The Home Service Expert Podcast - How to Make Use of Franchising to Accelerate Your Service Business’ Growth

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Jeff Dudan is a published author, speaker, and servant leader. He is the Franchise Executive for Dudan Partners, a franchise development consulting company that specializes in helping entrepreneurs build sustainable businesses and franchise systems. He is also the founder and former CEO of AdvantaClean, which started out as a student housing painting business, but evolved into a cleanup company when a natural disaster in South Florida presented the business with an opportunity to embrace a greater purpose.  In this episode, we talked about business development, franchising, strategic planning and coaching...

Look, if you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space. That's my take on it. You know, balance is a fallacy. If you want to crush it and you want to be ultra successful, then you have to be extreme the things that you choose to do. And what I did was, I'm not going to say that I chose family over business because in incorporating my values into my decision process, I became vastly and wildly more successful than I would have been had I not made that decision. I don't think it's mutually exclusive. I think that we have an

obligation to lead people in our lives, whether that be friends, family, business partners, whoever it is, and we have to show them what excellence looks like. Now, what the choice that I really made was I got to decide where I was, when I was, and what I wanted to do and when. When you've got a $5 million project going on in California, and it's not going the way it needs to, then I would have had to be in California to make sure that that went well. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today, I have a really great guest.

I talked to this guy for a while back, and he is really, really smart when it comes to business. His name is Jeff Duden, and he's an expert. Entrepreneurship is the main thing. He knows small business. He knows business development. He's an expert when it comes to franchising, strategic planning, and coaching. His businesses, Duden Partners, franchise executive from 2019 till now. He's the YPO chapter chair from 2016 till now. The Will to Win Media Group author from 2015 to now.

Avanti Clean Systems, he was a CEO from 94 to 2018. He's the official member of the Forbes Business Development Council since 2018. He's a strong advocate of community well-being and empowerment with a particular focus on families and children, a volunteer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and a board member at Vanity Foundation and stewards of the game. 85th fastest growing franchise, 46 top home-based mobile franchise, and the 187th in the 2015 franchise 500 of Entrepreneur Magazine. Top 100 franchises for veterans, top 50 franchises in franchise satisfaction, and top 100 multi-unit franchises of 2015 by Franchise Business Review. Your resume is pretty impressive, Jeff. I love it. Thank you, Tommy. I'm excited to be on your show.

Well, look, I think the listeners are going to get a lot out of this because I don't get a lot of people that are experts in franchises. But a lot of the businesses, whether it's window washing, power washing, Christmas lights, garage doors, I mean, it goes on and on. A lot of people think about, hey, what do I do to become a franchise? Is that the model I should go? Or should I just set up territories and be the owner of everything? And I really want to dig deep into this, but more importantly, to get going on it. You know, business owners have really interesting journeys to success, but yours is probably one of the most compelling stories that I've caught wind of. Tell me a little bit about your unique journey and where you became where you are today.

Sure, Tommy. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to the listeners and to share a little bit about the journey. And as business owners, I mean, we find our way into existence in different ways. And a lot of times it's by mistake. And you find great business owners that just become resilient. And they take advantage of the opportunities that cross their path. So I grew up in Chicago, a suburb of Chicago, Schaumburg, Illinois. And I never was a great student and I was primarily a basketball player but we had a new coach come and said hey we need receivers we're going to be throwing the ball so they recruited some of us off the basketball team and I got introduced to football and wasn't very good but I liked it so I walked on to a division one program that didn't work out I walked on to a Division I program. That didn't work out. I came back to a junior

college in Chicago and kind of the last chance you football factory and ended up with a scholarship out to Appalachian State. And when I showed up there, I mean, it was 1989 and my mom let me use her 1972 Buick LeSabre on a one-way trip out from Chicago to North Carolina. And I showed up and I parked that car in student housing up behind the university and I never went back to get it. And I think it's probably still there. But you show up there and you're in a completely, I think everybody needs an adventure in life. And for me, that was an adventure. And I really showed up and I liked it so much that I wanted to stay over the summer. So what I did was I started a painting business because I had worked the trades in Chicago. I had worked moving and concrete and the painting industry and construction. And there was

really just food service opportunities. And I knew that I needed more money than that based on my situation to be able to stay out there and survive over the summer. So a buddy and I started a painting business. And the first summer we did $8,000 in sales. We painted some houses for some of the faculty and staff at the university. But near the end of that summer, we were able to connect with the apartment managers for student housing, and they managed all the condominiums and apartments. So we put together a team the next year of athletes that were staying there over the summer, and we ended up painting sometimes 12, 13, 14, 15 apartments in a day. We got paid $200 to $280, depending on the size of the unit. And man, that was interesting because that summer we

did 56,000. And then the next summer we did almost $80,000 in sales and that's $1990. So it was a great foray into entrepreneurship. When I graduated with a degree in marketing, I really didn't take any job interviews. I knew that I wanted to continue to be a business owner and a buddy called me and said, hey, this hurricane just hit South Florida. And it was Hurricane Andrew. And it was 1992. And he had painted for us back when he was in college. And he probably knew that they were looking for hands to do work. And he knew that we were aggressive. So we jumped in the car, jumped in the little four-cylinder truck with a wooden, pressure-treated wooden ladder rack that we had fashioned.

