← Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
The Exit Strategy That Turned a $250K Franchise Into a $2 Million Payday
01:19:32
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- [00:00]
Dr. John E. Hayes
I was probably in franchising for 20 years until I interviewed this husband and wife who told me they weren't going to buy a franchise until they could envision selling the franchise.
- [00:12]
Jeff Duden
Interesting.
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Dr. John E. Hayes
I'd never heard anybody say that before. Half of them, no. I don't know which business I'm going to own, but I know I'm going to own a franchise, or more than likely, I'm going to own multiple units of a brand, or I'm going to be a mumbo and own multiple units of multiple brands.
- [00:33]
Jeff Duden
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Unemployable Podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you co authored one of the greatest sales books of all time with David Sandler, the founder of Sandler Sales, if you've spent more than 40 years advising franchise companies around the world, if you've lived franchising as a franchisee, a franchisor, a consultant and educator, and if today you serve as the Titus Chair for Franchise Leadership at Palm Beach Atlantic University, your name can only be the infamous Dr. John E. Hayes. Welcome.
- [01:07]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Wow. Thank you. It's a pleasure.
- [01:15]
Jeff Duden
Is it all true? Is it all true?
- [01:17]
Dr. John E. Hayes
It's all true. Yes, I can recall. Yeah, that's true.
- [01:22]
Jeff Duden
Well, the good news is I know you and I knew directionally that it was all true, but, you know, sometimes when we use AI to prepare things, I had a podcast the other day and it was like, yeah, I sold that business in 2021. I'm like, well, sorry, I didn't. AI didn't pick that up. Well, here's an opening question. As an educator, what impact do you see franchising making in the lives of young people today?
- [01:52]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Wow. It is opening up their imaginations even wider than. I mean, they don't have an imagination problem, the Gen Zs, but they have a problem understanding or getting their arms around how they can get into their own business, which almost all of them want to do. I'm going to say 90%. That's what I get in my classroom. 90% want to be in their own business eventually, if not right away. And a lot of them do it right away, even before they graduate. But they had no idea that franchising existed and that there are at least 4,000 different franchise opportunities, of which maybe half are really good opportunities. You know, we talk about 4,000, but there are a lot of bad franchise opportunities.
- [02:47]
Jeff Duden
You think half are good?
- [02:51]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Okay, I'm being kind. It's Friday.
- [02:54]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, you are.
- [02:55]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [02:56]
Jeff Duden
You're generous.
- [02:56]
Dr. John E. Hayes
I saw one of my advisory board members who did a podcast and he only said about 420 of them, in his opinion, are good. But, you know, that's a whole different topic. At least these students are finding out, wow, I didn't know this existed. And, yeah, I'll have to do it their way, the franchisor's way. But I'm okay with that because I don't plan to invent the next great idea. I'm okay with getting in on whatever brand name they decide that they like. And, gee, there are a lot of them. And so I get letters. This is graduation time. So this is when I get the notes and the letters saying, I came to college to study business, study marketing, study communications, political science. But you gave me a whole new idea, a whole new avenue to pursue. Parents say that thank you for changing our child's life. I mean, that's. That's really heady stuff, you know, to hear that.
- [04:07]
Jeff Duden
And, you know, when I was.
- [04:09]
Dr. John E. Hayes
That I can do it.
- [04:11]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, you do amazing work there. And. And I'm looking forward to unpacking it. You know, when I was working with my first real brand, Advanticlean building that, and we were partnered with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. And when Danny K. Started that, started that charity and started the hospital, there they were. There was about a 90% failure rate, death rate of children's leukemia and things like that. Now it's inverted to about a 90% success rate. And it's similar to entrepreneurship. I remember when I was a. When I was a college student, I don't think there was clearly less than 10% of the people in my graduating class that had any idea that they wanted to start a business. But I'm interested now to get your perspective on what's changed. Is it the gig economy? Is it lack of confidence in corporate America? Is it social media giving people more vision or more transparency or visibility into entrepreneurship? What is it about these young people today that they think more readily that entrepreneurial pursuits would be for them early in their life?
- [05:30]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, well, partly I have to explain that I teach at a conservative university. It's a Christian university. Palm Beach. Atlantic University, West Palm Beach, Florida. Small university, not even 4,000 students. The students who we get often will come from families where mom and dad or mom or dad are in business for themselves. So they've already had that role model. Got it. So that gives them some advantage, I think, over students at other universities, but by and large, even students not at our university. When I speak to others who are teaching business and franchising, that's the Trend students want to provide for themselves and they want to ensure their financial welfare and even their children's and grandchildren's as well. And they know that having a job isn't going to provide that. So they need to be in a business. And plus there's the idea that I really want to do something that I enjoy and I don't want to go get a job where I'm, I'm not really into it and it certainly isn't mine. So that's a different mindset. But when you. And social media helps because there are a lot of things that they can see but it's, it only confuses and I, and I don't see any clarity when they come to Palm Beach Atlantic as a freshman sophomore, maybe they transfer in. They don't have any clarity about what they're going to do when they graduate until, and it's not all of them, but until they get into a franchise class. Once they take Principles of Franchising, half of that class of 20, usually maybe 25, half of them know I don't know which business I'm going to own, but I know I'm going to own a franchise or more than likely I'm going to own multiple units of a brand or I'm going to be a mumbo and, and, and own multiple units of multiple brands. Yeah. And they didn't have any of that idea prior to learning about franchising. Now you mentioned the gig economy, that I think that's a problem for the Gen Zs. It's like a menu, it's like a smorgasbord. And frequently they have two or three jobs where they're only working maybe five hours a week or maybe 20 hours a week depending. But they like having that variety and there's lots of opportunities because of the gig economy to do it. I can be a bartender on Friday nights if that's what I want. But I think when they graduate, they still have the gig economy mindset. And I just heard from one of my Titus center advisory board members who hired not a Titus center student, but hired a young person, entry level to come into their business and said in two months we had to let her go. She called off sick way too often and we had to ask for a doctor's letter to make. Something was strange. Well, she had other jobs. She didn't have time for their full time job and they think that's okay. Somehow this is a problem. Yeah.
- [08:59]
Jeff Duden
What is the, what is the landscape of education in franchising? I know there's just a small handful of universities that even have a program. Yet there's829,000 franchise establishments in the United States. One out of every eight people. Maybe you have a better stat for me, but it was at one point, one out of every eight people employed worked for some sort of a franchise system. Almost 9 million people. It's a huge part of the economy. Small business is a huge driver of gdp. And then franchising makes businesses accessible to families on Main street usa. So it plays a very important role. Yet everybody I talked to stumbled into it somehow. There was no path. And so I really applaud what you're doing at Palm Beach Atlantic with the program there. But how much is really available for people to enroll in?
