Lessons Learned Scaling an 8 Figure National Franchise Brand with Daniel Ryan Claps

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down lessons learned scaling an eight-figure national franchise brand. And to drop these vibe bombs, I brought Daniel Ryan Claps and EO Fire Studios. Daniel is the CEO of Franchise Playbook and Vodicleating and Restoration. He has driven rapid franchise growth to over 230 locations, leveraging over 10 years of experience in a successful 2022 exit nationwide. Today, we'll be chatting about the 12 years in the game, what not to do when starting out, how to win in franchise and local service businesses, and oh, so much more.

0:38John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Daniel and our sponsors. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, 50 days will fly right on by. The only question is, will you have something to show for it? I created a free YouTube series called 50 Days to Something, a step-by-step path to build a real product, service, or offer in just 50 focused days.

1:22John Lee Dumas:Start today for free at eofire.com slash YouTube. Daniel, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Yeah, what's up Fire Nation? John, thanks for having me. The biggest thing that I've learned is the most successful people, millionaires, billionaires, I've met a few, you wouldn't think it at first, but they also are just figuring it out. They don't know what they're doing either before they get to the place that they're at. And so everyone's figuring it out. So there's really no excuse not to try for your goal. Fire Nation, what are we doing if we're not actually trying for our goals?

2:04John Lee Dumas:I mean, we're putting our dreams here on the line. We're taking a big swing of the bat. Let's just go for it. And that's why we're talking today with Daniel about lessons learned, scaling an eight figure national franchise brands. And I want to talk about 12 years in the game, Dan, because you've been a business owner for over a decade now. And looking back, I just want one. What is the single biggest lesson that you learned that only real world experience can teach? Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's the quote, um, you know, how do you get experience and you get experience or how do you make good decisions?

2:37You make decisions with good experience. And how do you get experience? It's unfortunately, it's making bad decisions. And so for me, it's definitely been, I've failed my way to where I'm at. And, but I've learned that you either, you know, you either win or you learn. And so for me, it's just been 12 years of trial and error and taking three steps forward, two steps back, and then three steps forward. So crawling my way to where I am today.

3:01John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, that's why we're having these episodes and these conversations with successful entrepreneurs so that we can learn from their successes to, of course, emulate those successes. But we also want to learn from their mistakes. We also want to learn from their missteps so that we can avoid those missteps and that we can maybe jump over them instead of having to fall down those rabbit holes. So let's talk about what not to do when starting out, because a lot of my listeners are starting out or maybe, you know, they're starting into a new direction. If someone is just, let's just say, starting a business or potentially even buying into a franchise today.

3:34John Lee Dumas:What is the top mistake that you see people make over and over again? Well, the first thing I would tell you is like, I've started multiple different businesses in my life and I would actually never start another business again. And what do I mean by that? When I was in college, I started my first business. I didn't have any help, any resources, any systems. I didn't know anyone and I started from zero. And I actually wouldn't do that again. When I was in my early twenties, I left and I joined a franchise. The franchise was my partner. They told me what to do, how to do it. And I was able to skip years of trial and error at a young age.

4:05Then I started a lead generation company in the franchise industry. And I had a partner that was older than me that gave three things, some capital, experience, and an audience of people that, you know, that we could sell our product to. He had a giant audience. And so again, I didn't really like start a business. I leveraged someone else's system. And then, you know, we were partners. And then when I started, you know, now Voda, it was the same thing. I brought in people that were really smart, that had an audience that knew what we were doing. And I was just kind of the blue of all that. And so my advice to anyone would be, you know, doesn't have to be a franchise, but if you're going to start a business, start with someone as a minority partner that is experienced in that industry or, you know, start with someone that's got a big audience of customers that can buy from you or join a franchise.

4:52I think joining a system that you can plug into is key.

4:55John Lee Dumas:Let's talk about how to win in the franchise and local service businesses. Because I think a lot of people aren't even really familiar with what's right around them. We're talking actually physically. So most people are underestimating these businesses. I mean, you know that firsthand. So what is actually separating operators who struggle from those who consistently win in both franchising, but even specifically local services? Yeah, I mean, in local services, the number one mistake I see people make, as you had asked, is that they forget what kind of business they're in. If you're in painting or roofing or plumbing, whatever it is, those are widgets.

