The Growth Coach was founded in 2003 by Dan Murphy and it is the only pure business and sales coaching franchise aimed at driving success while balancing the lives of small business owners, managers, sales people, self-employed professionals and executives across a wide spectrum of businesses and industries. The Growth Coach specializes in group workshops and individual coaching with the goal of helping clients gain greater focus and leverage to work less, earn more and enjoy more fulfilling lives. The Growth Coach is active in more than 100 markets in the United States and abroad and is always looking to expand domestically and internationally. Individual business coach franchises exist, Dan notes, but they still struggle with that “first mistake” — overcoming the limitations of too few hours and too many clients for one-on-one coaching. These competing concepts still fail to adequately address the need for group coaching. More than 15 years and 64 territories later, The Growth Coach is the largest franchise provider of group coaching services, and our business coaches have helped thousands of small business owners, managers and sales teams to reach new successes while providing entrepreneurs with a spirit to serve an affordable business opportunity. Today's guest on Eye on Franchising we are joined by Brad Schneider, President of the Central Ohio-North for the last seven years. Brad was like many of us, working a 9-5 job and missing the freedom to live the life he truly wanted to. Now he has the two ultimate freedoms, time and money. Tune in to learn more about Brad and the Growth Coach listen in to this week's episode! Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA --- Lance Graulich Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising Eye On Franchising
The Growth Coach was founded in 2003 by Dan Murphy and it is the only pure business and sales coaching franchise aimed at driving success while balancing the lives of small business owners, managers, sales people, self-employed professionals and executives across a wide spectrum of businesses and industries. The Growth Coach specializes in group workshops and individual coaching with the goal of helping clients gain greater focus and leverage to work less, earn more and enjoy more fulfilling lives. The Growth Coach is active in more than 100 markets in the United States and abroad and is always looking to expand domestically and internationally.
Individual business coach franchises exist, Dan notes, but they still struggle with that “first mistake” — overcoming the limitations of too few hours and too many clients for one-on-one coaching. These competing concepts still fail to adequately address the need for group coaching.
More than 15 years and 64 territories later, The Growth Coach is the largest franchise provider of group coaching services, and our business coaches have helped thousands of small business owners, managers and sales teams to reach new successes while providing entrepreneurs with a spirit to serve an affordable business opportunity.
Today's guest on Eye on Franchising we are joined by Brad Schneider, President of the Central Ohio-North for the last seven years. Brad was like many of us, working a 9-5 job and missing the freedom to live the life he truly wanted to. Now he has the two ultimate freedoms, time and money.
Tune in to learn more about Brad and the Growth Coach listen in to this week's episode!
Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA
---
Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
franchise, business, coach, franchisee, coaching, growth, network, opportunity, support, people, day, sales, folks, business owners, money, existing franchisees, training, brand, work, realize
SPEAKERS
Lance Graulich, Brad
Lance Graulich00:05
Hello everyone and welcome back to another fabulous episode of Eye on Franchising. I'm Lance Graulich. Your host of course, you already knew that right? So welcome back. I love to talk to anybody when it comes to franchising, but I especially love to talk with successful franchisees and that's who I have today. I have a gentleman that's been a franchisee for seven years. And I know we've talked about this before but franchising isn't all about burgers and fries this isn't a McDonald's franchisee you know, McDonald's, you have to be a millionaire to owner McDonald's and I don't know, I don't know if it's the best franchise anymore. To be honest, the you can get a better bang for your buck at some other franchises, although I love me some Mickey D's. So without further ado, seven years, he's a business coach, as sales coach, I'm gonna let you tell him. He's going to tell you what he does. So welcome to the show. Mr. Brad Schneider. He's a franchisee for the growth coach. Welcome, Brad. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. And thank you for being here. All right. So McDonald's, we know is a great franchise, it's been around forever, you do have to be a millionaire to own it. But you know, today there are so many franchises like the growth coach, that have been around long enough that some people haven't even necessarily heard of, but share with everybody. Brad, what is the growth coach?
