What kind of care are those facing the later parts of their life receiving in your world? Is it the children taking care of their parents? Or are you one of those taking care of your children and your parents? Do you know anybody that is getting burned out trying to continue their career and helping take care of their dad? Or maybe you live in a different location as your parents and you just cannot make it back to help support. So many people in the world are faced with these questions every day and they just need a little help. Enter HomeWell Cares… Today we have on the show Crystal Franz CEO and Brandon Clifford Senior Vice President of Franchise Development on with us to discuss the so many incredible benefits of having HomeWell Cares in your life and supporting those that need the help. People all function better when we enjoy life more. For most people, this can be achieved through increased activity, reduced stress, better nutrition and basic companionship. As simple as that observation is, it is at the core of what HomeWell Cares does. Their primary objective is to bring more enjoyment to the lives of those who find it increasingly difficult to function well on their own. They remove the burden of stress from both the person needing assistance, as well as those who love and care for them. They help people maintain their dignity and their independence. They protect and care for those who are unable to do so themselves. They help people function better and enjoy life more. This is all done by working as a team to provide reliable and compassionate in-home care that goes so far beyond typical adult care services. This is Eye On Franchising, where we share our vision for your franchise future. 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
What kind of care are those facing the later parts of their life receiving in your world?
Is it the children taking care of their parents?Or are you one of those taking care of your children and your parents?
Do you know anybody that is getting burned out trying to continue their career and helping take care of their dad? Or maybe you live in a different location as your parents and you just cannot make it back to help support.
So many people in the world are faced with these questions every day and they just need a little help.
Enter HomeWell Cares…
Today we have on the show Crystal Franz CEO and Brandon Clifford Senior Vice President of Franchise Development on with us to discuss the so many incredible benefits of having HomeWell Cares in your life and supporting those that need the help.
People all function better when we enjoy life more. For most people, this can be achieved through increased activity, reduced stress, better nutrition and basic companionship.
As simple as that observation is, it is at the core of what HomeWell Cares does. Their primary objective is to bring more enjoyment to the lives of those who find it increasingly difficult to function well on their own. They remove the burden of stress from both the person needing assistance, as well as those who love and care for them. They help people maintain their dignity and their independence. They protect and care for those who are unable to do so themselves. They help people function better and enjoy life more.
This is all done by working as a team to provide reliable and compassionate in-home care that goes so far beyond typical adult care services.
This is Eye On Franchising, where we share our vision for your franchise future.
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
franchisees, franchise, homecare, people, home, owners, brand, crystal, business, brandon, franchising, seniors, worked, care, ftd, franchise fee, big, caregiver, pandemic, talk
SPEAKERS
Crystal, Lance Graulich, Brandon
Lance Graulich 00:09
Hello everyone and welcome back to another great episode if I don't mind saying so myself to Eye On Franchising, and today I have my friends. Well, I'm not going to tell you where they're from. Let's do their introductions ladies. First. She's got 15 years in the franchise world. She leads the corporate team, the executive team and its mission to accelerate the company growth and provide ongoing support for their amazing franchisees. And her name is Crystal Franz she is the CEO of Home WellCare Services. Welcome to the show. Miss crystal.
Crystal 00:54
Thank you. Thank you, Lance. I'm happy to be here today.
Lance Graulich 00:56
Awesome. And then your counterpart? Well, let's see. He's a former restaurant owner. He is his true passion is inspiring others through business ownership and taking control of anyone's future for that matter that's capable through franchising. He fell in love with the homecare model, and He is the senior vice president of this wonderful brand, Senior Vice President of Development and franchise services. My friend Brandon Clifford, welcome, Brandon.
Brandon 01:24
Thank you, Lance. I feel like we need some like clap tracks. Or walk up I do. I do have
Lance Graulich 01:29
a claptrap. So welcome. Welcome, guys. So, homecare, let's start off with Well, let's go with your backstory crystal you first. So let's give us a little more detail that might be helpful. How the heck did you get into the world of franchise?
Crystal 01:44
So I started in hospitality, actually, I worked at a hotel, my first job out of college and marketing. It was an independent hotel. And we were always getting pegged to get flagged constantly, from your Marriott and your choices and all of that. And it was it piqued my interest. And so after a few years in operations on the hotel side, I actually did move on to franchising at Choice Hotels, International. They franchise, I, gosh, how many brands now? I don't walk they had 10 When I was there, but I think they've acquired quite quite a few since then. And that's really where I got my feet wet in franchising. I'm working in marketing and brand strategy. I'm very much in the hospitality, you know, people take my operation side and move it into the franchising side there, spent seven years there, and then did a little stint in an ad advertising agency for a little bit but knew that corporate franchising was where I wanted to be. And then actually hooked up again with our chairman of our current company. And will franchising Bruce hos, doing franchising for a smaller brand called WoodSpring Suites. And we rebranded that launched, it changed the operations kind of overhauled, it did a full 180. And a lot of the learnings that we got there, we were able to attribute to home well, and then looking for another gig and followed Bruce, our Chairman along again, he bought this company handful years ago, and brought me on again for us to kind of do what we did with WoodSpring. And that's what we've been doing for the last four or five years, which is brought me to you, Lance.
