Take it to the Next Level! How to become a successful entrepreneur in 2025

27:20We went from literally like picking up one box of shirts and screen prints to getting pallets delivered. um one of the kids apparently got covid and because they're all like my daughter's friends nine out of the 10 kids their parents made them quit their parents made them literally self-quarantine and so we were doing 350 orders a day which represents about six to seven hundred shirts and so we're like oh no problem get a you know a temp agency and bring all these people well they fucking takes forever for them to learn and speed and well they anyways we got we got really far behind we got about uh 6 000 shirts behind wow and team came in and they're like bro we got a problem and i'm over here like go go go let's go let's go and they're like hang on bro we got a fucking problem because even if we work 24 hours a day we can't get the numbers that we needed so if that wheel on the bike isn't working you can't because i've got some guys some dear friends of mine they're big in the e-com space they do millions of dollars a month and i've told them this and they all laugh and chuckle because they're like, yeah, dude, like, you know what I'm saying?

28:26Like every single person has this happen to them. We have so many of our business owners that we put in business through at Vaniclean that I'm still connected with that are just doing incredible things out there. But the fundamental of what they are doing was all of the things that they learned by being an operator within our system. I love that. I want to pivot here shortly to some personal things, some experiences you've had, the podcast, a little TV show, maybe a few people have heard of. But last kind of question, you mentioned the trademark thing. It made me think, would you ever start a franchise?

29:02Can you start a franchise if you don't have a trademark on your name? Is that like rule one? Let's say you're someone that you've built one or two locations and they're super successful and you're like, oh, I'm ready to franchise. but you just happen to have a name that you didn't trademark or can't trademark. Do you need to get a different name? Yeah, so those are two different things. So didn't trademark. Yes, you can start. You would disclose that in your disclosure documents that say we have a trademark applied for. Here is the application number. Here's the date that we filed for it. And now if you get denied on that, then that requires an additional disclosure immediately.

29:45So you've got to do that. Now, if you went to a trademark attorney and they said, you know, no way. Yeah, you're Smith Fitness, like Smith Fitness. And, you know, and it's wonderful. You're making millions. You know that it's a everything can be, you know, transitioned to a successful franchise. guys, but Smith Fitness, what you started out with and what you built with just happens to be a non-trademark. It's like, well, do I need to change my name? I don't know. It made me think of that when you started. I'm like, damn, how many people probably start down this path and they've got an amazing business, but maybe they didn't either think about it or they just pick something too common.

30:21Look, Ryan, I learned a long time ago that if I'm going to be broke, I don't want to be tired too. Can you imagine, like if I'm going to be broke, like I'm going to be comfortably laid up on, you know, catfishing somewhere in a really in a garbage pick lawn chair. No, but like, look, I mean, you build this whole brand and then the equity is in the name. I mean, when you go to sell your franchise system, a lot of it has to do with what's the equity in the brand. People know the brand. So if you don't own it, I mean, it just you've just kind of built not going to say you built it for nothing, but that would be a nonstarter if you can't get a trademarked.

30:58I, I, I don't think anyone would do that. So yes, you would have to go through a rebrand and, uh, you know, you would think that in this day and age that every good name's taken, but it's not true. There's all kinds of variations of things you can get. You can make up words, you know, there's get a little creative. Google didn't mean anything 30 years ago or 25 years, I mean, that long ago, but, uh, Jeff, I know you've had some incredible experiences, um, You know, through your success and what you've done, let's let's go right at Undercover Boss. I know our audience has probably heard of that.

31:33Maybe even seen you. I mean, I recognize that guy. I he had to go T and they were trying to put it together. Talk about how that came about and just the overall experience. Yeah, it's still we had a really good episode. It still plays a lot. It plays overseas. I'll know when it plays in Australia or in Europe somewhere because I'll get a bunch of weird Facebook messages. from over there. So, no, so in 2016, they were filming season eight, and they had somebody drop out at the last minute, so one of the things in life is, if there's no reason to say no, then you say yes. So they came to us and said, we've got two weeks to do this, we've got seven or eight people that we're talking to, we'd have to fly out from California tomorrow, shoot a sizzle reel, put it together, pitch it to NBC and they would, or was it CBS?