- [09:55]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Oh no, you have to go looking for it. And you don't even go looking for it because you don't know that you should. So what students will say to me, I came here to study marketing, but then I discovered this franchise program because my roommate told me about it. I didn't come here to study franchising. Okay, we get that two or three or four times I've had, whoa, my father's on your advisory board. My, you know, could be, and usually it's a young man, but young women too come to study franchising. But in my nine years, maybe I've had nine students came to PBA to study franchising.
- [10:33]
Jeff Duden
Got it.
- [10:34]
Dr. John E. Hayes
And the university doesn't do all that it could do to help that, you know, they're not making franchising. I don't think even the university understands what we're doing and how valuable it is and how much more valuable it could be to people and how many more students they could attract if they used franchising as available at Palm Beach Atlantic University. It's only at a half dozen universities. Right.
- [11:03]
Jeff Duden
I know we've spoken about this before, but what's your view of the impact that remote work is having on young people and their development in the workplace?
- [11:13]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, this is another problem that we're stumbling into. We thought, oh, this is great. And sadly. Well, I shouldn't say sadly. Every student in my franchise program has to complete a 90 hour franchise specific internship in order to earn a concentration in franchising. And if you have a concentration in franchising, you can go to the IFA convention, sit in on a CFE program and you'll score 100 on the test and people sitting at the table with you who have been in franchising 10 years won't. And they'll say, how did you get all those answers? Right? It's because they've got a really solid education in franchising, including an internship. But the internships are remote more than not because, you know, we're in West Palm Beach. There are a lot of franchisors in South Florida, but students can only drive so far. They can get down to Fort Lauderdale, but that's a hike for them to go down there to do an internship. But we don't have that many opportunities right in the West Palm beach area. So they do remote internships. A company like yours could say, hey, I want a student who knows about franchising, who could work on our marketing, who could program. And they can do it remote. We get a lot of that. Franchisors, suppliers as well, multi unit franchisees provide internships. But they're not getting that personal. Hey, I was in Jeff Duden's office, or I was in Ray Titus office and here's what he said. And because Jeff understood that I want to do this, he called his friend who, who can help me now I've got a mentor. That doesn't happen remotely.
- [13:02]
Jeff Duden
Right. Oh, all of the good stuff. I, you know, we have a pla. We have a multi brand platform here at Homefront Brands. And when we launched the platform and we acquired the brands largely in 2022 and we started hiring people, I immediately like, I'm like, we're going to need more space. We have a 22,000 square foot building, but we didn't have enough office space.
- [13:25]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [13:26]
Jeff Duden
So I went out, hired an architect at Plans Drawn. We built an outside gazebo area for employees to hang out. You know, big covered gazebo with a fire pit and, you know, all bar seating. Seating and walls, the whole thing. And then we were going to permit for our plans and we were up to about 70 employees. So we'd grown really quickly and we got up to 70 employees. And I just, we just. I was old school. I was expecting that we were going to be largely an in the office workforce because that's what I was accustomed to and that's what I was. And that's what I believe in. I believe in this proximity where people overhear the conversation in the hallway. And I would, I thought people would want to be around the executives. And you know, we had a handful of executives that moved to Charlotte that came in and coming to the office every day. John, out of our 70 employees, we've got like nine that work in the office. It's, it's. I mean, we killed the project, I'm like, thank goodness I didn't spend a million and a half dollars to, you know, modernize the. Because we were going to have seating for 100 and we had a coffee bar going in. I mean, we had a whole thing, you know, and, and now there's, you know, I'd be there, it'd be, it'd be an echo chamber now here. So now we use the facility for a training almost every week amongst our six brands. We use the facility for franchise owners to have regional meetings. We have a meet the team day one or two times. So it's, we do have a lot of hosting a lot of entertainment, but these people don't need permanent seating here. So it's, it's interesting and I'm, I'm interested in your view of how, what impact have you seen in your students and in their placements of AI so far? And I know it's probably a hot topic and people can spin out of control with it if you want to, but, you know, at least from where you're sitting right now, how are your students embracing AI? Are they using it to help them move into a career?
- [15:32]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yes. Not, not at the speed that we want. I think universities for a while and professors were stunned by AI and said, hey, if we catch you using it, then you're going to get an F. My policy is if you don't use it, we've got a problem.
- [15:53]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, I didn't need AI when I was growing up to get Fs.
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Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, right.
- [15:59]
Jeff Duden
I was able to do them. I did them old school.
- [16:02]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Right. And so yes, we, I want to know how are you using it? So I want you to use it. I want to know how are you using it. But if you're using it to write a paper and we're getting away from asking for papers because AI can write the paper and do a decent job. And even though we can detect it and AI itself will tell on itself because if I put a student's paper into ChatGPT and say, did you write this? Or words to that effect, a prompt? Yeah, I did 80% of this. Okay, that's not what we want. Because you go to college to learn how to think. That's a big reason, big part of your education. A lot of students get out of college without knowing how to think. Nobody forced them to do it, didn't want to do it. They did other things in college. But when we bring in people like you and others who are buried in franchise day to day and have real issues where you might need. If you mentor my students and you want them to use AI to help you to solve a problem, that's how we want them to use AI. And we're not there yet, that's still going to be a big leap. We still have too many who will say, well, I used it to make sure my grammar was correct and spelling. Yeah, okay, but in the process, AI also told you that you had five paragraphs that need to be rewritten and they went ahead and did, went ahead and did it for you.
- [17:45]
Jeff Duden
Right.
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Dr. John E. Hayes
So yeah, this is a tough one, teaching today in the midst of AI because students are, you know, we're human and we tend to be lazy sometimes and we tend to do other things and we forget there's a deadline Tuesday and I can't get it done without AI.
- [18:08]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. So much of education is compound on what you learned. I mean math and my son's in engineering. Right. So it starts at the base level with physics and then it gets up into this very specific physics that has to do with dynamics and then it's got this and everything builds on top of it. But AI will go to the end of the story and give you the answer. So the question is, are students going to continue to find value in building the layers of knowledge and wisdom? Because the answer is available immediately in, you know, with writing the right prompt. So yeah, it's, it's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting to see how it evolves.