And we headed from Boone, North Carolina, down to South Florida. And when we got there, we got some of our own jobs. And then we threw in with this company that my buddy was working for and basically cut our teeth in the insurance restoration game, doing $5 million projects, $7 million restoration projects, learning how to navigate insurance coverages and all of that. So as that work was winding down, we moved up to Central Florida and we started a company with two other partners that would become AdvantiClean. I moved up in 95 back to the Carolinas to open our second location. And from there, we really started building a national disaster response remediation company. And that went on

for 12 to 15 years where we became a national concern. And we worked, we did a lot of government contracting. We worked in institutions, universities, hospitals. We worked in VA centers. And we also did residential work, and we had offices scattered throughout the Southeast. And over time, I bought my partners out, just different vision for what we were trying to do, because I started the company with really the desire to build a national brand. My wife and I were married. We had children. And it was 2005. Katrina hit hit. And we were doing tens of millions of dollars of work at this point. And I went down to Katrina and spent three months down there setting up our storm response. We ended up doing

five years worth of work there in the Gulf Coast. But I was on my way back. What I realized was that I was missing my son's first football season. And he was seven years old and that was unacceptable to me. And I thought, you know, if I'm going to continue to build this company in the 50 or a hundred million dollar business, I'm going to be on the road the whole time. And it was, you know, it's one of those decision points where you say, you got to decide what's important to you because our true values are what we tolerate. And for me, it was inconsistent with the values that I wanted to have as a person, as a father, as a business owner. And I had been working really hard to understand what franchising the business would look like. So came back from that storm in 2005 and we had 50 employees and I said, hey, we're going to sell all of our company stores under a franchise model and we're going to move forward with that. So in 2006, 7 and 8, we sold

all of our locations in Florida and the Carolinas under a franchise model. We worked with those business owners for three years. We developed call center. We developed centralized marketing. And in 2009, we launched to the general public to offer franchises for the first time. We ended up with 230 operating locations in 37 states. And that business was acquired from me by Home Franchise Concepts out of Irvine, California, the parent company of Budget Lines and some other really quality brands. Combined, the business is $780 million in sales, and they're in 65,000 homes a week. And people say, well, why did you sell the business? It was growing so fast, and it was providing, and we had this growth opportunity. But sometimes you

have to ask yourself in a business, you say, well, is the decision that we're making right now the best decision that we can make for the families that we're responsible for? And as business leaders, when we have employees, and if you have franchisees, these people have invested in your brand. They've invested in you, and they're relying upon you to continue to innovate, to continue to find ways for everybody to make more money and to continue to attract great people to join your system. And at that point in time, it was the right decision for the brand to join a bigger group so that they could grow even faster and our franchisees could have more benefits, more resources to grow their business. So that's kind of their business. So that's kind of the story. And that's in a nutshell. I love that story, man. It's kind of nice and

refreshing to hear that you chose family over business. And I think there's not an entrepreneur that is listening that hasn't had to think whether it's if they don't have kids, their parents and their siblings, or just personal friends and the commitment, no matter what sacrifices, there's a good book by Dan Thurman. It's called Off Balance on Purpose. And it basically says, you're not going to be balanced. There's nobody that has a perfect work life, works out every day, meditates frequently, perfect relationship with their wife and kids, and goes to church every day. I just, it's not possible. What is your take on that as far as a balance, if you will?

Look, if you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space. That's my take on it. You know, balance is a fallacy. If you want to crush it and you want to be ultra successful, then you have to be extreme in the things that you choose to do. And what I did was, I'm not going to say that I chose family over business, because in incorporating my values into my decision process,

I became vastly and wildly more successful than I would have been had I not made that decision. I don't think it's mutually exclusive. I think that we have an obligation to lead people in our lives, whether that be friends, family, business partners, whoever it is, and we have to show them what excellence looks like. You know, now, what the choice that I really made was I got to decide where I was, when I was, and what I wanted to do and when. You know, when you've got a $5 million project going on in California and it's not going the way it needs to, then I would have had to be in California to make sure that that went well. The franchise model, you're really sharing your brand with great business owners and you're allowing them to provide their ownership

and their energy at the point of attack. And they have to deal with those issues. So balance is overrated. I think we need to be healthy. I think we need to be fit. I think we need to learn. I think we need to grow. But I also think that we need to be bold about life. And you can read anybody you want to, but there's no successful business advocates out there or talking heads that are going to tell you, do less activities, work less hard. But what you have to do is you have to decide what you work less hard. But what you have to do is you have to decide what you won't tolerate. And then you have to be smarter or construct business systems that are going to allow you to accommodate all the things that you decide are valuable in your life.

Couldn't agree more. And you need to take some time back and meditate and think about, it's tough. I just told you before we jumped on the podcast that I know so many business owners, and I'm one of them, that say, okay, I'm not a young buck, but I'm not ready to retire. But I've got a bunch of guys between the ages of 56 and 65 that say, what am I going to do? Like, okay, you're right. I should do more traveling. But when I come back, what do I do? This? Like, okay, you're right. I should do more traveling. But when I come back, what do I do?

This is my life. This is my baby. I've done this for 30, 40, 15, whatever it might be. They say, what's next? And it's a scary, scary thing, isn't it? It is. It is. Now, are you talking about people in your business?

Are you talking about people in your peer group? I would say just other business owners that I know, probably some of the listeners that are like, man, I've done this a long time and I don't know anything else. And not that I don't know anything else, but I've been successful. I write off a lot of things in my business. You know, I live a certain lifestyle and I know I can get some good money for my business. Some of them can't. Some of them don't have a business. They have a glorified job, but I guess you come to this realization that if I were to sell and my wife's begging me to sell or my, my girlfriend or my husband or whatever that looks like, what's next. And me and you talked a little bit about it, but you get an opportunity to redefine yourself.

You get a little bit of money. And the question is, what do you tell somebody? Because I hear this a lot. A lot of people are planning on selling and then they get right to the nitty gritty and they say, nope, I just, I don't know what I'm going to do. So it depends. I mean, the straight answer is it really depends. It depends on possibly where you are in your career. I mean, if you're 63 and you sold versus being 51 and you sold, the answer is going

to be a little bit different. It depends on what you want to do. I think it starts with your purpose in life. And what are the things that matter to you? And there's a great book called The On Purpose Person. I don't know if you've ever read it, but it basically you run through this process and you figure out what's important to you. And then you run things off in like this NCAA bracket style of tournament to determine like what's the most important thing to you in your life. Where are you in your career? And the other thing is, you know, how much money is it? Is it enough money that it's going to fit your needs? Can you put enough away that you can go and invest the other stuff actively and things that you have some voice or control in? So I think there's a lot of dependent things on that. But more importantly, I mean, you really want to do things that, at least for me, I'm not telling anybody what they need to do, but for me, you know, I want to do things that are consistent with who I think I need to be and to the extent that it helps other people, whether that be by example,

