide an opportunity. People did really well that had been with me for, I had nine people that had been with me more than 20 years.

So it was an opportunity for them to get a check and other people to get a check and opportunity for us to really create some generational wealth and set up the vehicles for some dynastic things and to fund those things. You know, one of your roles as a parent is to provide. So I'm like, OK, well, that's done. And then it would give me the opportunity to do something different. So I really knew probably in 17, I took a few inbounds from some platforms and I just realized I wasn't the person to negotiate this deal. So I really needed to hire an investment banker and take it out to the more broad

market and see who would be the best fit for it. And that's what we did. And it was a good thing for a lot of people. I agree with identity. I think one of the hardest moments in my life was losing that identity. Suddenly I felt like a nobody, right? Like I don't know what I do now. But take me for a second. You decide to start Homefront Brands, which is what you do today and you have the podcast and you do all these things now. Talk to us a little bit about that and what do you do today?

How do you make our listeners incredible franchises? So tell us a little more. So Homefront brands, after about two, two and a half years of investing and advising and really getting involved in fitness and wellness and pets and oil changes and sales organizations and all these different things. What I really came to appreciate very quickly was it's kind of like the Warren Buffett thing. It's like the very durable nature of property services. You know, we're going to have a hundred million more people in this country by 2050. There's at least, and it could be much more than

that depending on what position we ultimately take on immigration and things like that. Some integration is definitely good. I mean, we need new people in this country and that's the way it's always been. And then also there's an increased migration with remote work. So people are able to move to more preferable places if they want to and still maintain continuity of their career through remote work and those types of things. So anytime somebody leaves a home and gets into a new home, there's always work to get done.

And there's really a shortage of inventory of houses in some of these places that are growing so fast. So there's gonna be new malls and schools. And I mean, if somebody was in, what city was it? Nashville's been that way, but there's cranes everywhere in some of these cities that are growing. And it's just, they're growing so fast in so many markets. So it's the most durable of the 72 categories

in franchising. I think it's really the most durable category. You'll never find a homefront brands nestled comfortably between a blockbuster and a curves because there's no obsolescence in property services. So if somebody wants to really build a generational asset, and by the way, businesses are high class assets.

I bought my first home when I was in college for $62,500, and I bought the next two homes for under $100,000. And if you're a young person today, and you're in where I I live you can't buy a starter home for less than four hundred thousand dollars and that just doesn't work for people it's very difficult especially with interest rates such as they are tell me about it I'm in Silicon Valley without two million you can't even move forward your foyer is four hundred thousand dollars so I used real estate all along the way to fund my business million, you can't even move forward. Your foyer is $400,000. So I used real estate all along the way to fund my business. That was my bank, commercial buildings, homes, spec homes, all this stuff we built.

And that was how I would gain money to maintain a hundred percent control of my business and fund it. So, you know, stock market, Hey, we hit all new, all time new high yesterday. And it continues to go up. So that's great. Dollar cost average in there. But like if I'm a person right now that wants to create financial security, economic freedom

for my family on Main Street USA, take advantage of the tax code. Businesses move with inflation. Businesses are the highest class asset. And I think more and more people in the work that you're doing at Leap is playing right into that. People might be improving their careers, but they also might be getting into a business, whatever the next leap is for them. I don't know how you do it.

I know what you do. So we looked at this property services because it was like, well, property services has played out and, but I don't think so. And so we looked at it and we said, you know, there's this concept of, okay, if we're going to do this, one of the challenges, if you start a single brand, brands take a long time to build, they're expensive to build because we only get paid pennies on the dollar on the back end. So until we have in a service brand 60 franchise owners operating at some level of maturity, we're not even going to be a break-even

royalty self-sufficient company. So we have to get there. And the other side of it is, is if I want to attract the best talent in the industry that I could possibly get, I have to create an opportunity that's big enough for them. So I can't start with one brand and nibble at it. I'll be another 24 years. So we know that we had to start with somewhere between four and six businesses, and to be able to have enough scale opportunity

to invest the kind of money that I was ready to start writing checks for. I wanted the technology platform of the future, and I wanted to invest in it. And I wanted to build it before we even started awarding franchises and inviting them to come in. So that, and to be able to hire a C-suite and to be able to get all the things going

and to go out and acquire and buy the brands. Because we had to go and acquire businesses that had history and success. So I was like, well, if we're gonna do it, that's the play and that's what we have to do. So we're very fortunate getting to meet some incredible founders that had built some one-of-a-kind businesses. I mean, we have a one-of-a-kind business.