5:33And I don't mean to minimize it, but you're not in the painting business. You're in the sales and marketing business, and you happen to sell painting as a solution. And so I think the best owners, they realize in local services that, you know, 80 % of their time should be spent on going out there in the community, building relationships, basically selling and understanding that the more that they can bring in revenue, they hire great people, obviously give a great service and then get reviews and repeat that. But it's a sales and marketing business first and foremost.

6:00John Lee Dumas:I love examples in case studies so that my audience can actually maybe think about this in the real world. Or maybe even when they're walking around later today or later this week after listening to this interview, they'll actually like see what we're talking about and what you're about to share, which is just like a real example of somebody or a business. You're like, man, they're doing it right. Like they're doing what I'm talking about here today. Can you give a specific example of that? Yeah. I mean, this isn't like something that people would know, but I'll give you an example of a franchise owner in our system, if that's okay.

6:33Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm in the cleaning restoration business. So we go out, we extract water from homes and we clean floors and we do mold. Someone has mold in their house. And so one day a franchise owner called me up, people in a good relationship. And he said, you know, Dan, the leads, they suck. The leads aren't working out for the mold. And I said, well, talk to me about what's going on. And what he had said was that he was charging like a fee to go out and do an estimate. Right. So like, if you call me up, you want to get mold out of your house. I'm like, well, it's X dollars to come do an estimate.

7:00And I joked with him, like, you know, I think you're burning money. I think you should just go do free estimates as a cost of business and, you know, close the deal. So we were actually talking through chat and he said to me, I don't have a salesperson. So I called him on FaceTime and I said, I found your salesperson. He said, who? I said, I'm looking at him. You're an awesome salesman. You came from tech sales. What are you talking about? You're sitting here on your computer. And so the point is like, he started to go out there and do estimates. And guess what? He went to four estimates. He closed three out of four.

7:27The average ticket on molds, thousands of dollars. What better time and use of your time than selling?

7:33John Lee Dumas:And I love that. I mean, we actually had to go through that process. I'd say about two years ago and I mean, we got recommendations from people and everybody that was recommended to us gave a free estimate. Now, if four people were recommended to us and only one or two of them gave free estimates, like who do you think we're going to first? Of course, the one or two that had the free estimates won't be like, okay, do I like this person? Do they seem professional? I mean, they're doing this for free. I mean, it's kind of a win-win scenario. So I mean, if your competition is gonna be doing it or potentially doing it, like why aren't you?

8:03John Lee Dumas:And then of course, to Dan's point, It's like, if each one of these wins that you get is worth thousands and thousands of dollars, then it's time to pound the pavement and get out there and make it happen. So let's talk about specifically why franchising was the right move for you. I mean, you've chosen franchising as your vehicle. Why did this model actually make sense to you? And what kind of entrepreneur does franchising actually work best for? So I stumbled into franchising like most people. I started off as a franchisee in a franchise called Murphy Business and Financial. I'm so glad that I was part of that.

8:38I wish I could tell you I was smart enough to say someday I'm gonna be a franchisor and this is why I'm doing it. That wasn't the case. I was happy they even allowed me to be part of their system at that time. But now looking back, it was great because it gives me a different lens. I know what it's like to be on the other side of the franchise relationship. I think the best entrepreneurs that wanna be in a franchise is a few things. Number one, a franchise takes away all of the guesswork. It doesn't take away the work. And so someone that wants to execute, they want to follow a playbook, but they don't want to have to like figure out and build systems.

9:08A franchise is great for, you know, a lot of people think that there's no freedom in a franchise. Maybe if you're joining McDonald's, you know, with millions or thousands of locations, the different story, most emerging brands like home services, et cetera, you do have plenty of freedom. And so you're kind of like in business for yourself, but not by yourself. And you have a box that, you know, gets delivered to your house figuratively. you open it up and you follow the instructions like Ikea. Someone that likes to follow a process, franchise ownership is a great vehicle for them.

9:39John Lee Dumas:And that's one thing I like to tell the Fire Nation. I mean, it's great to have like your own idea and start your own business based off of that idea. But, you know, that's going to work occasionally for some people. But when you're a hard worker and you want to be entrepreneurial, you want to be running your own show, and you can jump onto a system or a process or a company that already has branding, processes, automations, recommendations, support, all these different things. And you know, it's a proven model because it's working in other zip codes and other area codes and other states and other locations.

