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Jerry Akers on Peace, Profit, and Posterity in Franchising
10 Plays11 days ago
Franchising changed Jerry Akers’ life, and now he’s on a mission to remove unnecessary pain from the industry.
In this episode of MustardHub Voices: Behind the Build, Curtis Forbes sits down with Jerry Akers — multi-unit franchise operator, author, IFA board member, and founder of Z-Dynamics — to unpack what actually separates thriving franchisees from those who struggle.
Jerry shares how he grew from one underperforming acquisition to 32 Great Clips salons across two states, what scaling really requires (hint: it’s not “semi-absentee”), and why culture is the ultimate growth lever. He explains how leadership differs from management, why mindset determines franchise success, and how to build bench strength that creates true operational peace.
They also explore the biggest misconceptions new franchisees bring into the system, the danger of rewriting the playbook you already paid for, and how technology and AI will reshape labor and leadership in the years ahead.
Jerry’s philosophy centers around what he calls the Franchisee Trifecta: Peace, Profit, and Posterity: building a business that runs well, earns well, and lasts.
If you’re a franchise operator, aspiring owner, or industry leader, this conversation is packed with practical insight and hard-earned wisdom.
About Jerry:
Jerry is a self-proclaimed “farm boy from Iowa” who spent 27 years in Corporate America as a turnaround expert. During that time, he, along with his wife and now two daughters, started putting together a Company that spans two States and includes 32 Great Clips salons. After two days of retirement, he became bored and joined The Joint Chiropractic as a Regional Developer. He now has four open Clinics and supports two franchisees, each with three of their own. In 2020, he co-authored the best-selling book, “Live it 2 Own It,” leading to requests for him to Keynote and share his success methods for Franchisees at conventions, along with classes and work sessions, training franchisees on best practices and business-improving tactics. Currently a State Council Member of NFIB and a member of the IFA board of Directors, Jerry spends the majority of his “retirement” time mentoring and guiding Franchisees of all brands.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jerry Akers and His Journey
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome back. This is another installment of Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. in this In each episode, I sit down with the people building, backing, and running better workplaces. I'm your host, Curtis Forbes. My guest today is Jerry Akers. Jerry's a self-proclaimed farm boy from Iowa who spent 27 years in corporate America as a turnaround expert.
00:00:29
Speaker
During that time, he, along with his wife and now two daughters, ah started putting together a company that spans two states and includes 32 Great Clips salons.
Transitioning into Franchising
00:00:39
Speaker
After only two days of retirement, he got bored joined the Joint Chiropractic as regional developer.
00:00:47
Speaker
He now has four open clinics and supports two franchisees each ah with three of their own. In 2020, he co-authored the bestselling book, Live It to Own It, ah leading to requests for him to keynote and share his success methods for franchisees at conventions, along with classes and work sessions, training franchisees on best practices and business improving tactics.
Mentorship and Family Impact
00:01:13
Speaker
Currently a state council member of n f i b and a member of the IFA Board of Directors, Jerry spends the majority of his retirement time mentoring and guiding franchisees of all brands. Welcome to Behind the Build. Thank you so much for joining me, Jerry.
00:01:32
Speaker
Oh, it's great to be here, Kurt. It's always a pleasure to visit with you. That's a mouthful. You know, I yeah i really appreciate our our friendship. I always love chatting with you. I feel like I learn something every time I do. And it's it has, this is sort of what's been making me so excited for this conversation because I feel like we're going to be able to dig into a lot. And I know a lot of other folks are probably going to be able to get a lot out of it too.
00:01:58
Speaker
um The audience doesn't really know this, but We send a questionnaire out to our guests and on it, you listed training and supporting franchisees as an area you're especially passionate about, which by the way, i love the, the, that sort of selfless, um, you know, why you've, you've clearly built a life around franchising.
Career as a Turnaround Expert
00:02:27
Speaker
Where did that passion come from? Well, Again, farm boy from Iowa, truthfully, franchising took me to a place in my life that I could never have even imagined. You know, it is. And I say this on stage quite often.
00:02:42
Speaker
Being in franchising has changed not only my life and my wife's life, but my children's lives, my grandchildren's lives, the lives of my parents and her parents, because we're able to give them a different existence than we would have had we just stayed with our corporate jobs.
00:02:56
Speaker
and And I've got roughly 250 employees, so I'm impacting about 1,000 family members' lives every day through franchising as well as clients.
00:03:07
Speaker
yeah So as I got into franchising more and more and started getting involved with the IFA and other organizations and meeting other franchisees, I discovered there is, frankly, too much pain in franchising that's unnecessary.
00:03:19
Speaker
And no matter what your vision or your dream or your goal is as a franchisee, it should be easier to reach that than for most franchisees it is.
