Start With A Win - The Bold Path of Charles Bonfiglio's Franchise Revolution

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Join our host, Adam Contos as he delves into the wisdom with a seasoned leader, Charles Bonfiglio, the visionary behind Tint World, who revolutionized the automotive franchise landscape. With over 40 years of entrepreneurial experience, we unravel the stories of relentless determination, strategic foresight, and overcoming challenges. From his humble beginnings he navigates the turbulent waters of entrepreneurship. Discover how Charles turned dreams into reality, leveraging franchising to propel his businesses to unprecedented heights. Tune in and embark on a journey of inspiration, growth, and empowerment in the world of entrepreneurship today on Start With a Win.00:00 Intro01:40 Where does the entrepreneurial bug come from?04:20 How to start a business from scratch.06:15 Things don’t always go as they are planned… at first.11:10 I know franchising now, let’s do this.14:40 There is an inflection point for franchisees.17:07 I always did this…20:10 How to make money for the company today – words of wisdom with the next 5 mins!25:08 I do this before staff members come in.⚡️FREE RESOURCE: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱?  ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/myleadership===========================Subscribe and Listen to the Start With a Win Podcast HERE:📱 ===========================YT ➡︎ https://www.youtube.com/@AdamContosCEOApple ➡︎ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-with-a-win/id1438598347Spotify ➡︎ https://open.spotify.com/show/4w1qmb90KZOKoisbwj6cqT===========================Connect with Adam:===========================Website ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/Facebook  ➡︎ https://facebook.com/AdamContosCEOTwitter  ➡︎ https://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOInstagram  ➡︎ https://instagram.com/adamcontosceo/#adamcontos #startwithawin #leadershipfactory

That's pretty solid advice right there to a new entrepreneur. So make sure that your people are productive first, and then if that's all going good, that's when you can start working on your own areas of development of your business. You want everybody going the same direction and doing the same thing and carrying the same brand promise. How do you keep that consistency going in your communication regimen with your franchisees? Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth.

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. Have you ever wondered how an entrepreneur's journey turns into a thriving business? Well, today we find out on Start With A Win. We're joined by Charles Bonfiglio, the strategic visionary behind Tint World.

With over 40 years of entrepreneurial experience, Charles has not only navigated the challenges of starting a business, but also revolutionized the automotive franchise landscape. From overcoming hurdles in leasing to strategic franchise expansions, he's a true pioneer in the industry. Today, we gain insights from a leader who turned dreams into a reality on Start With a Win. Charles, welcome to Start With a Win.

It's great to see you again, Adam. Hey, take us a little bit on your journey here from Brooklyn to Florida, building this automotive empire. Where did all your entrepreneurial background begin? Where'd you get this? And what made you want to leave your state and go start something new? You know, it's really a good question. I don't know where it really comes from when you get that entrepreneurial bug. But for me, I learned a lot from my dad. He had a clothing factory in Berkeley. And as a teenager, even as a 12 years old, I was actually going to a store and I wanted to learn every job that someone did in this business. So I learned a lot about business from my dad.

And then as I grew up and I was ready to do business, I opened up my own clothing factory and I started to design a clothing line. And so I did that. And then there's a story behind how well that went and where it went from there. But after that, I actually went to my dad and I said, dad, I've been doing the business that I learned from you. And now I want to do the business that I really love. I love cars. I had a convertible Corvette. I wanted to go down to Florida, be by palm trees, convertible cars, and I wanted to work on cars. And that was how my journey began. I sold everything, including my Corvette, took two suitcases, took a one-way plane ticket to Florida. And I started my journey into Florida to open up my first business in

automotive. Wow. That's really casting kind of your faith to the wind there, my friend. I mean, that's fascinating. But ultimately, I mean, it puts you in a position where there's no turning back. I mean, did you feel like it was do or die at that point? Or was it just dipping your toe in the water and seeing how it felt? In my mind, I don't know what made me feel that there is no way I'm going to fail. I just felt very confident that I could do this. I learned a lot from my dad and what he did. And through my experiences, I had a friend and older brother that had a car stereo shop called Dr. Car. So on the weekends as a teenager, I used to go there, hang around.

I learned the business. I thought it was really cool. And I just felt I was going to open something like that. And I had my clear picture in my mind. I was going to do it and I didn't even look back. It just was, I'm going to do it. And I saved up a lot of money and they sold my company. I came down to Florida. I had more or less about $30,000 saved, which at that time was a lot. And I got a one bedroom apartment set up quickly. I bought a four year old Ford EXP that was coming way down from a brand new Corvette. But I wanted to just, you know, really conserve my money, save it from investing in the business.