Brad 01:36
Growth Coach is a business and sales coaching franchise, like he said, we work with small and medium sized businesses. And I even hesitate to say businesses because I work with nonprofit organizations as well. And we typically help them grow in one of three ways. Either we work with the owners and the executives to figure out how to get more out of their day and balance their life and be able to be more productive. We work with their management teams to help them become more effective in what they're doing. And then we also work on the sales side and help, especially those entrepreneurs that didn't realize that they were becoming salespeople when they started a business, help them figure out a sales process and a sales system that works for them. So growth in three ways. And that's how we typically deliver it.
Lance Graulich02:19
Love it. Well, how did you get involved? Give us your history, because you know, a lot of our listeners love to understand, you know, how do people get into franchising? Is franchising right for me? So how did you know give us your history? What do you want to be coming out of high school, college, whatever.
Brad 02:38
Well, coming out of high school, I was going to Bowling Green State University because I was going to become the next play by play voice of the Cleveland Indians. And got there started working in the campus radio station, you realize quickly how much you have to really love radio, because you are going to be doing promotions and all kinds of crazy stuff for free. And that was just the opportunity to go to a small town somewhere. And hopefully, maybe someday get 1000 breaks to kind of get to where you wanted to go. And so after doing that for a couple of years, still working on an English degree because the mentors I talked to you said being able to write and communicate would be kind of important. In radio, I kind of was scrambled what to do got a minor in tech writing, and started working as a technical writer. And as I was doing that I was working for a contract firm in the Cleveland area at Rockwell Automation. And I learned I had a little bit of a gift to get information out of electrical engineers, and figured out how I can communicate with them and get information and that company that I was working for there, I follow the leader friend of mine to a IT consulting company, which got me involved in organizational change, and all the people side of technology. And that led me into about 15 years from there in two different about billion dollar sized organizations, both family owned that had grown up, one publicly traded one still private, doing everything HR leadership development, sales, training, coordinating distributor, distributor networks, things of that nature. And the last place that I was at for seven years I was there, quote unquote, to bring change to their HR group. And when I quickly realized they didn't want to change anymore. And it was time for me to find something to do. And so I decided I wanted to go out on my own. A couple mentors from a couple of previous stops on the way I talked to them about going on their own as they had gone on their own and gone back into corporate life. And one of the biggest things that they told me to do is look for someplace where I had resources available to me because the hardest thing for them about being on their own without a franchise was that they had to work during the day. They had to market at night. And then they had to build what they sold so that they could go and deliver it the next day and repeat that process and how exhausting that was. And so I was looking for For a partner that had something that could support me in that, and the growth coach certainly proved to be true.
Lance Graulich05:04
I love it. So how did you find growth coach in the first place?
Brad 05:09
How we find everything nowadays? I just started googling. I was trying to think of the what
Lance Graulich05:14
what were you googling work? Did you? Did you know, at that point, okay, I have a talent for helping businesses, obviously, if they want to change because that's, you know, it doesn't, if some guy is 500 pounds, you're not going to be able to help them lose weight if he doesn't want to.
Brad 05:32
I was always the guy at work that people came to, to talk about, how do they deal with situations, the challenging boss, a big career decision, trying to get buy in and support for an initiative, things of that nature. And I was always good at building relationships. And even as a external or internal consultant, I was always able to sell consulting projects, the only thing for me is I just had never kind of brought the opportunity to the table. I knew I could do those things. What I really needed was a partner that could kind of help me take those things that I was good at, and kind of helped me kind of fine tune my, the tip of my pen, if you will, is that I could be successful.
Lance Graulich06:15
So was it a Google search? Like, I want to be a coach coaching franchise, something like that? Helped me.com? No, I'm just kidding.
Brad 06:24
Yeah, no it was a searching for business coaching companies and business coaching organizations. And I stumbled into the growth coach amongst a few others in that search, and, you know, put in some information, and they got a hold of me, and the rest is history.
Lance Graulich06:41
I love it. Love it. So the growth coach at that point, you join them in 2015, about seven years ago. Do you remember how many franchisees they had then and what your process was like? Because Was this the very first time you investigated any kind of franchise
Brad 06:59
ever looked at a friendship franchise in any way, shape, or form before this, and in fact, the only reason why I started looking was that advice from friends on, you know, having somebody to have your back to, to handle some of that load for you. And so, as I started to look around at those things and find places for, you know, for me, like one of the things that I really enjoy personally, is I've coached a lot of baseball and softball with my kids, and I didn't want to go find another gig, where I work, you know, a 12 hour day, and then had to ask for an hour's worth of PTO, so that I could go to get to a coaching gig and see one of my kids play. So I didn't want to be an employee, I wanted to be able to kind of hone something. And that's where kind of I got kind of pointed towards franchising.