00:03:30
Speaker
So I just felt like I had something to
Training and Operations Improvement
00:03:33
Speaker
add to that. And if I can smooth that process out for a franchisee, ah help them find whatever their nirvana is, whatever their end goal is, ah whether it's just one unit or it's 100 units and passing it down to their kids, whatever it is, if I can help ease that pain and simplify the process and expedite everything,
00:03:53
Speaker
then I just feel like it's ah it's my what I'm here for because franchising changed my life and everything, and I like to give back to that. So helping others find that same joy that I've found is really my biggest passion right now.
00:04:06
Speaker
So you've lived sort of on both sides excuse me of this world, corporate America and franchise ownership. how did your experience as a ah turnaround expert shape the way you approach franchising? Maybe we start back with how did we get to being a turnaround expert?
00:04:30
Speaker
And then but that's a good place to start. And then how did, yeah, how did that shape how you ah approach, you know, business ownership? Yeah. Curtis, um again, simple guy, right? So I just look at problems and come up with solutions. So,
00:04:46
Speaker
I started out in my field as a salesperson and I learned early on that, of course, more revenue at the right margin leads to more profit, which leads to massive growth for companies.
00:05:00
Speaker
So early in my career, that's what I focused on is just changing the path of the company I worked for by being, you know, selling twice as much as anybody else or whatever the case might be.
00:05:11
Speaker
And then I discovered that operations sometimes couldn't handle that throughput. Uh, perhaps we needed to change our marketing so that it made my path easier to help them out. So I started just digging into all of those facets of business that were impeding, uh, the success ratio of that business.
00:05:29
Speaker
And frankly, I didn't know I was doing what I was doing until I started getting phone calls from competitors trying to hire me. So the the first time this happened, i had turned around a company in Little Rock, Arkansas, and, uh,
00:05:44
Speaker
ah they sold to a competitor. I learned about it like everybody else in the newspaper the next morning. And I'm sitting at my desk going, I hate that guy. I will never work for him. What am I going to do to feed my family?
00:05:56
Speaker
And I'm sitting at my desk on maybe my last day at this job, and my phone rings, and it's a it's an international company based out of Dallas. And it's the it's the regional vice president. And he gets me on the phone, and says, hey, I read the paper. You don't really know me, but I have been following you for a long time. How did, what are you going to do? And I go, i have no idea because I'm not going to work for this guy. He says, I'm flying into town from Dallas tonight.
00:06:21
Speaker
We're going to go to dinner and I want to hire you and move you to Dallas. And then he explained to me that I, unbeknownst to me, I had turned that company around and he wanted me to do the same thing with his.
00:06:32
Speaker
So went to Dallas, worked a couple of years there, did some, did some great things for them. ah worked with another company. They recruited me actually to move back to Iowa, where I'm from, so my kids could grow up with their cousins.
00:06:46
Speaker
And it just led, you know, one thing to another. So every two or three years, I would be hired to go to another company and do the same thing. I'd made that transition about five times, if I remember right, and then landed with a company where I really loved the people I worked with and the company. So I stayed there and I won't share numbers, but I exploded their company over my time during that. And then i I bought my first franchise and moved on and started focusing on using those skills to
Challenges in Franchise Expansion
00:07:17
Speaker
improve ours. So the first great clips we bought was a, it was an acquisition and it was barely breaking even.
00:07:26
Speaker
I never forget when we looked at it, I immediately went into turnaround mode if I own this business, what would I do to improve its fortunes? And so we bought it.
00:07:38
Speaker
Uh, we understood from our analysis that, uh, we needed to upgrade, upgrade the facilities just to, uh, you know, paint it and just make it look more appealing to customers. We, uh, uh, we knew we had some staffing issues, so there was going to have to be some retraining and maybe some, uh, repurposing of some employees. Um,
00:07:58
Speaker
And then I needed to remarket it. So we did the first two, cleaned it up, painted it, um trained and hired some new employees to provide the customer service level I felt was missing. And then we remarketed. I'll never forget my first tagline there was new owners, new attitude.
00:08:14
Speaker
Because our customers were still shopping in that center, but had quit coming to us because we weren't providing them what they expected from us. So we literally doubled the revenues in that first unit we bought in six months.
00:08:28
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So it was off to the races. We started acquiring more units and building units and using the same tactics. And then I started getting asked questions by other franchisees. and Fast forward, that's 20 years ago, fast forward. And now I do that full time.
00:08:46
Speaker
hey the First of all, that's remarkable. You know, you guys... um You didn't just buy a franchise. I mean, you built you built something system ah substantial, right?
00:09:00
Speaker
um You now span multiple states, dozens of local yeah yeah dozens of locations. who What were some of those early lessons you learned scaling from one location to many, right? Because...
00:09:18
Speaker
You are able to go in you are able to fix some problems, you are able to double the revenue. You go to a second place and you can kind of do the same thing and still sort of be hands on. The more that you do, you simply don't have the bandwidth, right?