Lance Graulich 03:32
Awesome. Well, well, wonderful, wonderful. Hey, by the way, for those of you folks listening, and you're interested in a franchise opportunity or business opportunity, home well has an incredible ownership option, or let's call it a special offer that they're doing right now. So stay tuned to this. And Brandon and crystal will explain that a little later. So Brandon, welcome to the show. Again, tell us a little bit about, you know, how do you how'd you get in the restaurant business, hagit And how did you fall into the world of franchising? We all know that, that not many people go to high school or college and think in terms of, hey, I'm going to get into the world of franchising, right?
Brandon 04:10
Sure. Yeah, no, but I mean a lot of people their whole career, they all are even growing up want to own their own business, right and correct kind of what, what was what it was, for me, I grew up in kind of an entrepreneurial household. My father always owned his own businesses and it was kind of a model for me to be able to like determine your own worth and you know, create your own salary and then create opportunities for yourself and your family and whatnot. And so yeah, to college, I kind of you know, bug him about wanting to do so I did, I did the normal sales route out of school and actually worked for a furniture a big franchise company 711 That was like my first foray into franchising I guess, learned a lot Slurpees I was never a huge slippy fan but like the the roller grow in the bakery. I'm all over that even to this day. But, but anyway,
Lance Graulich 04:58
big confessions coming out Today,
Brandon 05:00
yes, we'll get to that later Later in the podcast, right. Those will be outtakes. You know, but, but no, I mean, eventually convinced them to kind of Invest in me, so to speak and got into the restaurant world, you know, had never even worked in food service. But, but I mean, I went to a Catholic college. So we spent a lot of time at bars and restaurants, you know. So there's my experience and grew it from one location up to three, it was great for a while, but, you know, like, everyone, I mean, you know, this working with candidates that are trying to find the right fit, right? When I was 25, fresh out of school, fresh, you know, you know, in the workforce, newly married, no kids, or owning a restaurant was a great fit for me loved it. Yeah, right. 15 years later, with four kids, not such a great fit anymore, right. So now it's time to do something else. And, you know, I've always been, you know, intrigued by the franchise model, especially coming from when I was working with franchisees in 711. And seen the ability for someone to plug into a system and really be taught how to be a really good business owner, it always intrigued me. And so I actually set out to find a franchise or get involved in franchising, when I was transitioning out of my, my restaurant time, and actually was doing some franchise consulting, similar to what you do and worked with lots of different brands knew nothing about homecare, but then, you know, like, you know, it touches 86 franchise and touches 86 or so different verticals, right. I mean, there's like 7000 brands in the franchise space, and, you know, learn about this home care thing. And I was like, wow, like, from a p&l standpoint, you know, I'm used to inventory, right, I'm used to spoilage, I'm used to, like, you know, cash in your register, that you got to worry about someone stealing from you like homecare, this is so much simpler, you can put up huge numbers, you know, with very few, you know, customer counts, and really make a big, you know, a big business for yourself and your family, but also feel really, really good. At the end of the night, when you put your head on the pillow, and say, Hey, I made a difference in the lives of others, you know, and help them live longer, healthier lives at home. So started working actually pretty closely with home well. And then it was after a few months, I was asked to meet with this guy, Bruce Haase, the chairman of the board. And he, they
Lance Graulich 07:15
this was how long ago,
Brandon 07:16
this is the end of 2018, beginning of 2019. And he had just, I'm sure crystal and he had a similar conversation about six months before me, he had just purchased this little this little company and was looking to make it you know, make a change and kind of turn it on its head and really pour some gasoline on the fire in terms of, you know, recruiting new owners, they pause, you know, franchise recruitment for a little while to really refine processes training, you know, branding was a big one. And it was a, I remember sitting across the table from Crystal and Bruce and, and looking them in the eye being like, guys, I don't know, like, I've never worked for anybody else. I've never worked for a single company, like I don't know, if I really want to, I'm gonna be a bad employee. And I remember crystal specifically saying, well, Brandon, don't worry, this is gonna be very entrepreneurial, ended up being a great fit. I feel like over the last three years, we've, you know, it feels really good Lance, when you're inspiring someone to bet on themselves, you know, you know, invest in a business, but specifically in this industry, like I said, where we're making such an impact in the lives of others, you
Lance Graulich 08:17
know, and it's incredible. I'm gonna dive into that, you know, you said something that really resonated with me and I talked about it a lot, is that and you guys experienced this every day, there are people that are going to come to you that have some maybe have done something entrepreneurial before. And there's quite a few others that have never done anything. So I always ask the question, how do people become entrepreneurs? Is it something that they're born into you described, like, your dad was an entrepreneur. So you were kind of used to that. And that's how I grew up. Both of my grandfather's and my father were entrepreneurs. So like, I had, I was never going to be employable. Because I saw what it was like, on the other side, so many other people have to be convinced. And that's what I do as a franchise broker consultants, is get people's mindset, right, hey, you can do this, you just need to find the right brand, and the right support. So we're gonna dive into that a little bit more as to who is the right person for whom well, but crystal, you want to share with us? Like, what really you're the CEO? What's the secret sauce of home? Well, why home? Well, why the home care space? I mean, 10,000 people, you know, turning 65, or whatever the number is these days. So we know that's one reason and I keep hearing about what analysts and private equity groups call hockey stick growth is straight up growth for the next 35 years. So let's hear it in your own words.