32:28I think it was CBS. Pitch it to the network. Yeah. Pitch it to CBS and they would have to decide. So we did that and really quick, it came back that they were interested in having us on. So then we went through the reams and reams and reams of paperwork and it was, um, we went out on the show. I mean, we went out on the road maybe like a month later and it was a surreal experience for those people that haven't been behind the scenes in a production like that. It was really cool. I know I signed a bunch of confidentiality stuff and I really don't want to do anything to, uh, you know, I don't want to say anything that makes it harder for them to do the show, but it just, it seems to me, Ryan, like every year the show is canceled.

33:13yeah and then somehow it comes back for another so but i mean to pull this it's such a well-known show but i will tell you the the way that this is done there is the it is it is so it has done so well and so over the top that you would not think like you people do like is this undercover boss and then as this is going on they're like no it's not it's clearly not but it really but it really is. So, so yeah, it was great. We ended up being on the road for, we had a couple of little hiccups with a couple of things that were going on politically where they, we shot some stuff in North Carolina and then they're like, oh, well, we don't want to shoot North Carolina to reshoot stuff.

33:54So I had to fly my family. We did all the family stuff, right? We went, we did the office stuff. We did the B roll at the office. And then we went to the house and, you know, I'm cooking hot dogs on the grill. Dogs are swimming in the pool and all that. And they're like, we can't use any of that because there was some political thing going on. So, and it was a, you know, one of those things. And so then they, you know, we go on the road for a week, we film two or three segments. They fly my family to this wonderful resort somewhere in Georgia and we reshoot all of the family stuff. And then we go on the road.

34:29So I was on the road for a total of like 16 days and it was a great experience. And I will tell you that we had The producer said we had five episodes that we had to cut one that many shows would have killed to have. I mean, our franchisees were absolutely amazing. They lived the values of our company. They were out there trying to do the best thing for the customer. They were highly empathetic. I mean, I could have picked it a few things here and there. But at the end of the day, we ended up with four great segments. I got busted twice. They showed one of them. And but it was really I think I think what's interesting about the process is so, you know, we have a you haven't been here yet.

35:08I think you're coming, but I don't know. You've been here yet. But, you know, we have 22 ,000 square foot building on a five acre campus. It's kind of got broad shoulders. And, you know, we would I would I coached over 30 seasons of my kids sports and we would do, you know, my daughter's basketball team would practice in our warehouse. I lined the side yard as a football field, and that's where I coached our peewee football teams when the kids were growing up. And people didn't even know I owned the business. Like, that's kind of how we rolled. Like, we never, we didn't, you know, people had no idea really what we did, the scale of the enterprise.

35:41They didn't know that, oh, it's nice they let you practice here, type stuff. And so, like, we were pretty under the radar. And I sat my kids down on the couch in our bonus room. and above it is a quote on the wall we put and it has kids pictures of you know them doing whatever it is they did that you know we wanted them to think we were proud of them for and uh and then it had this quote from jerry moore the football coach at appalachian state it said always do more than is expected and then we had our family values up on our on our little plaque there and stuff and one of the family values is trust yourself to take chances fail fast and move forward always do more than is expected, you know, and all of that.

36:23And it's like, and I said, well, I said, guys, this is going to change things. And this is, I mean, it might change things at your school. I mean, we're going to be giving away a quarter million dollars worth of stuff. I mean, people are clearly going to know that, you know, whatever it is that makes the show. But when you looked at our values, it's like we couldn't say no. And they're just like, okay, well, we're willing to take the consequences of it. And, uh, and we did, and we ended up having a great show and, uh, they all got a little bit of time on it, you know? So that was cool. They got, they got like a flash across the screen.