And that's kind of where I was going at. There was no looking back. Awesome. And so many entrepreneurs have this question of, okay, you land in an unknown city. You don't know anybody. You've got so many dollars in your pocket. Like you said, you've got an apartment and a car. What's next? I mean, how do you start a business from scratch like that? If I just simply put it, it's get down in Florida, get an apartment to get out of the hotel, get a rental car so I can, I mean, buy myself a little low cost car to get

out of the rental car, go to the hotel, did that. Next thing, find a location where I can put my business and search that out, negotiate a lease and build it out and put up a sign and go in business. It was simple, straightforward. I had a little bit of a blueprint plan written, how to do it, where I was budgeting for. And I was just going to do it as simple as that. It wasn't even like a maybe. It was just, again, I don't know what I didn't know. But things turned when I got down to Florida and I learned a lot.

So you just started taking action. I mean, you got up in the morning, you're like, what do I need to do today? And you went and did it. That's pretty solid advice right there to a new entrepreneur. So you started installing car stereos, is that correct? Yes. First on my home car, I utilized my friend's older brother's car shop to be able to go there, learn about it, start installing my own stereo system. And then I started doing it on my friend's cars. And then I wanted to find myself just hanging around in the car stereo shop on the weekends and next thing you know, hey, Charles, do me a favor, help put those speakers over there.

Hey, Charles, you know, I need the stereo. Go show them what can work with the amps and the stereo and i just started learning i started you know just finding out how to work this business um it was fun i liked it i didn't think of it as a job i thought of it i would get to learn something do something i liked um and people started saying hey you're really good at this you should think about maybe doing something like this in your life i didn't really think seriously until i did and made that judgment to sell my businesses and move down to Florida and open up a car stereo shop. So then you turned this into Tint.

Is that correct? I mean, how did that transition occur? Well, it didn't go exactly as I planned. Okay. So after being down a few months in Florida, I went to the landlord, the first one that I found a really nice location. I wanted it so bad. I thought it would be great. It was an auto center. It had an Amco transmission, a Jiffy Lube,

a tune-up place. I was like to the landlord, listen, I want to open up a car stereo shop. They have to market accessories. This end cap would be great. Can I get a lease from you? He was like, no, no, we really don't write to businesses like that. I'm like, what do do you mean i know what i'm doing like this is a business that's everybody has well that's like trendy we'll go for like companies that are already established and you know i said but you got like you know i'm go transmission in the area he goes yeah but they're established business this is another location i said huh i said. I said, okay. I said, but I'm well-funded. I'm ready to go.

He wouldn't have it. He said, well, we get funded by the banks to buy our properties, and they're trusting these brand names that go in here. We get funding. A new startup wouldn't be good for us. I said, okay. So I started to understand what I needed to do. From that point, I left.

I went to a bank. The bank was Wells Fargo. I walked in. I said, I need a business loan. I have X amount. I went to a bank. The bank was Wells Fargo. I walked in. I said, I need a business loan. I have X amount. I hit my business plan. I said, we don't have any loans for that. I said, you don't have any loans?

How do you get started if you're not going to loan me? They said, well, we only really lend to businesses that are growing, not starting. Okay. So I left, and I said, you know, I kept nice with everybody. And then I ran into a cousin of mine who had recently started a Meineke discount muffler franchise. And he did it in New Jersey. And he said, what are you doing in Florida? And I told him what I was trying to do. I said, how'd you get started with that? I said, well, what do they do for you as well? They help you get financing. They help you find a location.

They give you a roadmap. And I found franchise. I think, wow, that's what I need. It wasn't the business that I wanted. I wanted aftermarket accessories. But it was something that he was being successful at. He was getting ready to open up a second store. So with that, I called up and wound up getting a franchise

from Reineke. I started my first store. And I went back to that same landlord and they said, I just got approved from Reineke. How about now? Oh, here's my lease. We'll take it. We'll love it.

We love Reineke. It's a good brand. So franchising just gave me the blueprint and the roadmap for me to get what I needed to get over that hump. And I opened up my first store about a year later. Then I got married. I went to my wife and said, you know, I'm still driving this Ford DXP.