00:09:33
Speaker
So when it comes to scaling from one to many, you encounter more challenges than you had just in dealing with the one. Massively. And, you know, that was one of the big learnings early on is that it's a different mindset to own a small number of units, let's say one to five or something like that, depending on volumes, than it is to have a more corporate approach to doing that.
00:10:03
Speaker
And I don't mind sharing this. My wife is more the, I can only manage four or five units type person. she She likes to have her hands on everything. So, It was a big transition for her as probably I kind of drug us along on this path because I'm a growth guy.
00:10:19
Speaker
But what what what I learned early on is there are several lessons. One of them is all about staffing, especially on the management level. So we I built a ah management training program in about my third year in the business that had nothing to do with Great Clips and everything to do about running a very strong, forward-leading Great Clips location so that I could develop bench strength, but I could also bring up the level of the quality of the managers that I had. I needed them to manage as if they were me.
00:10:51
Speaker
And then I needed to have a confidence that they could do that. And I teach franchisees to this day that if you're going to scale, you've got to believe in the 80-20 rule, meaning if you've trained your managers correctly, they're going to do it 80% your way.
00:11:04
Speaker
And the other 20% may be better than the way you would have done it, certainly different. But if you're hiring smart people, You really want them to have a little bit of an impact on the outcomes of wherever they work. So that was one of the biggest lessons is, ah you know, not just hiring, but also training great staff. We built a culture around, well, as trite as it seems, around a family approach. We're all in this together.
00:11:29
Speaker
ah Rising tide lifts all boats, those kinds of things. So that managers who had come from difficult backgrounds believe that you know, they can take better care of their families, especially if they're single moms, if they just follow our process and do what we ask them to do and continue to grow their income and their benefits and so on. So, you know the biggest lesson turning turning them around was you need to have great staff, ah mainly the management level, and you need to have bench strength. So when somebody quits, you dont you know, you're not short a manager for a
Franchisee Engagement and Mindset
00:11:59
Speaker
while.
00:11:59
Speaker
And then giving them a real value system that keeps them engaged and growing with you and doing it the right way so that you don't have to worry about it. So me as a, we'll call it absentee owner, a semi absentee owner, I can have a monthly meeting with my management team and i can watch the numbers, the success metrics, as well as the financial numbers. And if we're hitting on all those things, that business is going to run pretty smoothly and accomplish what we want it to accomplish. So Those are really my big things that I focused on early on that brought us to where we're at.
00:12:34
Speaker
I want to talk more about the staffing and and and culture just a little bit. But, you know, when when people think franchising is like plug and play, we've talked about this before, I know, but what do you think people, what do you think they misunderstand the most about when it comes to that?
00:13:00
Speaker
Well, you know, I talked to prospective franchisees and franchisees and struggling for franchisees about this all the time that there, even though it's sold that way, they're really, you know, this whole whole image of semi absentee franchise ownership is, is really kind of a mirage that's sold, uh, to get people into franchising. And I don't say that in a negative way, although it could be taken that way. Um,
00:13:26
Speaker
Semi-absentee ownership really comes with scaling ah because, and I'll use, I got a buddy that owns a sandwich shop. If he learned early on for his first three sandwich shops, he was going to spend time making sandwiches because staffing was an issue, finances were an issue, whatever the case might be.
00:13:45
Speaker
When he got to his fourth and fifth one, he had enough ah revenue and profit that he could afford to build the infrastructure so he didn't have to make sandwiches anymore. So people who think they're going to be semi-absorbed with their first or second unit, it's unlikely to happen. I won't say it won't happen.
00:14:01
Speaker
It has, but it's unlikely. So they have a a misperception of what that looks like. And if it doesn't happen early enough for them, they get turned off to franchising. And they they they look for a lot of, frankly, they look for people to blame a lot of times the franchisor.
00:14:17
Speaker
um and And they'll probably leave franchising very, very disappointed. They'll sell out or close or whatever. maybe lose some money along the way. And that's part of that pain I was talking about early in this conversation is that's not necessary if we right-size their expectations or if somebody's there to help them when those expectations aren't met so they can get past that curve.
00:14:41
Speaker
Interesting. So a lot of that pain really centers around, I think, either unmanaged or um um sort of, i guess,
00:14:54
Speaker
misaligned expectations, right? About when they're getting into franchising. I assume, I guess, a lot of people want to jump right in at that mid-tier where, you know, you're coming in as a CEO where you, you know, you have 15 or 20 units, right? and you're managing it that way when the reality is, is you're going to be much more heavily involved than than probably you want to for a little while, kind of like paying your dues.
00:15:18
Speaker
That's exactly right. And we know, or I'll just say I know, but many of the people in franchising that I work with have learned that franchisee engagement at the unit level, especially early in your path, is critical to finding success. You can't just, in most cases, hire a general manager and disappear and just collect money.
00:15:39
Speaker
You've got to be engaged. To this day, if I get a haircut in one of my salons, I sweep my own hair. And probably everybody else's hair that's on the floor, because that's part of, that's the image that I've got with my staff is that I am in it with them. If the, and I, I'll share this, but if the toilet needs plunged, I'm going to go plunge the toilet. If laundry needs to own it, because if they don't know that you own it, that might be really weird.