37:01Yeah. They're, they're, they're 15 seconds of fame. Yeah. 15 seconds of fame. And then we had, when it, when it showed the night that it showed in, in January of 17, we rented out an entire bar. There was 250. Oh, and I had my little football, the little football team was coaching at the time. Like they were on it. So that was cool. So we had about 250 people came, kids that I've coached, their families, all the employees, their families, the local news. And we saw it for the first time, along with 7.1 million other people. And I'm telling you, it was a great show. And it did so much for the business and the brand and the franchisees, really just confirming, like, you know, really living the values that we had, that we knew that we lived within the four walls of the business.

37:43But, you know, being able to display it to the world and put the franchisees front and center was just an incredible opportunity. So I always encourage people to say yes. And there's risk because if you watch that show, some of them go very poorly and you have no control. And I will tell you, man, they tried to wear me out like early, late, three times a day, an hour in front of the camera asking me probing, you know, you know, kind of questions that would be incendiary, you know, trying to get me to break. And I just said I took the whole position that said, if I don't they can't they can't use anything that I don't say.

38:23Yeah, that's smart. I hope you got media training before. That sounds like you did. No, I didn't. But I knew that I had an irresponsibly quick mouth and I needed to put a, you know, clap a lock on it. But we did good. Two questions on that for transition. Like first, and you mentioned it, it was good for the business. I tell people that they don't completely recognize like when things like Shark Tank and things like these things where you can get your company like out there, like the monetary and brand impact of that awareness that you can't buy, by the way, or you can. And it's just way more than you'd ever spend.

39:10I'm assuming there was some rebound, I mean, like some upshot from that on some level. It was immediate. You know, we ran a call center. We answered 250 ,000 inbound phone calls for our franchisees and we did it very well. And I mean, there was many, many jobs that said, I saw I saw your company on Undercover Boss and I'm giving you this job for, you know, like they were touched by the episode. and franchisees directly got work attributed to it. There was a spike in franchise sales, but it wasn't massive. But being able to use that episode kind of as a piece of content during the process to really exemplify what we stood for, how we rolled, it tells the story of our brand.

40:07They did obviously a great job with it and little graphics and little trucks and a map. So you could watch the first four or five minutes of that thing and get our whole company history and in a high production quality. So just that was worth, you know,$250 ,000. The first hundred million in sales that we generated were entirely bootstrapped. bootstraps. So the first, uh, the first trance of our lifetime sales came from a big chunk of it was Facebook advertising. Um, so 26, 2017, 2018, um, even 2019, uh, when it was working when it worked. Yeah, exactly. And even before then, right. But if so, it started even earlier, there were Moise Ali from native.

40:54He talks about generating a dollar, a dollar 50 subscription signups for$12 a month to order it and just like infinite demand. And he sold that business for a hundred billion cash in like two years from started very successful. It's still very around everywhere. Um, and so in the beginning it was, I need to create a product that is different enough that would capture the attention to create a Shopify, chose Shopify and you Shopify was going to be the platform we were going to build on. Um, I started developing the product by talking to my dentist, my orthodontist, my oral surgeon. What do you sell in office?

41:28What products? I went and bought as many products as I could. I analyzed all of the Amazon reviews, negative reviews, focusing on that area so that you can find some pockets. Then I saw that sensitivity is important. The whitening formula had some opportunity to be improved upon. The delivery method of being able to plug it into their phone, which we invented that ability to power it by the phone because the very first version of Snow was$95 and it was a battery powered light. I did not like it very much, but we needed some delivery system for the serum to be able to test it out on the customers.

42:12So I started running ads and it was pretty quickly a success. I set up the first version of the website and I had an agency come in and publish it. So we got it up on Shopify very quickly. And then that was after about six to nine months of talking to my dentist, reaching out to suppliers, searching who makes toothpaste, who makes this, who makes gel, and then getting samples and then tweaking those formulas and then getting some testing. So that took, you know, six to nine months, at least going back and forth, maybe 50 to 100 ,000 bucks to buy the first order of the system that I had created for Snow 1.0, I guess.

42:56That was 95 bucks. So we started running ads on there, gave free shipping. And the focus was professional level whitening at home without the sensitivity of other systems. So, you know, really designing around the sensitive tooth customer, but also the one who wants to max out whitening. So it's like you want your cake and you want to eat it too. You want to preserve your enamel, but you also have a wedding next week. And it's like boom, boom, boom, boom. So we just kept tweaking that formula, percentages, whitening agents. What can we do to help with sensitivity? And so continuing to tweak that, then it became a device business as well with our LED technology, which we now have multiple versions of.