10:12John Lee Dumas:You know, that's going to work if you can only figure out how to make it work for you in your location. So to me, it really has a lot of benefits for obvious reasons. And we're going to talk about why home services and restoration, the road ahead, and much, much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. If you've ever tried getting a traditional bank loan for your business, then you already know that it's not exactly fast or easy. Between rising costs, tighter lending standards, and all the hoops you have to jump through, it can feel like you're stuck waiting when your business needs capital now.

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11:23John Lee Dumas:Give your business the flexibility to handle whatever comes next. Apply now at revenued.com slash fire. That's revenued with a D dot com slash fire. Apply today and be ready for whatever comes next. Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom. That is where High Level comes in. High Level allows you to build and run your entire business from one platform. website builder and hosting funnel and landing pages email marketing automation and workflows calendar booking payments and subscriptions even course and membership hosting everything works together seamlessly plus award-winning 24 7 support so you are never stuck and when you go through my link at high level fire.com you unlock my full bonus stack a 30-day free trial of high level with full access a private 50-minute coaching call with me weekly live office hours with me a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something Execution Roadmap, and more.

12:23John Lee Dumas:Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Dan, we're back and I want to talk about why. Why home services and restoration? I mean, of all the industries that you could be in, why did you choose this? Why did you choose home services and restoration? For me, like some of your listeners that are maybe in between what they want to do next, I had a different business in the lead generation space. And I sold that business to private equity in 2022, started looking at what to do next. I was looking to be a franchisee again in different areas and then realized that for me, the route of franchisor made a lot more sense just because of my background in the industry.

13:07So I started looking at opportunities, home services. I wasn't like, I'm not handy at all. I just saw that it was an exploding industry. It's growing. It's actually like cool now. You see like Wall Street Journal articles about plumbers and stuff. But for me, it was an industry that was growing. And it was an industry that if you're good at sales and marketing, you know, the barrier of entry and the bar is pretty low. So that's why I wanted to be in home services. Restoration is super clear. It's a need, not a want, recession resistant, AI resistant, Amazon resistant. You know, there's really like, if you have water in your house right now, you have to get it out or fire a mold.

13:45Like you, you have to fix it. Right. So that was the main driver. It's a growing industry. It's a simple business. There's a larger labor pool you can hire from. And then most importantly is the numbers, like our business, the numbers are really good. And to me, I don't need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. I want to be in business to make money and help people. And so I don't care if I'm cleaning carpets or selling cookies or to me, it doesn't matter. I want to be in a business that makes an impact and it makes money. and for us, restoration is definitely one of those businesses.

14:13John Lee Dumas:So I want to talk about the road ahead because at the end of the day, you're successful in what you're doing. And so we can really learn from those people who are having success. And of course, by learning from their past failures as well as we've already talked about. But like, how are you specifically, Dan? How are you thinking about growth? How are you thinking about leadership? How are you thinking about scale at this stage in your journey? I'm a big believer in like act, think big, act small. And so I'm really pretty focused on just doing what I've been doing again and again and again. You know, as I said, I've been an entrepreneur for 12 years.

14:48I find that people usually, you know, three, four years into their business, they start to get like shiny object syndrome. And for me, it's the opposite. I just want to keep doing the same thing again and again really well, which for me is onboarding franchise owners, supporting them, helping them achieve their goals, figure out more ways to support them and just, you know, kind of repeat that. So, you know, I envision having Voda at, right now we're at 109 franchise owners, 270 territories. Leads are focused on growing that footprint to, you know, several hundred franchise owners. And more importantly, they're hitting their, you know, average unit volume and unit economics and profit numbers.

15:24Like to me, what's that Zig Ziglar quote? If you help enough people get what they want, you can have anything you want. I just want to focus on growing these franchise owners in the company.

15:32John Lee Dumas:That is the Zig quote. It's a great one for obvious reasons. Before we move on, leadership. Like what guidance do you give to other franchise owners when it comes to leadership that you've learned maybe the hard way, but also maybe just through experience? I mean, listen, everybody talks about good culture and finding great people. I think that's clearly like, that's the price of entry, you know, and then like treating people well and having all that. That's like the price of entry. But I'm a very big believer in incentives. I think at the end of the day, no matter what, at our core, we're incentive driven.