00:16:04
Speaker
Oh, that's probably true. In fact, but it does lead to great conversations with clients because i get my haircut and then sweep my own hair and the clients look at like, is this a new thing or do I have to sweep my own hair? No, that's the owner. Wait a minute.
00:16:18
Speaker
How many does he own? He owns 32. And he's still sweeping hair? Yeah, that's just Jerry. That's the way he runs the business. We really appreciate him for his involvement in this. I love that.
00:16:29
Speaker
I love that. You know, you've you've supported other franchisees beyond your own locations. What do you see that separates, you know, the ones that thrive from the ones that struggle. it And, you know, comparing those multi-unit owners to the single, you know, or very few unit owners, I guess, is like apples to oranges, right? Because those who really, really thrive, who have, you know, 30 some odd units versus those who thrive, who have two units, right? Do things, they're they're involved differently, right? So if you had to just kind of create a ah real general rubric, right? What separates those who thrive from those who struggle?
00:17:21
Speaker
Well, you know, part of it goes back to a glass half full, glass half empty mindset, I believe, because people with, you know, a glass half empty mindset many times are never satisfied. They're always seemingly irritated at where they find themselves in life. And that leads to conflict with, you know, at all levels, but certainly with their franchisors. I have found being engaged with my franchisors, ah being a positive a champion of what they're trying to do, and yet holding them accountable when they need to change something, comes from a different standpoint and is accepted differently. So me, I approach everything as if, you know, ah my glass is, you know, half full and I'm really happy about that. I got some water. So when I'm doing okay and then a problem comes up, That's just part of small business. That that solving that problem is just part of small business.
00:18:15
Speaker
There are things in life we control and things we don't control. The things we don't control, there's really not a lot of sense in wasting a lot of time and energy and passion on those things.
00:18:25
Speaker
The things we have some control over, let's figure out what to do with this. Let's analyze it. Let's get some other people involved. Let's come up with a solution. And I don't care if you own one or 30. I think that process is still somewhat the same at that level. because um You know, franchising is not just a means to an end, in my opinion. It's more of a lifestyle.
00:18:46
Speaker
And being a business owner at any level is different than working in corporate America. At this today, my phone could ring with a problem at one of our locations. It doesn't because I've built such great infrastructure. They they just don't call me. They've solved the problems themselves.
00:19:04
Speaker
But I don't have days off. On vacations, I might have to do some work. And I'm okay with that. And many franchisees struggle with that. When they get in, they assume once they get it set up and running, they can just, you know stay home or go to their lake house or go to Florida or whatever and just collect
Consulting Business: Z-Dynamics
00:19:22
Speaker
paychecks.
00:19:22
Speaker
And so, again, miss misaligned expectations and, ah you know, their goals may not be quite where they need to be in some of those things really lead to a lot of angst and anxiety and sometimes irritation in franchising. And I think there's a lot all of us can do to help level that playing field.
00:19:42
Speaker
You do all of this under the Z-Dynamics umbrella. so So tell me, you know, tell us what what is Z-Dynamics? What kind of clients do you work with?
00:19:54
Speaker
Sure. Z-Dynamics sprung from the writing the book. When I co-authored that book, my phone started ringing. it started with franchisees from different brands saying, I read your book. I love what you're doing. Can I can i get some help from you? So You know, me being me, the first few, I said, yeah, let's just have a conversation. I'll give you some ideas. Go do your thing. And then it then it literally turned into a business. It got to the point where, ah you know, I was trying to deal with ah a fair number of people. ah Their needs were more than I could handle on just one phone call. It was more of a, you know, maybe a three to six month process of mentoring and coaching and those kinds of things.
00:20:33
Speaker
So at that point in time, I just came up with a structure where they could they could hire me for a pretty small fee to, to coach and mentor them on a regular basis. And and again, I won't get into all the details of it, but that's in essence what it looks like.
00:20:47
Speaker
Uh, and then I, I got a couple of calls to keynote for some franchisors because, uh, a message from a fellow franchisee is accepted differently than a message from somebody from corporate. So I have the chance to share the things that made us successful, um, that are best practices and how we can incorporate them into their business. And, uh, and sometimes ah help manage some expectations, I guess, of franchisees and their franchisors. So I got started with that. Then I had a few franchisors want me to start consulting with them to um realign how they were working with their franchisees, maybe how they approached them or how they provided certain support things to them or whatever. So it it really started from just me trying to help a couple people to now a full-time retirement job.
00:21:37
Speaker
A retirement job. i i love that. you ah um You have certainly come up with something that um you know probably few people would have put together. um That's pretty funny. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to add, it has morphed to the point now where I'm building some virtual classes and putting them on our website because of the demand.
