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240: 7,000 Locations, One World Class Culture: Dave Mortensen on Franchising the Right Way · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

• 0:46
  Welcome, Revolutionaries, to another episode of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast.
• 0:51
  I am John DiJulius, Chief Revolution Officer, and today I am really excited to have Dave Mortensen on, a longtime client friend.
• 1:02
  Dave is the co-founder of Purpose Brands, the largest and most trusted portfolio of fitness, nutrition, and wellness franchise brands.
• 1:12
  The portfolio includes Orangetheory Fitness, Anytime Fitness, Waxing the City, The Bar Method, Base Camp Fitness, SUMHIIT Fitness, Stonger U Nutrition, Healthy Contributions,
• 1:25
  and Provision Security.
• 1:27
  Purpose Brands generates a combined revenue of $3.7 billion, operates more than 7,000 locations across 50 countries, and serves a total of six million members.
• 1:41
  Anytime Fitness has been recognized as the number one fitness franchise brand in the world.
• 1:47
  Dave and Chuck Runyon, his business partner, have a new book, I think it's their third, called, Fanchise Your Franchise.
• 1:56
  Welcome, Dave.
• 1:58
  Hey buddy, how you doing JD?
• 1:59
  Great, great.
• 2:00
  Where does this podcast find you?
• 2:03
  Well, I am at home today in the balmy weather of Minnesota with all the chaos going on in the world right now, which we don't need to dabble into, but crazy.
• 2:15
  have been through a lot the past five years,
• 2:19
  you know the good news, it'll teach the world one thing.
• 2:21
  It's gonna teach the world that you can look far left or far right, but the answers are typically in the middle and we need to work better together as a nation.
• 2:29
  Humanity is important and we're missing the boat on that, so hopefully that'll turn around.
• 2:33
  Well, hopefully, one of your next ventures is politics.
• 2:36
  That would be great.
• 2:38
  lord help us if I do that.
• 2:40
  So, listen, I want to make sure I get excited about people, but to show you that this isn't hyperbole, I've been fortunate, I think well over a decade, have worked with you and
• 2:52
  Chuck and Anytime Fitness, have written about what you guys have done in my last three books.
• 2:58
  Got to go underground behind the scenes and see what you've built.
• 3:03
  I've never, could truly say this, I have never found a company that built a better culture than you.
• 3:11
  And the incredible thing, then you and Chuck and your amazing leadership team, I know you're gonna deflect that as you're right.
• 3:20
  But what blows my mind,
• 3:22
  Dave, and you can help me with this.
• 3:24
  I always say when we opened our salon 33 years ago, actually like next week, we're pretty good at customer service.
• 3:31
  In the beginning, because 50 % of our staff was me and my wife.
• 3:36
  So whether you got it or you didn't, you had to work next to us all day.
• 3:41
  Then we started, you know, opening more locations and join
• 3:45
  growth and success and that experience took a nosedive because me and my wife weren't everywhere and you know, not everyone got it and we weren't able to do it.
• 3:55
  Now we only, you know, have a few handful of locations and they're pretty good but we own them, right?
• 4:03
  And there's a control factor there.
• 4:06
  so it's a long setup but
• 4:08
  you franchised, which I can't understand.
• 4:12
  And how many tattoos are there of AnyTime Fitness out there?
• 4:15
  easily over 4,000.
• 4:17
  Yeah, so I've been speaking at your annual conference where, you know, there's a line around the building for tattoos.
• 4:25
  They have to be any time fitness tattoos.
• 4:27
  That's the amazing thing.
• 4:29
  I've spoken to, you know, not only all your major markets in the US, but New Zealand, Australia.
• 4:37
  And these aren't your employees.
• 4:41
  These are employees of franchisees of yours.
• 4:46
  and they're the ones getting tattoos.
• 4:48
  And they're the ones that, I mean, just the culture is just amazing.
• 4:53
  you know, I wanna set that up for, I've never seen anyone and that's what I wanna get into.
• 4:59
  But you share a little bit about your backstory, how you got to where you are today.
• 5:05
  You know, luck and choice in life, right, John?
• 5:07
  And I've had a lot of luck in my life and I've made some good choices along the way.
• 5:12
  you know...
• 5:13
  You know, early on I was someone who just was passionate about the fitness industry in general and making a difference in people's lives.
• 5:19
  I was rare.
• 5:20
  I came out of high school wanting to be in this industry.
• 5:23
  I went to college and soon realized I wasn't a college kid and dropped out of college and started working in the industry at a pretty young age of 21 years old.
• 5:32
  And, you know, just kind of worked my way up a chain of clubs.
• 5:35
  from there, that's where I met Chuck.
• 5:37
  Chuck was doing a similar path as I was.
• 5:40
  And we connected, realized we
• 5:43
  were pretty good at what we were doing and we started a consulting firm pretty early in our years.
• 5:48
  We start traveling all across the US, Canada, Australia a little bit, down into Mexico, working with all different types of gyms, big box, small box, you name it, we probably
• 5:58
  worked them.
• 5:59
  Dave, I'm sorry, what was your credibility?
• 6:02
  Why would someone hire you?
• 6:04
  It sounds like you're young at this time, you and Chuck in your 20s or early 20s.
• 6:09
  Yeah, why are people bringing you in?
• 6:12
  What's your, you know.
• 6:14
  Bottom line is a lot of people are very passionate about, especially back then, were very passionate about the fitness business and making a difference in people's lives and they
• 6:22
  would open up gyms.
• 6:23
  But the operational components to executing a high level gym wasn't there, right?
• 6:29
  And Chuck and I were about driving results and driving results really means bringing in more members into your gym and developing an experience that makes a difference with those
• 6:39
  customers when they walk in the door.
• 6:40
  And that's something we were just really good at early on.
• 6:43
  and we were able to not only do it ourselves, but actually write it down.
• 6:48
  Write it down and go, what are those steps?
• 6:50
  What are those procedures?
• 6:51
  What are...
• 6:52
  Dave, had you owned a gym yet or worked in them only before this time?
• 7:01
  That's a great question.
• 7:02
  it started out, we just worked in them, right?
• 7:04
  We worked in them.
• 7:05
  those experiences and went to the road and start sharing those experiences with others.
• 7:11
  Now, it's funny you said that because during that period of time, we said to ourselves, you know, we keep telling people and as we got larger, we said we need to start showing
• 7:19
  people that we know how to do it.
• 7:20
  We were just not telling them what to do.
• 7:22
  So we bought our first gym in 1995.
• 7:25
  And actually that gym was a big box gym.
• 7:28
  It was the first gym I ever worked at.
• 7:30
  I got a front desk job, four dollars an hour at that club.
