Jeff Dudan
Appearances
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Our company was growing so fast on the direct business side that there was no resources, time or energy spent on the franchising, number one. And number two, there was a lack of alignment with my partners. They were fearful. They were very comfortable building a lifestyle contracting business. And I was willing to do it for as long as it took to get us where we needed to go.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
But that wasn't what I signed up for. In our second year, in 1995, I moved to Charlotte by myself and started our second location. And we became the thought leader. We became the innovator. We actually weren't operating under AdvantiClean at the time. We came up with the brand. We got the trademark. We said, we need to change our name now because we're going to be a franchise organization.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So all of that started happening around 2000. But when you have partners that everybody has to be aligned, until I bought my last partner out, we couldn't make any progress on it because there was just too much info. And honestly, the innovations that we came up with in our North Carolina location, which was probably 80% of the revenue coming through there. We created our commercial services group.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
We created our government contracting division. 90% of the revenues were being generated by our office. And that office, the original office, was having a real hard time making the transformation over to the current business model. And ultimately, my last partner, who was a wonderful man, he was an incredible mentor. but he wasn't one that could deal with a lot of stress.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And he ultimately kind of got a little sick and just was like, you know, I need you to buy me out. So hurricanes hit central Florida in 2004. There was three of them that crisscrossed there. We ended up doing about $4 million worth of water damage in about 90 days. And that's very high margin work. And that provided cash for me to go to him.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And it's funny, I hired a mediator to help us negotiate the sale. We had real estate. We had multiple commercial buildings. We had lots of assets. We had the franchise business, which was nothing at the time. And then we had our operating business, which was significant.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And the guy's like, I've never been in a negotiation where the buyer was trying to give the seller more than he was asking for, and the seller was trying to take less. So we were inversely negotiating against each other. I'm like, Dan, you've built this. You need this money. He goes, well, I don't really, you know, that's a lot. You know, you're taking all the debt.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I'm like, so it was interesting. And the guy's like, I've never seen anything like it. But I think that's a testament to that partner. His name was Dan. And he was just a really good guy, very giving. And then I'm not the hardest business guy out there. I care deeply about our franchisees' success.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Part of being a good franchisor, business is too hard, especially for entrepreneurs and first-time business owners to just go to the contract and beat them over the head with it when they're having a legitimate problem. understanding what they need to do or the stress of it. It's such a shift for them to put that entrepreneurial suit on for the first time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So many entrepreneurs out there, not like you, I don't believe, but I probably suffered from a lack of focus. And when you're growing up, I think you have this entrepreneurial gene. It manifests itself in a couple of ways. First of all, you're not a very good rule follower. You want to learn independently. So I was a voracious reader. I was a Discovery Channel guy.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And you really have to have patience and empathy and a real intent that these people are going to be successful. And sometimes it's tough love. And sometimes we make mistakes in a program or an advertising thing or something like that that has an impact on them. Sometimes they make mistakes that we've got to parachute in and help them resolve a lawsuit or a problem or something like that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
But when you're partners like that, like you're real partners and you have to really care. So franchising is difficult for that reason. And people that have had a lot of success or maybe they've been a high-level executive at a bank, And I've hired those people to come into my franchise organization. And after like a year or two, they're like, it's too soft. You can't just fire them.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
It's a game of influence. And it's a journey and it's an entrepreneurial journey. And so there's a real nuance to really good quality franchising. And yes, it's execution. It's technical excellence. It's paying attention to the market. It's being agile and bringing new solutions to make sure that your franchisees don't get behind. And it's all the good business stuff that's there.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
But then on the other side of it is you do the sunset rule, answering every call before the end of business. remembering people's birthdays, calling people when they have something that goes well. It's that stuff too. It's all mixed in there because it's really, it's a big partnership.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
You have to. And I mean, if somebody gets in trouble and they do, then we will do everything we can, including waiving fees and everything to get them out and get them as not hurt. The nice thing about service businesses is that the investment's not that high. They don't have a big expensive lease or piece of real estate.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So their ability to recover anything that they got into a service business is usually very attainable.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
First of all, Undercover Boss likes to work in franchising because it's easier for an employee of a franchisee not to know who the CEO is. So they do a lot in franchising and they had somebody that dropped out. A lot of people turned them down. The contracts are like three inches. So, I mean, there's a lot of legal. So I'm going to go out and no matter what happens, you're going to record it all.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And the first time I'm going to see the show is when it plays in front of 7 million people. on national television and I have no say. And they're like, yeah, that's right. So a lot of people are, they're afraid of it. If there's not an immediate compelling reason to say no, your answer should always be yes. When you're an entrepreneur.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Now you could say, well, you know, the things you say no to blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, in an opportunity like this, you can't buy that kind of press. So they had to drop out and they like, if you can film in two weeks and get through the contracts. So what they do is they come out, they do a sizzle reel about four hours of filming. They put together what they think.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
They send it to CBS. CBS turns down nine out of 10 of them. You got to make it through that round. And then you got to make it through contracting. And then you got to be willing to give away X number of dollars on the show. It's your money. And it's a big number. And then you got to commit to going and wherever and whenever. So that was how it happened. And then the experience was amazing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I just I learned and I learned and I learned. But then when I sat in school, it didn't land on me and I didn't want to conform and I didn't want to comply. And I look back now and I realize that probably maybe things could have been different if I was a better student. But at the end of the day, there's a reason why people like me end up doing what we're doing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I would never tell how they do the show, even though my confidentiality is long since up. I don't want to ruin it for them, but let me just tell you, I mean, at first people start sniffing out that is this undercover boss? But the production of it is such that they do a great job creating the scenario where these very real conversations can happen. And the conversations are all real.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
They really are. Now, how they get those out on time, whatever, that's their little secret sauce. But it is exhausting. The more drama, the better. So if they can wake me up early and say, we want to shoot you getting out of bed and pretending to call your wife and blah, blah, blah. And then they'll take you for an hour and stand you in the rain before you shoot and ask you questions. Yeah.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And then they'll take you at lunch and do the same thing. Then they'll take you after the shoot and do the same thing. Then they'll keep you up till 10. Over the course of time, they're trying to see if they can break you a little bit, I think. Now, that's not what they said, but it was clear that they're really trying to get soundbites.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I went into with the approach, the saying, the only way that I can have control over what's said is only say things that I'm comfortable with them using. And by the way, you can probably tell by now, the filter between my brain and my mouth is paper thin. And it's like a coffee filter that's been used. So 75% of the things that popped into my head, I'm just like, you're not going to say that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
You're just not going to say that. Because it would have been, they would have put it together in such a way that would have made great television, but it would have made me look like, you know, the worse you look, the probably better it is. So what happened is we did five segments. I got busted twice. They threw out one that I got busted.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And they said at the end of it, they said, you know, you have four segments that are so good. Usually they have to go film an extra three minutes at a dog park because they don't have enough content. They said, you have five segments that people would kill to have. And as a result of that, we had a very positive show. And it was very emotional. We had great outcomes with the people that were on it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
One of the ladies, Danielle, Half the stuff that happened to her and her family, they didn't even show. I mean, they have a psychologist waiting offstage after the reveal and all that, but she really needed the help. She had kids and a special needs child, and the husband was no longer alive for a
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
really horrible reason and it was just and they were getting ready to be homeless you know and she calls her daughter on the phone like after the show and she's on speakerphone and and the daughter's like you mean we're not going to have troubles anymore they were getting ready to lose their place they were living and she ended up we set her up as a remote call center person so she could work from home take care of her special needs child who was near the place where she needed to get him care and
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
They had never been on a vacation, so they rented a van and they drove California. That's all they wanted. We're like, we're going to send you here. And they're like, no, just rent us a van and give us the money. We're going to drive around California together as a family. We're going to see that. She was a top performer. And for two years in the call center, we paid her rent.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I took the standardized testing and I made a really high score. And my guidance counselor called me in and he's like, your grades and your test scores do not match. I was an athlete. I mean, I was a gym rat. I grew up in Chicagoland and out there on the playgrounds playing basketball every weekend or in the rec center. came to play football.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