00:22:04
Speaker
mainly by franchisees who want to learn more about our guerrilla marketing tactics or our manager training program or something like that. So this is just evolving almost every day in a way that I could never have anticipated because again, when it started, it was just to help a few people. And now my goal is to help thousands of franchisees, not just two or three, but thousands of franchisees through, you know, some sort of involvement where they listened to me at a,
00:22:31
Speaker
at a keynote and maybe get a couple of questions answered, or we actually do some mentoring together. I don't care. It's whatever they want. But the fact is, I want to take as much pain from as many franchisees as possible.
00:22:43
Speaker
You know, as you work with them, providing the training, the support, I'm kind of curious, like just generally speaking, right, broad strokes, what does good training actually look like in practice, like beyond the manuals and the onboarding?
00:23:01
Speaker
You know a lot of times I got to work on their mindset. I'll be very honest. And again, that sounds so trite. I i hate going to kind of to conventions where we have leadership training on stage all the time because everybody hears about leadership.
00:23:13
Speaker
The fact is, again, those expectations that maybe they had when they became a franchisee that weren't met, we've we've got to get past those and understand I am a franchisee now. And i unless I want to you know cancel my franchise agreement and close my location, My job now is to layer on whatever I can onto what my franchisor gives me as support and figure out how to get past where I'm at right now, depending on what the problems are.
00:23:38
Speaker
So I work with them to help, ah you know, realign their expectations, maybe even the the tasks that they're doing ah that are maybe they're not the most ah ah the best use of their time to get their enterprise where it needs to be. So we do some of those kinds of things. And I actually just analyze their business as if it were my own. Once we get, you know, past those first couple meetings where we're talking about, you know, what their problem, what their perceived problems are, because I want to hear it from their standpoint.
00:24:10
Speaker
If they hate their franchise or I want to know that right up front. And I want to talk about the whys. What are they doing or not doing? So that that gives me some insight when I'm suggesting things to them moving forward. So,
00:24:23
Speaker
We start there and then then I analyze the business and I start looking at ah shortfalls or missed opportunities or those kinds of things. And then I can talk to them about you know what their business would look like if we closed this
Leadership and Culture in Franchising
00:24:37
Speaker
gap. I spend a lot of time on the success metrics of their particular brand, whether it's a number of new clients, ah how many of them become members, what percentage leave every month and cancel their membership. you know, how many ounces are in a ah sandwich, you know, whatever the success metrics are. We dig into those to see how they perform at those levels. I may talk to some of their employees to see, you know, what their perception of the issues are. And then I, and it's almost like a kumbaya moment. You know, you you try and put all of those things in a in in a conversation in a way that they will say, i see the wisdom in starting to change some of these things.
00:25:16
Speaker
I'm happy to share, you know, I generally, guarantee two to four times ah ROI to the franchisee for whatever our agreed upon fees are. Because I know in every business I can find low-hanging fruit through marketing, through operations, hiring and training, scheduling.
00:25:37
Speaker
ah Generally, those are probably the big four that we find some real missed opportunities on. And and that turns into tens of thousands of dollars a month sometimes. Wow. Wow.
00:25:48
Speaker
Jerry, so in I do want to get back to the staffing and the culture part that you that you brought up a little bit early on How do you help franchisees develop strong leaders right at the location level? right not just Not just good managers, but but leaders. right Lack of leadership in franchises is a huge people problem.
00:26:11
Speaker
Um, you know, and you talked about some of the first things that you did is walk in and and train these folks to be able to be you. How do you develop? Well, as best as they can, nobody's going to be you. Nobody wants to be me. How do you, uh, um, how do you develop that strong leadership at the location level?
00:26:36
Speaker
Well, um, I'm a big whiff them guy. What's in it for me. And, So many of our franchise employees come from difficult backgrounds. You know, fill in the blank. There's so many things they can be. I can tell you in my businesses, quite often my employees come from ah maybe multi-generational poverty. Many of them are single moms. ah Many them have never had a strong a leader in their life that maybe they've been told that they were never going to amount to anything or whatever. So we, you know, with all the love in the world, I'll say that we play upon those issues and we, we try and show them a different path through that. So ah we we work and and I would do this with a franchisee that I was working with too. We've got to figure out who their employees are and what they need. We we don't want it to be just a job for that employee
00:27:29
Speaker
And sometimes we've got to change the way we approach employees in order to get past that. So if we feel that they're interchangeable parts and we'll just keep hiring and firing and things like that, then we're never going to change our leadership structure because they know that's the way we're doing When they see us, I always, in my locations, because we do a lot of acquisitions, so you always end up with questionable staff when you buy it.
00:27:55
Speaker
In our locations, we're looking for that one person that will buy what we're selling, that one employee that's really looking to change their lives. And and I talked to them or somebody does now and says, what do we need to do? How can we help you get to where you're trying to get in life?
00:28:12
Speaker
And when they share it with us, we talk about how the job can get them to where they're trying to get to so that it becomes not just a job. It becomes, how do I take better care of my children? How do I end up owning the first home in four generations in my family?