Lance Graulich07:43
The two best types of freedom, time freedom, where you make your own schedule, and money freedom, you get to make whatever you want to make.
Brad 07:52
Exactly. And that's what I tell people, like, you know, there's days where I'm in the office at 430 in the morning, but what I choose to do it so that I can be out by 330. So I can, you know, a couple of weeks ago was high school football playoff time, you know, I was able to grab my kid from school at 245. And we were on the road and up and up and going to that game. But yeah, I put in a lot hours before and after that, because you can't, you can't really enjoy the life of the business owner. And so you work the business,
Lance Graulich08:20
if you know what I mean. Absolutely, absolutely well, and that's also our reward. You know, you have to work, make the money work and make the money and but we get we get flexibility. That's the beautiful part. So let me ask it one at what point in this process? I'm assuming it might have happened, you were thinking to yourself? Well, I know my friends are telling me, you know, I just need support and resources. Was this a situation when you saw growth coach, like how many of the things you do investigate before growth coach hit you? And you're like, alright, this is it. And describe growth, growth coaches process, and how you got into it and got excited about it. That's the other follow up question.
Brad 09:04
Yeah, sure. So for me, I looked at two other coaching brands in addition to this one, and I'd still not given up hope on kind of doing my own thing. And so while I was, oh, shoot, what's the term nowadays? Quiet quitting my corporate gig, quiet quitting. I was researching my next opportunities. For me where growth coach stood out was, first off the people in operations. I just really appreciated them. They were like minded like me. It's an organization that certainly wants to make money. And it certainly wants to do well financially. But it's a service business at its core. And that really lines up with me value wise, I wanted to be partner with somebody that wants to have an impact with business owners, and yeah, make some money and have some fun doing it. But really doing that kind of through service. And so that was probably the biggest thing that attracted to me. The other thing too, was a And this is certainly borne out to be true in my practice in my HR corporate gigs. I always got frustrated when I tried to buy training or coaching services from people. And I knew what we needed. And they kept shoehorning me into a product that they had. Yeah, and the cool thing about what we have with the growth coach, and what I saw in that sales process, is that what we have is really a framework of different tools and processes. And it's my job as the coach to figure out what my client needs, and also listen to them. And not just hear what they say, but also maybe show them some things, they haven't necessarily said to me as well. And then build solutions and build coaching programs around what those needs are. And that's what really was exciting for me about the growth coach, it was always client centric, it was never business or sales centric in terms of trying to fit people into things that we have yeah, here's this package, I know you don't need 62% of it. But the rest of you do need, sorry, the price is the price, right, I'd rather just give you 100% of what you need. And maybe you know what 40% of it, you didn't even realize at the time, and that's okay. Because, you know, there's all kinds of times where I, you know, I'm probably the least handy guy, you're going to talk to you in this show in the next year. And if I go to the hardware store, and if I'm actually asking for a certain thing, I'm really looking for somebody to tell me, Hey, you also need the gaskets, and everything else that go along with it. And so that's part of our job, too, is helping open up those eyes of those business owners to see you there may be more of what you have need wise and maybe what you're even presented to me,
Lance Graulich11:34
right. So talk a little bit about the process. So, you know, you fill out an online form. And these days, you have franchise brokers like me, of course that, you know, will will shield you from the 800 calls, because people tend to inquire about a lot of brands, and and I shield people from that. But in those days, I mean, even still, you know, you're filling out your form, they call you for an initial call. You know, you're obviously excited to get information walk me through how many different phone calls what was that process? Like? How long did the whole thing start from first call to you becoming a franchisee?
