Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 18 - Navigating Entrepreneurship and Franchising: Ben Davis and The Gents Place

Transcript

Ep. 18 - Navigating Entrepreneurship and Franchising: Ben Davis and The Gents Place · Big Talk About Small Business

0:06
Mark Zweig: This is Mark Swig, and I'm here with my co-host, eric Howerton, as well as a very special guest today, ben Davis, who we'll introduce in a moment.
0:16
Mark Zweig: But this is another episode of Big Talk About Small Business, and we're here in beautiful northwest Arkansas.
0:27
Mark Zweig: The weather is perfect outside, really is.
0:31
Mark Zweig: I drove here on the highway with all my windows down, my sunroof, open.
0:36
Mark Zweig: Your hat was your hat on, my hat stayed on, and then suddenly, though, like a straw wrapper went flying out of the car.
0:42
Mark Zweig: I felt so bad.
0:44
Mark Zweig: Was that from Burger King or McDonald's?
0:46
Mark Zweig: It was from my kids From, yeah, it was McDonald's, of course, but you know, I'm just like this rampant litterer driving my Mercedes down the highway and throwing shit out the window.
1:00
Mark Zweig: It was pretty embarrassing, frankly, although it was just a straw wrapper.
1:03
Mark Zweig: But your hair was flowing, though, yeah, and the Taco Bell bag that I knud under my seat fortunately didn't fly out.
1:11
Mark Zweig: But anyway, it's always good to be here with you, eric and Ben.
1:18
Mark Zweig: We're lucky to have been with us today.
1:20
Mark Zweig: Now, you and Eric go back.
1:24
Mark Zweig: Have some connection from the past, don't you Ben?
1:28
Ben Davis: I think so.
1:28
Ben Davis: So Eric is.
1:29
Ben Davis: He claims to be a OG Gents Place member in Bentonville, so I still need to fact check that, but he has been, it is true.
1:38
Ben Davis: Okay, all right, so we'll.
1:41
Ben Davis: We'll claim that.
1:42
Ben Davis: So, yes, we own the Gents Place brand and Josh Safran there in Bentonville is our franchisee, and Eric apparently has been been looking and feeling his best, thanks to us, for five years straight.
1:55
Mark Zweig: Well, he is a good looking guy.
1:57
Mark Zweig: Thanks, mark.
1:58
Eric Howerton: I will say Appreciate that man, and it now get better looking every time I go to the Gents Place.
2:03
Eric Howerton: I was actually there yesterday.
2:04
Eric Howerton: So, ben, you don't not only was an OG, not only an MIOG member, but I'm an all access member at that.
2:11
Eric Howerton: Did you know that?
2:13
Ben Davis: you'd?
2:13
Ben Davis: Yeah, man, I did not.
2:14
Ben Davis: I didn't know I was speaking to an all access member.
2:17
Ben Davis: I feel like I buttoned up, man I feel like I should have worn a you know, a suit and tire.
2:22
Ben Davis: I would have been better prepared for this call.
2:25
Mark Zweig: I'm missing out.
2:26
Mark Zweig: I don't know what all access means exactly, but I'm going to learn about that.
2:30
Mark Zweig: But so, ben, tell us a little bit about your business and your background and how you got into it.
2:38
Ben Davis: Yeah, so I I'll try to be a little concise, but it does go all the way back to 2008.
2:45
Ben Davis: So I actually got an SBA loan two weeks before Lehman brothers collapsed, at 25 years old, starting the Gents Place.
2:52
Ben Davis: Uh, yeah, it was crazy timing.
2:56
Ben Davis: And uh, my banker actually called me and said, hey, you haven't started spending your money from your SBA loan yet.
3:03
Ben Davis: And I said yeah, you know, the construction is going to start in eight weeks or whatever.
3:06
Ben Davis: He said you need to start spending money now.
3:09
Ben Davis: Send an invoice to your contractor and so we can trigger the loan.
3:14
Ben Davis: Otherwise we may take it back from you.
3:16
Ben Davis: So that was my entry into entrepreneurship and I didn't know and you guys probably have worked with contractors and builders enough there is a.
3:24
Ben Davis: It's probably the only time it's ever happened in the world where you know you call a contractor up and it's like can I wire you $50,000 today?
3:31
Ben Davis: I don't need an invoice, and that's what I had to do.
3:35
Ben Davis: I didn't realize I would never, ever want to do that to a contractor to pay him for work before anything starts so fast forward.
3:43
Ben Davis: So that's 15 years ago.
3:45
Ben Davis: Started the business?
3:46
Ben Davis: Crazy time ended up opening in December oh eight, in Frisco, texas, just north of Dallas and had no experience in the hair business no experience really as an as an entrepreneur.
3:57
Ben Davis: But I had built with a team.
3:59
Ben Davis: As a fifth employee at a company called Goosehead Insurance, I'd built that company from five to 150 people with the CEO.
4:07
Ben Davis: And so I felt at 25 years old I knew everything and I was going to go out and strike out on my own and so open the Gents place.
4:14
Ben Davis: And so the Gents place is a membership base.
4:19
Mark Zweig: I said what drew you to hair?
4:22
Ben Davis: Oh, really easy.
4:23
Ben Davis: I hate.
4:25
Ben Davis: I realized I hated two things in life.
4:26
Ben Davis: One was getting my haircut and the other was going to the grocery store, and I avoided both at all costs and I didn't have enough money to open a grocery store and it seemed kind of boring.
4:35
Ben Davis: Now I realized I would go and get my haircut twice as short as I wanted, so I wouldn't have to go back for twice as long.
4:43
Ben Davis: I hated it that much and so I thought if I could fix a personal problem.
4:50
Mark Zweig: You're 25, you've had some success in another business.
4:55
Mark Zweig: You decided to go into this business.
4:57
Mark Zweig: You got yourself a loan for a build out.
4:59
Mark Zweig: Then what happened?
5:04
Ben Davis: I was in the business with cold water because we couldn't get the hot water to work.
5:09
Ben Davis: The day I opened my business was the day of my son's second open heart surgery.
5:14
Ben Davis: He was one years old, so I worked the front desk from 10 am to 8 pm that day and then I drove 45 minutes to go be with him after his open heart surgery.
5:25
Ben Davis: So it was crazy time.
5:28
Ben Davis: So, 25 years old, no money kid with health problems, but we were entrepreneurs.
5:35
Ben Davis: We were able to control our own destiny, which was ultimately all that really mattered to us at that time.
5:42
Mark Zweig: Hey, ben to that.
5:42
Mark Zweig: So what did you do that made it special?
5:46
Mark Zweig: How did you grow this business?
5:49
Ben Davis: Yeah.
5:49
Ben Davis: So the concept was what it is today, but probably on steroids.
5:54
Ben Davis: We wanted to create a place where I actually wanted to go and get my haircut.
5:59
Ben Davis: I looked forward to it.
6:00
Ben Davis: In order for that to happen, we needed to do something more than just haircuts, and so we created a membership based model that was focused on building community.
6:09
Ben Davis: We call it a community of influential gentlemen a place where you could expand your business network, where you could expand your influence in the community, a place where there was personalized experiences, where you felt like people knew exactly what you wanted and anticipated your needs so you could expand your beverage ready when they saw you pulling into the parking lot and coming in the front door.
6:34
Ben Davis: And so we created a concept that was I call it a country club meets speakeas, he meets barbershop it's kind of the way I visualize it.
6:44
Ben Davis: So I figured, if we could pull that off, that we would create a place where Mark would want to go to instead of avoid at all costs like I was doing.
6:56
Mark Zweig: Well, clearly I don't go to the barber too often, or I wouldn't look like this Didn't you say you were?
7:02
Mark Zweig: This was for, like, some kind of gentleman?
7:05
Mark Zweig: How did Eric get into this thing?
7:07
Mark Zweig: That was my thought.
7:08
Eric Howerton: Money, money.
7:09
Eric Howerton: Okay, it's subscription, mark.
7:11
Eric Howerton: Yeah, not too much qualification.
7:13
Eric Howerton: Do you have a subscription?
7:15
Eric Howerton: So I'll actually testify as a long-term gents play subscriber that I mean everything.