00:28:28
Speaker
How do I get the first new car in two generations in my family? How do I do those kinds of things? And then we structure everything around that. We come up with a way. It may be changing some compensation plans, some but ah benefit programs, and is certainly training, adding training to the to the factors.
00:28:46
Speaker
um But we do some combination of those things to get employees to understand that they are a part of something bigger. Even if they're still making sandwiches or cutting hair or whatever they're doing, they're a part of something bigger and they're going to get X out of it, whatever X might happen to be in this situation.
00:29:04
Speaker
And we've had very high success rates with finding that one person that becomes our champion in each location starts doing it our way. Other employees see the changes in their outlook and their life.
00:29:17
Speaker
um even Even they're wearing new clothes to work now. They're dressing better. They're They've got a smile on whatever it might happen to be. And then you see other employees going, well, wait a minute. My life kind of sucks. I want to have her life or his life.
00:29:30
Speaker
What do I have to do to get there? And then, you know, you're on to something because it becomes a little bit about ah like cellular ah clusters growing. You know, then you get one on board and then two on board and then four on board and it just keeps taking over.
00:29:44
Speaker
I love that. I mean, as a motivational factor, right, to inspire somebody um to grow, right, within within these sort of structured guidelines that you've been able to provide to them right they can uh they can grow and then you know as as most leaders should they start to inspire those around them right to be to be better and sort of elevates everybody so you know what is a what is a good manager versus a leader look like um yeah mean tell me a little bit about that a good manager does the basics i mean they'll
00:30:21
Speaker
They'll make sure the scheduling's in place. People are there to open it up. It's cleaned up at the end of the day. For the most part, customers are taken care of A leader will actually make that a top performing unit. they'll They'll rally their team around them. You'll see a difference in the team because the manager is a leader, not just a manager.
00:30:39
Speaker
You'll see the team take on a much higher ah a much higher need to provide better service and to react better and to be on their game all the time. You'll you'll literally see this transition in them when you finally got to the point where you've got that great leader slash manager. um They become easier to work with.
00:31:01
Speaker
um you You know, people that we've helped in the past, you know, the franchisee is not getting calls from the manager anymore. If we do this correctly, the manager's got the latitude to make way more decisions than they did before, and they feel comfortable making those.
00:31:17
Speaker
So I'll tell you the title of the next book I'm writing right now. It's called Peace, Profit, and Posterity, the Franchisee Trifecta. Because when you've got management doing what they're supposed to be doing,
00:31:32
Speaker
That covers all of your operational issues. So your phone isn't ringing, your units are running the way they're supposed to be, you you have less stress, your your life becomes much easier to manage as a franchisee.
00:31:45
Speaker
Profit's a component of that, profit's also different because that's how you open other locations or retire someday or whatever it might happen to be, so that's a piece. And then the posterity is what are you gonna do with that business?
00:31:56
Speaker
um Someday you're going to die or you're gonna wanna retire, what's gonna happen with it? so How do we build a business that is valuable and and in demand to either pass down to your kids or sell and take some you know a windfall and live a different life in the future? So really, that's what we're looking for is to build a management team and then a team under those that gets us to the point where as a franchisee, we can we could hit that trifecta.
00:32:23
Speaker
I love that. I love that. Peace, profit, and posterity. All this boils down to culture. I mean, when you're when you're operating at dozens, you know, across dozens of locations, culture becomes much harder to control.
00:32:40
Speaker
So how do you create that consistency without killing, you know, the ah the autonomy? And then I have a follow-up question to that about the franchisor, but let's just start with Zs.
00:32:53
Speaker
Sure. So there's a variety of things. First off, it's got to start with your onboarding so that ah new employees know the expectations because that's on me as a franchisee or my training manager or hiring manager, whoever. we've got to set the We've got to level the playing field before a manager has to be responsible because it's not right to force a new employee that's not prepared for that expectation on a manager. It's just harder on the manager. So Whether you've got an onboarding program that ah your HR department does or whatever, we've got to get that level set before we start.
00:33:25
Speaker
We make sure the manager knows. In fact, our managers are involved in the hiring process, so they already know who they're going to get. I think that's in some way, shape, shape or form a component of it.
00:33:36
Speaker
Our employee manual is a part of the onboarding so that they understand. If there's questions about our expectations, I want them to happen during onboarding, not when they get on the job.
00:33:47
Speaker
Again, making the manager's job easier so they can really focus on being a leader instead of ah you know a base level trainer. So we want to take them through that process. We also ah believe that like people who have goals should be compared to their peers.
00:34:04
Speaker
So years ago, we started a process over at that time, probably eight units that has continued to grow with us, where our success metrics are on a color coded system. And our 250 employees get ranked every month on that, and it's shared with all 250 employees. Wow, okay.