- [18:55]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Challenge. Because you know, if I could get the answer right now, why do I want to go through 10 exercises to understand how I got to that answer? Well, you know that that's. We're not teaching people to be patient or to understand the process. I don't think we know how to do that in the age of AI because they can just jump to the end and get to the conclusion.
- [19:23]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, medical in particular. My daughter in law is a physician. My mom went through a cancer situation and I mean I leaned into AI to prepare for the doctor's appointments. But I would never depend upon AI for health advice because you just, I mean, so it's like you gotta have the, someone's gotta have the underlying knowledge and experience when it really, really matters. So. Well, interesting. And I think about from a franchising perspective, you know, how can we, how can we provide greater value to our franchisees even, you know, even. So I had Sean Clark, I seem to reference this a lot, but I had the CEO of Go High Level, which is a really fast growing CRM on the podcast. I Mean, they have six. I think they're second to either Salesforce or HubSpot in terms of number of clients. And they started that business in 2017. They don't really advertise. But his take on it was, look, there's going to be all these AI startups and they're going to be single modality things. You know, we're going to take a lead and do this or we're going to, you know, it's going to, it's going to have a single purpose modality. And then once they learn how to build an AI, they're going to go lateral. So the company that was converting the leads now can build a voice answering and then they can also build a booking mechanism and they can build. So they're going to, Everybody's going to be going crazy to do product line extensions using AI. But he believed that the people were actually going to win in the end, which it seems like there's always three or four big companies that take the whole market. When technology's involved is the companies that already had a customer base and used AI to enhance their products and just gave it to the customers for free because it didn't cost them much to make the enhancement using the technology. So the bigger companies will just get bigger, the smaller, some people will make money along the way doing startups. Certainly there's money in helping the 31 small billion small, 31 million small businesses in this country understand how to use AI in their business. But, you know, things are, when things flash, everything in my experience is everything swings back the other way. Right. So as fast as something swings forward, then there's going to be some backward swing of, you know, everybody that went into business and made some money is now that many people are going to be going out of business and, and, and then it, it settled somewhere in the middle of, of the pendulum. So it's good. But, but this one might be different. This one might be different.
- [22:01]
Dr. John E. Hayes
I think part of what we can do as educators is tell stories because even though we have AI and you can get to the end of the story faster. Well, you can't if it's your story, nobody can. They don't know your story. So they don't know how to get to the end. They don't know how to put my story that I'm telling them into AI or your story that if you wanted to come to teach my students and teach them the layers of how to solve a common problem as a franchisee, you could do that through one example of a Story would be just using Jack, my franchisee, who came from here, who put in this much money, who decided he wanted to do this, this, and this, and this happened. How do we get him to solve that problem? So, and that's what Michael Gerber did in the E Myth, which is one of the most terrific books in business for people to read. I use it in the classroom with my entrepreneurship and franchising students. And, you know, he's using the lady Sally, who's in a small business, and how to take Sally through the progression. So if you have their attention and they understand why they're going through the exercise, then they don't need AI as fast, they don't need AI to solve the problem. They'll want to be in there to figure it out. Yeah, yeah.
- [23:34]
Jeff Duden
Dr. Hayes, how did you fall into franchising?
- [23:37]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, that was, you know, I was just telling Kent State University today, they contacted me about that kind of, that question. And I have two degrees from Kent State in journalism. My undergraduate, my master's degree, both in news writing, which I wouldn't advise anybody to go do today because I thought I was going to be a newspaper writer all of my life, but God definitely had a different plan. But the ability to write and understanding how to build a story and to create maybe a. Whether it's a short story or an article that's going to go into Forbes magazine or it's a book like what I wrote with David Sandler and what I wrote with Fred DeLuca, the co founder of Subway and others. I had that skill. That's what I learned in college. And I wrote a book about franchising. It was called Franchising the Inside Story. It came out in the early 1980s and changed my life because the media and people say in the age of Trump, fake news became very popular. Well, fake news existed in the early 1980s.
- [25:03]
Jeff Duden
Oh, come on.
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Dr. John E. Hayes
Every day.
- [25:06]
Jeff Duden
The government never lied to us. The media never lied to us.
- [25:10]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Radio stations across the country would introduce me. Not as well as you did at the beginning of this. They would introduce me as the world authority on franchising. And they were going to talk to me about my book. I think I was maybe 32 years old. I wasn't a world authority on anything. I never owned a franchise, never worked for a franchise. All I did was write a book. I did interview a hundred people to get that book. But if you write a book, the media will say you're the world authority on that topic. So I started teaching people how to write books. But that When I kept being booked to speak at conventions about franchising, one day I said, I really need something legitimate that holds me up. So I became a franchisee with a partner, however, who operated the franchises. I didn't have the mind to do that. So I've been a franchisee several times. Then I was sitting on boards like the Dwyer Group, which is neighborly today. And I sat on the board of we buy ugly houses, homevestors of America biggest. It was the McDonald's of the real estate investment industry. And that founder and I became very, very close. I did a lot of work for him. He got cancer, bile duct cancer. Was dead within several months. And his. He and his family asked me to succeed him as the franchisor. So, again, God's plan just didn't. Doesn't fail anybody. And God's plan for me was, was that I was going to be in franchising. But I got there with two degrees in journalism and a PhD in American history. So it was not the. The regular route.
- [27:01]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. How did you meet David Sandler?
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Dr. John E. Hayes
He was a client, and I shook in my boots the day he called me, because I knew he was the sales guru. Yeah. And I wasn't any good at selling or didn't think I was any good at selling. And he said, I want you to come down here to Maryland and sell me on why I should hire your marketing services. I don't think I was ever so unsettled knowing that. How do you go talk to the guru of selling? Sandler himself. But he was very kind and very, very helpful, and I did win the account. And in the process of it, he knew that I had written Don Dwyer's book, Target Success. And he and Don Dwyer had been franchisees in a franchise together out of Waco, Texas. And he said, can you help me the way you helped my friend Don? I want to put the Sandler submarine, the Seven Steps to Selling into a book. And I said, sure, I'd love to do that. That's what I do best. And so we wrote you Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a seminar, which is a whole lot of a title.
- [28:20]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, that's. I always wondered about that. I mean, it's a. It's a great. It's a great title. How did you come. What does. What does that mean?