We covered her rent so she didn't have living expenses. And at the end of it, two years almost to the day, she ended up getting married and buying a home, which was her goal. So the whole goal was to set her up with income and reduce her expenses so she could save for a down payment on a house and also give her that stability of W-2 so she could qualify for a loan. And it just worked.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And she was great. And she was a top performer. And so that's when it goes well. And that's what it's all about.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
People can't make decisions against a framework that they've never seen. The first thing I did was I got into Vistage in 2009. I had an incredible mentor who had built Husqvarna North America from $29 million to $530 million through a dealership network. So he was the perfect coach for me. And then at some point I got into something called YPO, which you're probably familiar with.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I got into YPO. And as I moved up through leadership in YPO and I got into a bigger room, I realized that everybody in there had sold a business and that it wasn't that scary and that your identity and your role could be separate. My whole identity was wrapped up in two, really three identities, the founder and CEO of AdvantiClean, father, husband, and coach. So That was it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
But the ability to say, you know, I've been running this business for 24 years and 11 months. We're one of the largest, what I would consider high quality assets at that point in time that was available for the market because private equity had come in and really gone through the home service space and acquired a lot of businesses. There just wasn't a lot of inventory out there at the time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So now we're in a space where maybe the demand is exceeding the supply. Multiples were high. I was 50. We were comfortable. We didn't need the money necessarily. But I also knew that the company needed to go through a real investment. It needed some change. It needed some life pumped into it. And
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I just said, you know, if I'm going to do something else, I would like to have more capital and I would also like the headspace to be able to do it. And you sit in the CEO spot. So there's certain things that you can't do because it might conflict with what you're doing right now. So I thought it was a great time to provide an opportunity.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
People did really well that had been with me for, I had nine people that had been with me more than 20 years. So it was an opportunity for them to get a check and other people to get a check and opportunity for us to really create some generational wealth and set up the vehicles for some dynastic things and to fund those things. You know, one of your roles as a parent is to provide.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
You know, we got a new coach and he wants to throw it and you recruit people. Basketball players have good hands, like we can catch it. So recruited me to the football team and that was great. And I loved it, but it wasn't very good. So I had to walk onto a school that would also academically accept me, which was the University of Northern Iowa.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So I'm like, okay, well that's done. And then it would give me the opportunity to do something different. So I really knew probably in 17, I took a few inbounds and, from some platforms and I just realized I wasn't the person to negotiate this deal. So I really needed to hire an investment banker and take it out to the more broad market and see who would be the best fit for it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And that's what we did. And it was a good thing for a lot of people.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So Homefront Brands, after about two, two and a half years of investing and advising and really getting involved in fitness and wellness and pets and oil changes and sales organizations and all these different things, what I really came to appreciate very quickly was it's kind of like the Warren Buffett thing. It's like the very durable nature of property services.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
You know, we're going to have a hundred million more people in this country by 2050. There's at least, and it could be much more than that, depending on what position we ultimately take on immigration and things like that. Some integration is definitely good. I mean, we need new people in this country and that's the way it's always been.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And then also there's an increased migration with remote work. So people are able to move to more preferable places if they want to and still maintain continuity of their career through remote work and those types of things. So anytime somebody leaves a home and gets into a new home, there's always work to get done.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And there's really a shortage of inventory of houses in some of these places that are growing so fast. So there's going to be new malls and schools. And I mean, somebody was in, what city was it? I know Nashville's been that way, but there's cranes everywhere in some of these cities that are growing. And it's just, they're growing so fast. in so many markets.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So it's the most durable of the 72 categories in franchising. I think it's really the most durable category. You'll never find a home front brands nestled comfortably between a Blockbuster and a Curves because there's no obsolescence in property services. So if somebody wants to really build a generational asset, and by the way, businesses are high class assets.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I bought my first home when I was in college for $62,500. And I bought the next two homes for under $100,000. And if you're a young person today and you're in where I live, you can't buy a starter home for less than $400,000. And that just doesn't work for people. It's very difficult, especially with interest rates such as they are.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I'm not saying anything about their academic standards. I'm sure they're very rigorous today. This was, you know, 1986. Yeah. Only made it through there one year, dropped back to a junior college. That was an inflection point in my life where I said, I'm going to get out of here and I'm going to have one shot to do it. It's going to be through a football scholarship.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Oh, I can't even imagine.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Your foyer is $400,000. Wow. So I used real estate all along the way to fund my business. That was my bank, commercial buildings, homes, spec homes, all this stuff we built. And that was how I would gain money to maintain 100% control of my business and fund it. So, you know, stock market, hey, we hit all new, all time new high yesterday. And it continues to go up. So that's great.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Dollar cost average in there. But if I'm a person right now that wants to create financial security, economic freedom for my family on Main Street USA, take advantage of the tax code. Businesses move with inflation. Businesses are the highest class asset. And I think more and more people in the work that you're doing at Leap is playing right into that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
People might be improving their careers, but they also... might be getting into a business. Whatever the next leap is for them, I don't know how you do it. I know what you do. So we looked at this property services because it was like, well, property services has played out, but I don't think so. And so we looked at it and we said, you know, there's this concept of,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
okay, if we're going to do this, one of the challenges, if you start a single brand, brands take a long time to build. They're expensive to build because we only get paid pennies on the dollar on the back end. So until we have in a service brand, 60 franchise owners operating at some level of maturity, We're not even going to be a break-even royalty self-sufficient company.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So we have to get there. And the other side of it is, is if I want to attract the best talent in the industry that I could possibly get, I have to create an opportunity that's big enough for them. So I can't start with one brand and nibble at it. I'll be another 24 years. So we know that we had to start with somewhere between four and six businesses and
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And to be able to have enough scale opportunity to invest the kind of money that I was ready to start writing checks for. I wanted the technology platform of the future and I wanted to invest in it. And I wanted to build it before we even started awarding franchises and inviting them to come in.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So that and to be able to hire a C-suite and to be able to get all the things going and to go out and acquire and buy the brands. Because we had to go and acquire businesses that had history and success. So I was like, well, if we're going to do it, that's the play. And that's what we have to do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So we were very fortunate getting to meet some incredible founders that had built some one-of-a-kind businesses. I mean, we have a one-of-a-kind business. We got some fast followers, number two in the market, potentially. And then we got some that are table stakes type businesses, highly fragmented out there. But all of the brands meet our requirements of revenue.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So I basically pulled myself out of anything that I was doing. And I just focused on... really a couple of things that I needed to do to get that. Some of it was grades, some of it was working on some speed and things like that, deconstructing speed and doing the things I needed to do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
revenue composition, residential commercial mix. We have one that's straight B2B. So then we said, all right, well, we don't want to go through the normal cycle of a bunch of mom and pops. And then eventually when they get tired, they get bought out by the bigger fish. Think about franchising like this. So think about it as a cityscape.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
You know when you see these cityscapes with the buildings and all of that, like the skylines? The height of the building is relational to the size of the balance sheet of your franchise owner. So you don't want to have a cityscape that's all ranch houses because nobody can buy anybody else. You need people that have enough capital that they're going to drive the marketing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And if somebody gets tired or wants to get out of it, that they're going to be like, yeah, I want that territory and I want to roll it up because that's what it is. And we said, we need to create the type of opportunity where we can have a smaller number of large franchisees.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I mean, I would rather have 200 franchisees doing a billion dollars than 2,000 franchisees doing a billion dollars because it's a billion dollars. We get paid the same, but think about the difference of the noise that we have to deal with. So we've purposely and intentionally constructed our platform to be able to attract those types of owners.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And then those types of owners you can be more collaborative with because they really bring value to what you're doing and they have the money to stay through it on a startup with the marketing and they'll hire a little bit more talent and stuff like that. And they can be more challenging too.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And that's fine because the first time around I was putting my toe in and on the ice to see where it would break. This time around, we're just an adult group. We're done radical transparency. Everybody sees everybody else's numbers. We look at the numbers first. We make decisions. If we make a mistake, we take responsibility for it. We move as a group and we hunt in packs.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Everybody has a different problem that they want to solve with a franchise business. Some people, it's an itch they just always wanted to scratch. And they're comfortable and they can tolerate it. And they see themselves doing something different. Other people, they're solving for kids' college educations. Maybe they're behind on that. Other people have been downsized three times.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