7:23
Eric Howerton: Ben, you talked about that country club atmosphere, networking, I mean personalization, it happens, I mean it's actually, it's.
7:31
Eric Howerton: You know, I think, ben, what you're saying is you hate it going to get a haircut, but you actually liked being in a network and going to a place where I mean there was a place to relax.
7:42
Eric Howerton: You know, a place to chill out is actually an experience.
7:44
Eric Howerton: That's.
7:45
Eric Howerton: I mean, that's what.
7:46
Mark Zweig: I enjoy every time I go and everybody knows your name.
7:48
Mark Zweig: They do Like Cheers they actually do, yeah.
7:51
Eric Howerton: It does make a difference for sure.
7:52
Eric Howerton: It's crazy.
7:52
Eric Howerton: All the stylists, like even the ones like I mean you know I have one that I go to every time, but I mean all the stylists know who I am and people at the front desk do greet me with a drink every time.
8:01
Eric Howerton: Wow, I got my own locker there.
8:03
Eric Howerton: That is so cool.
8:04
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's super chill.
8:05
Eric Howerton: I mean you get super nice lounge chairs.
8:07
Eric Howerton: I mean it's like going to a country club and hanging out.
8:10
Eric Howerton: That is awesome.
8:11
Eric Howerton: I've had meetings there.
8:12
Eric Howerton: Have you really Business meetings?
8:13
Eric Howerton: And stuff.
8:14
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's great, that is cool.
8:15
Mark Zweig: Well, you started in a really entrepreneurial area there in Texas, where you are, ben.
8:24
Mark Zweig: How did you grow the business from there?
8:28
Ben Davis: Yeah.
8:28
Ben Davis: So Facebook ads had just come out that year that we opened and we took full advantage of that.
8:34
Ben Davis: So our primary acquisition vehicle for new customers was displaying ads on Facebook for a completely complimentary member day pass.
8:44
Ben Davis: So it was come in for a day, we'll roll out the red carpet.
8:48
Ben Davis: We were so good, let us prove to you that we're worth it.
8:52
Ben Davis: And so we got thousands and thousands of form fills online that we ran through a marketing system, went through email, text message, follow up on phone calls, online booking, and we drove a lot of traffic into the business immediately and it was a very novel concept at the time.
9:09
Ben Davis: There's a lot of copycats today, but guys were really looking for a place that was other than I'll call them XYZ clips, joints to put everyone in the same bucket, and it was too good of an offer to pass up.
9:24
Ben Davis: So that really built the business over the first several years.
9:27
Mark Zweig: Also smoothed out your cash flow, I think with the subscription model.
9:31
Ben Davis: Well, yeah, the interesting thing about the subscription model is we have a big cash lever we can pull with an annual membership.
9:38
Ben Davis: So you know, eric's, on annual membership We've got anywhere from $600 to $8,000 cash lever we can pull if we're really good at what we do.
9:47
Ben Davis: So you could have a relatively slow traffic day in the business maybe.
9:52
Ben Davis: See, you know 20 or 30 guests.
9:54
Ben Davis: But if you sell four or five annual memberships, you know you have a four, five, six, seven, eight $10,000 day.
10:01
Ben Davis: You've got to be good at what you do.
10:03
Ben Davis: You know people are taking a risk with their money.
10:05
Ben Davis: But that's attractive about the business when you're offering a comp service.
10:10
Ben Davis: You've got to convert those annual memberships.
10:13
Mark Zweig: I mean it sounds like to do this you had to do pretty expensive build out.
10:19
Mark Zweig: I mean you've got probably more facilities investment than the typical mail oriented hair place I would assume.
10:28
Ben Davis: Yeah, everything about what we do is luxury.
10:31
Ben Davis: It's bigger, it's nicer, you know, restoration, hardware, furniture, full complimentary top shelf, bar, member lounge, liquor lockers.
10:43
Ben Davis: We want guys to come in and feel at home when they get their haircut and hopefully they spend some extra time there and invite their friends.
10:52
Mark Zweig: Wow, that sounds awesome.
10:53
Mark Zweig: I'm gonna have to check this out myself, eric.
10:56
Mark Zweig: It might look a little better.
10:58
Mark Zweig: You might the next time I see you Might so, ben.
11:02
Mark Zweig: So now you grew this business and do you have a franchise model now at this point, with your additional locations?
11:11
Ben Davis: Yeah, so we started with the SBA loan in 08 and in 2016 we decided to franchise the business and we took on some small investors but big names.
11:22
Ben Davis: So Jerry Jones and Emmett Smith came on as investors and partners in the brand in 2016 and 2017.
11:30
Ben Davis: And we started franchising.
11:32
Ben Davis: So we awarded several franchise licenses early on and as we started to get locations open, covid hit and so we've had took a few years off from franchising but just restarted our efforts this year and our next location will be opening in the Midland Odessa area oil country.
11:52
Eric Howerton: Nice, very cool.
11:53
Eric Howerton: So when you started your franchise, I mean, had you you had just one original location or had you already built a couple more in your area?
12:03
Ben Davis: Yeah, we had.
12:04
Ben Davis: We had.
12:05
Ben Davis: We had three locations when we decided to franchise open our fourth right when we filed all of our paperwork.
12:11
Ben Davis: And my second location is actually in Kansas City.
12:14
Ben Davis: It was an acquisition.
12:15
Ben Davis: So it was probably against all common business practice and certainly advice I was being given.
12:21
Ben Davis: But I got a phone call a year into our business in Frisco and someone had built a similar place in Kansas City and could not make it work for a variety of reasons and we ended up acquiring that business out of state.
12:33
Ben Davis: So my second business was out of state and that forced me to create systems and controls and SOPs early on in the business and I think that's ultimately what gave me the confidence to franchise.
12:46
Ben Davis: We had already kind of quasi-franchised and having a location out of state and having to operate it remotely, yeah, what were some of your learnings about that distance?
12:55
Eric Howerton: right, so I mean, like for anybody that's looking to kind of like scale their business, but I mean you went.
13:01
Eric Howerton: I mean I don't know how many miles that is, but I can tell you it's probably a good eight hour drive to get up to Kansas City from Dallas.
13:07
Eric Howerton: Right, so that that distance had to cause some problems because I mean just building out, making sure things are running correctly, managing that, I mean all your SOPs, everything you're trying to instill I mean you had to have some challenges with that.
13:21
Eric Howerton: I mean, what did you?
13:22
Eric Howerton: What were some of the painful points to that?
13:25
Ben Davis: Yeah, and I'll even start with just a recommendation before I forget, for anybody that's starting a business is started as if you are not there physically in the business.
13:37
Ben Davis: Even if you are there, you can force yourself to be out of the business to figure out what you need to systemize and create those SOPs early on.
13:47
Ben Davis: You know, I was fortunate enough to be forced to do it because I had this business out of state, but I would highly recommend doing that because eventually you probably don't want to be in the business every hour of the day.
13:58
Ben Davis: I worked the front desk the first 18 hours, or at first 18 months, for 12 hours a day, most days of the week, to learn.
14:06
Ben Davis: The business had no idea what I was doing.
14:09
Mark Zweig: But the challenge is Good way to learn.
14:10
Ben Davis: Yeah, just remote, do it, yeah well, yeah.
14:13
Ben Davis: Well, that's again.
14:15
Ben Davis: There's a bunch of different philosophies out there and you know in business on, you know, do you learn everything yourself and then you start to kind of delegate it out.
14:22
Ben Davis: Or, you know, do you delegate the stuff out that you don't want to do and you don't care and you're not good at?
14:27
Ben Davis: And my approach has always been to have first hand knowledge of something before I delegate it out, because you know employees, team members they don't work out most of the time right, most people don't stay with you forever and I need to be able to potentially step in or at least have the internal confidence to know I know their job and I know how to hold them accountable and I could step in if I need to.
14:56
Ben Davis: And that gives me that confidence that you know I don't need a bad team member in my way because they're holding me hostage in my business.