We got some fast followers, number two in the market potentially. And then we got some that are table stakes type businesses, highly fragmented out there. But all of the brands meet our requirements of revenue, revenue composition, residential commercial mix. We have one that's straight B2B. So then we said, all right, well, we don't wanna go through the normal cycle of a bunch of mom and pops, and then eventually when they get tired,

they get bought out by the bigger fish. Think about franchising like this. So think about it as a cityscape. You know, when you see these cityscapes with the buildings and all of that, when they get tired, they get bought out by the bigger fish. Think about franchising like this. So think about it as a cityscape. You know when you see these cityscapes with the buildings and all of that, like the skylines? The height of the building is relational to the size of the balance sheet of your franchise owner. So you don't want to have a cityscape that's all ranch houses, because nobody can buy anybody

else. You need people that have enough capital that they're gonna drive the marketing. And if somebody gets tired or wants to get out of it, that they're gonna be like, yeah, I want that territory and I wanna roll it up because that's what it is. And we said, we need to create the type of opportunity where we can have a smaller number of large franchisees.

I mean, I would rather have 200 franchisees doing a billion dollars than 2,000 franchisees doing a billion dollars because it's a billion dollars. We get paid the same, but think about the difference of the noise that we have to deal with. So we've purposely and intentionally constructed our platform to be able to attract those types of owners. And then those types of owners you can be more collaborative with because they really bring value to what you're doing. And they have the money to stay through it on a startup with the marketing and they'll hire a little bit more talent and stuff like that.

And they can be more challenging too. And that's fine. Because the first time around I was putting my toe in and on the ice to see where it would break. This time around, we're just an adult group. We're in radical transparency. Everybody sees everybody else's numbers. We look at the numbers first.

We make decisions. If we make a mistake, we take responsibility for it. We move as a group and we hunt in packs. So if a listener is listening to this, why would they reach out to Jeff? How would they know if this is the right thing? Everybody has a different problem that they want to solve with a franchise business. Some people it's an itch they just always wanted to scratch and they're comfortable and they can tolerate it and they see themselves doing

something different. Other people, they're solving for kids, college educations. Maybe they're behind on that. Other people have been downsized three times. They want a job that they can't, they're gonna be the last one fired because it's them doing the firing. Other people want to fortify something for their retirement. And they want to build equity inside of something

that they can sell and have retirement. Some people want to build something because they've got kids that are in college that they want to do something with. And they're better to Work inside of an existing system than try to go through a startup of a new business and create everything. So All of these are different outcomes But the process is the same

People decide for one of these reasons that they have a need we get people that hear about us from the podcast there's referral partners out there brokers and consultants that do a really nice job of qualifying candidates and putting them through some rigor and on their skills, their financial capabilities, their outcomes, their timeframe, and all of that, and then match them up with good companies. They do research on the companies. They know who everybody is, so they'll, they'll know what to expect. And if they like a platform or a brand better than others, they'll say why.

And then just good old fashioned internet marketing. My job, there's different types of CEOs, there's financial CEOs, there's marketing CEOs. I'm a very marketing promotional type CEO. We've hired professional business runners and they're great. They're the best in the business, I think, and very interesting group of people, multi-billion dollar, multi-brand platform experience. So my job is really to set the tone for the organization. And you know how it is.

You don't realize how much downward pressure you as the CEO have in the organization, just by your presence. And the greatest thing that we can give anybody is our standards. You set the standards and you maintain the standards. And in franchising, you're working at the other end of it to make sure that people are getting what they need and that people are okay and people are taken care of. And I want to ask you for a second, Jeff, because you mentioned that you're more the marketing CEO. And from every time that I see, you know, from that show, probably way before that, for the podcast, your books, you always realize that building that reputation

and your personal brand will actually elevate everything around you. This is a big portion of what we teach in Leap Academy, but unfortunately, I needed to fall off on my face everything around you. This is a big portion of what we teach in Leap Academy, but unfortunately I needed to fall off on my face to realize that I didn't build my personal brand and that took me down. How did you realize that and how do you do it so well and what motivates you?