They want a job that they can't... They're going to be the last one fired because it's them doing the firing. Other people want to fortify something for their retirement. And they want to build equity inside of something that they can sell in retirement. Some people want to build something because they've got kids that are in college that they want to do something with.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I just was barely good enough to get a scholarship out to Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and got there, met my wife February 2nd, 1989. She took on the project and I attribute our longevity to many things, but we're passionate about similar, but one of which is we're both constantly working on me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And they're better to work inside of an existing system than try to go through a startup of a new business and create everything. So... All of these are different outcomes, but the process is the same. People decide for one of these reasons that they have a need. We get people that hear about us from the podcast.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
There's referral partners out there, brokers and consultants that do a really nice job of qualifying candidates and putting them through some rigor on their skills, their financial capabilities, their outcomes, their timeframe, and all of that, and then match them up with good companies. They do research on the companies. They know who everybody is, so they'll know what to expect.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And if they like a platform or a brand better than others, they'll say why. And then, you know, just good old-fashioned internet marketing. My job, there's different types of CEOs. There's financial CEOs. There's marketing CEOs. I'm a very marketing promotional type CEO. We've hired professional business runners, and they're great.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
They're the best in the business, I think, and very interesting group of people. multi-billion dollar, multi-brand platform experience. So my job is really to set the tone for the organization. And you know how it is. You don't realize how much downward pressure you as the CEO have in the organization just by your presence. And the greatest thing that we can give anybody is our standards.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
You set the standards and you maintain the standards. And in franchising, you're working at the other end of it to make sure that people are getting what they need and that people are okay and people are taken care of.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Well, I appreciate it. You know, I really just write books when I come to the end of an era. I have two books. I wrote a book called Hey Coach, which is really the story of a baseball team with which I go through my method for building a youth coaching team. So when I knew that I had aged out of coaching my kids, I'm like, I have two drawers full of stuff.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I've developed it over a dozen years, and I need to put it into a book just so other people can have access to it. And then I'm not dying with the knowledge. And it was the same thing with discernment, the business athlete's regimen for a great life through better decisions. It's really targeted towards, I think, people that are
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
early in their career or looking at their first entrepreneurial adventure and really an underpinning, a foundational thing to say, here are a variety of views at models for making good decisions and how you do that. So that was really the purpose for that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Nobody's running out to Amazon to buy discernment, but yeah, you know, actually is doing quite well now for some reason, but it's not a beach read, but it comes down to two things. It comes down to reach and And then it comes down to know, like, and trust. So number one, nobody can buy anything from something they've never heard of.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So at the end of the day, anywhere that I can get this face, hopefully dimly lit, generally, hopefully people are listening. Yeah. you know, but anywhere that I can get this opportunity to be with you, to talk to your audience or to be in a Forbes article or to be on a television show or anything like that, like that is just more reach and exposures of people that, what is it?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Then I started the painting business because I needed the money to stay during the summer.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
People buy, they have to be touched 11 times and seven different piece of content or four channels or something like that, something like that. So, so there's reach and then there's, okay, well, now that you're reaching people, what are you saying? What do you stand for? What can people expect? And what you hear today is what people are going to get when they come to Homefront Brands.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And it sets the standard for, I mean, if I'm willing to say all of these things, then our team understands that that's what we are bound and obligated to deliver upon. And it's not easy and it's choppy. Building business is hard. We had 180 business owners under 12 months old. Think about that. 180 new business owners under 12 months old. We are a fast growing franchise platform and
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
We managed it. We managed it, but it wasn't perfect. But everybody kind of knew what they were getting into. And if we were short, we spent and we worked really, really hard to make it all work for people. And it's only getting better. So I think personal brand is valuable to the extent that you're actually willing to live up to the messages that you're saying.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Because where do people get in trouble? It's the TV preacher that then, you know, has indiscretions after indiscretion after, like, okay, you know, I was getting ready to send my retirement money into you, but now I'm not.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And whoever you are, values are value neutral. Your values are just like, this is how you make decisions. This is what people can expect from you. Your values for a vice product vapes or tobacco or alcohol or things like that are going to be different than your values for a business like ours or whatever.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So the values or Zappos, you know, which has a great set of principles that they built their business on, or great franchise platform, Neighborly had a set of these rich values that when two or more people, I hate to plug another platform, but look, they're good, man. I don't mind it. You know, when two or more people come into a room
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
at that company, they have to start by reciting the values in every meeting.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Right? Wow. I mean, they put the cult in culture. You know, I'm not willing to go that far, but we use them. We make decisions by our values. We talk about them. I teach the trainees in the first two hours of training how to use those to build your team and introduce yourself to the marketplace. And so people know what to expect when something doesn't go well.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So I think all of that, back to your question, is getting the reach and as cost-effective as you can, letting your voice fall on the ears of your customers, your prospects, and then delivering a message consistently that will be the same after they get in the door as it was before they got in the door.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Don't be so afraid of what other people think. You can't make decisions based on how other people might react. It's not a good filter for making decisions. You need to have a system by which you make decisions. And if you read the entire discernment book, Not one of them is what other people might think. Because by the way, most people that you're thinking about don't have experience.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
They've never done what you're trying to do. We're all just wrapped up in our own ego, in jealousy, with the fact we didn't get a lot of sleep last night, whatever it is. Really work on the fundamentals of great decision-making and understand how you make decisions and why, and take the emotion out of it. And fear is an emotion, and it has no place in wisdom.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Not to be overly dramatic about it, but the shift really came, like, I mean, I failed in my first college. And I went back home. And at that point, my parents were divorced. There was always enough, but there was nothing extra. There was nobody at the house. My parents had kind of moved on. We had the house. I had a younger brother that was there. He didn't have any support.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
It's been an honor to be on. Thank you so much.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I'm just like, wow, this is what life's going to be. There was another thing that made impact on me. I've really actually never mentioned it before, but we had a friend that was a couple of years older than me and he got killed. Being somewhere he shouldn't have been, he wasn't really involved, but he got in the middle of it and he ended up getting murdered randomly.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I was like, wow, if I was there in that group, I probably would have been the one that would have tried to step in the middle and say, guys, we don't need to be doing this. And that could have been me. So that made an impact. And I'm just like, you know, I really need to think about what I'm doing here.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I also, regardless of the actual performance of the grades and such, not, I actually had a high opinion of myself that I was smart, that I could accomplish things. And that, you know, if I set my mind to it and having some success athletically, I think bolstered a little bit of that confidence. The social confidence wasn't there. The academic confidence, the rigor wasn't there.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