• 7:33
  was the same first gym we joined, opened.
• 7:36
  And that had 400 members when we acquired it and we turned it into a 4,000 member, very, very successful gym.
• 7:43
  And we started buying existing gyms, remodeling them, and then selling them off.
• 7:47
  In fact, that same gym that we bought, we flipped gym.
• 7:54
  okay.
• 7:54
  would rebuild them up, flip them, and we were very successful on that.
• 7:58
  And during that period of time, that's how we came up with the concept of Anytime Fitness.
• 8:03
  So how many locations did you own before you started franchising, franchise or franchising?
• 8:11
  How many locations?
• 8:13
  We owned five different locations at one period of time that we either bought, acquired and flipped.
• 8:19
  The one gym that we had, which was a 40,000 square foot gym, we kept during that period of time.
• 8:25
  And even when we opened up Anytime Fitness, the first one in 2002, we still had that gym for probably three years prior, past that, but then sold that off along with our
• 8:35
  consulting firm.
• 8:36
  We ended up shutting down because we got so busy with Anytime.
• 8:40
  That's cool.
• 8:41
  So a couple of things you brought up there.
• 8:43
  I always say in a lot of industries, you tell me if this works in the fitness gym, the entrepreneur, well, someone's very talented at a chef, a hairdresser, a landscaper, and
• 8:58
  they may or may not get sick of making someone else rich.
• 9:02
  So they opened their own.
• 9:05
  They have the technical skills, but they didn't have the business side.
• 9:09
  And that's why so many struggle because, you know, and it sounds like that's kind of where you guys saw your niche was you had a lot of people that are passionate about working out
• 9:20
  and providing that experience, but they probably didn't know the business end of it.
• 9:25
  Is that safe to say?
• 9:26
  Yeah, there's two parts to it.
• 9:28
  Number one, we were as we were doing our consulting business, we worked with a lot of different gyms, right?
• 9:34
  And we always noticed this uniqueness of these owner operator gyms always had that passion side of the business and probably because they also were willing to invest in the most
• 9:44
  important asset in their life.
• 9:46
  And that was themselves, right?
• 9:47
  So entrepreneurs will invest in themselves.
• 9:50
  We believed in that model of franchising with people investing in themselves.
• 9:55
  We also learned everyone has different capabilities and skill sets.
• 9:59
  And we knew that if we built a solid franchise system that could have the full ecosystem of capabilities, we would be able to level up and support whatever gaps they have and
• 10:09
  enhance the strengths that they have.
• 10:11
  to make them the best operator possible for the model that we were providing.
• 10:15
  yeah, franchising was definitely something we believed in even before we opened our first gym.
• 10:21
  In fact, uniquely, our first 30 gyms opened.
• 10:24
  Not many people, and I'd never advise doing this, our first 30 gyms opened, were all franchisees.
• 10:29
  We didn't even own our own first core.
• 10:32
  you have a proof of concept, that's why I asked you, seven to 10 corporate owned locations, proof of concept.
• 10:39
  Man, how did you sell it without the proof of concept?
• 10:43
  Like that's hard.
• 10:45
  Is it called the pro forma?
• 10:47
  Is that kinda what, okay.
• 10:51
  sold it because
• 10:52
  The same way Chuck and I have been since we started business.
• 10:55
  We're very transparent, we're authentic, and we're open communicators.
• 11:00
  So as we were developing Anytime Fitness, like most people, think they need to hide every secret recipe.
• 11:06
  We were very transparent in telling people what we were doing.
• 11:08
  And we had so many people literally knocking on our door and saying, hey, listen, can I be one of your franchisees?
• 11:15
  Well, they believed in us.
• 11:16
  They knew the results we developed in the industry and said, you know what?
• 11:19
  They wanted to be a franchisee.
• 11:21
  yep, come on in but hey listen, we don't have this thing figured out.
• 11:25
  You're going to grow this thing with us.
• 11:27
  We're going to make mistakes together but guess what?
• 11:30
  If we all climb the same hill, we're going to become giants in the end and that's what we tried to accomplish.
• 11:35
  Yeah, get on board early now.
• 11:37
  There's gonna be some growing pains, but you're gonna be part of something really special.
• 11:42
  That's really cool.
• 11:43
  It's funny, you were smart enough to know that you had to own your own for the credibility purpose.
• 11:50
  I did the opposite thing.
• 11:51
  I own, obviously, know, my backstory.
• 11:54
  I opened John Roberts Spa and, you know, like everything, an accident, I start getting asked to speak because of our
• 12:01
  growth and reputation.
• 12:03
  And then when I started speaking, I started reducing on my bio.
• 12:09
  I didn't have much to put.
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  I won the third grade kickball contest on there, trying to populate it with anything I can.
• 12:17
  But what I start doing is I start diminishing.
• 12:21
  And I think almost to the point where I took it off that I owned a salon because I thought,
• 12:27
  Who would want to hire a salon owner to come in and speak to a fitness center or an accounting firm?
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  So I thought that was a detriment.
• 12:35
  And then this happened about five times in a row.
• 12:38
  The CEO that was introducing me said, he'd do whatever the bios say.
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  goes, this is why I want, because this guy owns a salon.
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  He's at the pointy end of the spear.
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  He knows what it's like.
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  And here's me in the back thinking, what an idiot.
• 12:53
  I thought that was a...
• 12:54
  a bug and it was a feature, right?
• 12:56
  And that's where you got.
• 12:57
  all right, so you go and listen, listeners, whether you're thinking about being an entrepreneur, going into franchising, if you're a leader, what Dave has to share in his
• 13:10
  best practices, just like I've learned so much about.
• 13:14
  building my brand and the culture from them.
• 13:20
  So, all right, so Dave, you and Chuck go at it, you build Anytime Fitness, and I don't wanna gloss over that, and then you start acquiring other brands.
• 13:33
  Take me to kind of where it came from 20 years later, 22 years later.
• 13:39
  Yeah, well, you know, we started Anytime Fitness in 2002.
• 13:45
  Our second brand we brought on the portfolio was in 2012.
• 13:52
  Waxing the City which was 10 years later.
• 13:55
  But really the ethos of that was four years prior to that.
• 13:59
  So four years prior to that.
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  There were actually three of us.
• 14:02
  were three business partners.
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  And Anytime Fitness was having great success at that point.
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  We probably had about 600 units open.
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  But this is where Chuck and I started to realize we were onto something that was bigger than ourselves.
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  And we were passionate about that.
• 14:17
  And we realized this is something that's unique.
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  It's special.
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  And it's something we want to start.
• 14:23
  We wanted to double down on what we were doing.