Brad 12:12
you want me to go back seven years? I don't know if I could go back seven or not that old? Brad, come on, you could remember most of this. Fair enough. Yeah, so I wouldn't say it was probably August, September ish of 2014 When I started that process and doing the research and getting in contact with the growth coach. And then I would say between December and September of that year, September, December, early, I had four or five different phone calls with sales folks, operations folks even talked with an existing franchisee I even went so as far as finding somebody that was kind of close to me geographically and giving him a call and reaching out and kind of getting his perspective on things. And then in December, they had a what we call Meet the Team, which we still do today. Or come in and visit the office meet all the folks that support the brand and work for the brand, learn a little bit more in depth and detail about the brand. And then walking out of there had a few questions kind of went back and forth on kind of getting the information that I needed. And then started in training in March of that year and launched my business in May of 2015.
Lance Graulich13:24
In May of 2015 Okay, good, great. Yeah, Meet the Team day for the listeners, Meet the Team day discovery Day is a way to really get a candidate get you a prospective franchisee in front of the corporate team, other key players, because you know, whether like it's joining a fraternity or a sorority, you have to see each other see how you like each other. Make sure there's a good culture fit, obviously. And and franchising is a two way street, you both have to like each other. So because this is a long term relationship, obviously so and then you also mentioned validation, the opportunity to speak to existing franchisees, which, as you know, is incredibly valuable. How is their experience? How long did it take them to ramp up their business? You know? So obviously, they passed, passed your test on all all levels? I guess it's fair to say, Right? Absolutely. So what is the what was the support, like when you launched? Because that's kind of the magic question. Everybody tends to ask whether it's an air conditioning brand, or McDonald's or the growth coach. So all right, well, now what I gave you some money. Now what? So describe that sort of onboarding training process?
Brad 14:44
Yep, absolutely. So it's kind of three pronged to get you started, and then there's some ongoing support after that. So we have what we call a jumpstart process that you go through and it's all the kind of the basic mechanics of getting your business set up. And it's a step by step. So I know for me, I had no idea about creating an LLC or an S corp or anything like that, just structuring the business. So some tools and some guidance on kind of, you know, things that you need to do to kind of get the business up and running. And then that part transitions into just some of the basic marketing, let's get your website up and moving. Let's go ahead and do some different things in terms of planning. Some of the top contacts, this is very much a relationship business. And so who are we going to be reaching out to, and kind of getting you prepped for that week of training, we're in that week of training, we really get into product and service. And I think specifically for the growth coach, where we do a really good job is coaching is kind of the reward in this business. And it's really a sales business at the end of the day. And so we spend a lot of time walking through what it's like to go through our sales process. And we have a four step process that we kind of teach, to help somebody that's never sold, business coaching before, to be able to kind of step in and build that relationship, figure out the needs that that folks might have present solutions to them and language that they understand. And then ultimately gaining a commitment and so that we could trainings really focused on that. And then we have a really intensive 90 day kind of launch period, we call it the secret to my success. And it's a 90 day map of what are you going to do every day to get that business up and going and build that momentum quickly. And so you're out on your own at that point, and you're launching your business, but you got a weekly call with one of our operations folks who's supporting you, and giving you guidance in real time. And then one of the things that I've found to be the most valuable that we do is we actually hold regular coaching circles, with our coaches. They're actually hosted by our coaches, they're not hosted by corporate. And they are kind of group coaching opportunities for us as coaches to get together and talk about what we're struggling with talk about what's working well over in, in New York, and how can I apply that here and just I love some real time kind of coaching and support from folks in the network that have done it have built it out, like you that have sat there and had those moments once you got started going, what am I doing? And why did I get into this? And just all that kind of support? Wait, I have to work? Well, yeah, exactly. You know, that stuff, too, right. And just all that kind of support that comes along the way. And we actually carry those coaching circles on even seven years. And I still participate in the regular coaching circle with some different coaches that are network and, and I'm always learning from those coaches, whether I helped facilitate them, or whether I'm actually just a participant. You know, sometimes you think as the as the experience person, you don't get a lot out of those things. But then you realize that there's a little bit of nugget in training that maybe you forgot that you stopped doing for whatever reason, and then you bring that back into your game. So those coaching circles are huge, and we're really an interesting network to and that, you know, I've actually coached for some other franchise networks, and they can be pretty competitive and, and sometimes, you know, kind of going, maybe hesitant to share information in our network. It's been great. I mean, everybody wants to help. And we're kind of helping people by nature as coaches. And so being able to find a network, like the growth coach, where everybody's looking out for your success, not just your operations, folks, but your fellow franchisees is a great environment to be in
Lance Graulich18:31
you hit on a lot of great stuff, you know, when you were talking about the needs, obviously, as you go through the steps and training and all that, and I was laughing because of what we said earlier about these other companies that take the off the shelf stuff, and well, you know, module this or that, you know, even though you don't need all of this. And, of course, we all know the old expression prescription before diagnosis is malpractice. So I'm glad to hear that you are, you know, wanting to prescribe the right, you know, methodology for your clients, of course. But you know, I also absolutely love when you talked about the collaboration, because there's nothing better than a great franchise system. It's one thing to have a great corporate team operations, have all those resources out there success coaches, whatever they're called organizations have different names franchise business consultants, but when you have an opportunity to really collaborate with the brothers and sisters, if you will, of the you know, existing franchisees new and old it's it's pretty amazing. That's where the power of franchising to me having been a franchisee multiple times, it's pretty damn powerful, isn't it?