But again, I didn't have really a role model or anybody holding me accountable to do those things. I think if somebody would have just said, I'm going to take a look at your report card once in a while, maybe I would have. But I think all of those things combined to a fear of failure, I was staring right at it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Lack of focus leads to a lack of greatness. Many entrepreneurs are screwed into existence by circumstances. Personal brand is valuable to the extent that you're actually willing to live up to the messages that you're saying. It comes down to reach, and then it comes down to know, like, and trust. Nobody can buy anything from something they've never heard of.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I think through reading and books, a lot of fiction, a lot of ink magazine, a lot of business-y type stuff already, but also a lot of fiction. I had seen the world through the eyes of the authors. And I knew there was a lot out there. And I just always assumed that I would get to go see it one day. Now, the life I live today, I would have never anticipated.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I mean, I'm flying all over the place and I get to go to great places and I get to be with some of the top people in the industries. I would have never thought. But I do feel like I belong and I can walk into a room with people that you only have seen on television or in the internet and be comfortable in that arena. But it was a shift. We get in our own way with our own insecurities.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
If we argue for our limitations and we lose that argument, then we get to keep those limitations for our entire life.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So I had worked all the trades growing up. Chicago's a union town, so concrete construction. I worked for a moving and storage company. And one of the summers, I worked for a painter. And that's a really low barrier to entry business. And my roommate had a truck. And I'm like, hey, let's start a painting business. There wasn't anything more than, we're going to need money to stay.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
At that point, it was kind of a low point with my dad's business had been failing. And there just wasn't any money. I just didn't have an avenue to get any money. So even to stay over the summer, I had to solve that problem myself. A paintbrush, a small ladder, a deposit on a job, and you're a painter. And I knew how to do it. So it was nothing more than that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
It was just, I like to say, many entrepreneurs are screwed into existence by circumstances. And I've got a problem to solve I want a case of beer a week and I want to eat and I need a roof over my head. It was just that simple.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I graduated college and a buddy calls me and we had built this very successful apartment painting business. They had asked us to put a crew together and we recruited all the athletes that were taking classes over the summer. And we would do 15 or 20 apartments in a day. And we were making real money. I was making more than the football coaches were making.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So I got offered a grad assistant football coaching job at the University of South Carolina by one of the coaches that had gone there. And he said, he called and said, would you want to do that? And I mean, I couldn't afford to live on it. Back in the mid-80s, they weren't paying assistant coaches a whole lot. So I was making more as a part-time painter. And my brother was coming behind me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And if the resources weren't there for me, they really weren't there for him. And he was stuck. He was washing cars at Schaumburg Toyota outside of Chicago and going to that junior college. So, you know, I also had an obligation to stand up a household and be able to help them with tuition and get them through school. So this guy calls and he says, hey, this hurricane just hit South Florida.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And then there's, okay, well, now that you're reaching people, what are you saying? What do you stand for? Like, what can people expect? Don't be so afraid of what other people think. Fear is an emotion and it has no place in wisdom.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
You guys are aggressive. We need all the help we can. They basically said, call everybody you know and see anybody who wants to work. And so we went down there and cut our teeth in the insurance restoration business for 18 months. Then in 94, moved up to Central Florida to start a business with three partners that I would ultimately over the next 10 years, buy them all out,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
We became a national and international government contractor, disaster restoration. We had offices in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina. And I bought my last partner out in 2004 and decided to franchise the business. So we sold all of our company stores under the franchise model in 2006, 2007, and 2008.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Launched the business in 2009 to the market, and we ended up with 240 locations, and I sold the business in 2019.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
What I would say is my observation of it is my dad was working seven days a week. I was proud of him actually at the time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
But when I look at it in hindsight and I realized that on client days that he would make me put on a sport coat and go sit in a cube to act like he had employees, I'm looking at it and they were a little overprotective over that snack box that you were supposed to put money in. I mean, if something got gone,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Somebody was in trouble and I was a kid and I was hungry, but I didn't really realize in a way it was a failure, but in the other way, him and his partner ran that business for probably a decade. or longer. And then when he closed the business down, he did work for the clients from home. So he was still an independent contractor.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And then ultimately he took a job with a big company to get benefits and pension and whatever. And that's where he finished his career. But I didn't look at it at the time as a failure. I just knew that he was in business for himself.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Look, I wasn't a good partner. I didn't understand what partnership was. Good agreements upfront head off bad disagreements down the road. And you need to understand when you enter into a partnership, are you an investor, an advisor? Are you the operator? Are you going to sign an employment agreement? Are you going to run this business?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
You have to get absolute clarity around how things are going to go. And I think we went into this business and we started it up and there was a real interesting negotiation when we started it where these two guys were University of Florida graduates. They were older than us by a decade or more. They had a lot of experience and we were kind of the young kids
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
rising stars or whatever in the in the field and they wanted 51 of the business and my sense of it was we shouldn't do that because we're going to lose control so i said look it's a 50 50 business it's 25 four ways and we'll let you brand the company in the florida gator colors So I traded that for that 1%.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
But it's actually, now if you think about the succession of the negotiations that went on, that was really important percent because it wasn't a year and a half later where one of the partners just wasn't showing up and was one of the older guys. And he was getting into it with the other guy and it wasn't working. So we had to buy him out.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And then my partner that I started with, it was the same thing. It was a lack of alignment, lack of performance, lack of showing up. And the reality of it is we didn't negotiate who was responsible for what before we started. People just act in the way that they perceive that they were going to have to contribute. And then there becomes these disagreements. So
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
If you want to have a professional outcome, you've got to design professional partnerships. And if you're not going to operate the business, then don't even pretend that you're going to operate the business and make sure that the business has the operators that it needs and the contingencies that it needs. And people are agreeing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
Another problem you get into with partnerships is if money needs to be put in. If there's three people, you're reaching for your wallet and they're reaching for your wallet. You know, that's the problem. Like, you know. The rubber hits the road when it's time to write a check. That's when it really, do you really believe in this? Are you really committed? Are we really all aligned?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
So now what I'll say is if you forward that to today, I've made a study and I made a point of partnerships and collaborations more specifically. And, you know, I have a great friend who has really made a science of collaborations. You don't have to just start a business by yourself to take advantage of a known market opportunity. You can create a collaboration. You can name that collaboration.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And now everybody gets the benefit. And if you look at it, and I know you were an investor and you made a lot of investments. And I also got into that after I sold my business. I mean, I got very diversified and lots of investments and partnerships. But the challenge was that some of them expected a lot of me because they wanted to trade on my reputation and my background.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
you can be a partner, but you've got to be out front of this business because you're going to give people comfort that if they join this franchise, then it's going to be built properly. And that was never the agreement. It was like, well, you're going to invest and you're going to advise. So you have to get those clear expectations up front.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And you really have to be careful about the things that you get involved with to make sure it's something that you can carry it through. And then you have to do scenarios that say, if everything goes as worse as it possibly can, Who's going to step in?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
I hired my first franchise attorney in 1997 because coming out of the hurricane, I realized that it was the franchise businesses that were dominating. And observationally, the ServPros, the ServiceMasters, the Paul Davis, it was really First General Services, which was a dealership model. Observationally, they were the ones that were able to bring the resources.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Jeff Dudan, Undercover Boss: How I Built a Thriving National Franchise From Scratch | E51
And I realized that that industry was very heavily controlled by franchise systems. So I'm like, well, then we should be a franchise system. We shouldn't join a franchise. We should be a franchise. So I hired our first one in 97, just got some education on it. I actually created our franchise company in 2000. But, you know, lack of focus leads to a lack of greatness.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
We have so many of our business owners that we put in business through AdvantiClean 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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. So you've got to do that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
Now, if you went to a trademark attorney and they said, you know, no way.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
Look, 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 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 lawn chair? No, but like, look, I mean, you build this whole brand and then the equity is in the name.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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's just you've just kind of built. I'm not going to say you built it for nothing, but that would be a non-starter if you can't get a trademark. I don't think anyone would do that. Yes, you would have to go through a rebrand.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And, uh, you know, you would think that in this day and age that every good name is 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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. So now. 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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? I think it was CBS. Pitch it to the network. Yeah. Pitch it to CBS.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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 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
