Start With A Win - From Hollywood to Franchising | Aaron Harper, CEO of Rolling Suds

Starting point is 00:00:00 What does Hollywood and hard work have to do with franchising? For our next guest, it's everything on Start With A Win. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. Coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters at Area 15 Ventures, it's Adam Kontos with Start With A Win. Today, we have a remarkable guest with us, Aaron Harper, CEO of Rolling Suds Power Washing. Aaron is a seasoned expert in building relationships and developing brands, honing his management skills during his time in the film and television

Starting point is 00:00:36 industry in Hollywood. His journey in the franchising world began as a franchise development director for Chemdry, and when Belfour Franchise Group acquired Chemdry, Aaron's role expanded to senior director of franchise development. Get this, there he played a pivotal role in rebuilding training, marketing, and support infrastructure for franchisees, which are the franchise owners, by the way, personally contributing to the opening of over 400 territories across two brands. Now as the franchisor for Rolling Suds, Aaron is responsible for building and managing the franchise system, offering world-class support to franchisees nationwide. So get ready for an insightful conversation on franchise growth,

Starting point is 00:01:18 business, and entrepreneurship, as well as valuable tips for living a fulfilling, happy life as a business leader. Aaron, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited to be here. Hey, you have a really interesting background that I want to dig deep into that I want to kind of get into. What should small business owners, entrepreneurs, otherwise known as franchisees, to us, what should they be thinking about in order to create successes in their business and life? So let's start with you though. You had an interesting way to get into business starting in Hollywood. Take us through that. And then how did you get into franchising? Yeah. So I fell into franchising just like most of everyone else in the franchising industry.

Starting point is 00:02:02 I didn't find it. It found me kind of thing. After college, I thought I wanted to be a talent agent in Hollywood. You know, I don't know if you've ever seen Entourage, but I was, I wanted to be a Ari Gold except nicer. And, and so I started like, you know, I graduated from UC Santa Barbara. I moved down to Los Angeles. I did the talent agency thing. I was kind of on the agent trainee track and realized that I didn't like any of the people I was working for and I didn't want anything that they had. So I was like, OK, well, what's next?

Starting point is 00:02:35 And then a buddy of mine from college was like, hey, you should get into franchise development. And I was like, what's franchise development? Because I'm thinking like McDonald's, you know, when I hear franchise or Chick-fil-A at that time. And he goes, no, I mean, like, it's really cool. You can like help entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs and provide this bridge. And there's all these home service businesses. So jumped from Hollywood to carpet cleaning, which was my first job in franchising was at Chemdry. Scaled that up. Belfort bought that brand. They asked us to help that company scale to a multi-brand platform. They bought a brand called the Patch Boys.

Starting point is 00:03:12 They asked me to get involved to help scale that. It was 100 units, 40 franchisees. There was some infrastructure that needed to be built in order to put that in a position where we could scale. We did that. And then from October of 2020 to October of last year, I scaled that business by 223 locations and all of those franchisees opened and they opened, um, with full-time labor hired prior to going to training and estimates and jobs on the calendar right away. So it was a really cool experience. Um, then, um, we had also scaled

Starting point is 00:03:41 Belfort franchise group to 12 brands. Um, 12 brands. And I decided I could do this. I could do this on my own. And so I ventured out. I started looking for businesses that I could franchise, that I could take from kind of one corporate location to multiple units. Did diligence last year on about two dozen businesses. Met the founders of Rolling Suds in September. They were like, we're good at power washing, not franchising. And I was like, great. I know nothing about power washing, but I know a ton about franchising.

Starting point is 00:04:09 We partnered. I raised a ton of money to do this the right way. We started franchising in February. We now have 47 locations in 13 states across 16 franchisees. I live in Nashville, got a two and a half year old son and a 10 month old daughter. Awesome. This is a really cool story. And it's one that you're proving the systems work here. Because what is franchising? Franchising is not an industry for everybody.