- [28:29]
Dr. John E. Hayes
He said, listen, you. There are a lot of people out there who want you to come to their seminar, and they're going to teach you how to be a salesperson. No, they're not. You can't learn it. It's like riding a bike. You don't get on the bike and you ride it. You get on the bike and fall off and figure out, how do I prevent myself from falling off? How can I be successful? And then you get on the bike and you go a little further and you run into a car or you run into a tree. How can I prevent that from. How can I be more successful? And he broke it down into the seven steps. So then he created the Breakfast Club. So you go to a Sandler franchisee, sells you on coming to their Breakfast Club. And every Tuesday morning, we're going to meet at 7 o' clock or 8 o', clock. We're going to meet for 90 minutes and we're going to help you get on the bike and we're going to see what happened when you got on the bike. And you got 10 colleagues there or 20 colleagues there rooting you on and helping you. And if you do that over and over and over and over, you will learn how to be a terrific salesperson, but you won't learn it by. At a seminar.
- [29:40]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, method works. That's their Sandler. Quick start. I've done it. I've. I've put so many people through that program. And sales, you need a. You need an internal process. And they're all very similar, but David's was great, so I'm so thankful you wrote that book. I've given it out to so many, so many people.
- [29:58]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's a terrific book. I loved working with him. He was humorous and he gave me so many. He was one of my mentors. He was a client. But, you know, he paid me so that he could be my mentor like Don Dwyer did.
- [30:17]
Jeff Duden
Well, maybe you were the better salesman after all.
- [30:19]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, I wasn't so bad.
- [30:22]
Jeff Duden
I guess not. Hey, I have a question. You said that Don Dwyer, who's founder of Dwyer Group, which is now neighborly, and David Sandler were franchisees together.
- [30:33]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yes, in. Oh, it's not coming to me. You would know it. It was in Waco, Texas, and they were selling. Selling. It was.
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Jeff Duden
Was it a Ziggler?
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Dr. John E. Hayes
Wasn't Ziglar? I worked for Ziggler. I wrote a book with Zig Ziglar. Yeah. No, this was Paul Meyer, maybe.
- [30:57]
Jeff Duden
Paul Meyer, that's right.
- [30:59]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah. Okay. It was all on cassette tapes. Yeah, but I can't remember it. It's not around anymore.
- [31:11]
Jeff Duden
I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Oh, well. Well, that's well, incredible story. And then from. What was your connection to era?
- [31:23]
Dr. John E. Hayes
ERA as an expense reduction analyst? Right.
- [31:26]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:27]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Okay.
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Jeff Duden
You write a book for them.
- [31:29]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yes, I wrote about how to the Success. I forgot about that. Yeah, I forget the name of that book.
- [31:38]
Jeff Duden
I have that book.
- [31:39]
Dr. John E. Hayes
They were based in Dallas or the American offices. Yeah. Okay, there it is.
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Jeff Duden
You've written so many books, you don't even remember making money.
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Dr. John E. Hayes
Are you talking about real estate or are you talking about expense reduction analysts?
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Jeff Duden
Yeah, making money while saving. Making money while saving money.
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Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, yeah. And they use that as a, you know, a booklet to help sell franchises. I've written a bunch of those.
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Jeff Duden
Yeah, yeah, these are. This is good. The. Dan Sullivan was with him at a meeting and he said that. And I'll get the. The percentages are wrong here. Right. But he writes very small, thin book. Single, basically. Single idea, single modality, single concept books, 50 to 60 pages. He says if you write a 200 page book, people are going to read 15 to 20% of it. You write a hundred page book, people are going to read half of it. And if you write a 50 to 60 to 80 page or 50 to 80 page book, they're going to read a hundred percent of it. So he writes a book every quarter. And they're usually very, very smart, but single topic and you can read them in one. One plane ride.
- [32:55]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that idea. And you know, we still love books. I mean, it's not a great industry for making money for a lot of people like it used to be. And a lot of people want to listen to the book, which is okay as well. I think all of my books are. My books sell more in audio than they do in print.
- [33:19]
Jeff Duden
Do they?
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Dr. John E. Hayes
Okay, that happened several years ago. More audio sales. Yeah.
- [33:25]
Jeff Duden
Well, tell us what's going on at Palm Beach Atlantic University with the Titus Center.
- [33:30]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah. So this is the ninth year of that center. It just flew by. And I have taken a step back from the day to day operations because frankly, it was a seven day a week job doing and I had to raise all the money, even though Ray Titus came along, lives in West Palm beach and decided to give the university a million and a half dollars about 10 years ago if they would open a center that would teach young people about franchising and he would hire those.
- [34:05]
Jeff Duden
Very generous. That was very generous.
- [34:06]
Dr. John E. Hayes
That was great of him.
- [34:07]
Jeff Duden
What, what, what? Where did he need the tax write off for?
- [34:11]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, lots of things. Well, he's done another million and a half to go into our new business. Building, which you have to come and see one of these days, because we have the state of the art building, not just on our campus, in all of West Palm beach, maybe between here and Miami, there's nothing like it. Beautiful building. We just moved in a month or so ago and Ray helped with that. So we, we got off the ground 2017, and it occurred to me because I, I left Kuwait where I was teaching, and I loved Kuwait. My life in Kuwait. People don't understand this at all. They think that all the terrorists live in the Middle East. They don't. They live in the United States. The Kuwaitis are happy about that because they would laugh and say, well, they might be Kuwaitis or they might be from the Middle east, but they live in Chicago. We don't live here. We don't want them here.
- [35:10]
Jeff Duden
It's very comforting.