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
It was really cool. I know I signed a bunch of confidentiality stuff and I really don't want to do anything to, 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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 it is it is so it is done so well and so over the top. That you would not think, like, 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 is.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
So, yeah, it was great. We ended up being on the road. We had a couple of little hiccups with a couple of things that were going on politically where we shot some stuff in North Carolina and then there. They're like, oh, well, we don't want to shoot in North Dakota. We had to reshoot stuff. So I had to fly my family. We did all the family stuff, right? We went, we did the office stuff.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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 out on the road for a week. We film two or three segments.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
We 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. So 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 five, the producer said we had five episodes that we had to cut one that many shows would have killed to have.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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 at 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
But it was really – I think what's interesting about the process is – You know, we have a, you haven't been here yet. I think you're coming, but I don't know if you've been here yet. But, you know, we have a 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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. People didn't even know I owned the business. That's kind of how we rolled. People had no idea really what we did, the scale of the enterprise.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
They didn't know that, oh, it's nice they let you practice here. And and so like we we were pretty under the radar and I sat my kids down on the couch in our 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And 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 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And they're just like, okay, well, we're willing to take the consequences of it. And we did. And we ended up having a great show. And they all got a little bit of time on it. So that was cool. They got like a flash across the screen. Yeah, their 15 seconds of fame. Yeah, their 15 seconds of fame. And then when it showed, the night that it showed in January of 2017, We rented out an entire bar.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And it did so much for the business and the brand and the franchisees, really just confirming like, Really living the values that we knew that we lived within the four walls of the business. But 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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
But I knew, uh, I knew that I had a irresponsibly, uh, quick mouth and I needed to put a, you know, clap a cheek, clap a lock on it. Uh, but we did good. We did good.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
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. They were touched by the episode and franchisees directly got work attributed to it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
There was a spike in franchise sales, but it wasn't massive. But being able to use that episode kind of as a... It's a piece of content during the process to really exemplify what we stood for, you know, how we rolled. It tells, I mean, my gosh, it tells the story of our brand. They did obviously a great job with it and little graphics and little trucks and a map.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
So you could watch the first four or five minutes of that thing and get our whole company history summarized. and in a high production quality. So just that was worth $250,000.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
You are in control. Every decision that you make, every action that you take determines the slope of your line. It determines the velocity of your business. It determines the quality of your life. And you can do that in a franchise model. You can do that in your personal life. You can do it in direct business. But at the end of the day, man, it's body of work.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So like part of our job as business owners is to create space so the universe can organize itself and we can calm the swirl around all the opportunities that we have. And so, you know, I shared that with you and you had shared something similar with me. And then we're at this great party. Right. And I was I held off for a little while.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And then I and then and then it's like we went to the VIP dinner and it was a special drink paired with a special. So I had I had to have five drinks with five courses. Right. So that was out the window. Right. And I – he said, how did you do last night?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, I said, I tried to stop after 1, but it was actually 1.30.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
It was so fun. My other one was I tried to figure out if I could make an old-fashioned last night, but I couldn't make one. But I could make four.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, I mean, they'll do $1.5 million to $2 million in a location, but they'll make $500,000 or $600,000. And just on, you know, who cancels $10? Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, $12.95. It costs you more in gas to drive over there and cancel than it does to cancel.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
You're pretty close to the Tiger Woods of home service. Yeah. But not to glaze you like a donut, but – Nice. But, okay, so the fourth thing I did during this last 120 days, and part of it was, again, creating the space. Then I was coming home from Vegas. I was out there doing Ryan Pineda's podcast. Yeah, yeah, Ryan's the man. And I got COVID. Oh, you did? That was just two months ago.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, I got COVID, and I got walking pneumonia after that. So I was down. So what I did was I went deep into David Goggins.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Can't hurt me. Yeah, so here's the great thing. He says... you know, you're performing against your own standards. And he goes, if you can perform against your own standards, void of any purpose, most people go to train for a marathon, and then that's because, oh, I'm going to train because I'm training for a marathon. No, man, you just train, you just push yourself.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So, you know, really, it took me a good bit to understand, because he says the same thing just over and over and over again. And it took me a good bit to understand, but like, we are just competing against our personal standards. I'll give you an example from this morning. And I Probably shouldn't, but I'm going to do it anyway. All right. So I get checked out of the room.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Great workout this morning. Got up, worked out. I had a sauna. Great. I get my stuff packed together. I'm like, all right, I got just enough time to grab something to eat and then to get over here and be on time. So I go down to this little kiosk and I get a breakfast burrito and a cup of coffee, which is sitting right here.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Now, are you talking about franchisors or franchisees?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And I and I shove that thing down my face and I'm heading back into the hotel to go down to the first floor and catch an Uber. And there's a homeless guy sitting there and he's just got one sign just says food question mark. And then he's got this dog.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
OK. And I go in and I'm standing at the elevator and I'm like. Right outside is a kiosk. They have these beautiful sandwiches. Or I just go and I make sure that I'm here five minutes earlier. And I'm like, screw it. What are my personal standards? I left my luggage there. I went out and I bought two. I said, do you have anything for dogs? They said, no. I said, give me two ham sandwiches.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, so 4,000 actively growing franchise brands, 90% of franchisors fail within 12 years, and there's good reason for that. So, yeah, every day roughly one comes into business, and every day roughly one goes out of business. Which is crazy. But I don't know. Is that any different than traditional small business, stuff like that? Maybe not.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
They had these beautiful, big, fat ham sandwiches there. And I just walked them over and I gave them to the guy. I just did it because, like, number one... Take an action. And number two, what are your personal standards? And like probably nine times out of ten or before 120 days ago, I'd have thought it and not done it. But like you do it, man.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
You have to do that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Or are you taking control of the rest of your life?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. So I got two things on that. Number one, you pay people here by the hour. I know you pay a lot of commission because you allow people to make a lot of money within your organization. Performance pay. Performance pay. But we get paid by the conversation. Yeah. The quality of the conversations we have, the caliber, with the right people in the room, that's when everything moves forward.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I mean, I met the founder of Chirp. We're back and forth. And I said, well, we would like to use Chirp, but it doesn't integrate with our thing. He goes, oh, don't worry. I'll do it. And just meeting him yesterday, you know, and he said, oh, okay, well, then he'll do it. The second thing is, you know, one of the things I think that's rare about your company is the execution and the implementation.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Like ideas are great, but ideas unimplemented mean nothing. So, you know, the ability to – so when things are going well for you, you can move your gaze out farther strategically and think about new opportunities, new businesses, your water treatment business. But when things start falling apart, business owners have to go in. They've got to jump back in.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
You've got to get right back down and figure out what spring or what sprocket fell out to allow this to happen. So now the more capable organizations we build – the more time that we get to spend out there going to places like this. Because my job in our platform is to be out and understand. Visionary. Well, what's cutting edge?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