whether that be by coaching, I like to coach, whether that be by working with people alongside in their businesses. And then also too, I mean, I'm sure you have, I mean, I've been working since I've been like 14 years old and, you know, there's with few exceptions, I mean, it's been kind of a sprint. So I do like to be able to, you know what, if I just want to be somewhere else in the world tomorrow, then I can be somewhere else in the world tomorrow, then I can be somewhere else in the world tomorrow. So the first distinction people want to make is, are you an operator or are you an investor? Right? You have to designate. If you're going to get involved with something else, or you just want to do the same or something similar, bigger, better, faster,

which is a lot of times what most people fall into. Are you going to operate it? Are you going to try to elevate your thinking? Are you going to try to play the game at a higher level and be able to invest and coach and manage? You know, a lot of people are just going to kind of fall back into what's comfortable for us and, you know, be doing the same thing, maybe with a little bit of cushion or a little bit of net. So I think it's different for everybody. Well, how do you think about that? I think that my ultimate goal, people ask me, you know, what do you want to do? And I say, kind of what you said earlier, what I want to do, what I want to do it with whomever I want to do it. I think that there's a lot of doors opening as time goes on. And money was a big deal for me for a while. I mean, it still is. Don't get me wrong.

But that was one thing I wanted to kind of conquer when I used to hear my mom and dad argue about money as a kid is I never want this to happen to my life. I never want to be involved with this scenarios where people are just getting divorces because of money issues. So I think that kind of the final frontier, there's a lot of things I'm working on. But I love what Einstein says is compound interest is the greatest thing in the universe. And when you have enough of it, it works for you rather than against you. So I think accomplishing that and then really saying, look, what is my biggest and best thing I can do on this planet?

And I'm obsessed with some crazy stuff. Like I love SpaceX. I love thinking about what's out there, what's going on with the world right now. What can we do to better humanity and kind of making a difference and leaving a legacy. But a legacy for most people is, was I a great dad? And that's a great legacy to leave. Was I a great husband? So I think you got to really challenge yourself and really sit down in a quiet spot and say, this is bad. I've heard this in about 20 books, but what are people going to say when I die? And is it good things? Because I want

to make sure we got a short time on this earth and let's leave something behind that said we were a genuine great person. But you're right. There's no right answer. Well, you know, I tend to believe that the two greatest, most precious assets that we have in life are time and love. So inside of that, if you can build a business and you keep it and it runs, you sell it and you're proficient at using the proceeds of it and you manage through all that, you know, what you've accomplished is freedom. And it's your freedom to choose. When we have control over what happens to ourselves and we develop freedom. And it's your freedom to choose. When we have control over what happens to ourselves, and we develop freedom, and that's why we work so hard as business owners to

create systems and to invest in training and to put incentive plans in place and profit sharing and equity plans and all these other things. Because our job as business owners is we need to create a dream that's big enough for other people's dreams to fit inside of it. And when we do that, and then now we put the work in to create the systems and the sales and the revenues and the precious assets where other people can fulfill their dreams. I mean, life is about progress. You know, when I think about built like a dude and partners, we're really about three things, franchising, freedom through entrepreneurship. So we're very entrepreneurial in the things that we do. We think about employee ascension, and then we think about children's and

family issues. So think about a stream versus a pond. If a leaf falls from a tree and it hits a pond and it just sits there stagnant, like what type of employee wants to be that leaf? Now, if it hits a stream, the moment that they hit your organization, that they start moving and there's progress being made, nobody wants to look back last year and realize that they're worse off than they were. They didn't learn something. They didn't get promoted. They're making less money. They're in a worse situation. So part of our goal is to create these ecosystems of business where people can immediately hit it and systematically start making progress. Now, it's up to them what they do with it, right? But if you can give people a path to freedom through the belief that if they serve the company well, that the company's going

to return that, The reciprocity, I believe building reciprocity between a company and its employees, then you are going to be elevated. And now the rooms that you're in as a business leader can be with other business leaders. One of the things that really helped me my last five or six years of my career was joining YPO and being in the room with people that have built a hundred million or billion dollar companies or leaders in government or these types of people. You always need to be looking to get in a different room, right? With new perspectives, new ideals, people that have done it before or get a bigger table so that the

people around your table are the kind of people that you aspire to be. One of the things that I've come to learn is it always needs to be experience over advice. So here's some advice to the listeners. If you're a business owner, I find myself giving this all the time because I get a lot of calls from people to help them. If advice is cheap and you really aren't looking for advice in life, you're looking for experiences. Tell me about a time, Tommy, when this happened in your business or how did you overcome something like this? You really want to be listening to people that have done it before. There's 7 billion people on this planet. There's very few original ideas. And pretty much,

unless you're Gates Jobs or one of those people, there's somebody above you. There's somebody that's in front of you. So getting around and getting experience from people, when I talk about getting a bigger table or finding a new room, that's the best thing you can do as an entrepreneur and a business owner to make sure that you're benefiting from people's experience that have tackled things or figured things out before. You know, I'm on several podcasts and they always typically say, what's one piece of advice you want to give? And I say, first of all, identify your avatar. And an avatar can mean a lot of things. I've got avatars of companies I want to buy. I've got av mean a lot of things. I've got avatars of companies I want to buy.

I've got avatars for my customer. I've got avatars for my employees of who I'm looking for as technicians. But in this case, it's someone that you look up to that you want to learn from. And I try to find a few of them a quarter. And a lot of them come on the podcast. You're one of them that can teach me a ton. But if I have a question, it's like, hey, I only need five minutes. But first of all, they're like role models. And some of them are younger, some of

them are older, but it doesn't really matter. They've been through it. And just that piece of advice is, hey, I was in a similar position or hey, I don't really know, but I've got a guy that's been through this exact same scenario that I could probably put you two together. And the people that have done it are more than happy. I've got a young guy in here. He's 25. He's been shadowing me for the last two days. He's not in this room right now.

He's actually meeting with one of the managers, but that's called paying it forward. And he's like, dude, I listen to everything. I've read your book several times. I'm implementing it. And he came back in this morning and he had 10 pages of single type notes. And he's just a really smart guy.