- [35:12]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Just a great life that I had teaching there. But then Ray, who was one of my clients for years, contacted me and said, I gave this money. And the president of the university said, we need a PhD who knows how to teach franchising. And Ray said, he's in Kuwait, we just need to convince him to come back. And that happened. But then it occurred to me, there's only one student registered for, for Principles of Franchising. This isn't going to work. Maybe students don't want to study franchising. They don't even know what it is, so how could they? And I needed the university to do, to step up and do more to promote what was going on. And also the university said to me, now you don't get any of Ray's money. You're going to need money to operate the center. If you want to have an assistant, you have to pay for the assistant salary. If you want to travel to the IFA convention, if you want to be a member of the ifa, you'll have to raise the money to do that. And we're going to give you a stipend in addition to your teaching salary. We're going to give you a stipend to run the center, but we expect you to pay that back at the end of the year. This was not, you know, this, I didn't do my research on this. But again, by the grace of God, my first franchise class in 2017 had 17 bold students in it. And we've never stopped from there. That core of 17 went out and told 17 more, and they told 34 more. And on and on and on it went. So we've graduated now. We had our largest graduating class in May. Just a week ago. Two weeks ago. A week ago, I guess. And so about 120 students from PBA Small University earned a concentration in franchising. And of that number 12 are franchisees. And they've acquired 13 franchises because one bought two. And half of those dozen students who became franchisees did so before they graduated, against my advice, because I said it's more than full time being a franchisee. Being a student is at least half time. You got to spend some time here on your studies. I've got one who, he's in the window cleaning franchise in West Palm beach and he's doing gangbusters. But he has not finished his degree and doesn't have time to come and finish the degree, which is, okay, everyone doesn't have to have a college degree today. But knowing how to be a franchisee, how to be a business operator, this, this young man will regret it if he doesn't come back and get some of those fundamentals. Then several dozen of these graduates work for people like, well, they don't work for you yet, but they might. But they work for Ray Titus. Of course. They work for Midas, and they work for Burger King. I got my first graduate who, you know, this is a kid who studied. He majored in accounting. He got a concentration in franchising. He wants, he doesn't want to eventually wants to own a franchise, but he wants to get into the numbers and franchising. And Burger King is going to refranchise hundreds of locations that they bought back, and Burger King's going to come back strong. This young man got hired on the refranchising team. Okay. He's going to be the numbers guy. He's going to go out and meet with Burger King franchisees and show them the plan, show them why the numbers makes sense.
- [39:08]
Jeff Duden
All right, so for, for any of our franchise candidates or other people that are newer to the industry, what is refranchising?
- [39:16]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, this is where you take franchises back. Franchisor takes it back and, and fixes a few things and wants to refranchise to.
- [39:24]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [39:25]
Dr. John E. Hayes
To another franchisee, maybe one who wants to own 20 instead of just owning one.
- [39:31]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. Or it could be corporate stores.
- [39:33]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, corporate stores as well.
- [39:34]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, yeah. I, I fund, I funded my, I funded my, my franchise habit with, by selling our locations around the Southeast to raise money, and we shifted people from operating those locations to franchising. And. But yeah, it's, it's. And, and you know, there's a certain franchise candidate that is more interested in buying Something that's already going as opposed to planting a flag in a new town and you know, having to start it from.
- [40:03]
Dr. John E. Hayes
We don't emphasize that enough.
- [40:05]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [40:06]
Dr. John E. Hayes
It's not all about the startup. The first thing I do and probably week two is give my students a disc profile. Once I know their disc profile, I know if they're startup material or not. Yeah. And that doesn't mean you can't be in franchising or own your own business, but it means you want to skip that horrible for some startup period of two or three years of working nonstop and not making any money until things grow up and catch on.
- [40:37]
Jeff Duden
Well, that's bad advertising for candidates.
- [40:39]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Got access to money, you can go buy that and skip the startup.
- [40:42]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, yep, yep. And there, and there's people that are sophisticated, high, you know, well capitalized people that yeah. Just want to maybe buy two ongoing businesses and grab some efficiencies and things. And you know, it's interesting, we have a talk track here that's really starts with outcomes and I found in franchising that people fall short of that discussion. They'll talk through, okay, well here's, here's the franchise opportunity, here's how it works. Then you work through the awards process, then they go to onboarding, then they go to training, and then they go and launch their store and then you get to unit economics and it's kind of where the story stops. You know, you have, we have, we have a performance coaching model with five levels of performance but at the end of that or sometimes people get interrupted like they need to sell their business, they need to exit their business. So do you, do you think there's, there should be more education in franchising around selling your business? We say that sale is not a four letter word. It's not a bad word. In franchising, the business is there to serve you as the franchisee versus a franchisee thinking that they have to operate this business for two decades or three decades. What's your, what's your view on that?
- [42:05]
Dr. John E. Hayes
One of the, one of the big advantages of writing books particularly or writing about any topic, but you get to know it from different angles. I was probably in franchising for 20 years until I interviewed this husband and wife who told me when they weren't going to buy a franchise until they could envision selling the franchise.
- [42:30]
Jeff Duden
Interesting.
- [42:31]
Dr. John E. Hayes
I'd never heard anybody say that before. Yeah, everybody else is focused on, well, I'm going to get this thing started, I've got to get the permits, I got to get the equipment. I got to hire people. Their whole vision was, if we can't see how we're going to sell it, we're going to invest $250,000, but we're going to sell it for $2 million and we're going to do that in seven years. And if we can't see that possibility and this happened up in North Carolina, if we can't see that happening, we're not. That's the. We're only going to buy a franchise that we can do that with. Nobody had ever told me that before. I thought, that is brilliant. Go find a franchise that serves your end goal. Yes. And they thought $2 million would be enough for them to retire nicely, and certainly it would be. But I said to them, you will buy another franchise. And within six months they became franchisees of another concept.
- [43:34]
Jeff Duden
So they were successful in selling their business for the 2 million.
- [43:37]
Dr. John E. Hayes
They got more than 2 million. And they were so happy. They were only in their 50s, barely in their 50s, so they had a lot of life to go. Yeah. They were in Sinarama. It was a Titus company.
- [43:51]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [43:51]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Bought a Sinarama, North Carolina area. And then after they had all this money and they had all this time, which is why I'm not retired, because what would I do? They bought another franchise and they were only in their 50s, so. And they be. I think they bought multiple territories of Trans World Business Advisors, focusing on how to teach people to think about envisioning getting their business to buying a business that will do for them what they ultimately want. Yeah. Which is a whole different way of approaching it.
- [44:28]
Jeff Duden
I think it's an underserved narrative in franchising at Homefront Brands. We start with it from. I do a call every Monday night with all of the candidates that are in process that jump on. It's called foundations. It's a chance for the candidates voice to fall directly on leadership's ears here. For them to step outside of the normal franchise development process and hear from leadership about Homefront Brands. Why do we exist? What do we care about? What's important to us? What are some of the things that are maybe cultural here that we think are important that they could expect? And we, for the first time we put this outcome thinking into their heads. They don't hear it anywhere else and they should. I mean everything. I mean it's, it's not just a turn of phrase to say begin with the end in mind. Because when you know what your outcome is, you will make different decisions in building towards it. Like These people, they. They knew immediately when they looked at a franchise opportunity that would not qualify for what their outcome was needed to be. So they knew to pass on it. And it's the same way with hiring. Are you going to hire an employee that's just going to keep the status quo, or are you going to invest in an employee that's going to get you to the outcome that you've already decided? So for us, you know, it's something that we talk. We're not ashamed to talk about it. It's not like. And I tell people we don't meet the team day today. And I'm like, look, some of you might walk out the door and say, look, I'm. I am not even in the door yet, and they're trying to push me out. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is, is, is you, you know, you need to have pace and purpose when you're building a business. And if, you know, we don't want. We never want our owners to be flat and happy, you know, and they get it right. They're. They, they reach a certain revenue level. They. It serves their lifestyle. They negotiate 30 hours a week or something or 20 hours a week, and the business is running well. That might serve them temporarily, but what if something happens to them? What if somebody gets sick? What if they've got to sell their business? I would rather them push that business and continue to grow it. And if they're not willing to do that, sell it to take all their money out and get a handsome sum and give it to somebody that is looking to grow the business. Because at a franchisor, we do get paid on top line. And the more top line that we get, the more we can do for our franchisees.