15:06
Ben Davis: But to answer your question about remote management, you know I have a podcast called the Untrapped Entrepreneur and that podcast is really centered around giving advice to entrepreneurs on how to, you know, create a business life that does not require you to be physically present in a place at any given moment to get the job done, and so, for me, I always have a mindset that when there's a failure in the business is that systems fail.
15:37
Ben Davis: People don't, and I could get an arguments all day long about whether that's true or not, but I think the majority of the time I have found that if there's a problem in the business, it's a system failure, and I just need to solve the system and not not the, not the person.
15:53
Ben Davis: And so I'm really big on creating systems in every single aspect of my life, from my own personal email management to, you know, operating a multi-million dollar facility, order management, everything else and so I would say do not wait on creating Systems.
16:12
Ben Davis: Pretend like you're not going to be in the business.
16:14
Ben Davis: You're gonna be, you know, on vacation for 30 days.
16:18
Ben Davis: Someone else is gonna run it and build your business around that concept.
16:25
Mark Zweig: Okay, that's interesting, I might.
16:28
Mark Zweig: I think that's a good advice.
16:29
Mark Zweig: Plan for growth.
16:32
Mark Zweig: Don't just expect to be a small operation forever.
16:36
Mark Zweig: So tell us, like as far as and I know a lot of hair businesses, I've seen Mostly their Women, female oriented ones.
16:50
Mark Zweig: They tend to operate basically as providing a facility and then they rent out the space to individuals who pay them rent.
16:59
Mark Zweig: Is that the way your business model works, or do you have some different practices?
17:06
Ben Davis: Yeah, there's really three segments in the in the beauty industry, at least at the brick and mortar level.
17:11
Ben Davis: So the first is a Commission based Hair stylist.
17:18
Ben Davis: So they're working inside someone else's business, getting paid a commission, and that's mostly female operators working on female clients.
17:25
Ben Davis: And Then maybe they grow out of that and they want to run their own business.
17:31
Ben Davis: So you have the booth rental business and this is where someone's paying typically a weekly fee To operate in someone else's building, but they're running their own business, they're booking their own appointments, everything else.
17:41
Ben Davis: So that's kind of a real estate play from an investor standpoint.
17:45
Ben Davis: And then you have the third, which is our segment, which is really a team-based environment.
17:49
Ben Davis: It's all W2 team members, very rich benefits.
17:54
Ben Davis: So we have matching 401k, we have health insurance, we have paid vacation, paid community service, mental health visits, doctors visits, you name it some of the best benefits you know across Industry verticals.
18:12
Ben Davis: And that particular type of team member is someone that is choosing to work in a team environment and may not want all the stress of running their own business, booking their own appointments or Kind of eating what they kill.
18:28
Mark Zweig: So you should be able to get better people.
18:30
Mark Zweig: I would think, yeah, that model versus them having to Go out and bring it all in and then just get a percent, you know, either get a percentage of it or pay for the overhead of the business themselves Seems like you'd get better people you get.
18:43
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know.
18:44
Ben Davis: I think the other side would probably argue this point but Someone who's really great at what they do and they charge $200 for men's haircut and they own their own business and they operate their own booth, they're probably giving fantastic haircuts.
18:58
Ben Davis: So from a quality standpoint, they may be really good at what they do.
19:02
Ben Davis: Otherwise it'd be out of business.
19:05
Ben Davis: I think what you find in our business is you find people that are culturally aligned and aligned from Come a mindset standpoint.
19:17
Ben Davis: Like Eric comes into the gents place because he wants to feel a team Oriented culture, a team environment.
19:23
Ben Davis: Everybody's working together on his behalf, making him feel, look and feel as best, and if Susie's not there one day to cut his hair, jenny will be right there to back her up and the there's continuity in his service experience, and so that's what the members expect.
19:41
Ben Davis: The team members Are in our industry segment because they want to make friends.
19:50
Ben Davis: They don't want to work by themselves in a little hundred square foot booth, and so it is really a match made in heaven when everybody's getting along, because everybody wants to be there and connect with other people and build relationships.
20:04
Eric Howerton: Yep makes sense.
20:05
Eric Howerton: You know, been one thing that I noticed too, just you know, as I've Been a customer is that you also have some pretty neat.
20:11
Eric Howerton: This allows you to have good incentives to write for the team To where they can be challenged.
20:17
Eric Howerton: They have targets and metrics and things of that nature.
20:19
Eric Howerton: When did you start deploying, you know, some of those things with your team?
20:28
Ben Davis: Well, I did some research on both of you guys and I know mark.
20:31
Ben Davis: I haven't attended his class, but I know mark is very big on transparency and business and and being an open book right.
20:40
Ben Davis: So I believe the same thing and I always had that mindset.
20:43
Ben Davis: And I remember meeting with a competitor who's sent sold his business Private equity huge success.
20:48
Ben Davis: I remember meeting with him two years into the business and I'd looked at becoming a franchisee of his and then I ended up opening the gents place and we met up and he said hey, I hear you're posting your Revenue and profit numbers and you're in like you're going over your P&L's with your hairstylist.
21:07
Ben Davis: Is that true?
21:08
Ben Davis: And I said, yeah, it's true, he goes.
21:10
Ben Davis: Well, why would you do that?
21:15
Ben Davis: Said, well, because they need to know if we're making money or losing money.
21:16
Ben Davis: And he's he was just blew his mind.
21:20
Ben Davis: He's like I don't think I could do that as Really too risky.
21:22
Ben Davis: He goes.
21:23
Ben Davis: He even said he goes.
21:24
Ben Davis: So what if you make 80 thousand dollars in a month in revenue and they think it's profit and they think you made all that money?
21:32
Ben Davis: And I said, well, I'll leave his name omitted.
21:39
Ben Davis: That's why you have to educate them that 80 thousand and revenue is not 80 thousand in profit.
21:42
Ben Davis: So from an early, early age in business for me I was just putting it all out there.
21:52
Ben Davis: Every day we're posting revenue reports, profitability, productivity, I mean everything is front and center and it is a culture where you can't hide.
21:58
Ben Davis: I mean there's a stack rank.
22:00
Ben Davis: You know top and bottom Pretty much everything and we, you know we have a team environment and help everybody out.
22:06
Ben Davis: But it started from the beginning is when you have that transparency, then kpi start to come up that people care about, they're meaningful to the business and and everyone's aligned and driving the right numbers.
22:17
Ben Davis: Oh man, that's, that's really progressive.
22:20
Mark Zweig: I think there's such a great opportunity to take a business where people don't do that yeah, and do that, oh yeah, you would come in completely change the country and drive to the next level.
22:34
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I mean it's like you know you're they're gonna have more trust for management.
22:36
Mark Zweig: I mean, we've talked about these things before, that the you know the studies that show that the Employees of restaurants think the owners make something like 27 times or 29 times what they actually do.
22:48
Mark Zweig: That's why you got to do that stuff, and it's really is interesting how many business owners are afraid to do it.
22:56
Mark Zweig: I think they either are taken too much out or they're afraid that's going to be discovered, or they're not making anything and they're embarrassed.
23:04
Mark Zweig: What do you think?
23:09
Ben Davis: Yeah, well, on the expense side too, we've done some fun things in the past where we have monthly team meeting.
23:17
Ben Davis: We're like, okay, whoever can guess the rent In this facility you know closest to rent, get to gift card.
23:22
Ben Davis: And and You'll hear, I mean it's crazy, because you know someone will go 5,000, 50,000, or like, okay, you have five to 50.
23:37
Ben Davis: These people have no idea, right, they're just throwing numbers out.
23:40
Ben Davis: Um, the other question that we ask them to that's always fascinating to me and we do this one more regularly is we ask him the top one percent, or top to say, top 10 percent, top 10 percent of our members.
23:55
Ben Davis: What do you think they make per hour in their jobs?
23:58
Ben Davis: Because we're trying to get a reference point for them, because they're in this kind of, they get paid hourly, plus bonuses, commissions, all of that, and I'm always just fascinated with trying to get to figure out where they are.
24:08
Ben Davis: And again, you'll hear as low as 25 an hour Too, as high as maybe 200 an hour, and that's where I kind of give them the big you know reveal.
24:18
Ben Davis: And I said the guy I worked for Before I started the gents place 15 years ago, who's now worth several billion dollars, they took, end up taking the company public.