• 14:25
  At the time, we had a
• 14:26
  a third partner who was really, really good at the startup side, but didn't like the scalability, didn't like the human capital that was needed, didn't like the development
• 14:36
  and evolution of the business.
• 14:38
  And we had to make some tough decisions.
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  And at that time is when we bought that partner out.
• 14:44
  And I'll tell you, this isn't a worst time you could think of.
• 14:48
  This was in the recession in 08, 09.
• 14:51
  John, at that time, we had to take out a $26 million loan.
• 14:55
  at 16 % interest at that time because we obviously, the only credit we had was the business we owned and operated, right?
• 15:03
  So if we didn't succeed in that work, we're out of business.
• 15:08
  We're gonna hand this business over to...
• 15:10
  our debtors if we could continue to grow it.
• 15:13
  Luckily for us, we bet on the right thing, just like I say to entrepreneurs.
• 15:17
  People you have to bet on first are yourself.
• 15:18
  And we bet on ourselves and we bet on our team and we bet on the business.
• 15:22
  Those three properties helped us develop our culture.
• 15:25
  And really that's when we defined who we were, what we were, and what we wanted to be.
• 15:30
  And that's where you saw us really double down on the self-esteem of the world and really wanted to make a difference with every shareholder that was touched by our uniqueness.
• 15:39
  And then we wanted to be able to develop our pillars around the four Ps of people, purpose, profits, and play.
• 15:45
  And really turn what culture, so many people put on a wall and signs, but we wanted to live it, eat it.
• 15:51
  breathe it and add it to our strategy year over year to evolve it because it's going to change over time.
• 15:57
  It changes every year and you've got to be able to grow with your culture as your business grows and as things change.
• 16:04
  Well, you know, that's the thing, you know, Dave, if you listen to a lot of entrepreneurs, CEOs, they'll talk about these things.
• 16:10
  They'll talk about their mission and purpose.
• 16:12
  But I've never seen someone bring it to life.
• 16:16
  And again, you know, you know, I, you know, my first business, John Roberts Spa we have such an easier business model because we own them all.
• 16:24
  We have total control.
• 16:26
  There's, you know, if you're not familiar with the franchise or franchisee business,
• 16:30
  There's a lot of things you can't tell them that they have to do and you're not there.
• 16:36
  This is the secret sauce and I know you write about it, but how did you build a culture that everyone talks about, but you guys were relentless and people were bleeding anytime
• 16:50
  fitness purple.
• 16:52
  I have purple shoes.
• 16:54
  I have purple handkerchiefs.
• 16:56
  from speaking at your event and I get into it and like, know, it's a, you know, the purple whatever, you know, is all over and the tattoos.
• 17:05
  You know, one time I spoke, I don't know if I told you this before, at your big conference and one of my last messages was give more, right?
• 17:13
  You give more in every situation.
• 17:15
  Provide surplus value, give more to your company, blah, blah.
• 17:19
  Next year I come back to speak and a woman comes up to me
• 17:22
  from Anytime Fitness and she shows me her wrist and it had a give more with an Anytime Fitness logo.
• 17:29
  Man, that's a lot of pressure like to realize that people are going to go out and, you know, drink the Kool-Aid, right?
• 17:36
  It's just, I can't do it justice.
• 17:38
  How do you guys build that?
• 17:41
  Your corporate office, I understand.
• 17:43
  They work with you.
• 17:43
  Again, that goes back to they gotta be around you.
• 17:46
  The Libby's of the world and Stacey's, Anderson and all the people there.
• 17:51
  But how do you get that to 50 countries and franchisees to their employees?
• 17:59
  You know, Chuck and I talk about this often, but this is where you need to know how to connect the dots.
• 18:04
  And there's a path we travel.
• 18:07
  It's 36 inches.
• 18:08
  I don't know if you've ever heard this, but it's the longest 36 inches we'll ever travel in our lives.
• 18:14
  And it's between our head and our heart, right?
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  And what Chuck and I have always done well.
• 18:19
  is understand how to make that travel.
• 18:21
  It's literally 18 inches from your head to your heart, but traveling you got to go both ways.
• 18:25
  You need to make it bilingual and they got to be able to speak together and you have to know how to reach people through their head or their heart.
• 18:32
  Now what you don't know is half of America is headfirst.
• 18:37
  Meaning everything that travels in there, the way they consume information, in fact, Chuck is this way, he's very head first person.
• 18:43
  It's gonna hit his head first and he's gonna process it where he will cause failure in his own world is when he starts to overthink things and he never allows it to connect the
• 18:53
  dots.
• 18:54
  Me, I'm opposite.
• 18:55
  I cry before I Exactly.
• 18:58
  Analysis by paralysis will happen for people.
• 19:01
  Me, I'm opposite.
• 19:02
  I'm, I literally, hits my heart first.
• 19:04
  And if I get emotional about something or sensitive about something, it won't travel to where I need it to.
• 19:10
  So what we have done a good job is helping people connect their heart and their mind.
• 19:15
  And we speak in bilingual ways to be able to make sure that we're hitting both sides of those.
• 19:21
  incoming information and help them process the whole because what that 36 inch creates is wisdom and when you create wisdom in people's souls what they deliver from that point will
• 19:33
  be massive and that's what we've been able to attribute our success in is always helping people make that that 36 inch travel.
• 19:42
  That's amazing.
• 19:43
  That's amazing.
• 19:44
  And you do it so well.
• 19:45
  And like I said, you can go to, you know, a franchisee, know, thousands of franchisees, but you can go to one of their employees and they, you know, I feel like I'm talking to a
• 19:56
  Dave Mortensen or a Chuck Runyon.
• 19:58
  I mean, you know, it's just the passion they have.
• 20:01
  How is franchising different from being an entrepreneur?
• 20:06
  explained, know, listen,
• 20:07
  I believe entrepreneur is one of the toughest jobs in the world.
• 20:10
  you know, if you need certainty, don't be an entrepreneur.
• 20:16
  But franchisees take it to a completely different level, which you went from obviously being an entrepreneur of both a consulting company and a gym to, you know, what today is,
• 20:28
  you know, the number one fitness franchise in the world.
• 20:32
  Well, the biggest difference is in what you have to one, you have to be able to make sure that people coming into franchising is different than being a sole operator and
• 20:42
  entrepreneur.
• 20:43
  You are giving up certain freedoms as an entrepreneur in a franchise system.
• 20:48
  And what you're giving up are some of the things that you are really giving up your own ego because as an entrepreneur, when you start a business, everything is on you.
• 20:57
  Every decision is on you.
• 20:58
  Every mistake is on you.
• 21:00
  Right.