But look, franchising is a – it has to be a certain passion play because there is so much collaboration that has to happen with these franchise owners. They all have, they come from different places. We have a high sophistication, high net worth franchise owners, and then we got people coming out of corporate America for their very first business.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I actually hate that visionary word because it's just like, you know, I love it when people put it in their LinkedIn title.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I'm a visionary and I'm letting you know that I'm telling you to call me that. But but, you know, like like our our job is to be on the cutting edge. Like what's you know, we're both in the genius network. Like what's happening six to 12 months from now that we need to make sure that we're ahead of.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Where was the inflection point where you were an operator of a garage door business And then in the next day or the next week, you were a business builder, a visionary, and an entrepreneur.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And every action that you take or every inaction that you should have taken that you didn't, it's a plus or a minus check, man. And at the end of the day, there's a tally. At the end of the week, there's a tally. And at the end of your life, there's a tally.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And you've gotta be able to meet them all where they're at. So a lot of times people franchise their business and they don't realize that it's gonna take upwards of maybe a couple of million dollars of investment ahead of their revenue to be able to build the systems and the processes and put the people in place to meet these franchise owners when they're emerging.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. Best business question. Gun to your head, if you had to do twice as much in half the time, figure it out.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So unfortunately, a lot of brands get 5, 10, 15 owners and then they realize what it is and then maybe they decide to discontinue it. But ultimately, look, franchising is accelerating at an accelerating rate. There's 829,000 franchise establishments in the United States. One out of every nine people employed works by or for a franchise system, almost 9 million people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, no, I was ready. I'd built the business for 25 years. I was 50. I knew that there was more to do, but like I couldn't I was not good enough to extract myself from the business. And plus, man, you have a business for 25 years. All my personal real estate was handled by my business office. I mean, everything was mine was really actually for as well as we did. It was a lifestyle business.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I mean, I probably worked the minimum that I needed to build that company. I coached all my kids sports. I prioritized my family. I did all of that kind of stuff. And if I knew then what I knew now, it didn't have to be mutually exclusive. I could have built five times that business if I had the right attitude that I have right now.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
and still not sacrificed any of the other stuff that I felt was important to me. But I didn't make a decision to sell the business until I got into something called YPO, Young Presidents. And then what I realized was everybody in YPO had sold the business. So I just hadn't been in the right rooms. Because I was, to your question, man, when I went to sell the business, like,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
It was a no-brainer, and I never thought twice about the decision, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hard to basically take my identity and strip it away from this business and then go into nothing. And I did fill it with a lot of business activity in which I learned some stuff, but I probably should have followed some advice and maybe taken six months sabbatical and but I took three days.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Oh, I would have focused on – look, we franchised our business and we didn't hire one person that had experience franchising. We figured it all out. We went and got like the guidelines from the government and we wrote our own thing. I mean it's like we were so proud that we were doing it ourselves, which was the stupidest thing on the planet. So if I would have just got two or three –
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Like your guy that came in here, if I would have if I would have been humble enough, smart enough to do that earlier, that everything would have been different. Now, I have no regrets. Like, you know, I'm a big I've come I'm big on this concept of body of work.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
OK, every action that we do every single day, every conversation we have, like it's either additive or subtractive to who we are in our body work. And at the end of the day, at the end of our life, like we got to be good with it. Like we we it's just this huge it's just this huge ledger of pluses and minuses. How do you spend your time? What do you do?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And, you know, your body of work, you know, like like you're you mentioned it. You're very giving. You got you got home service freedom. You got your vertical track. You like you're like, hey, if you can execute on what I do, God bless you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, so you don't even have to worry about giving everything that you know because you know darn well that almost nobody's going to be able to do it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, and nobody's going to catch you, so you're fine.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And it's a significant part of small business GDP, which is generally 46% to 60% of our GDP. So franchising is giving people entrepreneurial opportunities on Main Street USA for their families. So, you know, when you're scaling a big direct business, you can go fast because you make the decisions. You say, we're going to implement this. I'm going to pay for this. This is the way it is.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And you're not grabby.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, man. So like body of work at the end of it, you want to go back and you want to be in business with people that you like. You want to have made a difference. You want to have impacted their lives. You want to. I mean, so, you know, everything we do, man, is and, you know, people are so sloppy and lazy and undisciplined with how they invest their time and energy and their money.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And, you know, so, yeah, man, 15 years ago, I would have given up so much more to get the right people around me and focused on growth.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
It's been, yeah, I don't have any heartburn about it, but, like, you know, it's, yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, and we have great people. We've got really strong brand presidents that are proven in the industry. We've got a really strong C-suite. And, you know, honestly, that's one of the reasons that, like, fundamentally, whenever it is at the end of the day, when whoever it is looks at this business, like private equity, this thing is ticked and tied from day one.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Every document legally – I mean, usually when you get into emerging franchisors, like, everything is a mess. Territory policy is a mess. Like, they've just – you know, like I tell –
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Whenever I talk to emerging people, I'm like, the decisions you make in the first six months are going to, if you make the wrong decisions in setting up your program and then you go out and award 100 franchise owners, you've just cut 75% of your exit off just because of the structure of what you've done. You had the territory policy wrong. You didn't charge right.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
You made all these concessions, and it's just a mess. So, like, we did set the foundation of this business up with excellence. And, you know, we haven't been perfect in everything we've done. I mean, there's definitely some marketing things. Like, we got, you know, you launch five brands. You got to rebrand four of them. And all of a sudden franchise owners just start pouring in.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
You're chasing your tail. And the interesting thing, one of the probably the biggest difference between a direct business like yours and a franchise business like ours is, you know, if you want to roll out Chirp, you just roll out Chirp. If I want to roll out Chirp, I need to have some sort of a consortium of franchise owners that are going to get on the program with that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So if I'm willing to pay for it, then I can do it. But in our model, there's things that the franchise owners need to pay for. And again, you've got this wide distribution of people that have different outcomes. Some people are like, hey, I want to build a $500,000 or $1 million business, and I want to make a couple $300,000 a year and have a nice lifestyle and manage three or four people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
But if you took your employees here, your cross-section of your employees from your C-suite to your directors all the way down to your techs, and you gave some random 50 of them a franchise, think about what you'd be dealing with.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And then there's other people that just want to be monsters and want to build a $50 million business. So you have all of that, and they're all going to take a different approach when I say, we need to do this. So if I really want to do something, then I've got to shell it out. And then over time, you can make it mandatory, but it has to have proof.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Well, we get paid at the closing table.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. You've got to be careful on your rollback. Like you have to know what you're rolling back into. There's things that I've learned.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, so, you know, I had the top two people that were in my deal at the end. One was paying a little bit more. But what I didn't really fully appreciate that like we were a tuck-in. prior to them reselling. So my hold time on my rollback was short. Whereas the second place person, you know, I probably would have somebody else sold to them about the same time and they 5X their rollback.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So, you know, like just that one little thing and I roll back eight figures, right? So, I mean, it was a big chunk of money and it would have, yeah, it would have sat in there for another three or four years, but like I would have 5X that money. Knowing, looking back at it, I don't, I probably could have – I don't think anybody could have known.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
But what I – the fact that I did have is that this one was – I could have got the information that they were already in process and that we were a tuck-in and that we were – whatever I rolled in was going to roll back relatively quickly. And I could have acted on it and said, well, this $8 billion private equity firm is really growing this other thing. I would have been one of the first people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
investments in there and now yeah you come in early yeah i mean i was i was relatively early and now you know they're a 2.2 billion dollar company they're the ones that own uh clockworks and everybody yeah so um yeah so like i would have been third company in at the beginning yep And so like that – the amount of economics that – so like know who you're selling to.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And there's another private equity company that I recently met. Now, there's probably one of the – like one of the more famous ones and – They do a lot in franchising, and they're huge and all of that. Now they want to fly in and meet with us. And we're not in the market or anything like that, but they just try to get to know you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
They want to get to know you and all that. But, you know, in that particular one, I mean, they have 10-, 15-, and 20-year fun lives.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, which I heard you talk about the other day, which I was going to ask you about. But the reality of it is, then, if it's not going to flip in three to five years, when are you going to get your second?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And anything I do, no, close. But they've done a great job, by the way, with their investment in ServPro. I mean, they've 3X.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