- [46:52]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah. You know, one of the things as you talked about that, Jeff, that has always been attractive about you and I think brings prospects naturally to you, is that you're a young guy and you've done all this that you talk about, that your book is terrific, your story is terrific. So you've done it all. But you are old school in a very good way. What you do to help them, to help these prospects and new franchisees envision where they're headed. And Dwyer did that. Then his. You probably know Dina Dwyer.
- [47:32]
Jeff Duden
Yes.
- [47:32]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Don's daughter, who took over after his death. She would teach, and Don did this as well. Design your life.
- [47:41]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [47:42]
Dr. John E. Hayes
She's written a book about that.
- [47:43]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [47:44]
Dr. John E. Hayes
And Don would do such a good job, as I know you're doing as well of getting these folks to think about where am I going? I'm going to invest some money and I'm going to invest some time. What's that going to get me in two years or 20 years? And Don's belief, as I'm sure it is yours as well. If we can help you do that, you'll get so excited about where you're going, you'll want to get there as quickly as you can. Because just like that couple that sold their signorama for more than $2 million, they were ecstatic that they were able to do that. Yeah. And a lot of people can't see beyond this afternoon. And that's a problem.
- [48:28]
Jeff Duden
Well, first time business owners coming out of corporate America, they're used to operating within a system where they do their piece of the process, then they pass it along to the next person, the operations. If they're in sales, they pass it along or if something becomes unsolvable, they kick it upstairs. But in business ownership, it's like you, you have the latitude and the freedom to determine what your outcome's going to be and to drive the ship in, in that direction, of course, within the guidelines of the franchise. But I think it, you know, blending personal development and professional development and then competency in the business model is something that I've heard that Don Dwyer did exceptionally well. They focused on and it's so some of the things that I do for the franchise owners, I do an owners and it's 90 minutes and it's in the evening and it's one night per month and has nothing to do with the brand that they're in. They show up from all the different brands and I bring on a speaker and it's financial fluency or how to, you know, it's something. Or maybe it's just a workshop on Buy Back youk Time by Dan Martell or it's a sales management expert coming in and teaching them how to scale their sales team. So regardless of what business they're in, uh, you know, one of some of it was, one of it was at the year end, it was personal goal setting, ex, you know, workshop. So regardless, you know, it's, you know, you and I have gone around for decades and accumulated all of this training, delivered training, taken training. And if you're a first time business owner, like why do you have, why does it have to be 20 years or 30 years of planes, trains and automobiles to get this when we can package this up and deliver it to them and then help them accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. I don't think there's any shortage of. I mean, you can get books and you can watch YouTube and you can look at social media and all the things. But I still think. And by the way, I really appreciate the compliment about being old school values, old school messaging that landed with me. I deeply appreciate that. But it's true. It's. I mean, it's, you know, these things, these things are timeless. Investing in relationships, helping people connect dots, learn from our mistakes that we've made along the way, and then package packaging up in a way with tools that they can use these immediately in their lives. Now, the other flip side of the coin is half of them won't. You know, most of them won't. But, I mean, sometimes we're just. We're just working for the 20% that actually want to be great.
- [51:15]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Absolutely.
- [51:15]
Jeff Duden
You know, and the rest of them, they'll, you know, they'll. They'll. They will float to their level of whatever of their desires.
- [51:22]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, I teach for the 20%. Really, really want to be successful. Yeah, it's a drag because you got to deal with a lot of things that after a while, you get tired of it. I'm getting closer to that, and I'm thinking, you know, what if I were to do it all over again? I think I would sell, I would refranchise. I don't want to. I've been teaching franchising all my Life, for almost 50 years. I've been teaching people about it, but I'll never talk you into it. In fact, I'll probably talk you out of it, because it's not for everybody.
- [51:56]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [51:56]
Dr. John E. Hayes
And I. I don't want to do that teaching. I'd rather you come to me already convinced that, you know, you should be a franchisee, and I've got something to refranchise to you that can be very, very valuable to you. I think I envy those folks who get to do that. Yeah.
- [52:19]
Jeff Duden
You have a variety of people participating in the Titus Center. What experience do you share with emerging brands or younger brands? You know, and this question kind of goes to, like, what makes. What makes a great franchisor?
- [52:38]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, there's. There are many things that go into that, but I think it's heart. The best franchisors. I worked with Dwyer, people thought he was rough around the edges. He was a hardcore business guy, but he had a huge heart. And if you just gave him some time and he heard what you wanted to do and he knew he could help you do that he said to me once, I don't see you for who you are, I see you for who you can be. And he helped me grow into that person at times that I didn't even see myself. And Don did this for countless the 20%. And those people are franchisors today. And some of them are on the Titus center advisory board. And many of them are multi unit franchisees or they're big time executives with franchise companies. And they credit Don Dwyer and Ray Titus being another one. And Ken d', Angelo, the founder of We Buy Ugly Houses. They have a heart for helping other people succeed. They're teachers at heart. And so if I don't see that with somebody who's talking to me about franchising their business and a lot of people do, I get a lot of emerging folks come through the Titus center who want to be introduced to people who are on my advisory board like you. Thank you for doing that, by the way. And they want to meet Ray Titus or they want to meet the people from ERA or whoever it is they want to meet. If I don't hear them talking about helping, using franchising to help people get what they want, they probably should not become franchisors.
- [54:33]
Jeff Duden
I think it's remarkably harder to be a franchisor than it is to be a franchisee.
- [54:38]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Oh, definitely.