• 21:00
  Your brand is your brand your your people are your people when you start in a franchise system many of those things are in place and you are relying on a franchise or who's
• 21:12
  willing to consume the full value of that ecosystem to develop a brand and properties and technologies and all the systems and solution that are going to be the betterment for the
• 21:24
  product itself.
• 21:25
  And that always won't align with what, who you are.
• 21:28
  You know, there are going to be times.
• 21:30
  Dave, tell me if I'm right, an entrepreneur, probably by nature, is a control freak.
• 21:37
  Well, an entrepreneur, I will say they have control freak likenesses and many entrepreneurs never get out of that level.
• 21:45
  that's what I mean.
• 21:46
  Now you go to franchise model and you are giving up a lot of control, which is opposite of probably what made the entrepreneur successful in the, he's licking stamps, stuffing
• 21:59
  envelopes, to do the big stuff.
• 22:02
  I had to learn the hard way.
• 22:04
  Listen, I could pay someone $15 an hour to lick stamps and stuff envelopes, which frees me up.
• 22:11
  to bring in more money to the company.
• 22:13
  But that was hard at first, but now, you know, when you go into the franchise model, you're taking it to a completely different, you know, level.
• 22:21
  And I would say anything you get to bring to scale needs kind of, Chuck and I always talk about certain properties you need and properties you need to bring something to scale are
• 22:30
  really simple.
• 22:31
  Number one, you have to have a stakeholder mindset.
• 22:34
  Every stakeholder part of the business, I don't care if they're your customer, I don't care if they're your franchisee, your employee, if it is a vendor, every one of them have
• 22:44
  a position in your business and you have to care about every one of their successes.
• 22:50
  So when we make decisions, the last thing we do in anything we do when we build our strategy is build a stakeholder map at the end of the strategy.
• 22:59
  During that time, we will lay out those strategies and go, how do they impact every stakeholder?
• 23:04
  And listen, you're never going to create a win, win, win, win, win scenario.
• 23:07
  You can't do that.
• 23:08
  It'd be impossible.
• 23:09
  But what you can make sure is that you don't create a losing scenario for any of those stakeholders.
• 23:14
  Because every so often, you might put something out that's beneficial for your customer.
• 23:18
  But if it doesn't have value to your employees, it doesn't have value to your vendors, it doesn't have value to the business or the financial metrics of your business, guess what?
• 23:29
  Then you're creating more problems for yourself.
• 23:31
  So you have to create a stakeholder mindset first.
• 23:33
  If you do that right, then really the next thing is you've got to be the reason it works.
• 23:38
  You have to buy whatever you're going to put out there.
• 23:42
  You have to be the example of.
• 23:43
  I'm sorry Dave, when you're saying you, who are we talking about?
• 23:46
  We still talking about the franchisor or the franchisee?
• 23:50
  starts with you as the founder of your business and it has to resonate throughout your whole business, right?
• 23:56
  If you're not willing to walk the walk, it's kind of like franchises make big mistakes like when they'll they go out and they'll tell their franchisees to do a bunch of things
• 24:04
  but they're not making their own corporate stores do them, then that then you're not being the reason.
• 24:10
  We lead with reason.
• 24:11
  We will start with our corporate stores and make sure whatever we are doing, we are willing to invest in it first.
• 24:17
  test it, pilot it, and make sure it's successful before we put it up.
• 24:21
  Absolutely!
• 24:22
  So important!
• 24:24
  Yep!
• 24:26
  the largest franchise in the world and they were trying to roll out, they called it the experience of the future.
• 24:33
  it was kiosks and trying to get people to order and not go up to the counter.
• 24:38
  It was really good concept.
• 24:40
  And they were chasing
• 24:41
  Chick-fil-A model because they had gone out with that.
• 24:44
  So I had gone to their headquarters in Chicago and went to their corporate owned store that's in the building, in their headquarters, you know, at the bottom.
• 24:55
  And they weren't doing it there.
• 24:57
  Like, how can you tell, you know, the rest of, you know, your franchisees that this is the,
• 25:03
  where they have to go and invest, because you know, it's a significant investment when you want to go into that direction.
• 25:11
  And yet they weren't doing it.
• 25:12
  They couldn't figure it out themselves.
• 25:14
  So yeah, you know.
• 25:16
  Yeah when you're building building all of your answers from the top down and then you're not even willing to bet on it yourself you've created some massive problems with the right
• 25:26
  way to do it is actually build it from the bottom up in other words what i mean by that is work within your systems cuz the real gold in our system is being you gotta be curious you
• 25:36
  have to be humble and you have to go out listen to a lot of noise eighty percent of what you hear on the network is noisy right because everyone only has this much
• 25:44
  vantage point of the business.
• 25:45
  They only see what's in front of them.
• 25:47
  But guess what?
• 25:48
  If you're willing to work through the 80 % of noise, there's 20 % of value there and inside that 20 % of value is gold.
• 25:55
  And if you look for gold, you'll be able to build some pretty incredible things.
• 25:59
  But even when you build it, after you gain that information, then you have to test it, pilot it, make sure it's executable before you put it back out in the field.
• 26:08
  to go run with and sometimes we skip those steps and we've done that ourselves.
• 26:12
  Hey, we didn't come up with this.
• 26:13
  We made a lot of mistakes along the way that taught us a different way to do it.
• 26:17
  So we're evolving every day too.
• 26:19
  You gotta have a learning mindset always.
• 26:22
  The day you stop learning is the day you need to retire.
• 26:25
  And obviously the benefits, maybe it's not obvious, to franchise or franchisee model is you're basically providing entrepreneurs that become franchisees a turnkey model that they
• 26:38
  don't have to go out and reinvent the model and with a brand recognition versus John's gym that no one knows of.
• 26:47
  I'm
• 26:48
  you know, again, reinventing the model stepping on all the landmines that you've already stepped on.
• 26:53
  Is that safe to say that's one of the biggest benefits?
• 26:56
  It's one of the biggest benefits.
• 26:57
  It could also be one of the biggest failures because what ends up happening if you build a franchise system and you have franchisees that are now executing and delivering a little
• 27:05
  bit different model as you've created and you've built, there's no way to iterate that model to make it great.
• 27:12
  So one of the things is making sure you create consistency within that product right or wrong and making sure that you have testable information coming back at you so you can
• 27:21
  improve it year over year over year.
• 27:24
  where mistakes happen in franchise systems, sometimes franchise systems will allow franchisees, not because the franchisee has great ideas, they'll go let them run wild, but
• 27:36
  the problem is if you have five different flavors of your business out there, you don't know what the trueness of that business will be to go to scale.
• 27:44
  Yeah.
• 27:44
  There's a lot to learn as you build a franchise system or any business as you want to scale it past one, two, three, three units.