Brandon 09:40
Before you get into that Lance. Crystal will answer that question way better than me, but what I love about what you do, and what we're able to do here at home well, is actually open the doors of entrepreneurship and you touched upon it a little bit there. That like, the thing about a franchise that I love is it's actually not built for, for true entrepreneurs. It's built for people who are those Corporate analysts that understand the hockey stick growth kind of thing that can take a recipe, and then build it better than someone who's always trying to figure out how to do it different. You know,
Crystal 10:11
that's what we find a lot of our successful owners are just that you had mentioned, you know, you have people that are born into an entrepreneurial family with entrepreneurial spirit oozing out of the household. But a lot of times what we find we have some of those folks as well, and they do very well. But we find a lot of folks, they're the ones who have a corporate background, who have put in the time, who have given their all to everything, and don't really have anything super tangible and personal, in their banks or their, even their soul to show for it. And so what they're looking for is just that, and we think we are the answer to that. So to answer part of your question earlier is why home? Well, why homecare, why home? Well, is just that we're able to give people the answer they're looking for how do you get out of that corporate rut that you're in, day in and day out, where you're putting in hour after hour after hour, and not necessarily seeing, being able to reap what you sow? I think again, personally and emotionally mentally. And what home allows people to do is just that you said that hockey stick growth, Brandon touched on it, you know, why home? Well, it's the most simple business model that you can, you know, really sink your teeth into what you mentioned a bunch of those branches, as far as no inventory and all that kind of stuff. But the other thing is, there's very little ceiling, you know, it with with a with a restaurant, you have hours, you know, you're open and you're closed from a certain amount of time in homecare, particularly you, you know, however many caregivers you can get however, many clients 24/7, you can be making money while you sleep. And so that appeals to a lot of folks, you know, in the corporate world, and there is, you know, I can't stress enough also that emotional tie to it as well, because people want to make money, obviously. And that's, you know, you wouldn't be doing this if you you know, you would go volunteer, if you didn't want to make money, yeah, you want to make money. But to be able to put your head down at night and know that you're doing something really great for your community, because this particular business, you are very entrenched in your local community and your local market, and to be a player there, and to network with your chamber of commerce and your, your nursing facilities and, and even hospitals and just the senior population in your area. That's something that really makes you feel good about what you're doing and what you're investing in. And as you mentioned, the demand is there, uh, you know, the demand is there for that ceiling to not ever be put in place. You know, in 2040, for the first time in our history, we will have more seniors than we will use. And that's a crazy statistic. And these people are going to want care, and they're going to want it in their house.
Brandon 13:04
And they've been planning for it. Yeah, right. Crystal, I mean, you know, like, that age group, you know, that bracket. But I don't know if this is gonna offend you, Lance or not the boomers. I don't know if you're in it yet or not. I'm sorry. But
Lance Graulich 13:16
I'm 55
Brandon 13:18
Okay, all right. Cool.
Lance Graulich 13:19
Almost 56
Brandon 13:20
There you go. There you go. But I mean, the people who grew up in that they were planners, right. And they, they saw, you know, the downfall quote, unquote, of nursing homes and what their parents went through in the conditions they lived in where, you know, 30 years ago, a nursing home was the standard for senior care, right for when you were going to get to the age where you could no longer take care of yourself, you were gonna go live in a home. And they saw what that happened to their generate with it to their parents. They're like, I'm not living in a home. I'm living in my home, you know, and, and they plan for that. So we can capitalize on that Crystal.
Crystal 13:55
Not only that, too, but you're talking even those folks that are in our age bracket. We're, you know, homecare. I think the pandemic has put a spotlight on the awareness of home care for sure.
Lance Graulich 14:08
Oh, yeah.