- [54:41]
Jeff Duden
Starting up a franchise brand, the revenue is, the profitability is years away. You have to invest deeply in these franchisees. You've got to get them up, you've got to get them successful, you got to get them to maturity. You get pennies on the dollar on the back end and you've been providing support and it's competitive especially to get good quality franchisees and franchise partners. That's what makes us go. So it's, yeah, it's, it has to be a, it has to be a labor of love.
- [55:13]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [55:13]
Jeff Duden
And you have to really get excited about helping franchise owners. I've had 800 franchisees in the brands that I've built.
- [55:23]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Great.
- [55:23]
Jeff Duden
And that's all. And, and, you know, down to, and it just, it takes a toll on you because you have to care about all of them and you don't have to like them. You're not going to like them all, you're not going to love them all. Every, you know, it's like your homeowners association or your pta. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a group of people that you're, you know, some people you're just, you know, not going to Be yoked with. Right?
- [55:52]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [55:53]
Jeff Duden
But that being said, that's not the job to be liked. The job is to be trusted and to be consistent and to help them achieve their outcome and to do it. And so, I mean, I know the first time around I used to get really upset and. But now there's nothing that can happen. And I'm better for it. I'm a better leader for it because my heart rate doesn't even go up because I've had the same conversation a hundred times. So somebody comes to you with a problem or they don't like this, or that's not working within five or ten minutes, you can diagnose what's going on in their business. Now it's just a matter of are they willing to face it? Are they willing to do it? I can tell you what to do now and I can tell you where you're at and I can give you five or ten examples of exactly this scenario playing out and what the potential outcome scenarios are going to be for you. Yeah, but it's your business. I'm not going to, I'm not going to fly to Tulsa, Oklahoma and, and do this for you. You have to do it. And, and so there's, there is some freedom inside of that. And then you look, it hurts when it doesn't work out for somebody. And, but usually, you know, there's four things, right? There's their level of comfort. Do they get fearful of doing the things that need to get done? There's capabilities. Are they, if they don't have all the capabilities, they, that they need, are they able to do the things that they're the best at and then to fill those capabilities with other people properly, can they build a team? Can they build a comprehensive team? And then, but the biggest one I see is commitment. I mean, you know, I talk about this concept of being a business athlete. These people, they invest, they buy three territories, an inventory package, they spend all this money and they come to training and they haven't even watched the videos. And they, you know, they just, they don't take a real, they don't take a ownership mindset. They, they're not radically curious about how everything operates. They're not positively actively engaged in what's going on. They're almost like, well, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to think about what you just told me, and then I'm going to go back and somehow this is going to happen. And, and then, you know, and, and then they don't quit their job. Like they were supposed to. And, you know, they hire some kid to run it, and then they wonder why it's not working. And so, I mean, but that's. That's, you know, if that happens, I mean, that's kind of on us, too, that we didn't set that we allowed that to happen. So I think. I think more and again, being a more mature franchisor, we have to take responsibility for all of that. I mean, hey, I just went out and bought two $110,000 trucks for cash, and now one for me, one for my son, and now I can't pay my royalties. Okay, okay, well, we got a problem, you know. You know, shame on us for not coaching you. Better that you shouldn't buy trucks with all of your cash that you didn't need.
- [59:08]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [59:09]
Jeff Duden
You know, but I put the sign on the side. I'm like, yeah, that's great. Those were not in the. Those weren't in the business model. So. But it's crazy, but it happens, you know, it does happen.
- [59:19]
Dr. John E. Hayes
It's the same in teaching and franchisees. You know, we're all students. No matter what we're doing, I'm still a student. And my actual students teach me a great deal. But usually it's only 20% who read the material and before they come to the class. And I'm at a point now, I'm particularly because I'm older and I'm saying, okay, I'm going to teach another year. I'm at the point where I could say, listen, if you put your hand up, this is at a Christian university. I expect you to tell me the truth. Did you read the chapter? And the 20% that read the chapter, I'm going to invite to stay in the class with me starting in the fall. And the rest of you can go do whatever you want to do. You might go read the chapter. Yeah, but there's nothing for you here. I don't have anything to share with you here. I'm going to talk to these 20%. And that. That. That's why being a franchisor is hard, because you can't do it that way. Those folks paid your money.
- [60:17]
Jeff Duden
You're going to get. You're going to get called to the principal's office.
- [60:20]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Oh, yeah, I will, but I'm used to that. The principal's used to seeing me.
- [60:26]
Jeff Duden
Do you have a principal who's. The. Who's. Who's in charge at a university there?
- [60:30]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Well, the provost.
- [60:32]
Jeff Duden
The provost. I knew there was a word for it. Starts with a P. Yeah, I knew
- [60:35]
Dr. John E. Hayes
there was a provost is overall faculty.
- [60:38]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [60:38]
Dr. John E. Hayes
And the provost and I don't always see eye to eye, which is okay. You know, the universities are huge bureaucracies. They're not businesses.
- [60:51]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [60:52]
Dr. John E. Hayes
And they would benefit if they were businesses. And I ran the Titus center as a business which drove the university wacko after a period of time. Turns out they didn't want a hundred people on an advisory board like I attracted for whatever reason. That that's not acceptable.
- [61:11]
Jeff Duden
Well, it's an incredible organization. You've done a amazing job with it and it's helping a lot of young people do well.
- [61:20]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [61:21]
Jeff Duden
So you had said that there's some people that shouldn't be franchisees.
- [61:26]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [61:29]
Jeff Duden
What, you know what, what advice or what experience can you share about selecting the right franchisee for you for a candidate? I mean should they go to broker, should they go to a consultant? Should they, you know, what, what tools, what resources are out there for people? There's 4,000 brands. They're quite, it's quite confusing out there online because everybody's advertising you. You can be a startup franchisee with a first time owner with nothing, no infrastructure behind you and an unproven concept. And you look just as good online as a homefront brands or a neighborly or an authority brands or a five star, you know, so like how do people, what, what do you know about how people should weed through all of the opportunities that they come across?