24:28
Ben Davis: 15 years ago actually it's 20 years ago at bain consulting, he charged $2,000 an hour for his time $2,000 an hour 20 years ago and people are like they can't even fathom it it's it's anywhere from 10 to 100 times more than they thought it was, and so we use that as a, as a An example and a learning moment for the value of their time.
24:56
Ben Davis: So if you run someone 15 minutes late, that could be $500.
25:01
Mark Zweig: Yeah, yep, that's really good.
25:04
Mark Zweig: I like that.
25:05
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it puts them in the cut.
25:07
Eric Howerton: I mean that Again.
25:09
Eric Howerton: I mean I think one biggest things in business is understanding your target audience.
25:12
Eric Howerton: Right, Amen.
25:13
Eric Howerton: And so if you know who your target audience is time is so precious to them, Yep and then you can Demonstrate that you respect, that, you appreciate it and you help with that, then I mean you're gonna keep passing happy customers.
25:26
Eric Howerton: I mean that's yeah, you know.
25:28
Eric Howerton: I mean I know when I go in, I mean that's like time is of, is on the clock.
25:32
Eric Howerton: I mean it's like they're, they're very much on top of it and so that's a hard thing to do.
25:36
Eric Howerton: It shows respect.
25:39
Mark Zweig: I think for you, mm-hmm, if nothing else, you know, it's like you're considerate and they're respectful of your time.
25:45
Mark Zweig: I love that, ben.
25:47
Mark Zweig: That's a really great idea.
25:51
Ben Davis: Thank you.
25:51
Ben Davis: And I had a guy what really burned this into my brain when I was working the front desk for 18 months, had a guy I wasn't working the desk at the time and Someone else working there I get a phone call and this member says hey, ben, and so, and so I just wanted to let you know that I'm canceling my membership, not coming back again.
26:11
Ben Davis: I said, oh my gosh, what happened?
26:12
Ben Davis: You love this place.
26:14
Ben Davis: He said, well, you've run me late two times and I'm done.
26:19
Ben Davis: And you know, the first time it was like Something happened and it was excusable.
26:23
Ben Davis: And the second time, something happened and there's a reason for it.
26:27
Ben Davis: And I said, well, but you know, the first time I remember, when you were late because I was working.
26:31
Ben Davis: And then the second, like today, this he said Ben, let me explain something to you.
26:35
Ben Davis: I'm not comparing your service to the service I could get at any other haircut establishment.
26:42
Ben Davis: I'm comparing the service that you deliver to all the other places that I give my money to, like the Four Seasons, the Ritz Carlton, the Capitol Grill.
26:53
Ben Davis: He starts listing all these places and that that burned in my mind that if we're gonna serve this type of clientele, we have to be thinking about this business completely differently.
27:05
Mark Zweig: That's a really cool Story, um, the only but you did get me thinking there for just a minute.
27:11
Mark Zweig: Um, sounds like some of your clients might be a pain in the ass and be a little carried away with themselves.
27:17
Mark Zweig: I mean.
27:18
Mark Zweig: I go to the Capitol Grill, I go to Ritz.
27:22
Mark Zweig: Chris only you know what I mean.
27:25
Mark Zweig: I that must be a hard customer base to take care of.
27:29
Mark Zweig: I mean you must really have to like hold back sometime Telling people what you think the hardest, the hardest customer base.
27:38
Ben Davis: Um, but you know what man?
27:40
Ben Davis: I like a challenge, I really do.
27:42
Ben Davis: I like I like the guy coming in that's had a terrible day and you can tell he just walks in and he's kicking the dirt and you know if there's a dog outside he'd kick that on the way in.
27:55
Ben Davis: And yeah, he's pissed off.
27:57
Ben Davis: And I like seeing that guy and saying he has no idea what's about to happen to him.
28:04
Ben Davis: Because we have a system in place.
28:07
Ben Davis: We ask questions a certain way.
28:09
Ben Davis: We have this whole life coaching type of program that we take our team members through on how to turn grumpy mark around.
28:20
Ben Davis: You know, pissed off mark around.
28:22
Ben Davis: And we, you know I live for that.
28:25
Ben Davis: That's why I love the business that we're in.
28:28
Ben Davis: I remember walking to my CEO's office and I told him we're growing this company really fast.
28:33
Ben Davis: I called all my friends from childhood in.
28:35
Ben Davis: They took the company public six plus billion dollar company from nothing.
28:39
Ben Davis: I was a fifth employee there and I walk into my CEO's office and I'm quitting because I found my passion in life and he says what is it?
28:47
Ben Davis: And I said customer service.
28:48
Ben Davis: And he goes oh Ben, no, no, customer service, you're running this organization like we're hiring, you know, 4.0 GPAs.
28:59
Ben Davis: We're going to take this company public one day.
29:00
Ben Davis: And I attended this class at UT Austin for two days on the experiential economy.
29:07
Ben Davis: I learned about Starbucks and Rich Carleton and Four Seasons and all of these organizations that sold basically a commodity product and they made it really special and, for whatever reason, I just fell in love with that.
29:19
Ben Davis: I love the challenge of taking a guy who has really high expectations and blowing him away and exceeding those.
29:29
Mark Zweig: That's a really great idea.
29:30
Mark Zweig: You know, I've got a friend and we need to have him on the show at some time.
29:34
Mark Zweig: He owns a whole bunch of car washes and oil change places and they're really different than anybody else's as far as his facilities, his people, the training.
29:45
Mark Zweig: He took five of his managers to Europe and stayed in five star hotels because he wanted them to see what really good service was.
29:53
Mark Zweig: Because he says you don't even see it in this country.
29:57
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I mean, I thought that was pretty interesting and progressive, don't you?
30:01
Mark Zweig: I mean, it's the same idea.
30:03
Ben Davis: I did the same thing I've taken our team members to even if we couldn't afford Rich Carleton, we took them to the Fleming's Bar at the Rich Carleton in Dallas.
30:15
Ben Davis: We've taken them to five star restaurants so they could get that experience.
30:19
Ben Davis: And I'll tell you a quick story.
30:22
Ben Davis: The very first time in 15 years I've had a candidate hang up the phone on me on an interview happened two weeks ago and it started to go downhill when I said have you ever eaten at a nice day, calc like for a dinner or a birthday or special occasion.
30:39
Ben Davis: And 100% of the time I've had people say yes, I've interviewed thousands of people and this woman said no, she's like no, you've never had a nice place like birthday, anniversary, something, she's like not really.
30:55
Ben Davis: And I go, oh man, this is not good.
30:59
Ben Davis: And she ended up hanging up on me because I was-.
31:04
Mark Zweig: I thought you were going to say.
31:05
Mark Zweig: She said yeah, I've been to Bonanza or somewhere.
31:07
Mark Zweig: You know, you set a nice take house and then you knew that they weren't your person.
31:13
Mark Zweig: But sorry, bailey.
31:13
Ben Davis: That's right, chillies, yeah.
31:15
Ben Davis: But you know, I guess my desire to convert people over to living this Jens place experience out and having something better for themselves it got in the way and it offended her and I'm like I kind of went through my whole spiel and I go.
31:35
Ben Davis: Well, but this is why do you think someone would pay $250,000 up front for a country club membership and $2,000 a month to maintain it?
31:45
Ben Davis: What do you think they're buying?
31:46
Ben Davis: And she's like I don't know, it's a golf club, right.
31:50
Ben Davis: And I'm like yes, it's a golf club, well, probably golf.
31:52
Ben Davis: And I go what if it isn't golf?
31:54
Ben Davis: Because we all know it's not golf?
31:56
Ben Davis: At $1,500,000 up front, you can never get that return.
31:59
Ben Davis: You could play golf 100 times a day and still be over the public course fees and she didn't get it.
32:08
Ben Davis: I tried, I even used the okay you go to I said I know you haven't been a nice take house, but there's a $100 stake at a nice take house that exists right now in this world.
32:20
Ben Davis: And let's just pretend you're willing to pay $100 for it and you move the stake over to the hot dog rollers at 7-11, right, the same stake.