I would like to be able to come down here and drive a Corvette like I did in New York. She goes, Charles, you know, we're doing really good. And I thank you for everything we're doing, but I think if you want to have that, you might want to open up another one of these. I go, okay. So I go to my franchise. I go to another franchise doing. But I think if you want to have that, you might want to open up another one of these. I go, okay. So I go to my franchise,

I go to another franchise agreement, then I opened up a second store. And soon after that was successful. And then that began the journey of me wanting to open up more stores and actually buying real estate and leasing the real estate to my franchises. And that's what I kind of did before I developed Tilt World into a franchise. Okay. So you become a franchisee. You see, obviously, clearly the power of branding and

franchising here. I mean, the leverage is massive. Take somebody who's just trying to be a startup to somebody who's established instantly. I mean, that's a great story, Charles. Take us through, okay, you decide you want to start your own brand of tint world. And how did, how did that come about? Did you just go start a single location to prove out the concept? I mean, obviously going from accessories to tinting, but I can see in Florida, everybody needs tinting on their car windows. So I mean, how did we make this leap and And what happened with the Meineke franchises? So, you know, I got very involved with Meineke as a franchisee.

John Gold, their advisory board counsels, I helped them launch their very first point-of-sale software. It was a young guy coming in, and they said, we want to try this out. I said, I'll do it, And became the chairman of the computer committee. Launched their first point of sale with them. Started adding value of what else can we do with this thing from a store level. And over the course of a lot of years, I built 10 stores.

Most of, half of the locations that I built, I own the properties. And then I continued to build. But when I got to be around 2004, 2005, I was doing really well. I was at the top of the chain. I did everything I can do. And, you know, MyLiQ was becoming a very mature franchise and I wanted to do something more. I just wasn't done yet. I was really getting involved with helping grow their brand, but they were like more stabilizing out, and I was looking to do some stuff. I like to do systems. So I told my wife, I said, you know, I think I want to open up my own brand, something

else. She said, well, what do you want to do? I said, I want to build the franchise brand that I always wanted to build when I came down here. But one store is not going to do it. If I want this kind of a franchise, there's got to be other people that want it too. So I know franchising now. I want to build that.

So she goes, well, how do you want to begin? I said, well, there's a cool company called Tip World. The guy started in 1982, right around the time I came down to Florida. I came down shortly thereafter and he built it up to six locations. They were on a shoestring budget. They weren't anything great. They just were nice. I brought my car there.

And I liked the name. It was franchisee looking. They just were nice. I brought my car there. And I liked the name. It was franchisee looking. So I approached him in 2005. And I told him I want to buy his company. I think I want to buy the company and convert it to a franchise. And after that, we worked out a deal. In 2006, I purchased the assets of the company. In 2007, we launched a tipwell franchise. And I just wrote the franchise system the way I wanted it done. I understood it very well. And then we began selling franchises. And by 2007, we added three more stores to bring it to nine locations. And I wanted to go slow because I wanted to build and evolve this brand to where it was really like, you know, really a lot of legs to it.

And that's kind of how I started. Awesome. And tell me about your franchise growth pattern here. What are we looking at as far as how the growth has gone since then? So, you know, up to my first 20 stores, there was me, one other guy, and a bookkeeper. My wife's held down the fort with a couple of my minikis. Now, before I did this, I went to Meineke. I was very friendly with them.

I got them to sign off that this was not going to be a conflict with my current businesses. It was a different industry, what I would not do. And it worked out really great. I had a good relationship with them. And I just wanted to do this. But I was doing really well with that. So my wife overlooked my team that was running my Meineke franchises

while I was building tit world and so it was a few stores a year then to a dozen then to 15 18 20 um by 2019 we hit about uh just about 70 ish stores uh open and a bunch in the pipeline it was time to scale i felt like the system was predictable it was hitting the numbers when people were growing. I built a good team around me and it was time to grow. Little did I know we were going to hit the pandemic in 2020. That was when I was planning to grow. I got lucky. Our company got lucky because we became an essential business through working on cars.

And that allowed us to even scale quicker because, you know, I built a really good team. And that team helped me stabilize our franchisees, have a good mindset of what we're dealing with, how to grow together. That was a life-changing point for me and many people, I'm sure. But I think I learned a lot from it and it allowed me to level up in my leadership skills to help people in every aspect of where they are in their life and where they are in the country or even in another country, some of the stores we had. So that allows us to grow. But in 2020, we grew 22 stores, sold.

2023, we sold almost 70. I'm sorry, 2021, almost 70. And from that time, it's been 60 to 70 stores a year that we're awarding. And in the area of like 20 to 30 stores a year that were opening, a lot of people are buying multi-unit owners. So we're starting to bubble them up quicker. As they grow, they grow more faster. So we're right at about 140 stores open with about 100 plus in the pipeline of the development. Wow. That's great. I mean, there's this inflection point in franchising for all of our listeners. Your first 10 stores are your hardest.