Brad 19:49
Oh, it's immense. And you know, that's one of those things that I tell folks when they're looking at franchises you know what they should ask for and that's for me, that's a that's a must ask why Shouldn't invalidation calls is as a franchisee what kind of support do your fellow franchisees provide to you? And what kind of support network is that? And, I mean, it's immense and that, you know, and I, you know, as a franchisee, it's like, okay, I'm here in corporate and but there's always that feeling of, well, they're not out here. They're not, they're not doing it. They don't, you know, you know, it's, it's the, it's that classic perception that we always have. If somebody's not doing it, then they, they must not know. But when you have folks that are inside your network that are doing it as franchisees, and they're repeating the same things that you're hearing that are success, Keystone, Keystone from, from folks in your corporate environment, it just makes it all the better.
Lance Graulich20:45
I love it. I mean, but that's, that's the power of franchising. I had a guy the other day say, Yeah, I was thinking of doing something on my own. And I say, well, that's great. You can create something on your own. I said, Have you considered franchising goes? Nowhere, I heard it's expensive. And I go, Oh, really? Compared to what? So? I mean, you could do it on your do something on your own? But are you an expert in all facets of what you want to do? And he's like, Well, no, you know, I was, did a lot of electrical, and I know electrical pretty well, but I'm a handyman a little bit. Yeah, I guess I don't really know much about the business. And I was gonna hire a consultant to help me with that. I'm like, well, that's why franchises exists, you know, so
Brad 21:29
I'll give you I'll give you a great example, just this week, I, I got a cold lead from somebody, and they had some very specific HR issues. And I happen to know our guy in Puerto Rico is an expert in those things. And so hop on the phone with Gamliel, we're talking about the situation, he's given me some thoughts and advice, and, you know, we're moving the conversation down the road, there's, I would have been, I don't even know where I'd be going to try to find some good information to be in a good position to talk to that customer. But with Gamliel, it was, I believe, a quick instant message, a quick phone call, in within 24 hours, I'm looking a lot smarter, and bro are adding so much more value to my client. Because I'm in that network and gambling, I'll take my call.
Lance Graulich22:14
Yeah, you know, that's the thing. Franchising is all about the resources, you have all the resources. And then when you need something way outside the box, it's there in the in the, you know, in the collaboration with existing franchisees, so I love it. So let's talk about money, you can make money in your business, apparently, I'm being funny
Brad 22:37
You absolutely can. Yeah, and actually, that's one of the fun things about kind of business coaching as a franchise, it's probably one of the higher margin businesses you're ever going to get into. Because, you know, from our perspective, I've got some office space, obviously, I have some materials. But really, at the end of the day, it's kind of about your time and your energy. And when you execute the group coaching models like we do, that eliminates time as a limiting factor in many ways, where you can leverage putting groups of four or five, six business owners or managers together. And it really helps you drive that profitability for the business, while still providing a great amount of value and providing that flexibility, like we talked about previous.