Crystal 14:08
But we still have a ways to go in what non medical homecare is. Quite honestly, I didn't know it existed before I was brought this opportunity. And, but what you're seeing and people around our age is that they're the sandwich generation. You know, they're the ones that are taking care of both their kids and their parents at the same time. They're getting burnt out doing it and realize I can't do this any longer. And that's where they go to seek finding home care. But to know that that's a option, I think makes them want to plan even more for when they in those 20. You know, like I said in 2040 when you're gonna have more seniors than you are youth, those people in that are today. In that timeframe today, they're the sandwich generation. So they're going to plan for it like Brandon said, and so that demand It is unlimited.
Lance Graulich 15:02
Yeah, no, I love that. Unfortunately, my dad passed a couple of years ago. And that was my first immediate experience with homecare. And to be clear to the viewers, there's a lot of sort of misconceptions or misunderstandings about what we're talking about here. This is, as you just said, Crystal, this is non medical homecare, and it's, you know, like companion care. So, when mom had to go to the market, you know, there was a caregiver there with dad to fluff the pillow, change the station and the TV station, help them to the restroom, make a sandwich, whatever it might have been, to have a conversation with them, while mom had to go do her errands or whatever it might might have been, I helped out I flew in town
Brandon 15:48
It's very holistic Lance, and like, like you, you're talking to like the resource for the the adult child, you know, like yourself, like crystal, you know, highlighted kind of highlighted the sandwich generation, like, a lot of times, people who get into the senior care space, they sort of like skip over, that they're almost there kind of the customer, really, it's that adult child who has three kids of their own in a job. And they've maybe they've moved three times over the last 20 years because of their career, right? And then now all of a sudden, their mom's slips and falls. And they live in St. Louis, and their mom lives in Boston. And their whole, they're like, Well, how am I going to take care of my mother? You know, what I mean? Like, what am I, you know, and I can't throw away my career, because I have to take care of my children, but my mom needs my help. And so for our owners, a lot of them they talked about, like, that's, that's their Why is to, like, solve that problem for that for that adult child, you know, and being missed that in home care, you know, they think, Oh, I'm going to provide the best care for, for seniors, or, Oh, I'm gonna hire a lot of caregivers, which are all equally important. But you missed that that true customer a lot of times is the sandwich scenario. And
Crystal 16:57
the non medical is really important there because you can get people come in. And a lot of times you can have insurances pay to have your actual nurses come in and administer medication and do the blood pressure and do all that kind of stuff. But insurance only pays for so many hours of them. And then you're left
Brandon 17:14
they're not fluffing the pillows like Lance said right?
Crystal 17:16
You're left with this big swath of ours, where your mom or dad is left home alone and could fall or needs a bath, or needs help getting into bed or getting upstairs or grocery shopping, all of those things. Those are things that often aren't forefront in anyone's mind until they have to be.
Brandon 17:35
And resolution can be a lot worse than blood pressure, right?
Crystal 17:39
What's the solution? And that's where homecare comes into play for sure. Yeah.
Lance Graulich 17:44
So let's talk about the investment. You know, two things. So what what is the investment? And who exactly you're looking for, give me a sample a snapshot of who your current franchisees are now, your top franchisees
Crystal 18:01
Go Ahead Brandon whats the investment that you can start with? What's What's the investment look?
Brandon 18:05
Yeah, so I mean, we're looking at our accreditor FTD, the range is between 102 150,000 in that range, you know, that'll be a single territory. But I think what we do a little bit different at home well, versus some other home care brands out there is that, you know, we we typically look to partner with franchisees that actually have a little bit of a bigger aspirations, you know, you know, people that are empire builders, that understand the scalability, because we have many owners in our, in our, in our network, that they have a single office, you know, which you can operate out of that covers three or four territories, right. And so to kind of crystals point earlier about not being beholden to like a set amount of hours or a set square footage, like you see in these retail concepts, that's the thing about homecare is it can scale as large as you want it to, you know, and so while again, like the investment might be, you know, 200,000 say right in the middle for for a single territory, we attract a lot owners that maybe we're looking at a gym franchise, that's going to be a million dollar build out, right? And they say wow, for 500 for half that 500,000 I could acquire to three territories, I can deploy 150,000 for marketing over the next year for working capital and only be in for 225 You know, so to speak, right? And achieve the same kind of revenues and the same kind of return that I went for that that gym franchise that I was about to spend a million bucks on, you know,
Lance Graulich 19:30
so now's probably the appropriate time to talk about the offer that you just came up with starting in July.