32:32
Ben Davis: You move it's $100 over here and you move it to the hot dog rollers at 7-11.
32:37
Ben Davis: And I'm like what would you pay for that?
32:40
Ben Davis: She's like if I'm really hungry, $10.
32:44
Ben Davis: And I go perfect, I got her right, I'm going okay.
32:47
Ben Davis: So it's worth more over here than over here.
32:52
Ben Davis: It's the same product.
32:53
Ben Davis: Why would someone pay $90 more to go to Capitol Grill?
32:58
Ben Davis: Happens every day.
32:59
Ben Davis: She didn't know, and so I think I just got so frustrated that she said you know what?
33:05
Ben Davis: This position is not for me and I said I agree.
33:08
Mark Zweig: Yeah, well, yeah, sounds like it was an effective interview in the sense that you figured out she was true.
33:15
Mark Zweig: Jen's place material right.
33:19
Ben Davis: It bothered me because I felt like I could convert everybody over to realizing the value of what we do.
33:26
Ben Davis: And she was a tough cookie, yeah.
33:30
Eric Howerton: I think that it kind of actually speaks to your entrepreneurial spirit there.
33:34
Eric Howerton: When you say converting her over, I mean you can convert so many folks into your vision, right.
33:39
Eric Howerton: But I think that I don't know about you, but I've had some hard knocks and just like, again, I mean you can invest in people, but sometimes it's just reality, Like they just, I mean they just don't get it, they just don't get it and you're just spinning your wheels and you can pour that energy elsewhere.
33:56
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I think obviously you've got to have certain standards and if people haven't ever experienced it themselves, really good service, I think it'd be hard to give.
34:07
Mark Zweig: And again, though, I just love this idea of these mature, fragmented, huge industries where people need the basic product or service, but here you have differentiated yourself and made it so much more premium and you go after the high end of the market.
34:27
Mark Zweig: It's such a good business model for smaller businesses, I think, but most don't do it.
34:34
Mark Zweig: I don't know.
34:35
Mark Zweig: They're afraid to spend the money on the front end, or afraid to ask, or they all think.
34:40
Mark Zweig: I fight this every day, people who own businesses or want to own businesses, and they think pricing drives everybody's purchase decision and just doesn't.
34:52
Eric Howerton: No, no, it doesn't.
34:54
Eric Howerton: I think that you know, and to the point, like I mean, like no, ben, I'm sure that not all your customers you know me being one of them is not always you know, the high income earning folks right that are coming in, like I mean, but the fact is that these folks are, they work hard for a living and they just genuinely appreciate something good.
35:15
Eric Howerton: Something good, yeah, and they're willing to invest in that, and I think you've hit on that.
35:18
Eric Howerton: So, like you can come in and get that high end service, and you know, without having to pay your arm and leg for it.
35:27
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's expensive for what it is, but it's not really expensive in the context of life.
35:32
Mark Zweig: That's right.
35:33
Mark Zweig: That's the other thing, that's right, you know.
35:35
Ben Davis: Yeah, yeah, I mean we're like 10 or $15 more per service than kind of the mid tier place.
35:43
Ben Davis: So yeah, from an absolute dollar standpoint it's not.
35:46
Ben Davis: I want to share one thing too that I think maybe answers your question mark, at least in some cases.
35:55
Ben Davis: When you have this highly fragmented market, a workforce that is very low formal education, you have a customer based that is affluent, very discerning, that's high price point.
36:09
Ben Davis: There's a massive gap between where the team member is and where the customer is, and the work that you have to put in to that team member is not like a SOP follow the SOP training manual.
36:25
Ben Davis: It is an investment into them as a person, as a human being.
36:31
Ben Davis: So there's personal and professional development that needs to happen from the owner, from the leadership, from the brand, into these people on a constant, ongoing basis in order to have them start here and move their way up to at least understanding how the customer thinks, and that's what I'm really passionate about.
36:55
Ben Davis: So if you ask me kind of what business we're in, we're in the business of growing people and the haircut's just the vehicle that gets guys in the door and they pay us at the checkout and everything.
37:06
Ben Davis: But that's what I'm passionate about is taking a 19 year old, a 20 year old, a 21 year old, a 25 year old, a 40 year old that just has never had personal and professional development, no mentor nor no coach, and bring them into our world where they say, oh my gosh, I wish I would have come here 15 years ago, 20 years ago, and that's how we've been able to keep.
37:27
Ben Davis: Some team members have been with us for 14 and a half years.
37:31
Ben Davis: Our average manager tenure is over seven years.
37:33
Ben Davis: It's unheard of in this industry.
37:35
Mark Zweig: Sure, I believe it.
37:37
Mark Zweig: Well, you're kind of trying to raise their expectations in a way for themselves, it sounds like, through this process.
37:44
Ben Davis: Well.
37:45
Eric Howerton: Ben, you're hitting on a universal thread, right, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, in the very early stages, they think, okay, I have this vision, I can see what needs to happen.
37:55
Eric Howerton: Everything's on me, you know, I'm the only one that knows what's going on.
37:59
Eric Howerton: And they think it's a, you know, especially in the tech world, right, and all the software and all that industry that's growing, that it becomes more about the programming, it becomes about the technology, the automation and all these things.
38:12
Eric Howerton: And they think that, you know, it's not a team play.
38:17
Eric Howerton: But the reality is, is every single business and I've been around a lot of tech and software businesses too in my time, in some of the biggest and smallest, like the pouring into the team, developing the individual person, you know, and trying to get them to, you know, to basically to mentor them up and to take an ownership, and having confidence and leading other people, you know, is absolutely critical.
38:42
Ben Davis: I mean, it's 100% critical and most people don't want to do it.
38:44
Ben Davis: That's what I was kind of getting at, mark.
38:46
Ben Davis: Most of these entrepreneurs that I've met, they go Ben, I don't know how you do it, how you deal with all these crazy hairstyles, how you deal with these people.
38:53
Ben Davis: I deal with this.
38:54
Ben Davis: You should come over to my business and manage a bunch of NBAs, and I came from that world.
38:59
Ben Davis: I came from you know, a startup where I did.
39:01
Ben Davis: I did that and so it is.
39:05
Ben Davis: I think a lot of people are afraid to address these problems.
39:10
Ben Davis: They don't chase, they chase opportunity and they chase what other people are succeeding in in, in, in business and they go there and for whatever reason, I am sure there I have a disease of some kind.
39:26
Ben Davis: I chase problems.
39:28
Ben Davis: I really like to solve problems.
39:32
Eric Howerton: I don't think it's a disease.
39:33
Eric Howerton: Let me ask you a question, though, because I've something I've been really interested in in learning more about and I think there's probably a lot of listeners to franchising right.
39:44
Eric Howerton: So you, you started a business right.
39:47
Eric Howerton: You got your first location going, you did a couple more right Cause you saw the opportunities there.
39:52
Eric Howerton: But then you, what triggered what was actually triggering your, your ambition to go into franchising, the franchising model of the business, what triggered that?
40:05
Eric Howerton: And then tell us a little about the, the challenges that that were part of actually franchising, yeah?
40:15
Ben Davis: So I had the belief back in 2016, and I think this has changed a little bit that in order for a gents place to be successful, there needed to be the man or woman owner there shaking hands and kissing babies and like that's what made the gents place work, and I convinced myself that that was.
40:34
Ben Davis: You know, that was the only way to do it, and so franchising kind of lends itself to that model of that person being there locally in the community.
40:41
Ben Davis: We found that that's not necessarily the case.
40:45
Ben Davis: It's a good thing for sure, if you can have that.
40:48
Ben Davis: You have a Josh and Emily Safran and Bentonville.
40:49
Ben Davis: They're going to run that Bentonville location much better than I would remotely.
40:55
Ben Davis: It's going to be more personalized.
40:57
Ben Davis: They're going to see people and play tennis with them and all of that.
40:59
Ben Davis: And so the franchising model if you have a business that is dependent on building relationships, I think the franchising model is great.
41:09
Ben Davis: The challenge is you have to have a Josh and Emily Safran, and not everybody is Josh and Emily.
41:16
Ben Davis: Some people are not in their business very much.