I mean, you're trying to convince people of your concept. 10 to 50 is, okay, we're getting our systems right. 50 to 100 is we're learning how to sell and scale. And then 100 plus, that's when you start rocking and really starting to scale that organization hard. But there are certain things that you look for in a franchisee as you start to scale because you can't hold everybody's hand. I mean, that's the reality. You start to develop a more sophisticated franchisee and the

people in the network itself become more sophisticated and that becomes the power of the franchise is all that talent. So tell us, how did you start developing the leadership amongst your franchisees? Because you've said the word leadership before in this podcast. And I think that's really important in this. Well, you know, I realized that, you know, to get more people to believe on what you're doing and how you get on the same page, they have to believe you. And your message, your vision has to be very well clear and defined. If you have a changing division and you're not very clear on the path, how, where, when we're going to get there,

and why we're going to get there, why it's always important for us to all grow chip world with the same mindset, if they don't know a clear path, it's hard for everybody to rally up and stay behind you. So when you're a leader, some of us leaders, we're all over the map. I mean, we've got a million ideas. We're writing them all down. And that's great if you want to do that yourself. But don't screw up everybody else's mindset because yours is very broad. Not everybody can handle that. You've got to keep people focused on what the main objective is and how do we get

there and why. And if we keep that why in place everybody gets to know it's not just because we're doing it for no reason there's a why to it and that why has to be aligned with everybody in your team and hopefully everybody in your franchisees and it's easy for them to get aligned with you when they want to buy the franchise but how do they stay aligned with you when they have a franchise because some of their minds um don't maybe think that far ahead they're thinking shorter term so me i'm always trying to let them think i didn't do if you were inspired by my story you know and you think that it was easy it might sound that way because i'm looking back but looking forward it was a time of i loved what i did i worked in it every day you know came across obstacles, but I always stayed

focused on moving to the next goal. It wasn't an end game. I'm not making enough. I didn't get there yet. I always took the lever and looking at other people, not comparing myself with them, but learning from them. Some of them, I started seeing an order in opening five stores, eight stores. I'm like, I can do that. Let me talk with them and learn from them. And also, maybe I can teach them a few things. So franchising is a love of sharing your information with other people and hopefully helping them all grow together. And once they find a brand or product or service that they think they can be really good at and they love it, they're not really working. They're just building their life and their lifestyle and their financial growth.

And that's what I'm trying to look for in franchisees. Now, I've always really marketed franchising to my 21-year-old self. I thought that's who I was. That's who built it. But it's not. Those younger people buy it because they like it and they're pretty good at it. But now I'm getting older people that want a solid franchise that's predictable growth, that's predictable growth that's got really strong profit margins and it's a niche industry all the things they want you know recurring revenues to be able they want that and so they're even liking it more because they get to do some fun that you can really make a lot of money with and um but those people are coming in and they're actually being able to get more locations, bigger territories, and actually grow a little quicker because they have some financial knowledge behind them from their wisdom, from their skills.

So it's nice to be able to leverage the younger team with one or two stores and some of the more polished investors to come in and buy more. And that's what we're starting to see right now. Awesome. Charles, when you talk to a franchisee, whether it's a 21-year-old franchisee or a 45-year-old franchisee, whatever it is, and they look at you and they say, Charles, what should I do each day when I come into my business in order to make more money? What would you tell them? No, you got to focus on your people. They're paying people to work for you. So if they're productive, you just focus on yourself. If you're not focusing on your people, then you're losing all that productivity. So make sure that your people

are productive first. And then if that's all going good, that's when you can start working on your own areas of development of your business. Now Now for me, I get up very early. I come in early. My first four hours in the morning is for me and my growth and my business and my vision. And then my staff comes in and I like to work with every department to maximize their growth within the company. All right. And then as a franchisor, you know, obviously franchisors, you're growing or you're dying. You got to constantly be growing. You've got a franchise sales team. You've got a marketing and advertising team. You have people who are consulting your franchisees, trying to help them grow every

single day. When you talk to your staff as the franchisor, what are you telling them to do? Or what are you suggesting? Or maybe you're setting that path for how do we make money today for the company? What does that look like as a franchisor? Well, you know, we have something that's called a five-star program, which basically sets benchmarks. It definitely evolves. It's a lot of its core stuff, but some of it evolves over year after year. It's our company's shifts in the quality, the services, the departments, the product and service we're doing, they might adjust. So we have new standards and basically we're measuring that with our franchisees every

quarter where they're hitting the marks, both financially and in all the key performance areas that they want. And make sure that they're growing. We want to make sure they're always growing. And by us focusing on a quarterly basis and then our annual conventions, bring it all home, what we just got out of, it really does.