Starting point is 00:04:39 Franchising is a way of doing business. So what attracted you to the franchise model? Your friend talked to you about it and growing entrepreneurs, but truly, I mean, from your perspective, what attracted you to, you know, franchising in and of itself? Yeah. I mean, I'd always liked sales and helping someone kind of become a business owner and helping them buy into almost like themselves as well as the system was really interesting to me. And then watching them kind of have that experience of, okay, I'm going to buy this, I'm going to do these things, and I'm going to have a predictable result. And being able to

Starting point is 00:05:15 give that to someone was really exciting. And I think, you know, my love for that has only increased. And I've only learned how I could do that better over the years. And now with actually owning the company and being in charge fully of my team, and we've got 11 people on the team across the country and we're adding a new employee every two to three weeks right now, that just has been exciting. So I've really kind of like double, tripled, quadrupled down on providing a path for people to become business owners. And it's just, it's like, I'll never do anything else. Awesome. And a lot of people look at franchising from a perspective of, okay, you're the franchise headquarters, you're in it for

Starting point is 00:05:56 yourself. But truly the reality is you're in it for all the people that join you in the system. So it's, you have to be a giver in order to be in franchising. Granted, the franchisor has to make money in order to support and grow the brand and help those independent business owners that are part of it. Each franchise is independently owned and operated, folks, but they're subscribing to really three things. They're subscribing to a brand, so a federally trademarked brand. They're subscribing to a brand, so a federally trademarked brand. They're subscribing to a system that they have to operate under, and they're subscribing to the fact that they pay a set certain type of fee that has to do with that. So those three things

Starting point is 00:06:35 cause a franchise legally under the Federal Trade Commission and how that operates. Take me into what do you think grows a franchise network? What are the fundamentals of growing the network? Because people just don't, they don't go to the store to buy a franchise. You can't walk into the grocery store or Home Depot or whatever it might be and go, I want to buy a franchise, please. How do I do that? Take me through your perspective on how this concept is beneficial to growing entrepreneurs into their own business where they get to do business by themselves. I'm sorry, for themselves, but not by themselves because they get to hold the hand of the franchisor. Right. So at Rolling

Starting point is 00:07:16 Suds, we refer to ourselves as a franchisee company. If we're a franchisee company, it's super clear what we do. We provide services to franchisees and in return for those services, we're paid a royalty. And as franchisees businesses grow, they're going to need additional services. And so we'll need to innovate to continue to earn our royalty. And that's kind of the way I look at it. So in order to grow a good franchise system, you need engaged, happy, to a certain extent, satisfied, let's say satisfied franchise franchisees so they need to be engaged in the brand that doesn't just mean engaged in the day-to-day it means they believe in the mission of the company and that they're they're they're you know marching towards a common goal our mission statement at rolling suds is this is a relationship we believe that every good business

Starting point is 00:07:59 is built on relationships and so we approach it. We approach every interaction with that in mind. So, I mean, growing a franchise system has to do with how many franchisees are in your system that are successful and engaged and want to continue to grow and add more units and add more trucks. And so we're focused on just trying to help franchisees be as successful as possible and build systems now that support a 300-unit network. And I think that that's a foresight that I'm able to have based upon the experiences that I've had that a lot of emerging franchisors don't have. Because as you know, a lot of emerging franchisors are the insulation company that decided to franchise or the burger shop that said, well, I want to franchise.

Starting point is 00:08:45 And franchising is a different business. You're creating systems that support franchisees. And you can plug in power washing. You could plug in painting. You can plug in anything. But I can still get into that system because franchising is a different business. So understanding that and understanding what you need to do to support franchisees and do it before they have that problem is, I think, how you grow a good, healthy franchise system. Awesome. It's fascinating because

Starting point is 00:09:10 so many people want to start their own business, especially in this day and age. It used to be really taboo, call it 10 years ago, where people were like, hey, what are you doing? You go, I'm an entrepreneur. And they're like, oh, does that mean you can't keep a job or what? But now everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. They want to own their own business and they want to have control of their future, but they don't want to have to come up with the systems and processes behind that. That takes so much time and effort and energy before you even see where that open door date is to start selling. So, I mean, that's the beauty of a franchise organization is the franchisor, Aaron, you know, with the power washing company, you know, what he did