41:18
Ben Davis: They're doing two or three or ten different things, or entrepreneurs, they're absentee owner, and that's where it gets a lot more challenging.
41:25
Ben Davis: Where how can you replicate what Josh and Emily are doing and what Ben did back in 2008 to 2016, being everywhere all the time, how can you replicate that?
41:36
Ben Davis: And so that's where we're using pretty sophisticated marketing Techniques and systems and I'm not gonna be one of those like, we're not a haircut business, we're a technology business.
41:46
Ben Davis: We're not in that position, but I can tell you that we do use technology, we do use data to Personalize and best serve our guests, and we're just getting started in doing that, in doing that at the next level.
42:04
Ben Davis: And so I think what you'll see, you know, going forward from us is We'll open corporate locations, will open franchise locations, but we're gonna pick the franchisees that we know are going to be Like a Josh and Emily I'm not just saying that because I'm on a Bentonville show and you guys know them.
42:20
Ben Davis: They just do an Exceptional job.
42:23
Mark Zweig: I'm really glad to hear you say that, because I thought you were gonna go a different direction.
42:28
Mark Zweig: I thought you were gonna say you want to have a business that can have an absentee owner.
42:32
Mark Zweig: Hmm and all that.
42:34
Mark Zweig: I'm not a big fan of those businesses, I mean, it seems like that would degrade what you're trying to do.
42:40
Mark Zweig: So you need to be very selective and you need people who are, who are highly involved.
42:46
Mark Zweig: I would think I mean, or you know, the thing is not gonna.
42:51
Mark Zweig: It's not gonna represent what you're all about.
42:56
Ben Davis: No, and we have been able to have a blend that works.
42:59
Ben Davis: You know our most, our highest revenue locations.
43:02
Ben Davis: Well, our highest revenue location last year is a franchise location.
43:06
Ben Davis: Our highest revenue location this year is and maybe I'll take the top two spots or my locations, which I'm very rarely in, but in those locations you have a manager that's been there for 11 years and one that's been there for eight years and they have a true sense, trained by me, grew, kind of grew up, grew up both personally and professionally, been through divorces, been through having kids, been through life together, and so they treat that as if it's their own.
43:36
Ben Davis: And so that's where you know If you, if you, if you don't have a franchisee and you're gonna grow corporately, you better have somebody that lives and breathes that business and loves it almost as much as you do.
43:48
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I can see that could work, that's.
43:50
Mark Zweig: That's not the same thing as, like, I'm selling out, I'm retiring from Tyson and I've got half a million bucks and I'm gonna open this thing because I don't really want to work that hard, ben.
44:01
Mark Zweig: I'd worked hard in my corporate life but this seems like it could be good.
44:07
Mark Zweig: That's not the guy you want, I would think you know no.
44:11
Mark Zweig: I'm gonna spend half my time here and half in my House in friggin Colorado or some shit like that, you know.
44:19
Eric Howerton: I see a lot of those guys fail.
44:21
Mark Zweig: I Mean, yeah, you can bring people up like you did.
44:25
Mark Zweig: It's like a farm team, you know.
44:27
Mark Zweig: You work them up through every job, you Hold their hands and, yeah, coach them daily and they turn into people who think like business owner, like you.
44:36
Mark Zweig: But just the new franchisee, you know.
44:40
Mark Zweig: You just kind of you wonder about that.
44:44
Ben Davis: If they're not willing to make that investment into their people and we talked about that gap If they don't have the energy to invest to close the gap, then it's not right for them.
44:52
Ben Davis: There are absentee owner franchise models that are great, where you don't have to close the gap.
44:58
Ben Davis: It's a yogurt shop, so you have the, the customer, the customer in the, in the cashier, maybe in the exact same place a lot of the time, and so you don't have to teach them how to be a great business person.
45:12
Ben Davis: You just need to teach you know.
45:15
Ben Davis: Find someone that can show up and follow the SOPs.
45:17
Ben Davis: That Tyson guy that's got a half million bucks, we would tell him go find one of these other models that fit with absentee ownership.
45:23
Ben Davis: But you're gonna get clobbered in our business because you're gonna have a hairstylist that breaks down on you and says Her car's broken, she's getting divorced, this is, she's a single mother, and then what do you do?
45:34
Ben Davis: And if your response to that is I don't want to deal with that, then you're not gonna be a good franchisee for us.
45:42
Mark Zweig: Yeah, that's it sounds like the construction business, except it was guys and their cars were being repoed, you know.
45:51
Mark Zweig: So it's like this one, this one guy named Gator.
45:53
Mark Zweig: He lost his Monte Carlo SS and his Cavaliers E24 at the same weekend.
46:01
Mark Zweig: Wow, that's a bad weekend.
46:01
Mark Zweig: You know, that's a bad weekend.
46:06
Mark Zweig: I mean, the next weekend they're gonna jerk the double wide off the the lot.
46:08
Mark Zweig: I mean it's.
46:08
Mark Zweig: But yeah, now I get what you're saying and, and and that makes a lot of sense.
46:13
Mark Zweig: So your selection with your franchisees, I mean.
46:17
Eric Howerton: Imagine you've probably learned some Hard knocks on that at some times, or maybe you've had some really great experiences.
46:23
Eric Howerton: I mean, what kind of advice would you give to, you know, to a listener that's that's considered in that?
46:30
Ben Davis: Yeah, they're considering it as a business owner thinking about franchising their business.
46:36
Ben Davis: You know there's a bunch of legal steps and requirements and costs associated with that and when you get through those hurdles which that could be enough to scare you off it's kind of like going public.
46:45
Ben Davis: You know you get halfway through and you go what are we doing?
46:47
Ben Davis: This is gonna cost us two million dollars a year to service it.
46:50
Ben Davis: So you have to kind of jump over that hurdle and then when you finally go live in your, in your Taking on franchisees, it is a 10 year agreement in 10 years, believe it or not, and unfortunately is longer than most marriages in the United States.
47:03
Ben Davis: So You've got to think about it through that lens and I'll just kind of leave it at that.
47:12
Ben Davis: Right, there's a lot that goes into that.
47:13
Ben Davis: If you're on the other side and you're considering buying a business, starting a business, and you're considering, and you're considering buying a business, starting a business, or buying into a franchise as a franchisee, what I found is the best fit for a franchisee.
47:33
Ben Davis: So if you're, if you're thinking, okay, I wanted to, I want to own a business, am I a good franchisee?
47:38
Ben Davis: A good franchisee, for my experience, has been someone that Does not want to take the enormous risk to start something on their own.
47:47
Ben Davis: They've decided they they think that's too risky.
47:52
Ben Davis: Yeah, so it's like that's step.
47:54
Ben Davis: One Good franchisee says Ben, I would never want to do what you did.
47:58
Ben Davis: If someone says that to me and they're still interested in owning their own business, I want to talk to that person.
48:05
Ben Davis: If they come in saying hey, ben, you know I like what you do, but have you ever thought of taking the beams off the wall and changing the furniture?
48:14
Mark Zweig: and joining in Before they know what the system is.
48:16
Mark Zweig: Man, that's not good.
48:18
Mark Zweig: Yeah, I'm with you.
48:20
Mark Zweig: That's funny.
48:22
Mark Zweig: Well, you'll get a lot of MBAs and engineers who might start doing that to you, you know.
48:27
Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's like learn it, self-actualization.
48:33
Mark Zweig: Learn it our way first.
48:35
Mark Zweig: I mean, that's always the thing.
48:36
Mark Zweig: I think you see it with employees too.
48:38
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you want to be open to new ideas and everybody's creativity, but when they just get there and they already want to change it and they haven't figured out, maybe, why things are the way they are first, that just bugs the hell out of me.
48:55
Mark Zweig: It really does.
49:00
Ben Davis: Well, to your point.
49:00
Ben Davis: Something my multi-billionaire former CEO and mentor taught me probably the first couple of weeks on the job is listen, execute, add.
49:10
Ben Davis: He said Ben, listen to what we're telling you to do, then do it and then add.
49:17
Ben Davis: Then tell us how we can make improvements.
49:20
Ben Davis: When you have different types of people, you have the people that come in and they will listen and then they'll say but at my old company we did it this way and they skip over execution.