I really think he's going to become something huge. And the biggest thing is when I met him, I said, if you're actually going to do this, I'll help you. And what's funny because I called Kevin Wilson, who you probably know, he's a big guy in the franchise world, Mosquito Joe's, companies like that. He's got several different companies. And I said, hey, I want to come visit you. This was just four months ago. And he said, hey, fly on out. So I flew out with one of my buddies. He opened up his bottom drawer and locked it, said, I don't

show anybody this stuff. You can't take pictures, but I want to show you some stuff. And he started teaching us about franchising and this and that, and this is the goals, and this is how you build it and this and that. And I couldn't believe it because he just opened the doors, but that's what, that's what people do when you really respect them. And you say, look, I don't want to take up much of your time, but I look up to you and I followed you and researched you. I enjoy what you put out there. And the funny thing is most people will think about it and they'll say, I'm going to do it one day when I get the time, but they get trapped in their daily lives

and they say, I'm going to start working out. I'm going to start doing this. That's why there's a good book called The Consistency Chain and it says, you just do it. There's another book

called The Five Second Rule, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, start it, but Consistency Chain, just get it done. Just go ahead. Pillow the Band-Aid and just do this stuff. But most people never do.

They say, I'm going to join YPO. I'm going to join YC. I'm going to join IEO, whatever. All these different places. And I'm going to, you know, he asked me yesterday, the guy that's in town, he said, why do you do so much? What do you think PR does? And I'm like, PR gets me in front of really, really good companies.

And we use each other's services. And it's the community involvement and it's friendship. And it's kind of elevating yourself to fly like the eagle. You know, there's this old formula that you add five people up, the closest people to you, divided by five, you're within 20% of their income. That works 99% of the time, unless you're out doing what me and you just talked about, hanging out with the people you aspire to be. And that works with you. If you want to be around great fathers, hang around five great dads and watch what they do. If you want to be around a better husband, be around five, a better Christian or a better, you know, whatever your religion is, surround yourself with those people. So what do you recommend? I got all these questions. I haven't

even started because this is a great conversation, But what are some of the things you recommend to really get in front of those people? not afraid. Half of life is showing up. So I'm going to show up, but I'm not going to show up in at a conference or show up at an event and then sit in the corner. I'm going to meet these people. I'm going to learn something about these people. I'm going to see what I can invest in these people. You know, reciprocity, as second time I've mentioned it, it's amazing when you think abundantly and you seek to be around people and you seek opportunities and you're thinking about why wouldn't this work? Why can't this relationship work? I mean, it's freeing when you have that mindset. Now you have to be an athlete. You've got to be kind of what I call a business athlete to be able to do it, right? And I didn't mean to run into a shameless book plug, but I got a book

coming out called Discernment. And it is the business athlete's regimen for a great life through better decisions. And it should be out here in about 60 days. And the construct of it is the fact that business is all about probabilities. And every decision you make and every action you take, it either ticks it probability towards success or probability away from success. accounting, everything can go to zero. There's not a business out there that can't go to zero if something goes horribly, horribly wrong with it. And every business has the opportunity to be a wild success. So what are the actions that you're taking and how right-minded are those actions I think are going to be determined around the people that you're around and you're communicating with. So there's a great saying that says, you know, after I sold the business and I had started a few other, I've got a robotic mowing concept called Mobot, where we closed an investment from Husqvarna. They invested

in the business. So now we're awarding franchises across the country that do robotic mowing with Husqvarna robots. There's some other technology companies and other things, you know, that we're in, but I don't need to have the whole pie, but I do want a piece of the bakery, you know, but one of the prerequisites for me getting involved with an opportunity is like, like how great is the leadership team? What have these people done? And as I've gotten out and really vetted opportunities and spent more time with people, I'm in business with a guy from South

Africa that owns an $800 million platinum mine and a bunch of international businesses. The guy's absolutely brilliant. So what can I learn by being in business with this person? Can I keep up? What can I do there? So the businesses that Duden Partners is in, whether it be on the brand side, which we own several franchise brands, or it's on the services side, which would be things like outsourced franchise sales, marketing, technology companies that we own portions of, we have an entire ecosystem for building franchise brands or helping people convert their business to a franchise business. But what the common denominator is, is everybody that we're in

business with in these things is an absolute leader in their field. I mean, and that's, you know, that's what it comes down to, because for us, it's about being in business with great people that are absolutely innovating, crushing. They're business athletes. They're moving fast. And they're capable. They surround themselves with great people. And that's more than anything why I'm excited about this second half. I'll call it the second half.

I guess maybe it's just going to be my fourth quarter. But we'll see how long it goes. But I'm 51, so we'll see. But that's the exciting part for me now is all of these great people that are focused and capable and executing. Well, you know what's interesting? And I agree wholeheartedly.

Like I look for people that I think could take things to this next level and I want to invest in them. But at the same time, I've learned to really, I read another book called Essentialism and Focus and just really just nail it and scale it. But I wanted to talk to you real quick because you said something that's interesting, a lot of things that are interesting, but one that really caught the top of my mind real quick was I teach people with great businesses, industry leaders, how to be franchises. Now, I know there's a lot of good things that how to be franchises. Now, I know there's

a lot of good things that come out of franchises. Actually, Kevin will only do franchises. That's all he wants to build. It's almost like you get people to build your business. And I know it's not that easy. There's all these regulations. And there was this McDonald's thing that came out about, can you sue the franchise or the franchisee? And all these stuff that we were waiting for decisions for all these the sec and the regulations and i don't even know but there's advantages that they're almost like incubators to grow a business really fast and it's an influx of money almost like a an ipo but explain to me why other than a quick growth, why growing organically? And I don't want to use my business. Let's just say you had a very successful chimney cleaning business.