Well, I appreciate it. You know, I really just write books when I come to the end of an era. I have two books. I wrote a book called Hey books when I come to the end of an era. I have two books. I wrote a book called Hey Coach, which is really the story of a baseball team with which I go through my method for building a youth coaching team. So when I knew that I was not, I had aged out of coaching my kids, I'm like, I have two drawers full of stuff and I've developed it over a dozen years and I need to put it

into a book just so other people can have access to it. And then I'm not dying with the knowledge. And it was the same thing with discernment, the business athletes regimen for great life through better decisions. It's really targeted towards, I think, people that are early in their career or looking at their first entrepreneurial adventure and really underpinning a foundational thing to say here are a variety of views at models for making good decisions and How you do that? So that was really the purpose for that

Nobody's running out to Amazon to buy discernment But yeah, you know actually is doing quite well now for some reason, but it's not a beach read But it comes down to two things it comes down to reach and then it comes down to reach, and then it comes down to know, like, and trust. So number one, nobody can buy anything from something they've never heard of. So at the end of the day, anywhere that I can get this face, hopefully dimly lit, generally on rate, hopefully people are listening. You know, but anywhere that I can get this opportunity to be with you, to talk to your audience or to be in a Forbes article or to be on a television show or anything like that. Like that is just more reach and exposures of people that, what is it, people buy, they

have to be touched 11 times and seven different pieces of content or four channels or something like that something like that So so there's reach and then there's okay. Well now that you're reaching people. What are you saying? What do you stand for? what can people expect and What you hear today is what people are gonna get when they come to home front brands and it sets the standard For I mean if I'm willing to say all of these things, then our team understands that that's what we are bound and obligated to deliver upon. And it's not easy and it's choppy, building business is hard. We had 180 business owners under 12 months old. Think about

that. 180 new business owners under 12 months old. We are a fast growing franchise platform and we managed it. We managed it. It wasn't perfect, but everybody kind of knew what they were getting into. And if we were short, we spent and we worked really, really hard to make it all work for people. And it's only getting better. So I think personal brand is valuable to the extent that you're actually willing to live up to the messages that you're saying. Because where do people get in trouble? It's the TV preacher that then has indiscretions

after indiscretion after indiscretion. Like, okay, you know, I was getting ready to send my retirement money into you, but now I'm not. Well, the integrity and authenticity is a big piece of it. And whoever you are, values are value neutral. Your values are just like, this is how you make decisions. This is what people can expect from you.

Your values for a vice product, vapes or tobacco or alcohol or things like that are going to be different than your values for a business like ours or whatever. So the values are Zappos, you know, which has a great set of principles that they built their business on or great franchise platform, neighborly had a set of these rich values that when two or more people, I hate to plug another platform, but look, they're good, man. I don't mind it. You know, when two or more people come into a room at that company, they have to restart

by reciting the values in every meeting. Wow. Right? I mean, they put the cult in culture. You know, I'm not willing to go that far, but we use them. We make decisions by our values. We talk about them. I teach the trainees in the first two hours of training

how to use those to build your team and introduce yourself to the marketplace. And so people know what to expect when something doesn't go well. So I think all of that, back to your question, is getting the reach and as cost effective as you can, you're letting your voice fall in the ears of your customers, your prospects, and then delivering a message consistently that will be the same after they get in the door

as it was before they got in the door. Incredible. And we use it for interviews, for everything, right? The whole thing needs to match, right? If it's not a match, it's gonna be a culture clash. So we usually end with like an advice to your younger self. So something that if you would go back in time, would it be something that you wish you knew or somebody would have told you? Don't be so afraid of what other people think.

You can't make decisions based on how other people might react. It's not a good filter for making decisions. You need to have a system by which you make decisions. And if you read the entire discernment book, not one of them is what other people might think. Because by the way, most people that you're thinking about don't have experience, they've never done what you're trying to do. We're all just wrapped up in our own ego, in jealousy,

with the fact we didn't get a lot of sleep last night, whatever it is. Really work on the fundamentals of great decision-making and understand how you make decisions and why, and take the emotion out of it. And fear is an emotion, and it has no place in wisdom. And I think this is something that sometimes I wish I had listened to that a little more because it's scary, right?

We are wired by what people think, and that's gonna unleash so much weight when you can actually run faster. What an incredible share, Jeff. So first of all, I can't thank you enough. Like I can probably talk to you for another hour easily. But seriously, it's so incredible to see what you've built, what are you creating, what you're creating for others. I think this freedom and wealth and what I call portfolio career, I think this freedom and wealth and what I call portfolio career, I think we're in an era of different people will build different portfolios.

And I think this is part of that. And I think having a franchise that also create a little bit of, I mean, it's just incredible to see what you created. And thank you for being on the show. It's been an honor to be on. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.