49:32
Ben Davis: Then you have people that won't listen and they'll say yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm the type that needs to get my hands in and just do it and execute without listening.
49:41
Ben Davis: Then they tell you it didn't work.
49:43
Ben Davis: That's like me trying to put the cat tree together that came in from Ikea or Amazon.
49:47
Ben Davis: I'm like I don't need instructions, let me do it.
49:49
Ben Davis: I'm going to blame the cat tree for it, but the truly the most dangerous person in business, at least for us, is a person that comes in, or the franchisee that comes in.
50:00
Ben Davis: They listen, they execute and then that's it.
50:04
Ben Davis: They listen and execute and they're like a robot.
50:07
Ben Davis: They're like yes, sir, boss, man, I'm here, just tell me what to do.
50:11
Ben Davis: We never get the ad out of them.
50:14
Ben Davis: Those are the ones that hold a business back from growth.
50:18
Ben Davis: We require that, but you got to go in that order and we expect the ad Tell us when it's not working or that you can do it better, because that's what causes us to grow.
50:29
Mark Zweig: You can't just do listen, execute, because you can't anticipate every single problem that you're ever going to have.
50:35
Mark Zweig: That tell them how to deal with it if it comes up.
50:37
Mark Zweig: I mean, it's just, you can't.
50:39
Mark Zweig: That's where it breaks down, I would guess.
50:43
Eric Howerton: Hey man, in a few minutes we got left.
50:45
Eric Howerton: We got a couple of questions, if you don't mind.
50:47
Eric Howerton: First is what are your plans?
50:50
Eric Howerton: You've built this business.
50:52
Eric Howerton: It's growing.
50:53
Eric Howerton: What's your plans?
50:55
Eric Howerton: Are you going to continue to try to scale this out as much as absolutely possible?
51:01
Eric Howerton: Do you have a what's your foresight on that?
51:06
Ben Davis: We just built a 2.0 model which we were waiting to start franchising again.
51:10
Ben Davis: Until we had this done, we just built the Gents Storecom, and the Gents Storecom is a way to serve our members outside of just grooming services where they can buy.
51:22
Ben Davis: We have thousands of products on there from $30,000 electric vehicles to $1,000 leather bags and high end apparel and everything in between.
51:31
Ben Davis: Where they shop on the site and they earn 20% of their purchases, convert into annual membership credit, they could earn down their membership dollars.
51:42
Ben Davis: Now we're kind of surrounding our members, both offline and online, in a way that allows us to deliver luxury to them, to deliver emerging brands and new things and community.
51:54
Ben Davis: The Gents Store is going to evolve over time but now that we've got that in place, we want to grow.
52:00
Ben Davis: We're going to grow.
52:01
Ben Davis: We're opening another location soon and really hit January 2024 hard.
52:06
Ben Davis: In announcing to the world the new Gents Place model, we did a really good thing as we blocked every competitor out of doing what we're doing with the technology partner, who's the largest in the industry.
52:18
Ben Davis: We think we've got a little bit of runway to get this done, to prove out a new financial model, and we feel like we've built a moat around the business that is worth making a big investment in.
52:31
Ben Davis: I'm personally making an investment into the company, in growth, and we're going to ask franchisees to do the same.
52:39
Eric Howerton: In your store, ben, to be a favor man there needs to be.
52:43
Eric Howerton: I can't find it, and I mean it's about to be a little bit of gross, but a good like nose trimmer.
52:50
Eric Howerton: They can't find one, you can't find one.
52:55
Mark Zweig: I've got an 80 volt cobalt that does a wonderful job.
53:01
Mark Zweig: It's a weedwacker and a nose trimmer.
53:03
Mark Zweig: Well, okay, no, I'm kidding, it's an X.
53:07
Ben Davis: Mark, if you could commercialize that, we'll sell your product on the store I think you're my age.
53:12
Mark Zweig: Okay, I mean you think it's bad now, but it is a problem.
53:15
Mark Zweig: It is a problem I mean, like I can't people can say well, have you tried the wall?
53:19
Eric Howerton: What is it Wall?
53:20
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's about, yeah, yeah, it's like.
53:21
Eric Howerton: I'm like yeah, I've tried that, I've tried this, I've tried the tool for your nose, yeah, I mean, and it's battery operated and it doesn't really work.
53:28
Mark Zweig: No, it just kind of pushes things down.
53:30
Mark Zweig: It's like a bad lawnmower with a dull blade.
53:33
Mark Zweig: Yeah.
53:35
Eric Howerton: I mean, well, bam, do you have a bias on that man?
53:37
Eric Howerton: I mean, is there?
53:38
Ben Davis: one.
53:38
Ben Davis: No, no, taken, there is one.
53:41
Ben Davis: And we're, we're, uh, we're about to pull in a significant amount of product from some very big retailers that you have all heard of into the store.
53:48
Ben Davis: So you're going to see, you'll literally see Gucci and Balenciaga and North Face and Nike, and gift cards show up on the site here pretty soon and, uh, I can get you a nose trimmer man, there's no problem at all.
54:01
Eric Howerton: Well, you appreciate that.
54:02
Mark Zweig: The problem is when you get to be my age, the hair on your head not only does it stop growing, it falls out right, but it makes up for it with your nose and your ears.
54:12
Mark Zweig: You know, you guys are young, you haven't been there yet, but I'm sure Ben deals with old farts like me over there.
54:21
Ben Davis: But I'm going to.
54:23
Ben Davis: I'm going to put you down for a wigs mark.
54:25
Ben Davis: I'll get wigs on the site as well.
54:27
Mark Zweig: So, but I do.
54:28
Mark Zweig: But, ben, yeah, we do have some, some products that that, um, we'd love to talk with you about sometime that I think you know might fit in with your audience and, um, and you know it does make sense.
54:41
Mark Zweig: I mean, if you capture this group of highly affluent people of taste, then one good stuff, yeah, then you should be able to to, um, you know, tap into that audience and meet some of their other needs.
54:57
Mark Zweig: It just makes sense to me.
55:00
Ben Davis: Yeah, it's a big, big, big project, but we're going to.
55:04
Ben Davis: We're putting a lot of energy into it.
55:07
Eric Howerton: It's a huge undertaking.
55:07
Eric Howerton: I mean completely understand that, that retail space on the digital side.
55:13
Eric Howerton: The other question I had so your podcast Untrapped Entrepreneur right, is that what?
55:19
Eric Howerton: What is it called?
55:19
Eric Howerton: Yes.
55:21
Eric Howerton: So how do folks get onto that?
55:25
Eric Howerton: How, where can they go find that?
55:26
Eric Howerton: Um, and you know what's your, what's kind of your strategy on that?
55:30
Eric Howerton: I mean not necessarily strategy, but like how many episodes have you created, how many are you going to do?
55:34
Eric Howerton: I mean, what's your vision on that?
55:36
Ben Davis: Yeah, so you can go to untrappedcom um to find all the episodes and more about the podcast Untrappedcom.
55:44
Eric Howerton: You got a good domain.
55:45
Ben Davis: I got, I got it, baby, I got it.
55:47
Ben Davis: You know this, uh, and it did.
55:50
Ben Davis: It didn't cost that much money, but it cost enough for it, cost enough for me to be forced to start a business out of it, Um.
55:58
Ben Davis: So I am sure there's a lot of crossover on on the site or on on the podcast, um, but what I'm really focused on is there's so many podcasts out there that's like how did you do it?
56:10
Ben Davis: What are the three keys to success?
56:12
Ben Davis: How do you buy the Ferrari and it?
56:15
Ben Davis: And those don't really interest me.
56:16
Ben Davis: What I really want to know, because us, as entrepreneurs, we all talk behind the scenes and you know we're whispering to each other like I don't know what the fuck I'm doing to you, and it's like, no, I don't either.
56:30
Eric Howerton: Hey, that's going to be your opening social media clip, right there, did you just hear?
56:33
Mark Zweig: the conversation, eric, can I we're having before we started?
56:36
Mark Zweig: Awesome, perfect.