Brandon 19:38
Sure, yeah. So yeah, the other so our traditional franchise offerings a $50,000. franchise fee that security to territory, which is population base of about 300,000 total population and or 40,000 seniors. Okay, we try to get it you know, based on the demographics, it's hard to get it you know, right on that number, but pretty close. And yeah, and everything we do On well over the last three years has always been about trying to, you know, like I said earlier, open the doors of entrepreneurship that people who maybe otherwise wouldn't do it on their own, you know, and let them know that we have solutions, we have systems and, you know, and a lot of times that that initial franchise fee becomes a hurdle, you know, you know, no matter how much you have in your 401 K, no matter how much you saved in the bank, write a check for 50 grand is a big deal for people, right? And, and so we as a company, you know, started looking at like, Hey, how can we, how can we remove this, you know, and, and so we come up with a new offering that just launched here about a month ago, less than a month ago, where you get we're waiving our franchise fee, so there's no initial franchise fee, we have a $5,000 training fee. And then you have we have a higher royalty, that's set until you achieve 1.5 million in gross revenue. So you're gonna pay a 10% royalty. So you hit that, that, you know, total revenue number, whether it takes you a year or two years, you know, depends on what you're gonna do. We want you to take that money, you would give us that other 44,000 and invest in your business.
Lance Graulich 21:03
And the good news is you're not selling chicken wings. So I know the margins are higher. I can say that because I've talked to franchisees, and that's okay, so sure,
Brandon 21:12
you can say it all you want to.
Lance Graulich 21:15
So, so really, it becomes a really low cost investment, I happen to know, you have franchisees that are 20 that started when they were 24-25 years old with you.
Brandon 21:30
Yeah, we ever missed several people like that started under the age of 30. Actually our biggest franchisee in the whole system. He's no longer a young 20 year old, you know, but he was 23 when he opened his he's now you know, when he's three, yeah, he you know, and then you know, and now he's a, you know, 37 or 38, something like that. And I probably get mad if I say the wrong number. I'll underestimate it. But then yeah, just recently, we had we have had several the last three years. It's funny, I joke with them all the time about how like, in homecare, our bread and butter are seniors, right? Like we take care of old people. But it's really a young man's business or young woman's business. Because it requires a lot of energy. I mean, like you said, it's not selling wings, you know, so there is no inventory. There's no spoilage. p&l is are simple, but it's a people business. Right?
Crystal 22:16
You have to hustle. Yeah, and having the mentality.
Brandon 22:21
Absolutely, that they can't gains a lot of weight.
Lance Graulich 22:23
You're building the relationships. And that, for me is what what I enjoy the heck out of what I do every day. And just like Brandon, I see behind you, you know, trusted care and true compassion. You know, if if that's what you're into? Boy, this is the business for you. Right?
Brandon 22:40
Yeah. But crystal? I mean, you maybe I think we signed probably what four new owners that are under the age of 30 in the last three years, at least. Right, maybe even more than that. You know, so I mean, homecare, I think it's it speaks, it speaks a lot to the people who, like we said earlier have seen their grandparents, you know, go you know, they're seeing their parents deal with the demise of their grandparents, you know
Lance Graulich 23:04
so if you two were going to think of the top 10% of best franchisees in the home well system today? What are they? What did they do for a living before?
Crystal 23:19
Well, a couple of them have homecare experience. And so you know, we don't want to negate the fact that they came in knowing a little bit about it. And so, so those handful of folks are in our top 10%, I would say a lot of the other ones, it's not so much what they've done in the past. It's it's their mentality, one of our one of our top owners, and they're winning awards left and right. They always say we have no quit in us, you know, we don't know how to quit, and nothing is going to stop us. And then what did they do before one was in sales, and the other one was, forget what she did in Tennessee.
Brandon 24:05
So I mean, a lot of our owners, current owners, they'll they kind of reached the, like, director level or higher in a large corporation, you know, gotcha, you know, to where they're managing a team probably have, you know, 15 people or so, whether it's a sales team, or an operations team, or an HR department, whatever it might be, but kind of like, to the point where they're at like the the top of a department. And in order for them to move up inside that that corporate structure or whatever it's going to, I mean, we all know, we've been in the corporate world, like it's gonna take either, you know, someone retires or someone dies or something, right. Like they're kind of like at that point where they're not all the way to the top, but it's gonna be hard for them to move up. And so they see like, like Christmas or the beginning of this conversation that they've been for the last 1520 years building companies for other people. So it's like a natural progression. Why wouldn't I just build a company for myself right, and but they don't, they don't want to come up with an idea. They don't want to reinvent the wheel, they don't want to have you do all the brand work, you know, and come up with a unique selling proposition, you know, and so that's why it franchise makes sense. But I'm go ahead Crystal what were you going to say?
Crystal 25:15
I was gonna say, I think to what you're saying there. And the point I failed to make earlier when I was when I was going through this is that it's less about what we found, it's less about what they've done in the past that makes them successful, it's more of a mentality. Because like you said, we do have younger people enter into our franchise system and do really, really great. And you know, they haven't trudge through the corporate world for haven't done much.
