Start With A Win - Leaders, It's Time to Step Up

Starting point is 00:00:00 Caring about the person as an individual instead of trying to, first of all, lump them into a group. You know, oh, you're a franchisee. No, no. You're a human and I care about you individually because you put your heart and soul into this. You pay me my living if I'm the franchisor and I appreciate that and I love you for that. So I'm here to give you 100% of my attention and effort. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack leadership, personal growth and development, and how to build a better business. Let's go. Coming to you from Area 15 Ventures and Start With A Win headquarters, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. Today, I am on the Franchise Masters Season 2 podcast. This is a fun one. I get into some of my history, as well as a lot of tips and tricks for small

Starting point is 00:00:45 business and franchises. Let's take a listen. Everybody was going to party. I was going to bootcamp and did that for a little bit. I was in artillery and radio operator, things like that. I got into law enforcement. My family was, I was third generation law enforcement. I ran a SWAT team, kicked doors for a living, blew things up, saved people. And actually, I learned sales by working undercover narcotics. So that's where I learned how to sell and negotiate is on the streets of Denver, buying and selling drugs, legally, of course. And then I started companies.

Starting point is 00:01:22 I started building businesses in the late 90s. I built an online company that sold police supplies and government supplies. And then I started doing Homeland Security Consulting and counterterrorism training and turned that into a consulting company. And that actually led me to franchising, believe it or not. So counterterrorism to franchising.

Starting point is 00:01:42 I began by teaching real estate agents how not to get killed doing their job. And that took me into the franchise space of the real estate industry, teaching REMAX and other agents, women's council realtors, people in the National Association of Realtors. And then Dave Linegar, the co-founder of REMAX, who was actually mentoring me at the time, I had met him while I was working police work, actually. And he was mentoring me in growing businesses and being a leader. He asked me if I wanted to come work for REMAX full-time. I said, sure. What do you want me to do?

Starting point is 00:02:14 He said, I want you to work with our franchisees, helping them grow their business. You are an entrepreneur. You're a leader. They need both of those things in their mind. So I said, great. So I started working directly with franchisees, took over the Mountain States region of REMAX, operating the franchise business of that, then the California, Hawaii region, then the Florida region, then the entire US and franchise growth and marketing, advertising, HR, IT, all the technology.

Starting point is 00:02:43 I became the chief operating officer and the board of directors said, well, if you want to be the CEO, you need to go get an MBA. So I went back and got my MBA and then became the CEO of Remax. And it's kind of grown from there now. I since left Remax about two years ago, and now I'm investing in different franchise companies. We own a company called Port of Subs and I say we as in Area 15 Ventures. I partnered with a co-founder of RE-MAX, Dave, and a couple other guys and we own Port of Subs. I'm serving as the CEO of that right now as well as a startup called Daddy's Chicken Shack and we're franchisee for Harley-Davidson and we also have some other different business

Starting point is 00:03:26 ventures that we're invested in. You know it's interesting because the last time I was on a SWAT operation there was some gunfire and things like that and I thought oh wow I'm not getting paid to do this anymore because I started volunteering and kind of handed the team off. But ultimately, now when I'm sitting there negotiating a business deal, I'm like, you know, it was almost easier getting shot at. But the reality is that, you know, business is stressful and helping franchisees, you know, these people put everything they have into their business and they go home at night thinking, what's tomorrow? How do I make ends meet? How do I pay the bills?

Starting point is 00:04:07 You know, what if my employees don't show up tomorrow or there's no customer to ring the register, things like that. So it is very stressful running a small business, but it's also very rewarding because you are absolutely in control of your destiny and you have help doing that, which is the great part about franchising.

Starting point is 00:04:35 My strategy around caring about the franchisees was that when you're talking to them, they're all that matters at that time. Nobody wants to be just another face in the crowd. You know, when you ask a franchisee what their biggest concerns are, the words that they use are me, myself, and I. And that's the difficulty. But they also, strangely enough, you know, when you ask a franchisee what their biggest concerns are, the words that they use are me, myself, and I. And that's the difficulty. But they also, strangely enough, you know, you also pair that with the fact that the franchisees love the brand. They're with the brand because they have fallen in love with that brand and the concept. So they're combining me, myself, and I with the brand itself. And we have to recognize that as the franchisor. We have to look at that and say, all right, culturally, our number one priority should be to care about the person that is

Starting point is 00:05:11 sitting in front of us combined with the brand. And how do we magnify those things together? Because that's really what you're doing. You're in the laboratory there taking human beings and brand promise, brand awareness, product, service, whatever that is, and magnifying those things by using a franchise system. So ultimately it comes down to caring about the person as an individual, instead of trying to, first of all, lump them into a group, you know, oh, you're a franchisee. No, no, you're a human. And I care about you individually because you put your heart and soul into this. You pay me my living if I'm the franchisor and I appreciate that and I love you for that. So I'm here to give you 100% of my

Starting point is 00:05:52 attention and effort. So I think it's cultural. If the culture in the organization says, hey, they're another number, they're a franchise agreement or whatever, then you're going to lose because you lose that human basis for franchising and for entrepreneurship. But if we focus on the person that's in front of us and understand that we could be talking about how they're going to pay their mortgage or how they're going to pay their continuing franchise fee in a really difficult time. I've been through those. I mean, we've seen ups and downs. I've been in it for two decades and the economy comes and goes, or maybe there's a natural disaster, a hurricane, whatever it might be, or, you know, a great I mean, we've seen ups and downs. I've been in it for two decades and the economy comes and goes.