And it was a niche and you really knew the industry. You were part of the association. You just knew everything about it. You built procedures, policies, manuals around it. You had a scalable business. You figured out how to recruit, how to train. You figured out the CRM. You figured out how to get, how to train. You figured out the CRM. You figured out how to get leads. Just give me the pros and cons. I want to hear your point of

view on that. Right. So franchising is really about leverage. And so if you think about franchising, it's software as a service, cloud services, right? It's a multi-tenant platform with a variety of shared services where people can invest for only a portion of what it takes to build information technology systems, a brand, marketing, lead generation, business systems. So it's a multi-tenant shared system where people create leverage. And for a lot of people, a franchise is the way it's a transitional business. You can get into it for a franchise fee. Now you're buying a job or a business where you can do much better than you were at your place of employment. You can grow that business and learn how to be an entrepreneur. You're in business, you know, not by yourself. And then if it's a good franchise concept, there's a steady stream of people waiting at the end of that to buy that business from you. So

you might be somebody with a $250,000 or $500,000 net worth or less than that, depending on what you qualify to get into. And you might walk out the door and build a business for three years and sell it for a million bucks. Okay. And if you would have maintained your job, first of all, you wouldn't have learned all of the things that business athletes need to learn. Marketing, accounting, finance, hiring, HR. So you're honing your skills as an entrepreneur. You've built equity for yourself, not for the company you were working for. So from the franchisee perspective, that's kind of what's in it for them. And there's brands, there's brands that, you know, are worth keeping for

multi-generational, 10, 20, you know, some people own, I mean, one out of every eight employees in the country is employed by a franchise business of one sort or another. So it's a massive part of our economy. And you immediately walk into a known brand in a lot of cases. And you have customer acquisition, you've got people walking in the door, you've got leads. So it's a great training ground for that. Now, pure entrepreneurs like yourself, you're going to be like, well, I can grow this business nationally and I don't need franchise owners to do it. Now, there's some companies that do what you do and then they turn it into a franchise system and they sell to their local managers and whatnot. But it is about growth. It is about using capital from a franchise network, from the franchise horse perspective, to be able to

accelerate growth, to get great people in business with you that have a problem that they need to solve. For sophisticated investors, it's just a straight return on their investment cash flow. For other people, it's college education for their kids, or it's to bolster their retirement, or it's simply to get a job that they love doing something they love and that they can't be fired from. I mean, there's a great franchise called Wild Birds Unlimited. They support the whole people having birds in their yards and things like that. They sell everything to do that and educate around it. So there's really a franchise for everybody. And some people aren't looking to get super wealthy. They're just looking to

solve one of these other problems. So for those reasons, that's why franchise is so pervasive. And it's really invading so many areas of our business. I mean, it started out right in food and then it moved into oil changes and automotive and it moved into, and it moved into childcare, and it moved into tutoring, and its service has really gotten big in the last decade or so in terms of more service businesses. And that was because of the advent of technology and be able to do things centrally and provide systems that people can use mobile and things like that.

Haircutting. It's a good business model model and it allows more people to get involved in the American dream and to do business ownership. But a lot of people can't take two years to go into their basement and start dreaming up a business and hope it works. I mean, they need a reasonable opportunity to have some income. And a lot of these franchise systems have the ability to provide that for people. And I think as a franchise or, there's certain businesses that lend themselves to be franchised, things that are difficult to manage at the local level where you really need an owner that's on top of things. And you put that ownership mentality

right at the point of attack. And immediately day one, they have all the systems and all the processes and everything that they need to, if they follow the plan, to be successful. So I think those are the reasons that franchising has continued to be a very viable and vibrant part of our business community. You know, we talked real quick about the e-myth and in the e-Myth, he says the franchise model. He says your business might not be a franchise. What does a franchise have? And he always talks about McDonald's, the way they salt the fries and the way that they,

after seven minutes, McDonald's isn't known for soggy fries because after seven minutes, they get rid of them. No matter where you go, the fries taste the same. And to create a model to where the output is the same every time. And this is where I start with businesses that I've coached is let me find out if you're going to get the expected result every time, or at least most of the time, because we can't affect outside influences. Like if someone's going to run into you when you're driving out for a service, but you could definitely do defensive driving. So there's a little bit harder ways to make a franchise as you start adding

steps like driving to the job. And really, there's a few things. I love the franchise model of a fast food restaurant because they come into you or a Midas or Amco transmissions. It makes a lot of sense. And I love the home service base too for certain things, and especially the seasonal things that are hard to run a successful business three months or four months out of the year, like a mosquito company or a pool company. But I just love the idea of when I go into a business, I say, let's look at your standard operating procedures. Let's look at your key performance indicators. Do you understand that we talked about this before we got on the podcast, but the different drivers. And I go, I got a formula when I go into a business, and I just simply look at what's your average ticket, what's your conversion rate face-to-face, what's your conversion rate in the call center, how much is your cost per acquisition.

And then let's look at your expenses and see where the hell you're wasting all your money because most entrepreneurs are wasting so much money. So we could be the offense, but first we got to fix the defense, right? That's right it's fun for me that middle of the pnl i mean you got to manage your middle and grow the grow the top of it and the bottom you had an opportunity to to be on the undercover boss which is awesome tell me a little bit about that story about being on the show. Yeah, so that was really super cool and a great opportunity. And it was just an amazing platform. We really led with our values at AdvantiClean.

And our values were the acronym CARES. It was Community, Accountability, Respect, Excellence, and Service, or Servant's Heart. So I felt comfortable that we would show well, and it was really an incredible platform to highlight our awesome franchise owners and their employees and the care that they take. And it was a big deal for our brand and the impact that it had on our brand. So you really can't disclose exactly how they do it, but what I can tell you is it's an authentic experience. And the way that it is set up, if anybody suspects that it might be undercover boss, the ruse is so big that people, you know, they pretty quickly dismiss it. And it's clearly something else. And yeah, you go in there and after a certain amount of time, you're just one little part of a bigger distraction that's going on all over the

place. And you really get a lot of time with the target employee to really understand what's going on with them and to really understand how you might want to help these people and also learn about your brand. And for us, there was a lot of pride. I mean, you know how it is. You've started a company. And when we started this company in 1994, we literally had a conversion van that we painted orange. It was like the Shaggy and Scooby mobile. And we put the letters on it. And we had a little storage lot.