Starting point is 00:09:53 with ChemDry before that, what we do with Port of Subs or Daddy's Chicken Shack or what, you know, even McDonald's does. You bring a few things to the table as a franchisor. First of all, you bring the why. Why are you in this business? You know, Aaron, you know, you're in the business with, you know, for power washing, rolling suds and getting this going. You know, your why is we want clean, whatever you want cleaned. You know, the what is, okay, I'm going to show up and do these things. And the how is, here's how you're going to run your business. And then the franchisee gets to just put in their effort and the elbow grease and hire some employees to put forth in order to own their own business. So, I mean, this is really kind of fun when it comes to how we are growing America.

Starting point is 00:10:46 There's almost 800,000 franchise locations in the United States. There are almost 8 million employees in franchise locations. And there are probably 3,000 to 4,000 franchise ores. So this is a huge part of our gross domestic product. I think it's like 2% to 3% of the GDP. And a great deal of our communities are based on this. Franchising is all community related. So let me ask you this, what do you see that creates effective franchise companies and what do you see that creates ineffective franchise companies when it comes to creating profitability for the franchisor and the franchisee? Yeah. And I think it goes to what is the goal of the company? And, you know, some,

Starting point is 00:11:31 I would say the, the non-successful or unsuccessful franchise companies, franchisors are just trying to squeeze, you know, they're trying to get their margins as high as possible and franchisors margins, the franchisees margins as low as possible. And my thought process is if I have an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset as a franchisor, like how much can I give, give, give from a support standpoint, then the franchise system and the franchise or my business versus the franchisees business,

Starting point is 00:12:02 my business will grow based on how much effort I put into helping them grow their business and be kind of profitable is the goal. We have double the amount of employees right now as we do operating franchisees. And that's by design. We're building systems in order to support the growth that I know we're going to have. Now, I'm fortunate in just like you, I started in franchise development. So that's what I've done. And so I've learned a ton. And a lot of the consultants that I work with know that if they introduce someone to me, they're going to be taken care of. They're going to be put in the best position for success. And so I'm able to be choosy on who I'm going to bring in. And I think that's also when you talk about a successful franchise company, it's knowing who's going to be successful in your system and who's not, and turning away those who are not going to be successful and only allowing the ones who are to come in, especially at the beginning as an emerging franchise,

Starting point is 00:13:06 because they lay the groundwork for the rest of the system. So we've turned away a ton of franchisees this year. In fact, it's been 25 as of Monday that we've turned away that wanted to write checks that weren't right. So, I mean, that's kind of like a real high-level answer, but there's a lot of things that help make an emerging or any kind of franchise or successful. And I think really the goal needs to be, how do I make franchisees successful from an abundance standpoint rather than scarcity? That's great. So you, you've said the word, um, emerging franchise or a couple

Starting point is 00:13:40 times, what does emerging franchise or mean to you? Yeah, so an emerging franchisor is brand new. They're coming out, they're deciding, okay, I'm in a franchise now. I'm going to get my first couple of franchisees on the road or built out, going to help them be successful and then kind of scale from there. A non-emerging franchisor has 50 to 100 units already out there operating and has proven by three to five to six years back or even longer that the model has been replicated by franchisees. Emerging franchisor, we launched in February. That's when we launched. So we are in all sense of the word an emerging franchisor. Now what's beneficial is it's not my first rodeo, right? I'm not the power washer who decided I'm going to franchise. I'm a franchisor

Starting point is 00:14:32 who found a really successful power washing business, partnered with the founders and said, let's build a franchise system around your location. And so that's what we've done. So there are different kind of stages in the life cycle of a franchisor and emerging or even micro emerging is at the very beginning stages. this? How can I make money? Because I mean, really, you've kind of proven the concept, but now you're testing it with people who are not you or not the founding entrepreneur. The founder always finds a resilient way of, okay, if I can make it six months or a year and make a profit on this thing, great. I got a business that works. As a franchisor, we have to take that and add a couple layers of complexity, really, because we have to create a system that can't be changed easily so that we can maintain a brand promise in that franchise organization. So can we build this business model, you know,