43:40We have a wireless version, colors, lilac, special edition. We have a black one, limited at Best Buy. I mean, just all kinds of colors and types. And so at the very beginning, it was one product, which was really a couple products in one. And that's what we now have sold nearly 2 million times of that system, which has evolved now to wireless, our current wired system today, which is the number one made in America teeth whitening system in the world. And so that's still our most known product was that original teeth whitening kit all in one at home. We invented the verbiage, teeth whitening wands, the teeth whitening system.

44:23Just a lot of these verbiages that were a little more seen and professional, but that people could buy with free shipping two days, three days, it's in your hands. So that was a very, very start. And the goal was if that works out, then if you walk down the oral care aisle, couldn't Snow have a version of everything in there? Flossers, toothpaste, mouthwash, a toothbrush, a water flosser, aligners, all kinds of these products, mints, gums, breath sprays, all those products couldn't Snow have a version of that if this is successful. And now today, our product portfolio represents an oral care and personal care portfolio of 30 plus individual SKUs, multiple award winners with multiple of them winning multiple awards across the board.

45:10We have the best whitening strips, best toothbrush, all of these awards that are decorated on the site. And so now that has expanded, but that's about seven years later. So in the very beginning, it was Facebook ads,$95 system that we put together or that I put together with help and then push that out. Once that's sold, upgraded every single time that we reordered. The goal was how do we upgrade the formula, take the feedback. I was calling customers myself. And now I had built and sold many companies beforehand. I was independently wealthy. I could have poured a lot more money into the business.

45:50But I was still ruminating on, is this something that has legs? Is this something that I think it is? Am I crazy? And once I started to see that, then it became hiring more products, different versions of the products, more channels to acquire customers. Now we're in CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy, Neiman Marcus, Saks, Macy's. So now we're in about a dozen premier top retail partners today. But in the very beginning, it's Facebook ads, Shopify, one system, one person or two to help on customer support and shipping it out. And I shipped it from my spare bedroom of the house because the inventory, I didn't want to get an office yet.

46:35I wasn't sure. Right. And I was investing at the time. I had just sold a couple of companies. So I said, I want to see kind of if this could be my my next thing, you know. And sure enough, it certainly did. Is, you know, as you expanded past Facebook and started to get the broader, I mean, it's Facebook has people. I don't realize how many billion people are on Facebook and how broad the awareness is. But what was the percentage of like U.S. versus non-U.S.? And was we talking pretty much 95, I mean, majorly U.S.-based? And what were the channels that kind of – what were the awareness channels that kind of flowed after Facebook other than just distribution itself?

47:18Yeah, so it was, you know, Google, YouTube. So the whole Google suite, the whole meta suite, Amazon advertising, that whole suite. actually retail media networks. So also Spotify audio, right? So there's every, so retail media is, if we're in Best Buy, we want to buy web banner ads and we want to be the sponsored on Best Buy for anything teeth related. And so we're spending inside of the trade marketing to push those things, but they drive awareness top of funnels while on those platforms. And then we're doing everything from YouTube. we're doing a relaunch of TikTok. We've been hiring, we still are hiring like crazy for TikTok on the snow side.

48:04So TikTok is top of funnel. We're really excited about relaunching that. Instagram, Facebook are still very heavy on the front end. We do a lot of affiliate marketing as well. I actually acquired the affiliate marketing.com domain name about a year ago to build more reach in that space because it's a big portion across all of our brand, all the brands in my portfolio and all the brands that I've invested in affiliate marketing is a very profitable channel across the board. So affiliate marketing is another area because a lot of these bloggers, vloggers, Amazon editorial affiliates, they're putting us in front of an audience for the very first time, listicles, things like that.