Lance Graulich23:20
I love it. Yeah, no, that's, that's fantastic. So when you talk to some other top franchisees besides yourself, I mean, there seems to be some, some pretty decent gaps in some brands, as far as top performers doing outrageous amounts of money, and you got the middle of the road. And then you always have a bottom 10% or so, or 20% is your group about the same, you know, you got some stellar high performers, the middle ground, and then a couple of stragglers that are either new, or maybe they're older franchisees because I've been part of brands and that bottom 10% could be new franchisees that are getting their traction, so to speak. And then there's others that maybe don't listen so well or don't follow system as well as they should?
Brad 24:09
Yeah, you definitely have that. The other thing I've learned too, is that everybody gets into these businesses for different reasons. And you know, there's sometimes some folks that if you look at the performance numbers, they may look like kind of lower performers. But you know, what, they may be doing this more as a part time thing for them. And you know, like, there's one person in our network I'm thinking of in particular right now, he's got a really powerful nonprofit that he works with, that he founded. And, you know, the growth coach isn't necessarily his full time thing. And so, you know, you could look at him and be like, oh, you know, he's maybe not being successful, but the reality of it is, he's, you know, he's doing the things that he wants to do and he's, he's got the freedom to do what he wants to do. And he's able to make coaching part of it. So yeah, even sometimes, as you were saying, I would say definitely we're, we're we've got the typical bell curve going on. on here, but one of the things I think that's unique about us is that because of kind of a lower barrier to entry from a coaching standpoint, as well as the opportunity to kind of scale it as, as little or as big as you want, sometimes the performance number isn't necessarily all that meets the eye.
Lance Graulich25:19
Yeah, and, you know, to your earlier point, look, if it's a $45,000 investment, you have people doing this part time and and making 125,000 a year, you might look at them, like, you know, what, what are you doing, you could be making 300,000 a year. And people I know, I'm, I'm good. I got some other things going on. I don't really work hard, you know, I mean, because in your type of business, I mean, it's the sky's the limit, right? I mean, you gotta have, you gotta have guys making half a million a year up.
Brad 25:50
Yeah, I mean, the sky is the limit. And it really comes down to how much do you want to build that network? And how much effort do you want to put on the marketing and sales side. And that's really the if you were to look at the the top end of our network, I mean, don't get me wrong, there's some, there's some magnificent coaches that are there that are really effective. But every one of those folks at the top end of our network is an effective marketer, a strong salesperson, but not all of them came into the network. As effective marketers, and strong salespeople, they use the tools, they use the system, and they and they learned that and combined it with their experience to drive that success.
Lance Graulich26:31
Yeah, franchising is a great tool or resource to sort of, even out your weaknesses.
Brad 26:39
Yeah, and for me, I was very much that way. As I mentioned before, as an internal consultant, I could walk into any team meeting and talk to an executive VP and, you know, sell the opportunity to do an internal consulting project. For me, it was okay, how do I, if I'm coming from the outside? How do I get into that meeting with the executive VP, to be able to do that, and that's where growth coach has been really helpful for me, and teaching me some good marketing strategies and some good sales strategies to get known to develop that network. And then, like so many businesses is, you know, there's there's, I don't want to downplay the importance of, you know, web marketing and social media and things like that. But in our business, it truly still is a relationship business. And so the more you build those relationships, the more that referral networks rocking. Yeah, this guy is absolutely the limit. Yeah, I'll obviously
Lance Graulich27:33
Yeah, obviously strength in numbers for sure. And and that's what you have is all that all that support. So let's talk more about you so seven years with the company. You know, you are you still increasing in sales? What are you doing differently? You fat and happy at this point, making boatloads of money? Still just you though, right? Do you have a support team?
Brad 27:54
Yeah, actually, I have a virtual assistants who works part time for me, I love it. And then I've actually been working on right now trying to secure a couple of folks that actually come on board and help me kind of grow the business even more. So. You know, this year, you know, another record year for the growth coach of Central Ohio. You know, one of the things I get asked a lot of times is you know, how much you're making. And, and things of that nature for me this year, is where I went north of two times my corporate salary, before I started the business, and there's no reason why I can't make that three or four times or, and, and for me, it's really trying to get some other folks involved, I've got the referral network working, I just need to be able to deliver and produce some more services for folks that that are out there looking for the need. And so I've been spending a lot of time here wrapping up the year to go back to some old contacts in my network, who I've worked with in the past to see if they're ready to make the leap.