• 27:52
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:53
  All right, so let's transition here.
• 27:56
  You and Chuck sold, I know you're still on the board of purpose brands, but you sold.
• 28:03
  you're in transition.
• 28:05
  You've written a new book, Fanchise Your Franchise, love that.
• 28:13
  Tell us about what that means.
• 28:15
  What does Fanchise mean?
• 28:18
  Well, let me me first take back one thing.
• 28:21
  One thing he said, we didn't actually sell.
• 28:23
  What we did do is we doubled down.
• 28:25
  And what I say we doubled down is we actually partnered with another great brand called Orange Theory Fitness.
• 28:31
  We brought those brands together along with all of our other brands, Waxing the City, Basecamp Fitness, The Bar Method and everything and put it under one portfolio.
• 28:40
  Now, why I say we didn't sell, didn't know one.
• 28:43
  There was no money exchange.
• 28:44
  This was an interchange to bring two businesses together.
• 28:48
  So we actually doubled down on what we believe will be the future of franchising in the fitness and wellness space.
• 28:54
  And we believe in the power of multiple.
• 28:57
  And if we can bring two great brands together, which we did, and incorporate the best of the best of those businesses together, you become more powerful, more stronger, more
• 29:07
  valuable to your franchise and ecosystem.
• 29:10
  and then it gave us the time to level up our rules as board members and as evangelists for the brands itself.
• 29:18
  We're still actively involved in the...
• 29:20
  properties and strategies of the business.
• 29:23
  But then it also gave us the ability to do some of the things that we love to do, like share the stories of building a Fanchise And what is a Fanchise?
• 29:32
  I'll answer that.
• 29:33
  A Fanchise is real simple.
• 29:35
  And Chuck does it best answering this because he's a big, lot of people are music aficionados, love music.
• 29:42
  In fact, you can almost create what's called a fandom if you've ever heard a fandom in the music industry or whatever passion it could be.
• 29:49
  You could be passionate.
• 29:50
  about cars, you can be passionate about music.
• 29:53
  What we believe, if this is going to be the most, one of the busiest things you do every day in your life, is be a part of your business, why not make it a
• 30:00
  rather than just a franchise, why not make it a Fanchise And whatever business you're in, why not make it something that you are that passionate about, that you wake up on a Sunday
• 30:10
  looking forward to going to work on a Monday, right?
• 30:13
  And that is what we wanted to create, is that kind of compassion for the business that you are in.
• 30:19
  And we look for people that are like-minded that want to be a part of that.
• 30:23
  kind of industry.
• 30:24
  It's when you really look at everyone talks about ROI in their business.
• 30:27
  You've heard me say this before.
• 30:29
  Everyone talks about return on investment.
• 30:31
  You know, how much do I have to invest versus I'm going to get a return, but no one talks about the return on emotional investment.
• 30:37
  We call it ROEI.
• 30:39
  And if I'm going to put all of my, if I'm going to buy myself an 80 hour a week job, why am I not going to buy something that I want to be a part of, that I love to do, that I
• 30:46
  believe in, and that I want to deliver?
• 30:48
  And that's what we look for.
• 30:50
  And when you look to create that type of excitement in your business, and it's really, John, this is all about really evolving, embedding on your relationships, embedding on the
• 30:59
  people of your business.
• 31:01
  A lot of people spend a lot more time on their product, which happens naturally for all of us.
• 31:07
  We love our product.
• 31:08
  We want it to be the best in class.
• 31:10
  But if you don't have the best in class people delivering it, that product is mud in the water.
• 31:16
  And so with that, real quick, what you just said, how important is it that you, what are you looking for when, and this could be, it doesn't have to be necessarily a franchisee or
• 31:31
  a Libby, Jessica Schneider, great people you've had working with you for a long time.
• 31:38
  A person that loves your mission, totally buys in, but lacks today.
• 31:46
  the skill and experience or wicked smart people
• 31:51
  Yeah.
• 31:52
  But maybe they're not drinking the Kool-Aid.
• 31:56
  Yeah.
• 31:57
  In fact, wicked smart people that are in your business that don't align with your culture, we call them cancer in your business.
• 32:03
  They're the most dangerous people in your business.
• 32:05
  Highly talented people that don't have the passion for what they're doing are very dangerous for the business.
• 32:11
  But I'll tell you how to solve that.
• 32:13
  You first got to figure out who are you as an organization, you know, and who are you as a business?
• 32:20
  What are your human traits that you are looking for in people?
• 32:23
  So an example for
• 32:25
  Us, we have five traits that we look for in people and where we, can tell you when we failed on people, normally it's because they lacked most of these traits.
• 32:34
  Some of the traits were highly competitive.
• 32:37
  So for Chuck and I, they're five, I'll give them to you.
• 32:39
  We're highly competitive, right?
• 32:41
  We want to win and we want to win.
• 32:43
  We want to be with a winning mindset team.
• 32:45
  So having a highly competitive, gritty team was really important for us.
• 32:50
  Our leaders and our people also have to have self-awareness.
• 32:54
  Self-awareness, that's number two.
• 32:57
  Number two for us is you have to have self-awareness and you've got to be able to know who you are, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are because the only way to create
• 33:08
  a learning mindset with people is they have to be self-aware of their strengths and their weaknesses.
• 33:12
  So we look for people that are very, very self-aware.
• 33:15
  So that is something for us that is very important.
• 33:18
  Passion you talk about passion you've got to be able to feel them and not just hear them If you can feel people and feel their passion They're more likely going to be brought in
• 33:29
  because I'd rather have someone that has low talent high culture and passion Because I can develop those people and create something that we want.
• 33:38
  They have to be selfless in the franchise business and in our business.
• 33:43
  They have to be others first not me first
• 33:47
  type of people, it's just our business.
• 33:48
  Now other businesses are gonna have different traits.
• 33:51
  And the last one for Chuck and I that were really important for us, they have to have a sense of humor.
• 33:56
  Listen, at the end of the day, Chuck and I believe in a gut-belly laugh, we believe in having fun.
• 34:01
  And if, you know, in a world where things are so chaotic and serious, if you don't have a sense of humor about things, you're probably in the wrong business working with us.
• 34:10
  And when we find those people,
• 34:13
  All those other things will work itself out.
• 34:15
  So if they have enough talent, but they have those five traits, telling you they're gonna be rock stars in our business.
• 34:21
  Yeah, I love it.
• 34:22
  I like to say, hire for the heart, train for the part.
• 34:25
  Like, I think anything can be taught.
• 34:27
  Me and you are examples of that.
• 34:30
  But, but, but passion and, and think.
• 34:33
  So let me repeat the five traits.
• 34:34
  What do you call those five traits too?