48:41So, you know, about maybe 15 % of our sales online come from our online affiliates. And that's 100 % non-Facebook and Instagram because we don't allow it in the program since we run it internally. So it diversifies, it forces the diversification of that traffic. So that's kind of the stack from the top level. And then that, of course, as you mentioned, distribution funnels to marketplace first, right? Marketplace, then to retail actual locations. Then we also sell to professional dermatology, dentists, kind of local clinic kind of style stuff. So that kind of whittles all the way down and it repeats from the top.

49:23But let's say before you went into retail, what was your mix? Like, you know, because everybody hears Amazon, they get scared, like margins and all that stuff. How did you tackle? I mean, you obviously started D2C, which is the smartest place, best margins, all that. What was your balance with taking on Amazon and what's your perspective there with just overall mix and things? A lot of people get scared of that, but it's such a behemoth. It's hard to ignore. I was the same way, man. I like 10 years ago, told two of my best friends at Tuft & Needle, the mattress company, they have the number one most loved and most popular on Amazon mattress.

50:03And they had a very successful exit and huge success. They bootstrapped it. But they leaned into Amazon. And back then I was anti Amazon. You don't own the data. You got to pay them 15, 20 percent. Everyone gets refunds. No, no, no, no, no. You got to lean into Amazon. Over 50 percent of retail searches online start on Amazon and they end there because people go straight there to search for shoes, white sneakers. like they're going directly to search, they're buying there, the conversion rate's always going to be higher than your website. It is what it is. I mean, they've invested tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure because Jeff's a genius.

50:44And they know that if they can outsmart logistics and get the customers hooked on two-hour delivery, that that's going to put a lot of pressure on merchants. But I know that Amazon's a public company and because they're a public company in the U S there are antitrust laws, which means that Amazon cannot get more than 51 % of its revenue or 50 % of its revenue from its own products. So all the private label, they do all the kinds of things that they're doing. They cannot, I think it's like 47%, 46, you can Google it. It's like somewhere around 46, 47.

51:20So they just keep it going. They got to keep that 51 % marketplace revenue, which allows people like us to, to take advantage of what Amazon built. If it weren't for antitrust, they kick us all off. So like, that'd be my guess, right? Like on Amazon, why would they just make all the products that copy everybody? And yeah, they'd be in a lot of patent trademark lawsuits, but they'd manage those with, you know, all the lawyers, but they'd get it done. Right. And I think it's like, look at it. It goes, you know, I, I, last year was our biggest here on Amazon. I mean, every year is a green screen on Amazon.

51:53But last year was a significantly good year for Amazon. So we go, wow, we need to really hire in that direction. We need to really double down our partnerships in that direction. We need to really tweak our affiliate marketing efforts in that direction. So we went through it and said, we want to double down on Amazon and utilize our strengths, utilize our thousands of reviews, utilize our millions on our email on SMS list, like utilize our assets and our retail placements that are very unique to us in our industry to be able to show off on Amazon and build that business. So we have a goal for Amazon on its own to be a nine figure business for us in the next three years from an Amazon very focused scale plan, hiring plan, partnership plan that allows us to take advantage of the Amazon platform and marketplaces, walmart.com, et cetera, because what happens in a recession, and this is fact proven, I read this, they said, you know, during COVID, people went back to what they felt most comfortable and safe and secure with.

53:07So they went back to Walmart, Walmart, they went back to Target, they stopped venturing out so much onto all these DTC websites and all these unknown things, all these unknown subscriptions, recession hits or money gets tight, inflation, people are more likely to just, I'm just going to go to Target and get everything. I'm going to go to Walmart and get everything. I'm going to go to this website at Amazon. Let me just, it's convenient. It's cheaper. I'm just going to do it on Amazon. So you got to now play in that direction. Five, 10 years ago, you could get away without having to lean into it.

53:38Although I wish I could go back five and 10 years. And I would have built an army of team members and partners on our Amazon channel. And we would have been totally dominating that channel. So I love it. You do get access to email your customers. Now they've got some new things. There's all kinds of stuff, but it's the only platform that's driven by sales. So you can become the number one in your category, even above the big companies by sales volume. So you can drive, you direct your sales. Like if Snow directed all of our sales to Amazon today, which is maybe 15 to 20 percent of our U.S. digital revenue.