56:41
Ben Davis: So I'm I'm trying to get that out of entrepreneurs that haven't really shared it before because they've been too busy doing the podcast circuit telling everyone how great they are and um, and so the first season of the show, uh, we shot, I think, seven episodes that's rolling right now, um, and we got some really good contents and some great guests.
57:01
Ben Davis: Season two and beyond is going to be themed out.
57:03
Ben Davis: So season two is about being married and, uh, an entrepreneur, and so the challenges, the traps that come along with that.
57:13
Mark Zweig: That's cool.
57:13
Mark Zweig: Eric and I had an episode like that with our wives, yeah.
57:18
Eric Howerton: We should check that out.
57:18
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you should check that out.
57:20
Eric Howerton: The problem in the show is fun.
57:21
Mark Zweig: It really was.
57:22
Eric Howerton: It was really educational, though, mark and I, like we actually were nervous about that before we're actually saying, hey, mark, keep me on your bed.
57:30
Eric Howerton: I mean is legitimately talk about the shit that we say behind the scenes.
57:34
Eric Howerton: We don't want to have problems.
57:35
Eric Howerton: Yeah, we go home.
57:37
Mark Zweig: It's like Mark, you need to watch, right before the weekend yeah, it's like don't ruin the weekend.
57:41
Mark Zweig: Yeah, don't leave the weekend.
57:43
Mark Zweig: But, no, that that is a big, big topic and I talk with my students about that too, with your, your maid or your partner or your spouse.
57:51
Mark Zweig: You know you got to pick the right person, obviously, and you've got to have a lot of mutual understanding about what this really means, the commitment that you're making.
58:01
Mark Zweig: And it's hard for people, you know.
58:04
Mark Zweig: I, my last wife, I'm on wife number three I always tell people, if you want to get business advice, I'm generally pretty good, but when it comes to like relationship advice, you need to question the source.
58:18
Mark Zweig: But actually I've learned a lot from that.
58:21
Mark Zweig: But my second wife she she did not come from a family of entrepreneurs at all and so it was really really difficult for her to understand a lot of the risks and commitments and and all that we have to do.
58:35
Mark Zweig: So anyway, that sounds like a great season.
58:38
Mark Zweig: I'm really interested to listen to those yeah.
58:43
Ben Davis: I'll start recording season two in November and should be out December, january, I think, january.
58:50
Eric Howerton: Sweet man, super cool, love it.
58:52
Eric Howerton: Well, we need to keep connecting on that because I think that I mean, there's there's just so much content to talk through, right, and I think that it's going to be hopeful for listeners.
59:01
Eric Howerton: I mean, this point, we're all doing our shows, you know, to make sure that entrepreneurs know that they're not alone is one of the biggest things, right, and I think to that point about the spouses is like it's hard as an entrepreneur, Like we're pretty bullheaded.
59:16
Eric Howerton: You know, we've talked about that a little bit, right Almost to the point of narcissism almost, but but I mean, like we want, we want them to understand us, like what Mark was just talking about.
59:27
Eric Howerton: But also, how do we understand our spouses?
59:30
Eric Howerton: Because, yeah, you know, I mean like they, they're going through some stuff, as we're going through stuff, you know, and if you have a spouse that actually cares about you, they're watching you, yeah, and they'll like put everything you have into what you're going after and I mean that's affecting them you know I think the other thing is, too, is like you're used to being the boss too.
59:50
Mark Zweig: Yeah, Then you come home and it's like I don't work for you.
59:54
Mark Zweig: You know, I don't have that problem Now.
59:59
Mark Zweig: I just abdicate.
1:00:01
Mark Zweig: Whatever it is.
1:00:01
Mark Zweig: It's like yes, of course, honey.
1:00:04
Ben Davis: You know, well.
1:00:07
Ben Davis: Well, I'll tell you one story that we're going to, so we're going to open up season two, episode one, with my wife and I talking and being interviewed, and one of the stories I'm going to share in that, and I'll share it here, is you know, one day my wife and I were working together in the business and she was reporting into me, which I know you're probably thinking like okay, you idiot, like we could have told you not to do that.
1:00:29
Ben Davis: But you know, I leave the house and she calls me and I'm on the phone, driving away, and she is just complaining about everything.
1:00:38
Ben Davis: Her job sucks.
1:00:40
Ben Davis: I'm telling her it's not a job, you own the business.
1:00:44
Ben Davis: And then I just I got tired of it, so I just turned around without hanging up on her, and so I'm just like uh-huh, okay, and I turn around, I go back in the front door and we're still on the phone and I walk over to her desk and I just put my palm on her laptop and close it and just said you're done, you're fired.
1:01:04
Ben Davis: And she's like well, but I've got to get this and this done and I've got to call this person, I got to email this person.
1:01:10
Ben Davis: I'm like you are done, done, done, done.
1:01:12
Ben Davis: You're gone and that didn't work out too well.
1:01:17
Ben Davis: No, that's the worst mistake, I'll save the rest of the story for episode one.
1:01:25
Eric Howerton: Man.
1:01:26
Eric Howerton: That's some of the worst mistakes I've ever heard an entrepreneur make my entire life, man.
1:01:31
Mark Zweig: You guys are still married though, right Ben?
1:01:34
Ben Davis: We've been together since we were 16 years old, still married, and she's, you know I think she's actually in hearing distance from us, so I'm probably going to get shit, for you know, talking about this, she's a great woman, yeah.
1:01:48
Mark Zweig: You can tell her.
1:01:48
Mark Zweig: I said she's a saint and undoubtedly to put up with that.
1:01:53
Eric Howerton: But I can't wait to hear the story from her perspective.
1:01:57
Eric Howerton: This is that I'm tuning in on that episode.
1:02:00
Mark Zweig: I am too, man.
1:02:01
Mark Zweig: I am seriously going to be listening to this one.
1:02:04
Mark Zweig: It sounds exciting.
1:02:06
Mark Zweig: Well, it's great, and you know, the thing with these podcasts is there are a zillion of them and you do have to be different.
1:02:12
Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know I think we struggle with that, but you know, I guess our whole thing is we like having successful people on, like yourself, who are honest and will tell the truth and who've done it, and so that's really what we look for.
1:02:29
Mark Zweig: I think, more than anything as far as guests go, is everybody's got their own success model.
1:02:35
Mark Zweig: You know, there's no one best way to do anything, but I think the more stories we have of people who have done it, they all have something to offer, and that hopefully helps our listeners figure out what they want to do and how they want to do it.
1:02:52
Ben Davis: Yeah.
1:02:53
Eric Howerton: And I can tell you I learned a lot every time we have a guest, and definitely have on this one too, ben, I really appreciate your time, man.
1:03:00
Mark Zweig: I love your model, ben, and what you're doing and really appreciate it, and we appreciate you being on the show today.
1:03:08
Ben Davis: Yeah, thank you guys for having me.
1:03:10
Mark Zweig: Absolutely so.
1:03:11
Mark Zweig: One last thing what is the web address for the Gents Place?
1:03:18
Ben Davis: Okay, so go to the gentsplacecom and I'm going to give you the gentsstorecom, our new website that just launched this week, and then untrapcom if you want to follow the podcast.
1:03:29
Eric Howerton: That's fantastic.
1:03:29
Eric Howerton: So those are both on the Gents Place.
1:03:32
Eric Howerton: It is wwwthegentsplace, right.
1:03:36
Ben Davis: You don't even have to put the Ws in.
1:03:38
Ben Davis: We paid extra for that man.
1:03:39
Ben Davis: You can just put the gentsplacecom.
1:03:41
Mark Zweig: Okay, the gentsplacecom All right.
1:03:44
Mark Zweig: Well, listen, we appreciate you here today being here with us today.
1:03:49
Mark Zweig: We could talk forever, but we're out of time now and we will end this show with.
1:03:56
Mark Zweig: This has been another episode of Big Talk About.
1:04:01
Eric Howerton: Small Business.
1:04:02
Eric Howerton: Thank you all Been blessed.
1:04:05
Eric Howerton: Thanks, Ben.
1:04:05
Eric Howerton: Thank you guys, Thanks Ben, See you man.
1:04:14
Speaker 4: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
1:04:17
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1:04:31
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