• 34:37
  Five traits of the human traits that you look for in someone being a part of your team.
• 34:42
  Okay, highly competitive, number two, self-aware, number three, passionate, number four, selfless, and number five, sense of humor.
• 34:52
  Love it, love it.
• 34:53
  In your book, Fanchise Your Franchise you talk about the three golden rules for partnership.
• 34:58
  Can you share a little bit about that?
• 35:00
  I can.
• 35:01
  know, one, three golden rules for us are really, simple.
• 35:03
  Number one in our partnership, have to, we have to check our egos at the door.
• 35:08
  Chuck and I always talk about checking our egos at the door and making sure that it is, it is about what we're doing more than what we think.
• 35:16
  So, you know, examples of talking about our egos, I I would talk about
• 35:21
  No matter what idea, we don't care whose idea it is, we care about how we execute it.
• 35:27
  And I'll tell you that is probably the most important thing in the world is we're ego-less when it comes to great ideas.
• 35:34
  In fact, rarely is it our idea.
• 35:36
  What we want to do is capture the greatest ideas.
• 35:39
  And even if I'm against an idea, and I'll give you an example on this, John, let's say you and I are working together and you have an idea and I have an idea and we decide to go to
• 35:47
  your idea.
• 35:49
  My job isn't just to support you.
• 35:51
  My job is to execute and deliver it.
• 35:54
  Because 90 % of a great idea is how you execute it, not necessarily the idea itself.
• 36:01
  There's very rare where there's a bad idea in a business.
• 36:05
  It's how you execute it is where you failed.
• 36:08
  And Chuck and I have never in our 20-some, well, our 35-plus years in business together have never spent one day looking at each other and said, I told you so.
• 36:18
  What we have done is sat down and said, what are the things we did to not execute that very, well?
• 36:25
  Communication in our business is really important.
• 36:28
  So think about no egos.
• 36:29
  is number one, no egos or leave the ego at the door?
• 36:34
  Number two is communication?
• 36:37
  Okay.
• 36:38
  I really believe, and this is in franchising in general and partnerships, we've got to be able to partner in a why, right?
• 36:45
  Not just tell people what to do, but explain why we are doing it.
• 36:49
  Because when you have a high level of communication, we call it communication alignment and trust.
• 36:55
  the rest of this business comes very easy, but you have to have that relational side of the business very valuable and it has to be something that is succinct within you.
• 37:04
  You've got to be able to trust one another.
• 37:07
  So if you're not communicating and aligning yourself on a daily basis, Chuck and I did it by coffee chat every morning.
• 37:13
  We literally would sit down every morning and we could be talking about business for five minutes, personal for five minutes, but having a strong relationship and a strong
• 37:21
  communication line.
• 37:22
  is really, really important in the business, right?
• 37:26
  So now we have, we've checked our egos at the door.
• 37:29
  We have a strong communication where we're working collectively together.
• 37:33
  And then, you know, third in our relationship that has worked really well for us, and we believe it will work well with everyone else, is we have an all in hands, our hands are
• 37:43
  all in, right?
• 37:44
  We are all in together on everything that we do together.
• 37:48
  And we really want people to have that same mindset.
• 37:52
  So we have a driver's mindset.
• 37:54
  don't, we just want to work collectively together to move the business forward.
• 38:00
  So that community of practice and that collaboration for us, we are in one, we are as one.
• 38:06
  That's why Chuck and I never defined who is going to be this guy and who is going to be this guy.
• 38:10
  We actually do everything together.
• 38:12
  Meaning that
• 38:13
  I needed to know everything he was working on.
• 38:15
  He needed to know we didn't separate what we were doing.
• 38:17
  We may have worked on different things, but I could walk away from that today and in true partnership he could step in and take over tomorrow.
• 38:25
  Vice versa, I could do the same thing for him.
• 38:29
  And how we were able to do that over the years is being able to make sure we kept our egos at the door, making sure that we had a great relationship and making sure that we were all
• 38:39
  hands in on everything that we were.
• 38:40
  I love it, I love it.
• 38:41
  Couple more questions.
• 38:43
  I could talk to you all day.
• 38:44
  And I'm sure you figured this out a long time ago, but the decade plus that you were my client, you were the client of The DiJulius Group, I learned way more than I taught you.
• 38:53
  So I'd probably owe you some money, but hopefully it's a...
• 38:57
  That's not true.
• 38:59
  This is a big one.
• 39:00
  And I visited a little bit in my last book, but not to the degree that you do, you know, leading during a crisis.
• 39:08
  And again, this is not just for entrepreneurs, franchisers, franchisee.
• 39:14
  If you're a leader, if you're a parent, right, you are going to have, and unfortunately we don't have a lack of examples, right, you know, from, you know, the great recession.
• 39:27
  to a pandemic, to your personal.
• 39:30
  It doesn't have to be a world thing.
• 39:34
  Your company could be going through something, or you could be going through something.
• 39:38
  And these are all crisis-es.
• 39:40
  And they're critical because what I think of and what I try, when I want to go into that fetal position and woe is me is,
• 39:48
  I think of in my world, there's 150 employees that gave up other opportunities elsewhere and bought my promise, my vision.
• 39:59
  And I can't bail on them now just because it got hard, you know?
• 40:04
  And I knew that when I got in this, I wanted to be the guy, the person, not when was the economy's booming and the busy bus.
• 40:14
  pulled up out front and it's great.
• 40:16
  It's January in the gym or it's the holidays in the salons, right?
• 40:23
  Those are good times.
• 40:25
  It's when shit hits the fan.
• 40:28
  I wanted to be the person that stepped up, figured it out.
• 40:32
  And that's what I, as hard as that, that's why I always had to remind myself during those times is this is why I went into this.
• 40:40
  So,
• 40:40
  Yeah, you know, your leadership during a crisis.
• 40:44
  Well, I tell you, in any business, in any world, have anywhere from many to massive crisis.
• 40:50
  And everyone likes to talk about the major crisis when COVID happened.
• 40:53
  And I will touch on that.
• 40:54
  But I'll tell you, over the years, I think we were trained to challenge ourselves in crisis.
• 41:01
  tell you, I told you about the Great Recession in 08.
• 41:04
  That was one of many.
• 41:05
  Try a tsunami.
• 41:07
  in a market that we were growing in at the time in Louisiana was our largest growing year when that's the time he came in.
• 41:14
  can't tell you we thought the whole brand was going to bring up that was Katrina at the time and I'll tell you on the contrary because of some of the things that we do every time
• 41:25
  in crisis make a big difference in COVID.