54:16So let's say we put all of our U.S. digital revenue into Amazon. We would be the number one in every single category above all of the incumbent brands just because of velocity. But we would give up 15 percent at least margin based off of versus our own. You give up some data. But I got to tell you, there are days where I go, that's not the worst idea. But, you know, there's a better way to go about it. You know, build up the Amazon presence and build up the traffic and build up the list. So long story short, anyone listening, I would like triple down and look up a company called Hero Cosmetics.

54:51Look up a company called Zesty Paws by one of my good friends. And they're a half a billion dollar pet supplement brand. 100 percent of their sales pretty much were from Amazon. look up Hero Cosmetics. They have a miracle patch for acne, 20 bucks. They sold for 630 million, I think the beginning of this year in January, 40 million in profit just through Amazon. It was an Amazon driven business. So these Amazon businesses are getting very strong multiples. They're raising money. They're TikTok friendly. So I would say lean into Amazon harder than you ever have and really figure out how to dominate that platform in your category because it's the only place you can see sales as well.

55:36You can literally see an estimate of what everyone's selling. You can go look at Snow's stuff and be like, oh, they're selling an estimate of this much from this SKU. It's a great platform to build on. You take pitching specifically, and there's a lot of recovery nuances, a lot of longevity nuances, a lot of... We really care about that stuff, right? Because we couldn't have our product be our differentiator if we weren't focused on longevity, right? We tell people like, this is going to be long, hard, and difficult. And it's going to take consistency and discipline and dedication. You're not going to do it in 30, 60, 90 days.

56:09You are likely, you're not going to like, you know, wake up one day and like, you know, be strong as an ox. It's going to take five years. And are you in for this ride? Or do you believe that you're worth it? Right? And so we have that recovery element built in because what we're telling people is that it's the opposite of what everyone else is saying really in the macro sense of like, hey, come do this fast. Like, oh, you're not okay? That's okay. Let's come in anyway. Do it fast. Join a membership. You can lose 30 pounds real quick. And it's like, okay, well, that's flat. You get companies that say, one day it says they're signed on their building.

56:44The next day it says for lease. And you're like, why is that happening? So yeah, I think that's a combination of... Sounds like... You sprinkle a little bit of bigger... You do sprinkle a little bit of bigger, faster, stronger in there from my high school days, too. If anybody's ever heard of that program. Oh, yeah. I remember. I was sitting here thinking as you were talking, ICR, intensity, community, recovery. That is right. That's it in a nutshell. My answer was real long-winded. I simplify for a bit in marketing geologs. I like acronyms and simplicity. Yeah, but it's great. I mean, but that sounds like the building blocks of a long-term program and not, like you said, a gimmick.

57:35Because everybody gets that fire, you know, when they're ready to, okay, I need to lose some weight. I've got an event coming up, whatever. they get fire in their belly but then it dies if you don't have the building blocks of something broader you need the community to kind of keep you in it you need the recovery because if you're chilling yourself and not recovering at all then they get down and out like you said so I can see and all I know is the periphery you know I've heard I've had people many times me do birds whatever whatever so I'm gonna to make a promise to you that I'll go, I'm going to go hit burn up here at Greenville eventually.

58:17But what's it been like growing the business, man? I mean, just that kind of scale, you know, is incredible. What's that roller coaster been like? Definitely one, right? You went in 2015 when we announced that we were going to franchise in all 50 states. We thought hitting the own run might be awarding 10 units in our first year and really getting those stood up. And we were always concerned with unit economics. I'll talk about that in a minute. But I had no idea that we would do 200 in the first 18 months. And Fran did this article out of Franchise Times Magazine. It was one of our first earned media pieces that was talking about business that I was super proud of.

59:04and it said that we're in the 99th percent of all growth from all franchises, of any franchise that entered the market since 2010. And this was like 18 months in and I'm like, okay, well, we better not screw this up then. So how do we get all of these gyms open, right? We got to focus on, we call it ULEs, unit level economics. It's, you had a guest on, Jeff Duden, who's from this area. He taught me this actually. He's been a good friend and mentor of mine throughout the years. He taught me validation and franchising. And that's invalidation really in any business. It's not a franchise particular concept, but it's the stakeholders of your business being happy.