I mean, that's where we started. We started at the very beginning of this business and then to travel around the country and to go undercover and to see your brand and your tools and your vehicles and the uniforms and all of the systems that you've put in place being used. And you're kind of an observer to it and them telling you how the business works and what we mean to the customer. It was just a, it was a great experience. And fortunately for us, the episode came out very positive and we were really happy with the outcome of it. That's the Undercover Boss episode. If you go to my LinkedIn, you can find it, you can find it online, probably on Netflix as well, but it was a super episode hundreds of hours

invested to get 42 minutes of film in the can so it was quite an experience i love it yeah i'll check that out i uh i like that show it's always on and i just i'm sometimes i'm like i guess you don't study the founders as much in a franchise. Cause I just think you can tell me if I'm wrong, but every person that's gone to a franchise model, they, they're like, what's the next thing? And it's, it's, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's fast. And you kind of leverage your money because if you could do a few different franchises and the crazy thing is you got to have everything I said, you got to have a way to get the calls that are coming in. So you got to have a decent call center, at least a way to take the calls. You have to have lead sources and they got to hire people. So there's two things

here that I want to kind of jump into is I want to talk about a lead source. And then I want to talk about finding people, but the lead sources, I love Google, but most of all, I love affiliates. I love partners that help you find other people. So what have you found for most franchises? And you've studied and seen hundreds, if not thousands of them. What do you find to be the biggest way to find a lead source that's universal across the country? Well, it's digital. So it's also. So when we started the brand, I mean, we were a

heavy affiliate referral base, and we still are. Because when AdvantiClean would solve issues in buildings, it was their worst day. Their home flooded, they've got some mold problem, they're trying to sell their house, whatever it was. So they're looking for somebody trusted to give, who can we trust to take care of this? So for us, the affiliate marketing, the referral programs, the relationships with other business owners, it was really critical in AdvantageClean. So they had to go out and forge those relationships. You have to honor those opportunities that people give you with good service and good value pricing and good outcomes. I mean, it's digital. It's really digital today. And I'm in another brand called Rockbox Fitness, which is an awesome fitness concept. It's kind of a fight club and a nightclub. It's kickboxing plus a functional workout all in a really cool, fun environment.

It's growing very fast, very successful brand. And we're primarily digital there because you can work your tribe to refer people in and bring people in. And you can certainly incentivize people to remember to bring their friends during certain offerings and things like that. But more so, I mean, the first place we look in any of our businesses is where are we going to compete online? And I think it's different for everybody. I think social media is great for that kind of thing. You got Facebook, Instagram, you got Gary Vaynerchuk talking about Snapchat. You've got all these different places now. This new thing called, what is it? Tic Tac. And there's Twitter. I'm looking at it going, man, some people can get lost. There's Pinterest. There's a lot of places online, social-wise. One of the things I just heard the other day is this company spent all this money that Taco Bell

did on this advertising campaign. And it got a lot of eyeballs, but it didn't get people to take action. It didn't do as well as they thought, even though it got a ton of social media. In comparison, you've got the guy with the Dollar Shave Club that did a really funny, cheap commercial and formed a billion-dollar business with cheap razor blades. So finding out where your avatars are hanging out and getting in front of them with the right message. And there's so many people that say they're experts in this, but very few that I've seen that could actually do it.

Well, and if you were an expert six months ago, you're behind today. And I saw something Gary Vee was talking about. He goes, yeah, there's a lot of influencers out there that are getting a lot of free meals that are going to be looking for a job soon, you know, on Instagram. Because it's just as quick as things blow up, then, you know, the algorithms change. And it's about attention, though. It's about consumer attention. And, you know, where are the eyeballs?

And once you get the attention, what's the call to action? It's traditional marketing because you can land a great message on the wrong segment or the wrong demo, and they're not going to take action because they're not your buyer. So when I talk to a new brand or a new company, I mean, the first two questions out of my mouth are, number one is, who is the customer? And then you could go and say, how much does it cost to acquire them? But like, do they know who their customer is? Because it's like, once you show me where your goat's tied,

I can go get it anytime I want. So who's the customer and where are they? And can we identify them enough that we can go get them? And then who's the natural owner for this business? So decisions that companies make early should be somewhat informed because the future informs the present what matters on who might be the buyer for this business if it's built right. And when you start thinking that way, there might be strategic decisions that a lot of times it causes business to get more narrowly focused, right? You do garage doors. You could also do chimneys. You could take your systems and like there's chimney sweeps out there, right? But no, I don't believe you do chimneys as well, right?

No, no. Yeah, you create a big business that's focused on key certain things because if you tried to do everything, you would be eliminating a lot of people that could ultimately be the buyer for the business that you're building. So that's kind of where you start. And when you think about in a franchise model in particular, I know you do call center. We did call center. I mean, with 12 to 16 people, we replaced hundreds of hundreds of people that would have had to been sitting on the phone and in locations. So creating that leverage, but you're also getting a call handle that is, you know, the phone's answered, number one. Number two, it's answered professionally. Number three, it's tracked and it's entered in the system properly. And number four, you know, the right

thing's going to happen if you don't get a sale with the drip and the, you know, the remarketing and those types of things. So in marketing, it's the same way. There's so many vendors out there to your point that tell you, I mean, it seems like anybody that has a shingle can write social media marketing expert on it and get customers because people are absolutely desperate for leads. And my experience has been that nine out of 10 of those companies know less than you do. I agree. Well, one of the things I wanted to add to what you said is, let me put it this way. I could get in front of the right customers in certain markets I'm in. My training is very, very good, but I still don't think we can maximize every opportunity like we

could with certain individuals if they got in front of them. So for me, you got to look at it. And when you get big enough, everything's percentages. Everything I work with is my marketing is a percentage, my payroll is a percentage, my gross profit is a percentage. And when I can get above the scale, but think about this, if my marketing, let's say is 8% and I can get my average ticket to double, that just doubles the amount of money I could spend. That 8% becomes a much bigger number. So I look at the conversion rate in certain markets. And what I found is, is I lower the amount of calls I'm going to spend on marketing and then I dispatch properly. What happens is that number on marketing, and then I dispatch properly,

what happens is that number goes back up, and then I get hired again. But it's usually an employee and training problem. And that's where I wanted to lead the next question is, there's a big shortage of employees right now. You got to kind of give the French benefits, gamification, insurance, take home a cell phone. Sometimes people are given work trucks. There's a lot of different things you can incentivize people with, pay time off. But realistically, how do you go around and build 200 franchises in a matter of, you know, some people are doing it now in a matter of a couple of years. What levers do you got to pull? Because I think a lot of us spend so much time acquiring customers, we don't think about our