• 41:28
  I always tell people this story in 2019 Chuck and I were on a boat in Antarctica celebrating in December of 2019 we were literally celebrating being on the seventh
• 41:40
  continent being the only franchise system to be on all seven continents and we're pretty proud of ourselves knowing that we were going to go into our best quarter ever in 2020
• 41:50
  Literally, the stage was already set.
• 41:53
  Meaning we were gonna have more stores open, more revenue coming in, more success within the business than we'd ever seen.
• 41:58
  And by March of 2020, we closed every store in all seven continents.
• 42:04
  And when you start to think of that impact point and how that impacts your ecosystem, you really, you find out who you are as a human.
• 42:12
  And for Chuck and I, it was really simple.
• 42:14
  It was, we have this four-letter word that actually,
• 42:17
  Matters and it's a word called care one you have to care you have to really give a damn about everybody else first And we just did and and so did our team, you know, so when we
• 42:28
  ran into that situation we cared We we we doubled down on our C.A.T.
• 42:34
  which is our communication and alignment and trust and we talked about that and that sounds like small But we start but there's a thing in C.A.T.
• 42:40
  We don't talk about a lot and that's a trait called listening
• 42:44
  and really hearing people out and understanding where their challenges are.
• 42:48
  Because in a crisis, the thing you need to do is get rid of the noise.
• 42:52
  And you got to filter everything out and help people focus on what is most important at that moment in time.
• 43:00
  control the narrative and be in the certainty business?
• 43:02
  Is that?
• 43:03
  It is so and you know what I'll tell you John it's different for people.
• 43:06
  You could have an organizational focus which will share but when you get down to the individual sometimes you got to look at some people and say hey listen don't worry about
• 43:15
  the club today go take care of grandma might be her last breath she's taking and you you sometimes have to tell people that's okay your business will be there tomorrow because
• 43:26
  when people are focusing on the wrong thing for themselves at that moment in time.
• 43:31
  The executable of what they're doing is failing.
• 43:35
  And during that time, we were able to help people really make sure that they were in that, in our own internal team, in the operations of our business.
• 43:43
  And you start to narrow down, get rid of the noise, get rid of whatever it is.
• 43:47
  This is that 80-20 rule again, okay?
• 43:49
  80 % of what you're normally doing, that shouldn't even make it.
• 43:54
  Take that 20 % you're focusing on and then really prioritize that 20%.
• 43:59
  The other 80 % is gone at this point.
• 44:01
  Because in a crisis, you need to double down on that and then rally together and it's a community.
• 44:07
  And when you get your community of practice working together and everyone working on the same thing, it's amazing what you can create.
• 44:16
  Listen, in 2020, we're one of the only franchise systems that grew in 2020.
• 44:21
  With all of our businesses shut down, we still opened more stores than we closed while other brands completely dissolved.
• 44:30
  and never reopened again, we actually grew during that period of time.
• 44:34
  But it's because we were able to share with people, this is a moment in time, don't panic, right?
• 44:41
  Here's the things you need to really be focusing on and as we start to come out of this, know that we're behind you and we're support you and we're gonna be there for you.
• 44:49
  Let's do this together.
• 44:50
  And that's...
• 44:51
  you weaponized adversity.
• 44:55
  You weaponized, you know, and I always say this is, you know, I don't prefer, I never want to say I prefer, you know, I think there's golden opportunity in adversity, when
• 45:06
  everyone's sharing, not just personal adversity, but even in a recession.
• 45:11
  I say, you know, that's when we're going to really, you know, differentiate ourselves.
• 45:15
  And none of my businesses I've started do better in a recession.
• 45:19
  Some do, right?
• 45:20
  That's not it.
• 45:21
  But I know our competitors will do so much worse.
• 45:25
  They're just not, you know, they didn't create the Fanchise They didn't create the loyalty.
• 45:30
  You know, they're not in a position to handle.
• 45:33
  Even a turkey can fly in a tornado.
• 45:35
  When that tornado stops flying,
• 45:37
  turkeys start dropping, you know?
• 45:39
  That's good for the good businesses because there's a lot of poor brands in every industry that are giving us all a bad reputation because you go there and you're like, this is a
• 45:49
  ripoff.
• 45:49
  Why would I ever trust any brand in this industry?
• 45:53
  we have it.
• 45:53
  I love that.
• 45:54
  I share with my team and I want my leaders to share with them.
• 45:59
  One of them definitely came from you.
• 46:01
  The first one, I think I got this from the owners of Nemacolin and 84 Lumber, same owners.
• 46:09
  They say, I'll be disappointed to their employees.
• 46:12
  I'll be disappointed if you're ever going through tough times and don't let us know.
• 46:17
  Not because we're nosy, but we wanna.
• 46:20
  help you, be there for you, whatever that may look like.
• 46:22
  The second thing I want articulated to my employees, and I believe I got this from you and Chuck, is I'll be disappointed if you ever miss a important family event.
• 46:32
  And I love that, I love that.
• 46:34
  mean, nothing is more important than that.
• 46:37
  And nothing goes further than your employees knowing that.
• 46:40
  And I got that from you.
• 46:42
  I got a lot of other stuff I don't give you credit for, but I love those.
• 46:46
  I love the leadership.
• 46:48
  I think that's so important.
• 46:49
  I think we need to be prepared because it's coming.
• 46:51
  It may come next week.
• 46:52
  It may come in six months.
• 46:54
  I think we need to prepare.
• 46:56
  like anything, I think we need to be a lot of stuff I have found to personally get through as a leader a crisis.
• 47:04
  is really stuff we should be always doing, right?
• 47:07
  It's the healthy eating.
• 47:08
  It's who you surround yourself with.
• 47:10
  It's not doom scrolling and saying, oh my God, everyone's going out of business.
• 47:15
  You know, we're gonna go out of business.
• 47:16
  It's not getting sucked into the, you know, those things.
• 47:21
  You know, it's all that.
• 47:23
  Something else I wanna ask you to be brought up is you hear two different people out there, you know, experts say.
• 47:31
  One is,
• 47:33
  you advice to college graduate, find your passion and follow it.
• 47:38
  And then other people say, no, no, no, that's a bunch of BS.
• 47:41
  Find what you're really good at and you'll become passionate.
• 47:46
  Where do you fall on that?
• 47:48
  It's funny.
• 47:49
  this is, this is back to one way or the other, and there's no, no right answer.
• 47:53
  This is, and it really is both.
• 47:56
  You have to have a passion and you, you need to know you have the capability, right?
• 48:01
  You know, I may have a passion for basketball, John, but I'll never be an NBA player for an example.
• 48:07
  play shortstop for the Cleveland Guardians.
• 48:11
  It's not gonna happen.
• 48:13
  but there is a balance between the two.
• 48:15
  You never gonna have, you know, it's never gonna be probably the thing you're most passionate about.