16:07And so my way of leadership is understanding that, yes, people are gonna wanna work for me because it's a fun culture. We have parties and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, people are gonna wanna work in a company where there's an opportunity to make a lot of money or, you know, usually. And so for me, when I'm leading people, it's all about creating a compensation structure and environment that aligns to like what's in it for them. And obviously first figure out what motivates them. It's not always money, but what is it that motivates that person? positively and negatively, and then tying incentives clearly into that.

16:41It's, you know, all of a sudden you're not, no one's bothering you. They're not calling you because you've got people that are incentivized. They're in a business within your business and they have a stake in where you're trying to go. And so for me, it's all about tying people's incentives to what's going to help them and what's going to get the business to where I needed to go.

16:59John Lee Dumas:let's give some advice to your 23 year old self i mean if you could sit down with dan when he was 23 knowing what you know now at 33 what's one piece of advice that would have changed everything sooner i would tell that younger version of me to do what you're doing it's going to work out um but i think if i told my 23 year old self one one thing i i'm fortunate that i did lean into this. But if you have a younger listening, listener listening to this, you know, like people tell you, if you put money in the market at a young age, the compounding effect of it is like amazing. You know, the eighth wonder of the world is compound interest.

17:39To me, this applies just as much, if not more to relationships and to working. And so if you work really, really hard in your early twenties, I used to think like, I'm going to work really, really hard. So then later I don't have to like meaning let me get that 10 years done now so later it'll be easier now i understand that those 10 years in no way are the same as the 10 years later because the compounding effect of what you put in from 20 to 30 can really exponentially like i don't think you can catch up from it unless you have a really special situation and so 23 year old me i would just tell him to work just as hard there's plenty of time to have fun don't forget to have fun but there's plenty of time to have fun.

18:24You're not even, you're not, 30 is not old. Like you think you're going to be old at 30, 35, 40, whatever. That's what I would tell me.

18:31John Lee Dumas:Oh man, I'm 46 and I still feel like I am a prime chicken, just like ready, top of my game. And I do hear people in their twenties all the time. And they just say something like, oh yeah, you know, my twenties, I'm just going to figure it out. I'm just going to kind of mess around and not do much and just kind of have fun and do this and do that. I'm kind of like, man, it's going to end up being a wasted decade, like a wasted decade. Like I'm not going to say that I had a massive success in my 20s, but I was really grinding. Like I was in the army for four years. I went to law school. I was in corporate finance, commercial real estate.

18:59John Lee Dumas:Like I literally tried a lot of things. So I learned what I didn't want to do. So when my 30s hit, I was off into the races. And like, if I did like figure that out in my 30s, like I don't even know where I'd be right now, but it would not be a fun place. So for anybody listening right now, Dan, they might feel behind. They might feel overwhelmed. They might actually feel a little late to the game because what we were just talking about. What would you want to share with them about the truth of success that they need to hear right now? I feel like this one, when I've heard people say it, it's like, yeah, Tony Robbins hype, you know, positivity mindset.

19:37But I got to say that when you put together your positive mindset, you're thinking big, you're acting small, meaning you're doing whatever you're going to do at that moment, but you're thinking big. and like you add like an equation like positive mindset plus gritty hard work plus consistency plus time equals like success and so like to me the people that are successful they work hard for a long time and they're consistent but also hard work isn't like what's going to make you successful it's it's working on the right things and I think that starts by thinking big and I think most people that are further along than you, they thought bigger, not saying they didn't have some luck or that they didn't work hard, but usually like life is gonna take you to the standard you have in your mind and like what you believe you can achieve.

20:27And so like raise the floor of where you wanna go and then obviously the habits that'll get you there. And then other one would be who you're around. Like if I hang out with people that are, I just saw it last night actually, John, I was out to dinner with some friends, old friends from college and two of us ordered tea, a sushi place, and one friend ordered a beer. And then he realized like it's a Wednesday. Why am I ordering a beer? And he didn't. To me, it was clearly who you surround yourself and who cares if you had a beer or not. But it's like, we usually do what the average of the people around us do, whether it's money, health, work, whatever.

21:04John Lee Dumas:It's so true. I mean, let's be honest. People that are fit are usually hanging out with fit people. People that are successful in the financial world are probably spending more time with people that are successful in the financial world. I mean, this is why we end every single episode by saying you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. But before we get there, Dan, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more about what you have going on, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Very simple. If they're interested in learning about Franchise or Voda, my company, they just go to www.myvoda, which is V-O-D-A.