They've 3X'd their revenue. So they've done a really, really good job with them. I can coach people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, but nothing is going to change your life from here on out.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. Do you think it's rare that your equity partner gives you this much latitude to do whatever it is you want? Or was that the deal going in?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, yeah. Actually, I'm probably rolling out an education business in that space just because – You know, I do care about expanding the reach and relevance and the professionalism of the franchise industry. I mean, I've heard you say before, you know, hey, it's a lazy way to do it. If you can't do it, you know, it's a lazy way to build a business.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. And while people get big eyes. Right. And they say, well, I got this donut shop and, you know, there should be a thousand of these donut shops. But they really don't understand what it takes. But, you know, they get around somebody that and the bottom line is families get hurt. Like many franchise owners invest their life savings in a business. And it's really important that it's done well.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Let me ask you this, man. Three years from now, who's the CEO of A1?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Well, I think you're going to be like the Empire Carpet guy. You know who I'm talking about?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, like 588-2300. I grew up in Chicago. That's where that guy's from. And it used to be him. When I was a kid, that was him. But now he's dead. So now it's a cartoon guy. But it's still the same guy. One day, you'll still be all over the face of this and probably many other businesses. But it'll have to be the cartoon.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. So I tell my kids, like, when they want to buy something, like rims or something, I'd say, okay, you're going to spend $1,000 on this. Are you willing to give up $65,000 25 years from now? Because that $1,000, if you put it in the spreadsheet and you hit it with 8%, Right in that 25-year range, it turns into $65,000. And I'm like, are you willing to give that up?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I mean, compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. I mean, you're young. Thank God I invested in a lot of real estate young. I was just kind of a contractor. And I know you did apartment buildings, but I was just building houses and owning rental property. And everywhere I went, we bought an office building and stuff like that. And thank God. That adds up. Thank God.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I mean, over time, it's just, you know, you couldn't afford to buy this stuff today for what we bought it over time. And, you know, it's the same thing for them. They need to be putting together these assets. But, like, people don't do it. And then what happens is, right, they have just enough to live. And all of a sudden, we go through an inflationary period. People are in their 50s and 60s.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
They don't have the same earning potential or the energy. And next thing you know, like, my mom's still living, right? And she is tight. I mean, like one rotisserie chicken, three days. And she's got some money. And I told her, I said, please spend your money. I'll take care of you. You know, you don't have to worry about running. Your house is cash.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
We bought her a house for cash when she moved to North Carolina three years ago. She's got money in the bank.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Let's see. She was born in 44.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I'll make it up to you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And I'm prepared for it. All right. You're already a billionaire, just not today. But it's destined. The die's been cast. And you get your family going. By the way, you'll never regret. doing that. You'll never regret it. It's the greatest thing. That's my legacy. I hang my hat on that. We're three for three with our kids. And I'll never regret anything that I sacrificed for that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Look, franchising – like let's think about like retail-based locations. OK, if you want to make real money in franchising, if you're in a retail-based location, it's hard to do it because a fitness studio or a sauna or something like that might have $500,000 of revenue. So if you want to do what some of these – now there's a lot of big multi-unit owners in there.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So you're a billionaire. You got that going. Do you think you'll do the giving pledge? Because to your point, when people get billions and billions and billions of dollars, like 75% of these people, whether they're like Ryan Jumaville. You know Ryan?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
OK, I need to introduce you to Ron Jumaville. I think he's—sorry, Ron. I think he's probably, I don't know, $4, $5, $6 billion. Or if they're the $100 billion people, they sign up, man. They say, I'm giving away 90 percent of this by the time I die. Because at the end of the day— I mean, how many hundreds of millions of dollars?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I think, was it the Rockefellers are the ones that kept their money the best?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And it's wrapped around a charitable trust. Right. So they're the ones, but at the end of the day, I have two different sets of trusts. They're both dynastic in nature. My daughter, who's in law school right now, at one time said, when do we get our money out? And I'm like, never. And she's like, well, why'd you do it for? And I'm like, I'm not sure.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
But I want you to have enough to do something, but never enough to do nothing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
At the end of the day, I don't know why I made all this money. I mean, it's great, but, like, I don't have things. Like, I'm not a big fan.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
It does, but also they – Sometimes they don't want to go. Because they really didn't go through what you went through to get it. So they're not going to get the same out of it that you do. That's true. But it's very noble. And I think that's why you're going to be a great dad is because you care so much about your employees. You have a massive heart for people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I think that's one of the keys to your success. I mean, every time we talk, it's like my employees can be doing this for them. I'm doing that for them. I want these guys to, you know, not only go to Disney but do the Fast Pass. And, like, at the end of the day, man, it is a giver's gain. You can make money and still do right by people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And I think if you do it the right way, you can even do better by taking people with you. And that's perfectly said.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
They wouldn't leave. They wouldn't leave. Why would they?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
inside of these retail. So they'll have 100 or 200 or 300 restaurants or Hardee's or restaurants, things like that. So you can make real money in retail-based franchising. You can build a big team to support all those things. And people do it all the time, especially in food, haircuts, retail, all these lash lounges and things like this, all these retail services.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, well, I used to say my LinkedIn, but, man, I got a company working in there now, and a lot of messages get gone. But should I get my email out on a show this big? I'm not sure.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
All right. Well, hey, you can just reach out to me at Jeff at Duden dot me. And Instagram is a great way to message me. Just Jeff Duden. If you go to Jeff Duden on Instagram and you want a free copy of my book, Discernment, the business athletes regimen for a great life through better decisions. There's a link in there. You give us your email address and we get an electronic copy immediately.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
But or, you know, you can shoot me a message on YouTube and on the Homefront podcast, you know, just just there. But not hard to get a hold of. Instagram's good.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
OK, my choice is probably is Instagram and LinkedIn.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Instagram and LinkedIn. And usually I'm just in there just checking for anything that I need to do, any engagement that I need to pay attention to, you know, how things are performing or whatever it is. An hour a day between Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn is enough time to check, but not enough time to get to scroll.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
God shaped me way back.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Can't Hurt Me is great. You know, Good to Great was something early for me. Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni was something that was very instrumental for me early. Man, I'm big into Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time right now. I mean, if I had to pick one book for people to read right now, that might be it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Oh, well, hey, I appreciate it. Gosh. I don't know. I don't know, man. We went all over the place here. This is what I love to do. Yeah. I mean, I think if anything, you know, just encouraging people to be outcome focused, encouraging people to, you know, we heard this great thing about internal, external locus of control. You were talking about that earlier. Like, I'm in charge of this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I'm in charge. And You know, letting people understand that, like, you are in control. Every decision that you make, every action that you take determines the slope of your line. It determines the velocity of your business. It determines the quality of your life. And, you know, you can do that in a franchise model. You can do that in your personal life. You can do it in direct business.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
The service side, on the other hand, well, before I get off of retail, think about the risk and the investment of just doing one. Because you've got a $500,000 to $700,000 build-out. You've got a $500,000 to $700,000 lease guarantee. You've got a business that might do $500,000 to $700,000 in sales.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
But at the end of the day, man, like, it's body of work. And every action that you take or every inaction that you should have taken that you didn't, it's a plus or a minus check, man. And at the end of the day, there's a tally. At the end of the week, there's a tally. And at the end of your life, there's a tally. And just for God's sake, stop worrying about what other people think.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Stop making decisions based on ego. We had a great conversation this week, man. People – there's these HVAC guys and some of them have 11 locations and they're like, yeah, we should have stayed in one location because it was our ego that drove us to open up those other cities. And they weren't fully committed. So, I mean, I hate that I have to be 56 years old.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