Lance Graulich28:54
I love that you said you know more than or north of two times your corporate salary, two times your corporate salary, not to mention the freedom that you have, and extra time to be able to do what you want when you want because you're writing your schedule. Nobody else has any other expectations of you. And then my favorite subject that I talk to people a lot about is my CPA referrals, my tax specialist referrals, because so many people, Brad, as you now know, when they first get into their own business, most people don't realize, wow, look at all these write offs I get to tap into. I don't even need to make as much money as I thought. Because I now can write things off when I actually have an income and have profit.
Brad 29:44
Yeah we just had that next year discussion with my accountant about a month ago and what you know what's 23 and 24 look like and what are some different things that we can do. Related to that. I mean, there's other opportunities to one of my one of the friends in my network. Oh, ones investment properties. And you know, he approached me the other day. He's like, I'm buying this property up in Maine, we've talked about doing some leadership workshops. Like, if I do this, do you want to start hosting some leadership workshops up at this place? It's right up on the coast and Bar Harbor? I'm like, no, no, Scott, I don't want to do that. I don't want to. I don't want to do great leadership retreats with awesome business owners in beautiful places
Lance Graulich30:23
and exotic places. No, I don't want to do any of that.
Brad 30:27
So you know, just just things like that. Or even just the simple things like, you know, last year, last couple of years, I've been blessed. My oldest is a college baseball player at a university, it's a couple hours from here, you know, I can I can drive up there for a 4pm game, I've taken calls on the way to there, I've found secluded places away from there, where I've done some emergency coaching sessions during games to help clients out. And they know that I'm there and they don't care. And you know what I mean? It's just having that. I mean, you said it the the freedom and the flexibility. There, the money's great, don't get me wrong, and it's afforded our family some opportunity to do some things. But I could never buy back the opportunity to go get to watch my son play outfield and, and steal bases and throw guys out. I mean, there's no money on the planet that covers that.
Lance Graulich31:16
Yeah, I love it. That is absolutely fantastic. Well, it's always great to talk to franchisees that have had such great success, like you have, obviously got your money back on your investment, it's worked out amazingly well for you. You know, I tell people all the time that a franchise could be right for everybody. The question is, what franchise and and that's the key, because oftentimes, people don't necessarily select the franchise that's most appropriate for them, they get emotionally attached to something, you know, and you know, this as a as a coach. So having said that, and everything else we discussed already. Final thoughts for today, words of wisdom for folks listening?
Brad 31:57
You know, I think when you're when you're considering doing what you're doing and where you want to go, I guess I'll go back to that notion that there's just no, there's no, there's no price on being able to have some freedom and control on what you're doing. I mean, there's a world that continues to demand our time and energy and more and more ways. You know, I think I wanted that when I started a franchise as a franchisee, I should say, and I guess I didn't even realize how important and valuable that was, even when I was trying to get it until I've received it. And I started to experience that. And so, you know, if you're thinking about on your own versus franchising, you know, I mean, I think you got to really think about what is that? What does that world look like for you a few years down the road, because like with any business, when you get started, you know, a franchise isn't necessarily a guarantee to start printing money, kind of day one. So, you know, once you give yourself that appropriate time, what do you want that to look like for you, and whatever that freedom is for you? You know, Ken, this opportunity that you're looking at? Really, really Can you envision that can it can it create that for you. And then like we said before, it's all about people, and I don't care what kind of franchise you're in, you know, find a group of franchisees that are rooting you on and cheering you on, and want to be able to support you because that kind of support is the kind of thing when, when you're down and picks you up, and when you're riding high. You know, one of the things as a business owner, sometimes it's kind of lonely and so having that network to celebrate those wins with with you and help you maybe realize even more than you felt how successful you've been in being able to see that those things are for somebody like me, those intangibles are priceless.
Lance Graulich33:50
Love it. Well, Brad, I really appreciate you being here and spending time with me and my listeners. Because, you know, it's just from the heart Brad Schneider you know the growth coach, franchisee thank you so much and I wish you continued success.
Brad 34:06
Thank you very much for having me and have yourself a very Merry Christmas or whatever holiday they choose to celebrate.
Lance Graulich34:13
You got it. Thank you so much. Take care