internal customers. How do you build a campaign to get great people? Right. So what has happened is it used to be that brand was whatever the marketing people insinuated the company stood for to the general public. And culture was what was behind the closed doors. And you had to know somebody who knew somebody to figure out actually what was happening inside of a company. And what's happened with the rise of the internet and social media and companies like Glassdoor is that culture and brand have merged. So now, immediately, people can really find out, like, does a company really walk the talk? Do they put their money where their mouth is? How is it really to work for a company? So if culture is a strong point for your organization, it becomes a big asset when

unemployment is low and competition is high, they attract great people. Your reputation about how you deal with people when they walk out the door matters. If you're great, if you're all sugar on the front end, and then, you know, somebody goes to leave and they're treated poorly, our name and our reputation travels farther than we ever do. And we are spoken about in our absence more than our presence. And so really focusing on first getting the right stuff right between the four walls, you know, really understanding what good leadership is, what progress is for companies. And you're right, if you want to be the place to be, you want to be a great place to work, then you're gonna have to bite the bullet and do benefits.

But I think like, we like to say that, you know, we've created this super honest workplace, meaning there's always politics when the third person walks in the room, but create a low politics environment, right? Create training around dealing with issues immediately when they come up. Never let interpersonal conflicts between two employees get in the way of the business processes that need to happen. Look, if you guys are having a problem, well, why didn't this get done? Well, it really wasn't my job to do it, and Susie should have done it. Well, Susie says, blah, blah, blah. Well, they're having a problem. Look, here, you go to lunch, you come back, you tell me this got worked out or tell me who's leaving.

But you really want to create a place to where, to the extent that you can, that people feel like they have control over the things they're responsible for. They're going to be managed to very clear expectations, but they're not going to be micromanaged and treated like children. Because if we teach people how to treat us, and if you treat people like children, they'll behave like children. You treat them like adults, they'll behave like adults. So all of these, you know, little cultural things that you can do to give people some control, give people some progress, make sure they're connected to the people, you know, culturally, the values of the organization, and that there's respect for people's diversity. We want diversity in all

things. We want diversity in race and education and skill set and backgrounds, but we don't want diversity in values. And you have to constantly speak to that message. And then what happens is, is you become this culture that when somebody comes in, that's not a fit for it. And maybe they're not doing their work, or they want to jack around, or they want to, you know, hey, you got a minute, let me hang out in your doorway type thing. When we've got work to do, the organization rejects it, and they won't tolerate that. So building an honest workplace where people are respected, where people have the opportunity to grow, and they understand that everybody's bought in to

really, you know, achieve that. I mean, we all want to be part of a winning team. We all want to know where we stand. We all want to be working around people that light us up and give us opportunity. But if you don't and it doesn't matter to you and you're just there for the paycheck, then our organization is not going to be a good fit for you. So it's about understanding who you are as an organization, whatever your company is and taking the time. So like the very first thing we do in interviews is I have a card with the

values on it for the company, whatever company they're getting hired into, you know, which one of these values resonates the most with you. And then you talk through the values about this is what it is. And this is what it means. And this is how it lives in our organization, because values are tools that can be actually used. If you just hang them on the wall, it's nothing. If you use those and you incorporate those into your franchise discovery process, when you incorporate it into your hiring process, then people can choose pretty quickly whether they want to be in or be out. And after having some employees for 19 and 20 years in AdvantageClean, they remember the first conversation that I ever had with them.

And it's funny, you know, people will always remember the minute you meet somebody, it starts in the interview and the hiring process. They anchor on whatever you tell them. So lazy interviews where you're reading their resume for the first time and you're talking, we have a X400 press back here in the back. None of that matters, right? It's about, this is who we are.

This is how we know who we are. This is what we stand for. This is how we roll. And man, we're looking for people that are interested in these types of things. And it's gonna be a great place. Everybody has to get along with everybody. And you set the expectations up front.

And it's amazing. I mean, I can't tell you how many people we've had come here early in their careers, either right out of college or coming into the call center. They go somewhere else. And then they come back because they're like, wow, I didn't realize what an honest culture was like. Yeah, I think that's super powerful. And I think every company can do a little bit more of that. I'm looking at our core values on my mouse pad.

And I don't think we do a good enough job instilling that in everything we do. So one of the things that I've learned is to create a top five list and really focus on the top five. And there's always something that'll come up and human behavior tends to get the easiest things out of the way within the day instead of tackling the big tough thing. And that's why we have a meeting every morning and say, what's the one big thing in your day you're going to tackle? I think that's amazing. And that's great because you're not giving us advice on how to market for more people, but just how to capture and instill the values in the people you are getting in front of. I'm going to ask you one more question to kind of wrap up a few questions at the end. Do you have any advice or pointers

you can share regarding building a business from the ground up, especially applicable to the home service industry? You have to create volume running through the machine before you can make any adjustments. Obviously, you want to pick an industry where you think there's white space, but there's very few things that don't have competition already seated in place. So you just have to get your jaw set. I mean, there were garage doors before you existed. So you just have to get your jaw set. I mean, there were garage doors before you existed. So you just have to be prepared to compete. In the beginning, it's really important about understanding fixed overhead or ongoing expenses that you may or may not need.