59:39It's your debt promoter score. How likely are they to recommend this business or doing business with you to somebody else? And number one, number one thing is, to number one box the check, if you will, is are they making money? And what type of money are they making? So I'm always looking for a, this might be something people want to write down because I'll give you like a strategy. What I'm looking for in any business I grow is an investment. Let's say the investment is at$500 ,000. I need to make a million dollars in year one in order for that investment to be considered an A-plus investment for me.

1:00:15So it's a two-to-one investment cash to year one revenue ratio. And that's how we want to get every location out of the gate. Do all of them do that? No. But what that's really done, having that expectation, is we've aligned clearly and early with our franchise partners who are really driving the unit-level economics. We've learned that when we have that expectation, they start higher, they start with more members, they start better off. And getting to that place of having world-class economics and boutique fitness was a long road, but definitely a doable one. That was our focus the whole time from the very beginning.

1:00:51so the big what the hell are we going to do moment was when we had 200 and we had like 10 open you know like in franchising it's the similar it's kind of similar to fitness what we were just talking about like everyone wants to just go fast fast scale scale scale it is a vehicle per scale right i love the vehicle per scale but you can also scale yourself right into the ground and you see that happen all the time in this industry particularly the industry that i'm in the boutique fitness franchising industry. So yeah, it's a... I mean, think about it. It's logical, right? I mean, I care about my people so much.

1:01:28This isn't about money for me. This is about my franchise partners who invested their 401k, who invested their life savings, who liquidated their stocks 10 years before they wanted to, sold their house and moved across the state, who left their family in North Carolina and moved to Missouri and stayed in a hotel room for three months away from their children so they could go chase their dream. This is all about returning an ROI for them. And so with that type of mindset, that real people first core value, we're able to take what's in the gym, translate that up to a franchise partner network, translate that into an HQ culture.

1:02:01Now we're on the East Coast or on the West Coast, bi-coastal headquarters, operating the business that way. And where economics are better than they've ever been, we use annual unit volumes as a measure in franchising. how much each individual gym makes on average. And we'll be up near the 600s at the end of the year, which is top three in our space. So people first, like people first. And I'm going to preach that to the day that Morgan and I hang them up, which we're in the big leagues now. So I'm going to stay as long as we can. You take care of people, they take care of you. That's how, that's usually, that's right.

1:02:38Reciprocation is powerful just when you're trying to do the right thing. You said you started, I heard licensing in there. I talked to Jeff about this a little bit, like licensing versus franchising versus, you know, like the thought process there. And, you know, you mentioned it. If you aren't serving your franchisees, you know, then what are you doing, you know, as far as going in the business? Because again, if you're serving them, they're making money, they're happy. You get more franchisees and you grow. But what's it like, Like, truly, what's been some of the secret sauce to scaling like that?

1:03:16Like, now that you've done it, was there stuff that you would have gone, damn, I wish I had done that sooner? Or, you know, like, what are some of those learning lessons? Definitely, the number one thing is if you're going to scale your business fast, you want to invest ahead of that growth curve. You've got to anticipate that. You know, I heard Tony Robbins once say that anticipation is the ultimate power for any entrepreneur. and you're able to see over the hill before anyone else can, you can see the horizon when no, you know, over the horizon when no one else can. Well, your ability to navigate your way there, you know, is geometrically enhanced.

1:03:51And so what I always try to do is set big goals for the system, starting with unit economic goals and then set more broad range targets. So I stepped on the stage at our summit in 2021 and I said, we're going to build 10 ,000 units to the moon. And half my system was like, because we're a competitive culture, they were like, let's go. They're all pumped up. And the other half was like, how the hell are we going to do that? I don't know. I trust you, but that's a lot of units. It's like, how are we going to do that? The beauty is like, I don't need to know how we're going to do it. I just need to know that they're big enough why.