Brandon 25:41
Now we use a we use Oracle, Lance. I do. And I mean, we focus a lot on, you know, their emotional intelligence, like that's a big KPI in that report that we look at, because this is it's a, it's a, it's a personal, it's a person to person business, it's about people, people helping people like all those sorts of things, right. And so at the end of the day, our franchisees have to have the ability to put on a suit, and sit across the table from a board of directors of a hospital, and clearly articulate the value that homecare non medical homecare can provide to the healthcare continuum, right, that's one role. And then they needed to be able to on their way back from that meeting, you know, change out of their suit and put on a polo or a t shirt, and sit across the table from a minimum to low wage caregiver, who maybe has called out sick four or five times and your HR manager doesn't know what to do with this caregiver and is ready to fire him. And you come in, and instead of just writing that person off, get down on their level, and say, Hey, what's going on in your life that's causing this to happen, and understand and uncover that they're not just being flaky or whatever, it's that their car broke down, and they don't have $200 to fix their car. So instead of being honest, and saying that they've been calling in sick for five shifts, and previously, they were a great caregiver who never called in sick, so you don't want to lose them. And you fix that problem, you know, so problem solving, emotional intelligence, empathy, like those are the key components that make our owners really, really thrive.
Lance Graulich 27:14
Yeah, and obviously, if you when you're 23 years old, the younger franchisees, it's just all about the right attitude, the personality, the, the the guts and the grit, to get out there and just go do it. Right, right.
Brandon 27:28
Well, I'm a micromanager in this business either would you like I mean, if you want it to
Crystal 27:33
grow, if you want to scale for sure, I mean, if you want to tap the potential that homecare and home offers you, you do not want to be a micromanager. That's,
Brandon 27:42
you're not going to know all your clients, you're not going to know all your caregivers, you're going to know your director of sales, you're going to know your your HR manager, you're going to know your care manager you like you're going to know your your nucleus nucleus, right of this business. But you need to let the care manager manage the care aspect of your office and not trying to get in the weeds. Because you're not an RN, they are your sales rep manage the sales activities. You know,
Lance Graulich 28:09
it's it's just about empowering your people with both of you, which both of you have a lot of experience with. And, you know, we all tell people at the beginning of the franchise process, trust the process, it'll all unfold, and either you're gonna be right or not for this and, you know,
Crystal 28:24
that's one of I mean, that's the further answer to the question of our top 10%. They are the ones that they follow our lead, you know, that we give you we tell people you're joining a franchise for a reason you could you could go do your startup, and you know, you can you can do that. And some do that well. But if you're looking to franchise and you're looking to that for a reason, you want the blueprint, you want what we have to offer. And so take us up on it, you know, we are Team at home, while we are not we are so invested in the success of our owners. I mean, everybody knows the names. And will that be the case when when we grow to you know, hundreds of owners down the road? I'm not sure but today for sure. We know nearly every owner and we probably know within a few 100,000 What their revenue is today, because we're that invested in their in their success. But that means that we have the tools and the resources and the training and we're going to tell you and guide you on how to do it. And so the top 10% who are successful have taken that guidance, but what well I will say that one of the differentiators I think with home well and particularly in franchising, in my experience is that we actually give you the guide and the blueprint, but we also give you a lot of rope to figure it out how you want to do it on your own in your local market and past brands that I've worked for. It's very prescriptive, you know, you've got your brand standards and you've got to do XY and Z and if you do not do XY and Z you'll be penalized home while is not that I You have multiple revenue sources that you can tap. And any given one might make more sense for you and your local market, then your fellow franchisee one state over. And so what we try to do is give you all of the options show you how to tap all the options, and then we say you go figure it out, go and your local market, go do your competitive analysis, go do everything you need to do, bring it back to us. And together, we'll figure out how you want to do it, but it's personal to you, and how you're going to do that business. And so it's
Brandon 30:33
a personal business a little bit different hyperlocal, you know, it is I mean, it's, it's actually really well suited to a franchise because, you know, when people are making the decision on care for their mother, you know, they want to see that this is a reputable company that has history that has, you know, knowledge and expertise and all that kind of stuff. But they also want to know, the boots on the ground, like who's the owner, they want to know, the owner, they don't want to just hand over character, no one, you know, so how do you as a new into the homecare space portray that you have expertise in history and longevity, and, and, you know, and all that stuff, but also be the face of the franchise, right? You can't unless you tap into a franchise company, you know, and so we do a lot of like what Crystal saying featuring our owners, letting them tell their story, you know, their why, why did you get an old care? You know, what's your personal story,
Lance Graulich 31:21
you know, a lot of prospective business owners franchisees forget, you know, they they look to the brand, and while the brand is everything to them at the moment, it's the community that you're joining, because I got to imagine at home Well, the best practices of the top franchisees are something that are talked about and shared quite often. It's not just what you've learned from corporate, you know, I tell everybody, McDonald's, you know, a franchisee invented the fillet of fish. It wasn't corporate, I mean, there's there's collaboration, that's the beauty of franchise, I
Crystal 31:57
think you're tapping into one of our key differentiators. And again, I can say this with a lot of confidence, having worked in other many other franchise brands. And I tell owners this, I tell my team this, I have, I have never been a part of a franchise system, as wonderful as that of our home. Well, franchise owners. And I and we, you know, I try to psychoanalyze it and say, Why is that the case? You know, are we just really good at picking good people? But what I think it ultimately is, is we're bringing in people who are altruistic, you know, they want to help others. That's kind of innate in them, which is why they're getting into homecare anyway. And so when you have an owner who is having issues and wants to call up another owner, I mean, how many times Brandon? Do we have people that are like fly in, come in, hang with me for a week, I will show you the ropes inside and out of anything and everything you want to know. And so I think it's that it's that compassion and that that that feeling to want to help others. But then I also think that there really isn't a whole lot of competition there as well.