00:34:23
Speaker
We want them to know that they're if they're in the bottom part of it, so if they're in red, Red is a warning sign on a lot of levels. There's some hidden messages in that. but But in reality, when we talk to those people, we say, yes, you're in red, but we want you to get up higher because there's more benefits, there's more pay, there's more opportunities for you as you grow. So let's work together to get there.
00:34:46
Speaker
If they're in green, they won't stay there. They'll fall down. I will tell you, overachievers who are in green hate it when they drop, down to the next level.
00:34:57
Speaker
they They want to be in green. So they'll either work hard to get there or they'll start asking questions of their manager. How did I drop? What did I do wrong? What do I have to do different? It becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that the the culture, once it's set up, is reinforced by these things and it just continues to flywheel and bring people to the top.
00:35:17
Speaker
Now, there is fallout. Excuse me. There will be people who because of their mindset, their back past background, the way they were brought up, whatever, who are at the bottom of the totem pole, and they'll take it personal.
00:35:32
Speaker
And that's okay. We explain it's not personal, but if they can't get over it, they will, ah truthfully, they'll find another place to work where they're allowed to be mediocre.
00:35:43
Speaker
And we don't allow people to stay in mediocrity for very long. And we use a coaching approach to get them out of that. We share that with all of my clients and help them decide what makes sense to them so that they continue to do that. And in the world today, you can do so much coaching virtually that you don't even have to bring everybody together. We've got ongoing classes that we use. Most of them are voluntary, ah but it's to help improve their lives.
00:36:10
Speaker
In the management training program, we use a lot of very simple leadership books. Who Moved My Cheese might be an example or, you know, One Minute Manager, some of those kinds of things.
00:36:22
Speaker
yeah We find a lot of our employees who want to be managers maybe didn't have the best educational background and reading isn't one of their strong suits. So we don't want to irritate them or offend them or leave them out, but we want to introduce them to new concepts and new skills that they can develop. So that's all a part of this building culture and building management leaders part of what we do.
00:36:44
Speaker
That's, that's, I love all of this. I love the detail that you kind of, that you really, really go through. and it's clear how much you really want to invest in these folks because it's good for everyone, right? What's good for the goose, right?
00:36:59
Speaker
um You know, I'm kind of curious, like, coming back to like the franchise, but from your perspective, like what, what sort of people related issues tend to show up first when a franchise starts growing really fast, right? You've had this experience where you've either come in as a change agent, right? Or you've built some new ones that have have grown rapidly.
00:37:22
Speaker
What do you start to see showing up really quickly? You know, is it, uh, you know, over hiring and you get a lot of folks who don't fit that culture. um you know, what, what, what do you see on your side?
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's kind of a two sides of the same coin. Excuse me. We see really quickly people, free employees are not going to, ah they're not going to fit, whether it's because they don't buy into it, they're not willing to make changes, whatever the case might be. In many cases, they will opt out. We won't have to help them opt out. They'll just do it.
00:37:55
Speaker
um On the other side of the coin is once the word gets out in the community, their peers who, are doing the same kind of job for somebody else will many times seek you out because they're looking for more opportunities, more leadership, whatever the case might be. So the word gets out.
00:38:14
Speaker
And so yes, early on, ah whether you're doing an acquisition and changing some things there or whether you're an existing franchisee and working with me and we start changing the culture, you're going to have people that quit. That's the bottom line. You're going to lose employees.
00:38:31
Speaker
In most cases, you should celebrate that because those employees probably aren't now and never will be great performers. And there are better performers out there, even in spite of shortages and hiring and all that kind of stuff. If you are the employer of choice, I use that phrase all the time when I'm training.
00:38:49
Speaker
If you're the employer of choice, people will seek you out. There's people that are going to be working in fast food most of their life. That's just where they land. And they're going to probably stay in that. but they're gonna change employers from time to time.
00:39:03
Speaker
Let's not allow them to do that. Let's figure out what we've gotta do to keep them here. Even if we end up paying them them a little bit for better performance, that's a win because it costs way more to hire and train than to pay just a little bit more to get this person to do the job a little bit better, take more money home and decide they wanna work with you forever because they're appreciated there.
Future of Franchising and Technology
00:39:25
Speaker
hey Looking ahead, I'm kind of curious how you think, fra I mean, you've you've you've been in franchising for so long and you've seen a lot of the different changes, changes that have happened through through policy, right, through administration, through different best practices and leadership development.
00:39:47
Speaker
I want to hear, like how do you see it changing when it comes to labor, ah you know leadership, employee expectations, new generation right that we're all learning a lot about?
00:40:01
Speaker
Well, you know um AI is going to change everything. That's just the bottom line, whether we like it or not. It's going to change everything. I believe both AI and just overall technology is going to lessen the need for baseline labor, which is, you know, in many ways a good thing. it It lowers your overhead costs or your labor costs, hopefully allows you to keep a little bit more margin and those kinds of things. But your leaders are not just going to be trying to lead people, they're gonna have to be tech savvy. So our training programs are gonna have to continue to evolve and grow.