I mean, we have really good guest speakers, but it's not just any speakers. We try to tailor the annual convention towards the tone and the next growth of our company so it gets everybody aligned and powered up, not just to get excited, but to see the vision and the next growth of our company. So it gets everybody aligned and powered up, not just to get excited, but to see the vision and the growth of where we're going every year.

And we always are moving. We offer a lot of categories of services. So it's really where we're focusing and where we're seeing this opportunity for all our franchises to make more, grow more, and build their business even better and make it more valuable. So that's kind of what we're always working with.

I love that. The regular accountability. And I mean, essentially, the franchise orders a coach for the franchisee. And they're coaching them and holding them accountable to that growth. So the franchisee can find more opportunity than they thought they could find by themselves. That's why they found a franchise that works for them. So that's fascinating. And you mentioned your convention. Obviously, communication and clarity are extremely

important in a franchise network because when you have hundreds of locations or even dozens of locations for that matter, you want everybody going the same direction and doing the same thing and carrying the same brand promise. How do you keep that consistency going in your communication regimen with your franchisees? Well, it's always constant communication, but it's two-way street. It's not just for us to say, do this, do that, or we're doing this. We have to really learn what their pain points are because things change, things evolve. Whether it's financing on newer stores that are coming up, some of the interest rates increased, whether rents change up or down.

There's different things that evolve over time. And we're trying to be very proactive of not only just dictating to what's going on, but actually learning how they're feeling and how do we adjust it? How do we make minor adjustments to the system to always make it better and ease anyone's pain? And we're learning all the time. You said that before. It's like there's stages of growth. I think you're right.

Once you get to 20, then you get to 50, and then you get 70-ish. Then you say, wow, I got to get to 100. Now it's like, okay, we need a higher level team. It doesn't mean you have to get rid of your old team that you had that got the way you are. You want to keep everybody. These people are good, odd people, but you certainly have to increase the abilities and capabilities that your people have when you get to another level. It's every department, whether it's the finance department, you have to start and keep the eyes on whether it's the marketing department. You really have

to level up and really have good communication skills with franchisees and actually reporting and analytics. You have to make sure that your technology team is built both through the internal team and external team so you can scale for growth and never fall back. There's a lot of things. Your real estate team, all the different things that have to go through. Your build-out team, they have to really grow.

And even your trainers. You need more trainers. You need more coaches in the field. And as it it grows we try to keep one coach every 25 units so they can give good coaching some new some old some in a little bit uh that allows everybody to scale a little bit better and keeps us aligned but again it's also getting the team in the field to give feedback to the people in the office because that's important too. We want to know, not just let them serve whatever they're doing independently, but to know what's going,

how do we adjust, how do we improve, and how do we get more feedback? So we're always learning, always growing, and every layer of growth gives us another layer where we have to implement more people, more technology, more processes to really streamline each part of our business growth. That's great. I love how you've combined that vulnerability and that humility internally, but also taking the best ideas from the field. We always say in franchising, the best ideas come

from the field. So listen for them as the franchisor. So that's fantastic. Charles, you've shared a lot of great wisdom with us about growing a franchise company, you know, as the founding visionary behind Tint World and growing that into a pretty substantial franchise brand. I have a final question for you that I ask all of our great guests on Start With A Win. And you mentioned you get up and start working before everybody else. How specifically do you start your day with a win in order to set yourself up for those successes? You know, it might seem like small to some people, but to me, when I get up in the morning, people say, how do you get up in the morning? You sleep all night. You wake up. When I hit my head on the pillow at night at 11 o'clock-ish, usually, unless I'm going somewhere, I go to sleep like I'm out.

Next time I wake up is right at just before 5 a.m., and I lay in the bed for not even 60 seconds, and what I do in my mind is think, what's the most important thing I want to get done when I get to the office? And that one thing is on my mind, I can't sleep anymore. I got to get up. I got to go do it. And I know I want to get that and the short list of other items done

within the first four hours before 9 a.m. I want to know that those things are done before my staff comes in to the office and I start working with them. And I have some visitors that come in early, whether it's a franchisee, they want personal coaching, an employee, they're going to come in 6, 6.30.

But I'm going to plan those times so I can get my time in to get my big tasks, the big ones you've got to take care of, get that done in the morning. That's my win every day. I already put it behind me. I already know my company's going from that one big thing I put behind me in the morning, and everybody else is just starting awesome charles bonfiglio the strategic vision visionary behind tint world franchisee franchisor businessman and just a great guy we really appreciate your time today and all the wisdom you dropped on us and thank you for starting with a win Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok