SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 410: From Worker to Owner Does $5m in 2015 Franchise Model with Josh Herron of 1800GotJunk
07 Sep 2016
Chapter 1: How did Josh Herron transition from employee to franchise owner?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the $100 is Zach Ferron.
Chapter 2: What key factors should you consider when buying a franchise?
He's a 22-year-old Apple employee, and he's listening to the show and loving it. For your chance to win $100 every Monday, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now, and then text the word NATHAN to 33444 to prove that you did it to enter. Okay, many of you heard I made a big league acquisition of a company called SendLater. And I'm a greedy business guy.
I didn't want to give away equity to a technical co-founder.
Chapter 3: What challenges did Josh face when expanding his franchise?
So I found my coders on a website called TopTal at NathanLatka.com forward slash T-O-P-T-A-L. I paid over $12,000 to the site to a guy named He Sheming in China, who I've never met, but we're going to build a big business together. I'm taking SendLater public by the time I turn 30. I'll tell you more about TopTal later on in this episode. Top Drop, this is episode 410.
Coming up tomorrow morning, you're going to hear from Stacey Tushel. She made $1.1 million in 2015 with her Performance Arts Center and is now getting into coaching.
Chapter 4: How did the OxiClean franchise perform in its first year?
Top Tribe. Good morning, everybody. Our guest today is Josh Herron. He's the owner of 1-800-GOT-JUNK and YouMoveMe Kansas City. He's been with 1-800-GOT-JUNK for over a decade. And with YouMoveMe since 2013, prior to this, he owned a moving company called Easy Moves.
He recently opened the 1-800-GOT-JUNK Des Moines, Iowa and 1-800-GOT-JUNK Omaha, Nebraska, and is consistently one of the top performers in both franchises. franchise systems. We recently had Brian on who is the CEO and founder of 1-800-GOD-JUNK. I said, Brian, give me one of your best franchisors.
Chapter 5: What strategies did Josh use to grow his franchises?
I want to have him on and learn more about the business. He said, Nathan, you got to talk to Josh. So Josh, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yes, sir.
Awesome. First things first, franchisors don't succeed unless they're kind of entrepreneurial by nature. So I imagine at some point you made a decision whether to start your own business or buy into a franchise. Take me back to that moment.
Yeah, correct. And gosh, it was probably 2007.
Chapter 6: How does reinvesting profits impact franchise growth?
I was currently running a location at 1-800-GOT-JUNK in Kansas City. A guy who's now my business partner had taken over the operation, had bought it from the person I was working for. And through that, he gave me an opportunity to buy into the franchise system. And then we also bought another franchise called OxyFresh Carpet Cleaning. And that was kind of my first...
Like a real entrepreneurial day where we signed the papers in Denver, Colorado. Unfortunately, that one didn't quite work out for us like we wanted to. But, you know, during that period of time, like you're just going through the process in your mind, deciding you want to be your own boss. And like at some point you everybody has the kind of aspirations that they're going to make it.
I would assume everybody in business has aspirations that they want to work for some big conglomerate corporation and rise the ranks.
Chapter 7: What advice does Josh have for aspiring franchise owners?
And for me, I realized that we could do our own thing and be equally successful. So that's kind of how I became an entrepreneur.
So let me go. And by the way, how old were you when you were working as the manager at that first place?
So I was 23. Okay, how old are you now? Now I'm 32, or I just turned 33. Okay.
33. Okay, good.
Chapter 8: What lessons did Josh learn from his entrepreneurial journey?
So first off, take us back to that moment. You're managing the 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchise. The owner gets bought out by this other guy. And the guy says, I really want to keep your team, your core part of that team, so you stay. Is that how it worked?
Yeah. So I had known him. It was at 1.3 separate locations in the Kansas City area. He was a friend of mine. We had done the kickoff or conference together. and spend some time together out drinking beers or whatever.
And, you know, he, when the opportunity came, you know, when the opportunity came to fruition, he was like, you know, one of the reasons I want to do this, we want to, I want to work with you.
And I think that, you know, between the two of us, did you put that in his ear that he should buy it? Yeah, I did.
I was about to say, you know, I was in the middle of the conversations with the two owners at that time. And I'm like, well, I know somebody who may be interested and, called him and it was a no brainer at that point.
Why'd the current owner want to sell?
You know, there was two, two guys who couldn't really, they couldn't get along to, to vary, you know, varying levels of kind of, uh, what they expected out of, out of the business and kind of what they were willing to put into it.
And I was kind of stuck right in the middle and it was a great opportunity for me to exit, not a great situation and, and kind of work with somebody who I knew I liked and who I knew had complimentary skills to my, to my own. So it was basically a no-brainer for me, and I was glad it was the same way for Tyler, my business partner.
So the year before, the fiscal year before that business sold to Tyler, your friend, what did it do in terms of top-line revenue?
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