Brandon 33:07
And under Crystal's leadership, like we've done that strategically, right, like, setting up things like masterminds and communication and coaching our franchise business coaches, to like, Hey, you might know the answer to what this franchisee is asking you. But why don't we connect them with another franchisee that went through a similar struggle? Because they're gonna be it's gonna carry even more weight coming from them, you know, and so we try to be the connector, you know, I mean, it's like our main role as a franchise company, we're kind of like, okay, we're going to guard the brand, we're going to make sure that everything's consistent. And, you know, we're going to look at where the, where the industry is going 1020 years from now. But we're also going to defer to our owners on certain things that are happening today, in their local market, because they're the ones that are there, they're the boots on the ground, it's
Crystal 33:54
our biggest step that is a big strategy for us is, is creating and letting people tap into the network. We just like every other franchise, we have our annual conference. And that is a lot of us speaking to our owners and telling them what we're doing and what's coming up. But we do make a we're very intentional on creating as much time as possible. And that's feedback from our owners. I mean, they say that that's the most sometimes the most valuable is just letting them sit around a roundtable with each other and just talk. Yeah, so we recently implemented last year regional meetings where we're just hosts. I mean, that's all it really is. And we bring everybody in from a certain region and throw out topics and just let them go and they'll talk for hours. And we get some of our best feedback from you know, events like those.
Lance Graulich 34:46
I absolutely love it. It's the classic. You're in business for yourself, not by yourself. That's all what franchising is about. Now, here's the best segment of this particular episode. Tom Cruise said it best Show me the money. So, in your Franchise Disclosure Document, I have a note here, then your friends,
Brandon 35:08
questions coming up here. You're going to get our attorney on the line,
Lance Graulich 35:13
are we thinking caps on it? I have your attorney as your lifeline here. You don't need that. So the FTD for those of you folks listening is the Franchise Disclosure Document that every franchise brand needs to create their franchise attorney will create there are 23 items. Item number 19. Is the earnings claim. The way home well, does the earnings claim. The way you guys I should say do the earnings claim is that you actually list all of the revenue for all the franchisees and want to you know, there's a lot of things that jumped out at me, but you know, for the purposes of expediency, you know, franchise, franchisee number 30. In 2022, the 2022 FTD shows out of one territory did $3,467,000 in revenue. That's extraordinary. And I know what year he opened, it says that too, right, Lance? Let's see. And yeah, and he was only open. I have it right here. 2020. He opened in 2020. So I know there are extraordinary numbers coming out of home well, and anybody that's interested in pursuing home, well, you'll see the FTD at some point, you'll be able to talk to existing franchisees you've had enormous revenue growth through the pandemic as well. So what say you both of you to that?
Brandon 36:37
Yeah, he's a great franchisee.
Crystal 36:41
He's a franchisee number 30.
Brandon 36:43
Though, I mean, it's not a super anomaly, though. I mean, like, that's the crazy thing. I mean, we, when we came together, collectively, three and a half, four years ago, it's funny because, you know, Bruce charged us with, you know, you got to finding the best talent, you know, what can we do? How can we be a disrupter, you know, like, you know, and it's, it's really cool to have the backing up a board that, you know, when it comes to initiatives, if it's going to help our company, help our franchisees grow revenue, because that's going to lead to more royalties, like he wants us to do it. Don't leave it on the chopping block, because of budgetary concerns. He's like, bring it to me. And that's really cool. Right crystal? And so we've been able to do things to position the brand in the right way to find the right owner, you know, for sure, I mean, we spent man I mean, hours and hours and hours of diving into those Oracle's who's our ideal franchisee, who's our best franchisee today? Well, just because that's who they are today, who what do we want the system to look like tomorrow and crafting this persona? We spent a long time doing that. And I think that, you know, it's that old adage about how, you know, luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. We spent 2019. You know, like that a lot of a lot of effort went into preparing for the future of homecare. And then the trigger moment happened when the pandemic hit in 2020. And I remember turning to the owners and saying like look, homecare was meant for this, like we were built, you guys are the ones that are going to get this country through this and the owners latched on to that. So I think it's a combination of things of, you know, finding the right owners, you know, and the business model, the being there and the industry just being really right kind of Crystal what would you say?