00:40:37
Speaker
ah you know, when we're, when we're not dealing with people. So I always think about the kiosk that we order from at some of the restaurants anymore. I'm old. So when they put those out there, I literally dug my heels in and I would stand at the front desk. And so somebody came from the back to take my order. Cause I wanted to work with a human being.
00:40:58
Speaker
Well, I discovered quickly. I don't like waiting. And if I ordered, if I ordered from the kiosk, it was frankly more likely my order would be correct. So, I changed my attitude about that. And I think there's going to be some a to attitudinal changes that many of our clients, no matter what you sell, what product or service you represent, i think there's going to have to be some of those changes that take place. And we're going to have to be, as franchisees, we're going to have to be on the leading edge of the educational component of that, both with employees and with clients, to help them understand why this is a good thing for them and why they should adapt. and I mean, even as much as an app that many
00:41:39
Speaker
ah you know, franchisors are coming out with, sometimes there's an adaptive part of that where people push back. I mean, our job is to help get them on it because there's benefits for them as well as us.
00:41:51
Speaker
So there's going to be some staffing and leadership changes that come because primarily because of technology. And I think if you look at the numbers, America is becoming Japan. We're kind of a, we're not, we're not having as many kids as we used to, and we're still growing economically.
00:42:08
Speaker
So somebody or something is going to have to do those jobs.
Advice for New Franchisees
00:42:12
Speaker
I think we're still going be dealing with a lot of people, but we'll have people doing more tech type things than we will, you know, making burgers, let's say, you know, burger, you know, the burger flipping machines are a thing of of not just the future, they're going on now. And I think those whole processes are going to continue.
00:42:30
Speaker
please I really appreciate all the, the, the foresight. Um, and I think that that's kind of savvy to, to be able to see all that stuff coming down the pike. Um, I want to kind of wrap two things into one, you know, as we, as we kind of close out here, you've seen a lot of operators make the same mistakes that you probably made, you know, and I'm kind of curious, um,
00:42:56
Speaker
Just to hear you know a lesson that you wish every new franchisee you know would would really internalize, right? Or if you had a franchisee come to you and talk to you about wanting to build something really sustainable, not just profitable, right? You talk about the posterity.
00:43:13
Speaker
What's that single most important piece of advice that you give them, right? So before they walk right out the door, if you only had a minute, what do you want them to know? Well, it's the simple one. Follow the system that you bought.
00:43:24
Speaker
Most franchisees try to recreate the wheel and they've got a successful system they already paid money for. Why are you doing that? Every change you make that is counterintuitive to the system you bought is gonna actually slow you down and hinder your success.
00:43:39
Speaker
We were uber successful because we layered things on top. So my manager training, my guerrilla marketing, those kinds of things, those are all done with brand ah materials and colors and logos and all that. So we protect the brand. But I don't wait for the franchisor to give me everything I need. I have, I'm impatient. I want to get things moving right now. So I tell all franchisees, when you buy in, follow the system that you bought and understand what the franchisor owes you and what they don't owe you. And then focus on the things you as a small business owner can do to change your trajectory.
00:44:17
Speaker
Dig your heels in. roll your sleeves up, get to work and do those extra things and it'll pay off for you. I mean, that's what we did. And now I don't do any of that anymore because we've got people that do it. So those are the really low level things that I coach people on every day.
00:44:33
Speaker
I think that's really, really good advice. I think that, and I've heard it from talking to so many, right? um You hear franchisors complain a lot about about the latitude that a lot of franchisees try to take. And and frankly, you know it it winds up hurting them more than they think it's going to help them. And then you hear a lot of franchisees talk about the things that they want to do. And I scratch my head wondering,
00:44:59
Speaker
why'd you why'd you even buy the the business? Curtis, do validator calls. So ah prospective franchisees call me to ask about the ins and outs of running the business.
00:45:12
Speaker
I had one call me and started bragging about having an MBA in marketing. And as soon as he bought his unit, he was going to you know, rethink all the marketing that he was going to do and all those kinds of things. I said, dude, if you, if you buy this thing, do yourself a favor and put that sheepskin in the deepest, darkest drawer of your desk and never, ever look at it again and just do what they tell you to do because they don't talk about ah baseline marketing for a franchise at your MBA classes.
00:45:41
Speaker
yeah So it will not work. um I don't know if he ever became a franchisee, but I hope he took my advice regardless of what he did. i hope he did too. Jerry, I want to thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time time to join me and and chat with me a little bit today.
00:46:00
Speaker
No worries, man. It's always fun visiting with you. love talking about franchising, so hopefully a couple of And, you know, thank you so much to all you watching, listening to Mustard Hub Voices behind the build. Appreciate you tuning in. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
00:46:17
Speaker
Visit mustardhub.com to learn more about Mustard Hub and discover how we help companies become destinations for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge. Until next time.