1:04:29There's a big enough purpose because the people you're impacting in your community are also in other countries. And they deserve the same thing. They deserve a people-first fitness product. And so, you know, but we're only going to do that through you guys, right? How we're going to do that is focus all of our energy on putting more money into your pockets so that as a franchisee, you're able to get those AUVs up and then reinvest into the brand. So for us, just to give you a lay of the landscape, like Bird Brands is like, that's Bird Bootcamp and that's the front runner. That's the spearhead.

1:05:00Franchising really is about distribution, right? So now we come in and we have a nutrition business underneath, an activewear business underneath, a real estate business underneath, an investment company underneath that takes passive non-controlling stakes and companies that we're partnered with. And you start to think about secular franchises and other opportunities now that you have the infrastructure and the distribution. And it's like, that makes the return on investment for the franchisees even more important. and putting more chips in our basket so our opportunities get bigger as we go forward.

1:05:34Yeah. I mean, because that's what it is. Just for everybody listening, Bird Bootcamp as a brand or Bird as a brand, the way you grow brand awareness isn't always just advertising. When you have 200, 400, 500, 1 ,000 locations and the signage and thus in-market marketing and word of mouth, it grows the brand. It's reaching frequency at the highest level with that distribution. There's a lot of way to grow brand recognition and brand awareness that's not always just advertising in its truest sense because every new location that throws up a sign and community for bird builds the bird brand, right?

1:06:22Yeah. You know, I love your marketing mind. And if I had to pick a... I'm an entrepreneur, right? But if I had to pick a vertical that I'm most confident, it'd definitely be branding, I think, as a more specific term than marketing. And when I say branding, what I really mean is measuring things like brand equity. Pier 1 Imports is a good example. Pier 1 Imports went out of business, and then their logo sold for$50 million. And they were just burning cash, right? If your real estate portfolio is burning cash, unless you have some brand equity or some recognizable logo or something that's going to sustain it, it just crashes.

1:07:01There's no recovery element there. So when I think of being, when I think of the people that are listening to this and they're all entrepreneurs, it's obvious that owning your own business, number one, a brand, or number two, real estate portfolio, arguably one of the two best ways to build the wealth initially. And I always put brand equity just slightly ahead because I've got something, I've got a logo that means something to people, even though the brick and mortars aren't there anymore. And so for me, it's always been about And marketers try to measure this, but I think it's just them trying to be smart.

1:07:38It's like smoke and mirrors. And I said, try to measure like brand lift. It's like, well, okay, yes. What you're talking about, right, is okay, all the impressions from the signage, all the impressions from social media, all the impressions from word of mouth or one time in the mountains when Aunt Susie said something to Uncle Tim and Uncle Tim then takes his family in Seattle, Washington. Like you can't really measure a brand lift unless you isolate variables so, so finitely that it disregards all the things that actually create the brand lift. So I don't know if anybody is ever confused by brand lift.

1:08:10I'm a branding expert and I still don't get it. But that's what you're talking about is how does the collective touch points or the collective eyeballs on your brand... Gary Vee says attention is currency, right? And he's so right. What he's really saying is that brand awareness is your currency. And once I got all of the different units up rocking and rolling, You'd be surprised who comes out of the woodwork. My buddies from my junior high baseball team text me a picture of that logo. It said, my wife just joined. So yeah. And then you layer the digital paid advertising and organic social media and all the contemporary marketing stuff on top of that like we did.

1:08:49And I think that's the recipe. So you got to have the layer over the top. You've got to have the brand lift elements and then the hyper local community where you're in the field. Our FPs are in the field with their team, shaking hands, kissing babies, running for mayor, just making sure that they're the conversation when it comes to fitness in the town. Yep. We call it, you gotta drive brand and demand. It's those two things. That's what we preach to clients. And sometimes our clients, they just want to drive the demand. I'm like, you gotta invest in the brand, baby. You know, that's what's going to pay over time.

1:09:33Everybody wants sales overnight, but brands built over time. We're taking the BS out of business, baby. We'll see you next time. Or right about now. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

1:10:00Thank you.