• 48:19
  It's never gonna be the thing you're most talented about.
• 48:21
  But when you find the, the, 36 inch travel again, and on the balance between your talent and your passion, you just found your career.
• 48:30
  And that
• 48:31
  you more passionate back in the day about being an entrepreneur or the fitness center?
• 48:38
  I'm sorry, fitness industry.
• 48:40
  You opened up with you love the fitness.
• 48:43
  Was that the first thing and then everything else kind of fell into place after?
• 48:47
  Is that how yours went?
• 48:48
  So for me, I was passionate about the fitness and I would say this where Chuck and I were absolutely different.
• 48:54
  Chuck was passionate about the business.
• 48:55
  I was passionate about fitness.
• 48:58
  But then as I got into the fitness industry, I found out I was really talented at some things in the business.
• 49:04
  In fact, here's a funny story.
• 49:06
  The one thing I wanted to be in the fitness industry is the only thing I've never done.
• 49:10
  So there you go.
• 49:11
  I thought I was going to be a trainer.
• 49:13
  I thought I was going to be a trainer and that was going to be my career in fitness when I got into this industry.
• 49:19
  But then I found out I was really good at this thing called business and leadership and sales and all the operational things to do this business.
• 49:27
  And as I found my passion, I started to get passionate about the businesses and the skills that I had within it.
• 49:33
  And that's what made me be where I am today.
• 49:36
  That's so funny.
• 49:37
  So when I was in college, on my seventh year of the four year degree, I just became obsessed with I wanted to own my own business, right?
• 49:47
  And I didn't know what that was gonna be.
• 49:48
  And the only two plus two, probably like you, the only two plus two was I love sports and I wanted to be entrepreneur.
• 49:55
  So this is in the eighties.
• 49:56
  I'm like, I'm gonna open a sporting goods store.
• 49:59
  That was the only way I could find.
• 50:00
  wasn't going to be an athlete.
• 50:02
  You know, it wasn't, you know, all that.
• 50:03
  So that's what I thought I was going to do.
• 50:05
  And then met my wife and, know, was not interested in, in she was in the salons and, and, I opened it with her, for her thinking that it took off.
• 50:16
  I could then go open my sporting goods store.
• 50:19
  And, and, but, but my first thing was I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
• 50:23
  And then when I started dabbling with her and
• 50:26
  you kind of like you and Chuck, she had the artistic end, unbelievable hairdresser, blah, blah.
• 50:32
  I had the business customer service and all of a sudden, you know, the pendulum was in the middle, which in both, most industries, it's all either technical or all, you know, and
• 50:42
  that's what took off.
• 50:43
  I don't know.
• 50:44
  So I don't even know the answer.
• 50:45
  This is probably a therapy session I'm trying to figure out.
• 50:48
  But yeah, I had the passion, not necessarily for an industry, but then I love the industry, you know, and that.
• 50:56
  All right, last question.
• 50:57
  Well, what are you focusing on today?
• 50:59
  You have a best-selling book that just came out.
• 51:03
  where can people get that?
• 51:05
  And where can they find out more about what you're doing today?
• 51:08
  So first, what are you focusing on today?
• 51:10
  Maybe with the book and helping other businesses.
• 51:14
  Well, it's funny, helping other business create their own Fanchise within what they do.
• 51:19
  I mean, that is really what we want to help businesses do.
• 51:22
  One of the things I'm very passionate about, John, is the relationships that I've been able to develop over the years have created who I am today.
• 51:30
  No different than the relationship that I had when we met you and you helped us evolve our customer revolution, right?
• 51:37
  You literally did.
• 51:38
  Our revolution became into our please standards.
• 51:41
  which are the customer service standards that we deliver today and act on and have created as an action word in our business to please every customer and every person that we touch,
• 51:52
  right?
• 51:52
  So those...
• 51:53
  uh
• 51:53
  say, if you didn't meet me and I didn't help you, you probably would only have 6,999 locations.
• 52:01
  That last one really got you over.
• 52:04
  No, go on, I'm sorry.
• 52:05
  But those relationships, many relationships that have been created, you're one of 50 to 100 that we've created over the years.
• 52:16
  If we can help others just a little bit more and help them get to their next one, their next two, their next evolution of who they want to be, we want to help them create
• 52:27
  something that we've been so lucky to be able to be a part of for 35 years in business.
• 52:33
  And I've got
• 52:35
  one of the most incredible business partners, right?
• 52:37
  I'm happily married, I've got great kids, and I've got a business that is thriving.
• 52:42
  If I can help people find that within themselves, that's a passion for me because I love to see other people succeed in life, not just in business, but in life.
• 52:53
  And we believe we can do that with some of the properties that we've created.
• 52:57
  Where do our listeners learn more about your book and how to engage with you?
• 53:04
  It's real simple.
• 53:05
  It's the 4P guys.
• 53:06
  So 4P and guys, guys.com.
• 53:10
  Number four.
• 53:13
  Yep.
• 53:15
  You go to 4P guys.
• 53:18
  Yep.
• 53:18
  where they can get the book, Fanchise Your Franchise and learn more about how to engage with you and Chuck.
• 53:26
  to engage with us, anyone wants us to help them reach out.
• 53:30
  One thing we say in life and in leadership, create availability for people to find you and it'll make it a lot easier to be able to make an impact.
• 53:38
  So we're available.
• 53:39
  someone have to be in the franchise world to engage you?
• 53:43
  Because I mean, obviously you could teach corporate world, you could teach anyone.
• 53:47
  Are you just looking at that market?
• 53:50
  Or if someone is listening from KeyBank or whatever and wants to create the culture that you guys have created, could they explore you?
• 54:00
  Good.
• 54:00
  wants to develop a culture, especially anyone that's developed wants to develop a culture that is scalable and that they can scale within their system is something that we can be a
• 54:10
  part of.
• 54:11
  I have had the pleasure of not only working with you and your organization for over a decade, you and Chuck have spoken at our conferences, highest rated.
• 54:22
  This is the third or fourth time I've had one of you on my podcast.
• 54:27
  I truly mean this, Dave.
• 54:29
  I've learned more than I could ever have shared with you guys and
• 54:34
  Yeah, the person you are.
• 54:36
  I truly mean that.
• 54:38
  If we never did business again, would stay in contact.
• 54:43
  You are a genuine person with a huge heart, and none of this is a shock to me of your incredible, incredible success.
• 54:52
  Thank you so much.
• 54:54
  John you are a one of a kind yourself and I'm just honored to know you.
• 54:57
  Thank you, buddy.
• 54:59
  Thank you, revolutionaries.
• 55:00
  We'll be right back after this.