Starting point is 00:15:39 Rolling Suds, the way that power washing is done with you guys? And how old is Rolling Suds? I mean, it's been around a while. 33 years. It's a 33-year-old power washing is done with you guys. And how old is Rolling Suds? I mean, it's been around a while. 33 years. It's a 33-year-old power washing business. And they've probably broken every rule or found every way to fail in power washing, which is so reassuring for Aaron because when you come into this, you're like,

Starting point is 00:15:59 oh, okay, I've already learned all the ways not to do franchising. You've learned the ways not to do power washing. Let's get together and do something that works for people. So it's pretty cool. You talked about successful franchisees. So we've gotten through 10. Now you guys are super close to 50

Starting point is 00:16:18 and probably breaking 50 by the time this podcast comes out. What causes this upward momentum and what causes a successful franchisee where you can say hey um folks you know look look around come meet with any of my franchisees and talk to them we have a system it works stick to it here's here's the you know the golden nugget for this stick to the system people. Um, what, what causes them to be successful if, if they're like, I want to start a franchise. Yeah. Yeah. So franchisees, I say this to, I get this question all the time in franchise development. What are your most successful franchisees do? What do they do that stands out in difference? They follow the program.

Starting point is 00:17:02 When you buy a franchise, you're buying time. You're buying the time and the money that you would spend to figure all the things out that me and our founders, Brian Wendling Jr. and Brian Wendling Sr. have taken a long time to figure out. And so it doesn't make any sense at all to buy into a system and then challenge the system because it's the antithesis of why you bought into the system in the first place. Totally. So if you buy a franchise, understand that what you're buying into is an instruction manual that you need to follow. If you don't feel like you can follow an instruction manual or you kind of want to be the entrepreneur and start something and kind of have the idea and do that, franchising is not right for you. Don't buy a franchise. You'll be sorely disappointed. And so following the system and learning the system

Starting point is 00:17:51 and learning the playbook, and then come in and come up with new ideas and bring them to me. You've figured, you've done the system. Now you've figured out this referral partner strategy that helps you increase the revenue. We'll take that and we'll build it into our training now because you've brought something, but you got to learn the system at first. It's just follow the system before you innovate. And I can't stress

Starting point is 00:18:18 that enough to anyone who wants to become a franchisee. That's what you're paying for. Awesome. You mentioned a couple of times, like training and innovation, things like that. So we have the system itself. Okay. You're buying into the system. This is the framework for how the business works. If you look at like the fifth discipline, Peter Senge, the book, it's about systems thinking and following those systems in order to create success. Now let's talk about development here. So now you've got, you've got a great franchise network always has great training. When you finish the training or the training never finishes really, ultimately you should be able to work the system after you've done the preliminary training. And

Starting point is 00:18:58 then franchisors have ongoing training to continue to evolve the system and help you get better. How important is that for somebody to concentrate on? Because we start to continue to evolve the system and help you get better. How important is that for somebody to concentrate on? Because we start to see people drop the ball at that point. They buy the system. They're like, all right, I got it. And then you're like, all right, I'm going to teach you how to power wash. Like, no, I'm good. I know how to power wash. And they're like, do you, you know, do you know how to work this most efficiently and most effectively to follow the brand standards and create, you know, we have to put our name on every outcome that comes in this business.

Starting point is 00:19:33 What does training mean to you and how much should we stress this when we are working a business? Training's huge. I mean, when you buy into a franchise, that's another piece of like one of the layers of support that you get is training. When a franchisee learns the system and they start executing on the system, now it's about what's the different stage that they're going into from a life cycle standpoint. Then on our end as a franchisor, we need to know what problems they're going to have when they get to that next stage and how to solve for them now. And then I have coaching programs that are proactive rather than reactive that tie back to numbers. And every behavior that the coach

Starting point is 00:20:05 is coaching on should improve a certain line item on the P&L. And so everything ties back to behaviors and numbers. Now, I think what you see a lot in franchising is there's a ton of support on the front end to get that franchisee open. Then once they get to six, 12, maybe 18 months or two years, the support diminishes. And so now you have kind of a value gap. So it's like, you know, that franchisee is like, well, I don't hear from my franchisor. Like, why am I paying this royalty?