to continue to learn hard lessons, making mistakes. But man, just take care of your business. Raise your, you know, like only care about your own standards. Do things like that when nobody's looking, like I brought the guy that sandwiches today. And just, you know, people should have a great life.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I don't understand why everybody can't, within their own capabilities, within their own skill, from wherever they sit, Have a great life. And I would like to leave people with that. At Homefront Brands, man, we are 100. It used to be there's lots of different things in franchising. Responsible franchising or autonomy or freedom. Like we are focused on outcomes. Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I want you, if you're a normal person, it's your first business, can you build a $3 to $5 million business in five years and sell it for several million dollars and make it be that first chunk that you have to give yourself that little bit of freedom?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. Yeah. And then like, you know, can you you know, you win the next opportunity by succeeding than the one that you're in. And business is an infinite game.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So if you can come to us and we can and you can and it's hard and you can learn these business skills and you either expand within our platform on this monopoly board that we call Homefront Brands and you start building hotels and grabbing territories or. Or you sell your business with us and you go on and do something great. I tell you, I'll leave it with this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
We were at our industry event last week in Vegas. And they award franchisees of the year. So if you have a franchisee of the year in your system, They give about 100 of these out across the 4,000 brands. So one of our top real fence franchisees, Bob Stewart from Richmond, got Franchisee of the Year. And he walked across the stage with these other people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And I'm walking out of the room, and I see a woman that I recognize kind of smile, light face lights up. And then I see the young gentleman with them, and I recognize it was one of my AdvantiClean franchisees. I saw you interview them. Yeah, who was there getting Franchisee of the Year.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And if you hold your mouth right and do everything perfect, you're going to make a certain amount of money on that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, so he was an E-2 visa. They were in Argentina. The economy was falling apart, and they came to AdvantiClean, and they brought their entire extended family over. He was one of the young brothers or sons or nephews or whatever it was. There was about 10 of them that came over. built a great business in South Florida.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Half of them sold it, made really good money, and went on and built an import-export business. And Mariano is still operating there. And I mean... What impact did that little AdvantiClean business make in their life and the fact that we see each other, we tell each other we love each other?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And then one of the executives from AdvantiClean came up to me and he said, hey, I've been trying to get in touch with you. I go around to these offices with AdvantiClean and they've all got the pictures up on the wall from the conferences that you had and all of that. And part of it is how can we get the culture back to when Jeff had it?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
and he asked me to do a video to play at their owner's conference. Oh, wow. So I did the red eye. I got home, and I'm like, oh, he said he needed it today. I hadn't slept all night. And I'm like, well, let me put some Preparation H under the eyes. And I did just a three- or four-minute video.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
You know, he asked me to say a few things, but just to encourage them and just to praise them and let them know, like, they're carrying on a tradition. It's a 31-year anniversary we just had last week. That was the same day that I met Mariano. Yeah. And like, OK, body of work made a difference in that life.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So the standard is a good franchise should be able to demonstrate a 30-month payback. 30-month. Yeah, 30-month payback, cash on cash. That's what you're going for.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. So and that's at the end of the day, man, like we can't take it with us. But like just it just matters what we do while we're here and who we do it with more than anything.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
That's retail. But, I mean, I think it applies to everything. So when private equity comes in, that's one thing that they're looking for. So think about what's happened with construction costs over the last few years and cost of leases and things like that. So you've got a business model. that is inelastic in what it can charge. I mean, people will, fitness is funny, man.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Like you go from $129 to $149 and, you know, people are going bananas, but then they'll go spend $400 a month at Starbucks and spend $400 a month on supplements. So it's different, but yet they want 30 or 40 hours of service from you for that $129. So it's very inelastic. So you can't really raise price, but now your cost to get into business has gone up. So So that's a big challenge.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
But that's why I love service franchising. I mean if you look at some of the big platforms like Neighborly or like Authority Brands, there's a great example of a kid that was 28 years old in central Florida and bought an electrical franchise, first time in business. And eight years later, he's 36 years old. He had a $70 million electrical franchise, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And what's happened is private equity has gone – first of all, private equity loves franchisors.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. So think about it, the diversification of risk. You've got – Hundreds or thousands of families that are out there. They're deeply invested in the business. They're deeply invested in their communities. They're working hard. And, I mean, it's hard to kill a franchise system because everybody's out there with the ownership mentality right at the point of attack.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So once at scale, franchise systems are very profitable. They're very durable. But the great thing about property services, and I mean like you've proved it to an extreme, is that these businesses can get large every year by taking more market share. And I mean our businesses cost $150,000 to $200,000 to get into. So it's not – and there's no big lease guarantee.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So people can get into business in a home front brand and they can liquidate their investment relatively quickly. And then really it's this monopoly game, right, where – and you'll see it over time as we evolve and you'll get people that are buying their neighbors or they're stacking more than one home front brand on top of each other, building $5, $10, $15, $20 million businesses.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And when I first started franchising really in earnest in 2006 and 2007, there wasn't a big private equity market for the boxes. But now if you can cobble together some amount of EBITDA and some amount of top line, they love it being in a franchise system because of the leverage and because of the systems and that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So it's really – and I guess that comes down to like – I mean I sold my business in 2019. I was a restoration contractor there. built a national and even international restoration business and then decided to franchise it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
It was a personal family decision because we were working in the Caribbean and Hawaii and Canada and all over the place and I had three small kids and I decided that I wanted to be home. So I decided to risk all of that and really turn it into a franchise system and then we ended up over nine years.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
We had about 160 owner groups operating 240 markets and I sold it to Home Franchise Concepts in 2019. But, you know, coming back to operate again, it's it is all about being outcome focused. Right. So I'm sitting here in 2019, 20. I'm comfortable, which I fight every day. I'm comfortable. I'm doing investing, advising.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, I had plenty of money. But I'm sitting here and I'm like, all right, do I want to take my chits and run off to the golf course and to fishing? Or do I really want to? I'm looking at the country and I'm looking at everything that's happening in 20 and 21. And I'm like, you know, capitalism and families need businesses because they're a high class asset.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And we're looking at 100 to 150 million more people in this country by 2050. There's increased migration.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah, 339, I think, or something like that. So there's a housing shortage in all of these hot markets where the markets are growing. Yeah. So there's going to be massive home building. There's going to be retail. There's going to be hospitals, infrastructure, all of this stuff. So you'll never find a home front brands nestled comfortably between a Blockbuster and a Curves, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Because there's no obsolescence building into home services. So I know with confidence that if I look a franchise owner in the eye,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
And if I'm committed, I can say, if you put your shoulder to this, if you follow the plan, if you make this a priority, and if you execute, you can build a material business inside of the Homefront Brands platform with this one that you're starting with or additional ones. And we're never going to run out of opportunities to compete in property services.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
So to me, it's the most durable segment in franchising. And it's uncapped because you're not capped by a number of seats in a restaurant or a number of spots in a fitness routine or anything like that. And that's what gets me up every day. But like at the end of the day, you have to be really, really focused on the four-wall economics for the franchise owners.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
You have to care deeply about these people because in the example that I use, like we get a cross-section of the population. We've got people – we got one guy that built a $50 million business building MRI setups in hospitals. Multiple businesses. Guy's been successful over and over and over again. He came in and did a big buy with us. And he's like, I like the model. I like the space.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I like you guys. So we have a lot of people like that. We have private equity refugees investing in our businesses.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
You know what was so great? So I do – I'm in the franchise industry kind of like you're in the home service industry. But I got to go to this RhinoX event with you and with Cristiano yesterday. Man, it felt good to be amongst contractors again.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I mean, like, that's my DNA. And all of these guys are building, you know, $20 to $400 million businesses in there. And, you know, they started in their garage. And it was – I mean, it was really great to be in that room for that day.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
Yeah. Well, one of the things that you've demonstrated over and over again is this concept of regression analysis. Many people start in business, and if you think back to when you started and probably I think back to when I started, it was the same way. I was trying to figure out, okay, what's the next step? What's the next step? What's the next step?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
If you work backwards from a very specific future, it'll be a completely different set of steps than had you tried to work forward to it. And that's just it. It's like, okay, well, I'm going to pick the location not based on a proximity to a highway or traffic or storefront or drive-bys. It's like, where am I going to get the business from?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
I did. So I've done three things in the last probably 120 days. I've cut my alcohol consumption down by like 97%, 98%, which wasn't a ton, but I still don't recover like I used to. I mean, I got a good 15, 16 years on you, and I need every bit of energy that I got. Started that journal that I shared with you and cut my screen time down to an hour.