And that's really the toughest decision is, okay, whether it's an employee position, or it's a piece of software or it's a marketing, you can pretty quickly create a bunch of expenses that are fixed or ongoing monthly that are ahead of revenue. So the tact is you as the owner, if you're starting a business, you need to make sure that you are close to revenue. And I mean like close to it, like making sure that you are generating the revenue and that you understand, especially in the first year, you know, I see a mistake. A lot of service people

make is, you know, they hire a salesperson because they don't like to sell. And then they're working on the back of the house, which is fine. But then the salesperson leaves and takes all the accounts with them to another company. And you better stay close to revenue early in your business. As your business grows and you create systems of customer acquisition, you're less susceptible to that, multiple salespeople. But those are a couple of pieces of advice. And just understand that the last 10% of everything takes 50% more effort. Like if you're literally starting a business it's not nine to five like the music is made between the notes so if you're not open for

business right now you better be working on the projects that you're going to be doing when you're open for business like you have you have two jobs when you're starting a business running the business during the business hours and then building the business in the off hours you know i had an it guy that worked he he slept days and he worked nights which was great because i could work nights with him and then work days in the business so it takes a lot to get the big that big boulder rolling and you're not responsible for it nobody else is going to care as much so i would just get my jaw set for that. That's a great piece of advice. Some people think that these, some employees go off on their own and they say, I could, I could do this. I know how to sell customer stuff and I'm good at a salesman and a good tech technician, but they have no idea. They have no idea how to read, how to go on an

Excel pivot table or how to, they don't understand the complications of knowing your numbers. And I'll tell you what, most people, they end up being a small business under five. They have no ability to grow it and they never will. And a lot of the people that I'm talking to right now say, I want to get out of running my own business and I want you, I'm a better employee. I make more money. There's way less stress and I can live my life and I'll enjoy my life. I really respect those people because it's not

giving up. It's just saying, look, it wasn't as easy as I thought. And there's a lot of sacrifice that goes into starting a business. And if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. And I have a lot of respect for entrepreneurs that make it because most of the people that are in the government complaining about people making money never made it on their own. They never took the risk. They never had endless nights and sleepless nights and screwed up relationships.

And when you do make it, I don't believe you should just get penalized and just say, hey, you did great. You employ all these people. Let's penalize the crap out of you and see if we can shrink your business. It just doesn't make sense. I always try to get one thing in there. But Jeff, let me ask you this. What are three good books that you'd recommend? It could be anything. It could be fiction.

Oh, wow. Okay. Principles by Ray Dalio. I hear that one a lot. Yep. I like anything by the Heath brothers. So switch made to stick. Have you read those? No switch and made to stick. Okay. Got those. Made to stick is a great one. I'm reading scale by Jeff Hoffman right now. I'm also carrying around a Grantone's book, 10X. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a great one.

Okay. Yeah, I read that one. Okay. Then when is your book coming out? It's called Discernment. Yeah, it's really about making decisions. So the concept is this. So many people were athletes growing up, and they would have – especially kids now.

Like, they have coaches for everything. I'm going to work on speed. I'm going to work on flexibility. I'm going to work on strength. I'm going to work on my technique and my fundamentals, whatever they're doing, right? And then they get into the business world and they take a passive approach to just kind of following along and doing the task without really saying, all right, if I was an athlete and now I want to be a business athlete, what are the things that I need to be working on that are analogous to strength, speed, flexibility, technique, fundamentals, right? Well, it might be marketing. It might be HR. It might be digital. It might be technology. It might be these things. So if you're a young person,

you know, and a lot of it is just tidbits and stories of things that I've learned over the years and situations, again, because we're about experience, not advice. So what can people learn early in their career that could inform their decisions and their practices about how they can go about becoming an entrepreneur or be more successful in their role? Or, you know, you can be an entrepreneur within a company, within a construct, whether it be a franchise or a company like yours. So really, that's what the book is about. It should be coming out. I'm expecting it to be out no later than May. So we're really excited about it and appreciate the opportunity to talk about it on the show.

Awesome. Yeah. I'll make sure to notify all the people that are subscribed when it comes out. How does someone get a hold of you if they want to reach out? Just Jeff Duden on LinkedIn, probably the best way. You can send me an email at jeff at duden.me, J-E-F-F at D-U-D-A-N dot M-E. And LinkedIn is a great place to connect so I can kind of see what you're about and just drop me a note on there.

That's where I do a lot of my business communication. Okay. And then finally, one final thought. I'll let you close this out. Just leave something for the listeners. It could be about anything. Just one last final thought. My last final thought is, and I know it's not popular right now, read. There is an absolute direct told my kids I said i'm not going to teach you what to think

I just want to teach you how to think Whatever you think and however, whatever informs your thinking like that's up to you But think about it, you know books are a private conversation with somebody's brain Right. I mean like you are inside somebody's head and if you pick the right books It's people that maybe have the experience that might be relevant to you. But like, man, you know, you get on TikTok. It is TikTok, not Tic Tac, by the way. But you get on TikTok, you get on Instagram, you get on Facebook. And man, you burn hours and hours and hours and hours, hour and 42 minutes a day is spent on social media, an hour and 42 minutes a day, man, but people won't read for 10 minutes. And it's crazy. You've

got to have the discipline to really seek out knowledge because if you want to be wise and you want to have discernment, wisdom is a prerequisite to having discernment. Having a broad knowledge base is a prerequisite to making great decisions because now you can pull on all of the different things that not only that you've learned through your experiences, but other people have learned through their experience. And then to be able to sort those in the face of a decision and make a better, more informed decision. So it really starts with the fundamental of reading, which is a fundamental in training and being that business athlete. That would be where you start is on page one, chapter one. Yeah. Leaders are readers and Audible is a huge resource for me. And I just,

you listen to it faster and it's a big, big, big. I tell people all the time, once I started reading and exposing different managers to different books, it just opened up so many doors and going out there and networking. So I got to tell you, Jeff, this has been amazing. I got a ton out of this. We're going to have to do a second one when your book comes out because there's still a lot of questions I didn't even get to. And I think you're just an amazing guy with an amazing mindset and just open up the doors to different ways of thinking. Just 200 franchises, Undercover

Boss, the things you've done. It's absolutely amazing. And I really appreciate you coming on today. Thank you so much. This 20-minute podcast has gone by so fast. Is it supposed to be 20 minutes? Oops. All right. Well, listen, Jeff, I will talk soon. I've really enjoyed it, man. And your book is on my nightstand. So I haven't gotten all the way through it yet, but I did crack it open and I will be reading it. So I appreciate having it and look forward to listening to this and connecting with you more. And hey, we might be able to do business together. I'd love to have you around my table. We will. I appreciate it. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this,

but the way that the podcast has grown is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, why it's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe,

what I'm gonna do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here, I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here, I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to

homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day and thanks again.