Starting point is 00:20:37 Like, I'm killing it. I'm doing a million plus in revenue. And so you have to figure out, and that's what we do at Rolling Suds. You have to figure out what is that franchise what we do at Rolling Suds. You have to figure out what is that franchisee going to need 18 months from now, whether it's truck number three or how do we get from three trucks to six trucks or how do we expand to other markets? How do we buy out competitors? There's all these things that you can do to help them get to that next stage. And I think as a franchisor, that's

Starting point is 00:21:05 our job because it's our system. We have to know when they're going to need additional support. And that's where we have to innovate because that support that they need two years from now is very, very different than the support they need now four months in. Awesome. Yeah. It's fascinating when you talk about that, because when I got up in front of 130 franchisees at a conference I spoke at not long ago, we started talking about career pathing. And a lot of people, they buy a franchise and they're like, okay, here's my revenue stream. But you're going, wait a sec. Don't convince yourself that you've hit your head on your possibility and opportunity here

Starting point is 00:21:45 because you can scale your own you know if you're a franchisee you can scale and you can actually become a multi-unit franchisee that's very common and that's when you really start creating wealth and expansion and the asset that you are building right now so i mean that's really what you what you have you're trying to maximize that asset, but you don't maximize that asset by staying still. You have to continue to expand upon it. And like you're talking about, I love what you said about, you know,

Starting point is 00:22:14 we coach them through these things. So you coach them through their career path in order to get two, three, six trucks, whatever that might be. And next thing you know, people are you know kind of running the the power washing space in a metropolitan area but let me let me take you though back to okay the hard work involved here um you know this doesn't come easy free or you know you just don't wake up in the morning you have six trucks and you own the metropolitan area,

Starting point is 00:22:46 you got to go out there and be the boots on the ground and be the community. The franchisee needs to go out and connect with the community because really that's what builds your business more than anything is your community involvement. Take me through how do you guys do that and what is your perspective on how close to a community does a local or small

Starting point is 00:23:06 business owner need to become in order to grow their business? So yeah, that's exactly right. You need to be in your community developing relationships. That's why it's our mission statement is this is a relationship because every single thing that you're going to do should be generating relationships that are going to help you build your business. Now, from my perspective, I try to have my team take all the other stuff off their plate. So we have a bookkeeping company that does the books. We have a call center that answers the calls. I have an insurance agency that gets them their insurance. I negotiated a rate with a credit card processing company, and that's the lowest rate they're going to be able to get anywhere else.

Starting point is 00:23:44 I have a commercial real estate agent that helps them find their space. I have handled the production line and the delivery of the trucks. I mean, like all the stuff that like, you know, call it like minutia, even though it's not minutia, it's stuff that they'd have to do on their own so that the franchisee can just go out and focus on execution and developing relationships. And if, if a franchisee is, that's all that, that's all they out and focus on execution and developing relationships. And if a franchisee is, that's all they have to focus on is developing relationships and execution and managing their team, and we do all the other stuff, then there's a very clear delineation of what we do versus what they do. And if that understanding is there and we can hold each other accountable to execute on

Starting point is 00:24:23 those different things, then that relationship can absolutely flourish. And I think also like what we're doing from like allowing franchisees to come in in the system and kind of signing people up, it's like we don't want anyone to come in that doesn't want to build a big business. So on the first call that I have with someone, if someone's like, yeah, I really want one truck, I want one territory, like I kind of want to do this with my son, not business for that person we would just it won't be a cultural fit it won't make sense we're looking for guys who want to build the 1-800-GOT-JUNK of the power

Starting point is 00:24:54 washing industry like what they're we don't have that currently there's no serve pro or 1-800-GOT-JUNK of power washing and so we are we're doing that currently that currently. And that's a huge opportunity for someone to be part of that. But they have to be willing to execute and follow the system and say, okay, tell me what to do. I'll do it. And then I'll do double the amount of that. And so those are the types of candidates who we're signing up right now. Awesome. Shout out to Brian at 1-800-GOT-JUNK. He's the CEO up there. Great guy and a great company. But yeah, I mean, it's exactly their concept. You know, they didn't invent it, but it's very successful for them. And also I see it doing very well for you guys as well. Let me ask you this. What is one key piece

Starting point is 00:25:41 of advice that you have for franchisees? If you sat down with a franchisee, I don't care what industry it is. Maybe it's home services, man in a truck, whatever it is, type deal. Give me a major piece of advice that you give to franchisees if you speak in an event or meet with a group of people. So follow the system a hundred percent, go with what the franchisor says to do, execute on that and go out and, and, and like you just said, get involved in your marketplace, get involved in your, you know, we have, we have marketing companies internally that handle, well, they're external, but we've negotiated relationships with them that help generate leads for franchisees. But if a franchisee can go out and just get in front of the real estate agents, the property managers, the painting companies, and get out and in front of people, the business will grow.

Starting point is 00:26:46 That's what will happen. If they wait for the phone to ring and kind of sit back and say, what are you doing for me? What are you doing for me? Fill my calendar. Don't buy a franchise. If you aren't comfortable getting out and executing and following a system and developing relationships in your marketplace, it's going to be very hard to be a successful franchisee. Oh boy. I hope everybody rewinds it and listens to that. I mean, some gold right there. You want to know how to make money in your small business. I mean, nobody's promising you any income. They're giving you an opportunity to go make it. There's no given when it comes to small business and there's no given when it comes to franchising. It's that franchising means other people have done it successfully before you. So I mean, that's really all it is. And

Starting point is 00:27:29 they're willing to share the ideas, share their knowledge, share the network, share the system and the brand with you. If you join as a franchisee, everybody makes sure you look up Rolling Suds Power Washing and Aaron Harper, who's the CEO. Aaron, where can we find you and Rolling Suds online so that if we have any questions or if you've got somebody who's listening to this who wants to be a franchisee, where can they find you? Yeah, rollingsudsfranchise.com. There's all of our information there. You can submit requests for information. I'll reach out because we're an emerging franchise or they you know, they get to talk to me unfettered access to kind of the leadership team at this point. And so that's a really exciting

Starting point is 00:28:10 thing. Um, so rolling such franchise, you can follow me on, um, you know, LinkedIn, I'm pretty active, uh, Twitter, uh, Instagram, Aaron T Harper. So yeah, that's where you can find me. Awesome. And opportunities like this don't come around a whole lot. People, emerging franchises that really are doing great things in their community and are growing like this. I mean, this one is a hidden gem and make sure you look it up. Look up Rolling Suds. Aaron, I have a question I ask all of our great leaders on Start With A Win. And I know you've got a wonderful answer to this. So how do you start your day with a win? Yeah. So I wake up and then, you know, I, I look at, I have to eat breakfast. I have some coffee and then I tell my wife, both my kids and my dog that I love them. And then I get to work. I love it every day I love it some some

Starting point is 00:29:07 really good love fulfillment there and I mean that that's a great way to start your day I do something very similar to that my kids are all out of the house but you know it's definitely the wife and the now three dogs that that I'll hear that so anyhow uh Aaron Harper CEO of Rolling Suds Power Washing we appreciate all you do everybody, Aaron Harper, CEO of Rolling Suds Power Washing. We appreciate all you do. Everybody make sure you check them out. Rolling Suds franchise. Um, you know, it's, it's a great thing and it's growing quickly. Hop on board. Aaron, look forward to seeing you soon. And thanks for being on Start With A Win. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Adam. It's great.

Start With A Win - From Hollywood to Franchising | Aaron Harper, CEO of Rolling Suds

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