Crystal 38:28
Yeah, I would just add that, you know, I think it's funny because we don't talk about this very often anymore, because it's sort of old news to us. But in addition to doing significant investment in finding the right persona on the right owner, we looked at our competition in home care, and did a huge dive into other home care franchisors and saw okay, what are the opportunities, how can we be better? What can we do? And one of the things that we did and again, it was it was sort of old news now, but still I think we're writing its curtails for sure is completely rebrand our company. You know, we took a lot of folks that are part of the corporate office now come from much larger, bigger brands and bigger franchisors. And so we took what we learned and brought all of that to an a much smaller, emerging brand. And in an industry that was sort of antiquated when it comes to branding and messaging and positioning. And we invested in that. And we completely rebranded the entire company a handful of years ago. And then we have systematically taking every function including franchise development, and broken it down and built it back up to be as strong as it possibly can be. And to Brandon's point. I think we were 80% there when the pandemic hit. And so, it we were just there at the right time at the right place, and then that rest So that 20% We're working on, you know, we are we're, we have, we're not at a point where we build things down, we had to tear it to the ground, we're close to be built up in every aspect and every function of our business to help our owners. We're just putting on the final touches. And then we're actually meeting here in Chicago, not too long to see what the plans will be for the next three years. Because we feel like that plan that we had three to five years ago, we're pretty much there. So now what are we going to do to pour fuel on that fire even further?
Lance Graulich 40:31
I love it. I love it. Well, and that's also why for all those reasons, both of us sighted you know, you have happy successful franchisees and great validation. Final words for today. Brandon, you go first, we have to give the CEO the last word here. So Brandon, final words of wisdom and thoughts.
Brandon 40:48
Sure, no, I mean, I think that if I can say there's one thing that we've done well, at home well, over the last three years, and it was done intentionally is that, when it comes to franchising candidates, they get treated with white gloves, you know, when they're, when they're beat them when their prospective owner and they, they get treated like they're the most important, you know, person that that franchise sales professional recruiter is talking to, right. And that's the truth, right? And then after they sign their agreement, and they become part of the system, sometimes that wanes a little bit, you know, we haven't we focus really hard to make sure that doesn't stop, you know, we treat the franchise recruitment process, as literally just a, you're working with a different department inside of home. Well, you know, and you know, in, we're sort of dating you and getting to know you, and you're gonna meet our family, our franchisees, and, you know, and if you if you like them, you're gonna meet our, you know, our senior level executives, and you know, our parents, right, and they're going to prove that we can get married, but now we're married. So now we're committed, and we're going to be committed to you. So when you signed an agreement with home, well, we want you to be 100% all in on us, because we're 100% all in on you in sickness and in health, very sick, this death do us part, right, you know,
Crystal 42:06
pandemic, and recession, whatever
Brandon 42:08
it is, we're all in on you. And that carries weight from your, you know, like I said, during the recruitment process, you're gonna have a dedicated person you're talking to all the way up until you open your doors. And then you have a franchise business coach, who will talk to you weekly, if not more, anytime you need them for the life of your of your franchise agreement. So love it, because
Crystal 42:30
they show they may show up at your door even unannounced. To say hi,
Lance Graulich 42:36
Crystal, any other final thoughts? Brandon summed up a lot of good stuff, but you get the final word Miss CEO,
Crystal 42:43
hey, he did sum up a lot of a lot of great things there. But I would just say that if you are someone out there looking to change, looking for something that you can call your own, and to have a potential huge windfall, financially and emotionally, that home well, almost for you, you know, to give us give us a shout because at the end of the day, you're not just getting a business, but you are getting a family. And I know that sounds a little hokey, but it's true. The system the system is wonderful. And I truly cannot say enough great words about the corporate team. Like I said, I mentioned it earlier, but the they are so fully invested in the success of our owners. And I like to tell people if you know if you don't believe me when I say that, at the most cynical level, yours if you're not successful, we're not successful, because we're only getting a small piece of the pie that you're bringing in. And so I always say you know, if you if you don't believe me, at the most cynical level, just know that we need you to succeed in order for us to succeed, but it's passed the need, we really want that for owners. And we don't take it lightly that people are betting on us. You know, when they sign that franchise agreement and decide to be at home well, and we we care about that through the full lifecycle of their business all the way to exit Brandon helps a lot of people figure out their exit strategy as well. And that's another big thing that we offer too.
Lance Graulich 44:18
Well, that was amazing and amazing. Summary and keep in mind on my website I on franchising.com I do have this Oracle Business Builder assessment so I can help anybody listening determine whether Wholesale is right for them before I even introduce you to Brandon. But I want to thank Brandon and Crystal so much for being here. This has been amazing. And I look forward to amazing continued future success with you guys.
Crystal 44:46
This has been a lot of fun.
Lance Graulich 44:47
Thank you Take care, guys