Starting point is 00:06:28 Or maybe there's a natural disaster, a hurricane, whatever it might be. Or, you know, a great example was COVID when we had to deal with people being shut down. How do you approach that is, first of all, you have to care. And if your organization has a culture of caring, that's how you get there. If it doesn't, you're not going to find caring in your employees for those franchisees. The answer to this question scares the hell out of a lot of people because as leaders and corporate people at the brand headquarters, whatever it might be, they want to sit behind their desk and push papers around and make some phone calls every now and then or go visit the field whenever. But ultimately, it comes down to you have to be omnipresent, just delivering your

Starting point is 00:07:11 culture of the organization constantly. How do you do that? Well, a perfect example of how we did that was let's go back to call it March of 2020 when the pandemic hit. Everybody started freaking out. People were like were like oh you're non-essential we thankfully we were able to get real estate as an essential service because there are people in the middle of home transactions when everything started closing down but also look remax is 110 countries 9 000 units in 110 countries those people were trying to figure out how am i going to keep my you know my lights my lights on, things like that, if I don't have any revenue coming in, because nothing's happening. So ultimately what it came down to is we had these leaders in

Starting point is 00:07:54 franchising and in business who were hiding, and we had these leaders who were leading. So you can be a leader or you can be a hider. I chose to be a leader, and I showed up on video all the time. And we just continued that. We continued doing video broadcasts. We continued doing video podcasts. I had a weekly video broadcast called MindBodyBusiness. And we would take a word and how does that affect your mind? How do you put that into your body? How do you put that into your business in order to be a better just human being in order to, first of all, outlast the pressures that we had in business, but also build a better future for your company? Now, the franchisees out there will model what you're doing as a leader in your

Starting point is 00:08:38 headquarters. It's called mirror neurons. Leaders model leaders. And by the way, if you're not training leadership internally, if you're not spreading leadership internally, you're not going to do it externally into the franchise network. And they're not going to do it in their franchise unit, whether or not they're a, you know, chuck in a truck or they're a brick and mortar, hair salon, sandwich place, massages, whatever it is. if there's no leadership being modeled at headquarters to the franchisee, that franchisee is not going to model it to their employees or management to continue that. So ultimately, it's about being omnipresent. The best way to do that, unless you're face-to-face with them, is on video. Deliver your culture on

Starting point is 00:09:21 video all the time. And you see me do this all the time still. And then when you show up, you've built a great relationship with them via this parasocial relationship that they see you, fall in love with your cause and your motives. And it's like you've been there in their office on a daily basis. We all know that franchising is about being part of the community. You are the community representative of that brand and you're tight with the community. Well, a great part about

Starting point is 00:09:54 being with RE-MAX was that, first of all, we were everywhere and because we were everywhere, unfortunately we also were impacted by different challenges. And one thing you'll notice about RE-MAX and a lot of other franchise organizations is that when natural disasters strike, they rally the troops. They load up trucks with supplies and water and toilet paper and diapers and things like that. And they truck them off to where people need them, whatever country that is. It happens all over the world i was in florida during hurricane relief and we were stopping by a remax franchise to to work with them they were handing out supplies to the local community and there was a person in

Starting point is 00:10:38 there signing up to become a member of that franchise as a real estate agent and i walked in and i said why are you doing this today? She says, because this is what my community is about, is being part of this franchise in this community to help these people. This is where I live and I'm proud to be part of this. And it was because that Remax franchisee was helping the community that they were actually gaining business when nobody else was gaining business at that moment because they were helping the community the community wanted to repay them that's the cool part about franchising is that reciprocation of I'm gonna be with you I'm gonna take care of you franchisee we're gonna help the community and we're all gonna grow together so that was just

Starting point is 00:11:21 super heartwarming and I'll never forget that. I want people to take away that they need to care about leadership and being a damn good leader. Because if we don't have damn good leaders in society, we're not going to have business growth. We're not going to have economic growth. We're not going to have human growth. And that's what franchising is about. It gives us an opportunity to utilize those different levels of execution and influence in order for us to build business owners into business leaders and employees into managers and help them see a greater future. How many times do you hear that story about a franchisee who started as an employee and became a manager and then bought

Starting point is 00:12:05 a franchise. And now they own multiple franchises and they took a family who probably three generations live in the same house and they're barely making ends meet. And now they've built a great deal of wealth and they're sending their kids to college and they get to drive a new car or buy a new house or something like that. That's what I want them to know, is that leadership helps develop a greater future for people. And when we institute that with the franchising model, that's where we really see the magic. Thank you.

Start With A Win - Leaders, It's Time to Step Up

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