- [62:20]
Dr. John E. Hayes
So you should do what's going to be most effective for you and helps you to get to a level of comfort but not erase the fact that you're going to invest money and you're going to invest your time and you better know what you're doing. Well, the first thing I say to people, it's not for everyone. I'm going to teach in New York City end of May, the biggest expo every year is at the Javits Center. There will be lots of franchisors from all over the world exhibiting. There'll be people coming in from all over the world wanting to buy a franchise. I'll have a hundred people sitting in the room, A to Z's of buying a franchise. And I'll say half of you can leave for sure because this isn't for you. It's a beautiful day in New York City. You ought to go to lunch or you ought to go buy Broadway tickets, but sitting here, it's not for you. Now maybe being a franchisee is not for you and you're there because you want to become a Franchisor. Okay, that's an exception. Or you're there because you want to get a job in franchising and you figured out knowing a little bit about franchising would be helpful so that you could talk the language and get a job. So people who think they're going to buy a franchise, and I say to them, there's some stumbling blocks here that you may not be able to get over. And early on in that session, I'll introduce the disc profile, because again, that's my go to when I see that. And you're a C personality and you're a 30 in the C or a 34 in the C. I know you aren't buying a franchise probably ever, because Jeff Dooden is going to say to you when you say, I'd like to have your disclosure document, because a C knows you have to have a disclosure document and you have to give it to them. And when Jeff says, I'll give it to you, but let's talk a little bit. How much money are you going to invest in a franchise? Which is a good question for a franchisor to ask. And I want to know, how do you have that money? Is it liquid? I need to have your banker's name and phone number and, oh, I need your Social Security number. That C is out of there. C doesn't give any of that information, given the phone number. Makes them nervous. They're going to invert some numbers because they don't want you calling them and pestering them. So they're not going to become franchisees. It's very unlikely. If you're the D, however. Yeah, you're going to go buy everything. You're going to go buy the first thing that you look at.
- [64:59]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [64:59]
Dr. John E. Hayes
And maybe you shouldn't, because maybe you really need an eye to operate that business. And you're not an eye. So it's not just finding the right franchise, it's finding a franchise that matches your personality. And we're all different. Most franchisors never talk about that. Most franchise consultants, brokers, do not talk about that. And that's a mistake because you got to know who you're talking to and are they even cut out for your business or should you send them to a competitor? Because they're not going to work. It's not going to work. And you don't want to bring on a franchisee who ends up in the bottom 30%. And that's what happens. So I say to them, you got to know who you are, what you're all about. And then you got to look at businesses that offer you an opportunity to do something you really want to do that you're in love with, that you'll be committed to. And then, of course, we get to. Are you going to follow the franchisor's system? And if you're a C, the answer is no. Not until I verify why they do what they do. Well, how long is that going to take until you go broke? That's not. That's. Don't become a franchisee to go lift the hood and check all the spark plugs. That's already been done for you. Right. But these have to do that.
- [66:27]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [66:27]
Dr. John E. Hayes
No genius.
- [66:28]
Jeff Duden
No genius attacks. We say no genius attacks.
- [66:31]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah. So there's. There's a whole lot here. And it is a. I do the A to Z's of buying. I break it down for them simply. And I tell them to get the disclosure document as quickly as they can. Yeah, but. Cause that's where a lot of the answers are. And then I say, don't read it. And the IFA says that 77% of franchise buyers never read the disclosure. Well, that's wrong. That's a mistake. I say don't read it yet. Turn to item 20. Call 10 franchisees, ask them 10 questions. There's no sense reading this disclosure document only to find out this is a bad franchise. Nobody wants to buy it anymore.
- [67:17]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [67:18]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [67:19]
Jeff Duden
So you're slipping a lot of discs out there.
- [67:21]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, I am.
- [67:22]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [67:22]
Dr. John E. Hayes
That's a good one. I do. Yeah.
- [67:25]
Jeff Duden
Is.
- [67:25]
Dr. John E. Hayes
I offered to them for free. I don't take any. I don't sell you anything. I'm not going to sell you on becoming a franchisee. I don't sell you my books. I don't sell you a program. I don't sell you college education. Come to PBA if you want. Yeah, yeah.
- [67:41]
Jeff Duden
So are there some people based on the disc profile that just. Absolutely. There's not a franchise for them or is there something for everybody, depending on who they are?
- [67:51]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, there's something for everybody if you are willing to bring somebody else. Perfect example. We buy ugly houses. When I became the CEO, everybody had done a disc. But Ken, the founder of the company, never did anything with those discs. I said, why do you have these discs? He said, the consultant who helped me become a franchisor told me I needed to give everyone, everybody a disk. But he didn't tell me what to do with it. So they weren't doing. But we had the data and I said, you know, I want to find out why does. And we had 230 franchisees, and I wanted to find out why 12 of them were buying 100 houses a year. 100 houses a year. They were doing really well. 12 of them, maybe 15 of them at the time. And then there were 15 at the bottom who couldn't buy five houses in a year. And it was our fault. We were a bad franchise company. This doesn't make sense to me. Bottom line, if you didn't have d in the first or second position, you were not in the top 50 of our franchises.
- [68:58]
Jeff Duden
Oh, for sure, for sure.
- [69:00]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Because you gotta be able to go in and say to a lady who's lived in a house for 40 years, raised all of her kids, two husbands, six dogs, that you're going to give her $60,000 for her house when her neighbor across the street is selling their house for $120,000. But their house has a new roof and new windows and new flooring. And she hasn't done anything since her husband died 25 years ago. And you're going to buy it, and that's a gift. It's a fair price. In Texas, they'll run you out of those houses with a gun.
- [69:33]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [69:34]
Dr. John E. Hayes
C's aren't going into houses and S's aren't going into houses to make offers.
- [69:39]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [69:40]
Dr. John E. Hayes
The D's can go do that and tell you why I can only give you $60,000 for your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So once you figure it out that way, and I said to the sales team, don't bring me a contract. I can't sleep at night if I'm signing a contract with a. A C personality who I know is going to be in the bottom 10% of this network and blame me, which in that case, they're right. I should have never sold it. Yeah.
- [70:13]
Jeff Duden
John, we got just a couple things, more things I'd like to talk about. And one of them is trends in franchising. Right now there's so much turmoil out there about how work's going to get done. Franchising is a lot of things. It's a leverage business model. We all share the expense of building the business, building equity, acquiring customers with our franchisees and the franchisor. It's a community of support, people building the same business in different markets, learning from one another. Continuous improvement becomes possible. If you have good, highly engaged franchisor that's sharing the knowledge and facilitating peer groups and all of the things. To me, the model has changed more lives than it hasn't.
- [71:05]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yes.
- [71:07]
Jeff Duden
What are you seeing in terms of, is there a movement toward, now is there heavy movement towards brands like home front brands, property and home services because they're less threatened by AI? Are you seeing anything in retail based locations, fitness, health and wellness restaurants, things like that? You know, I, I haven't really detected much stock markets up, so sometimes people get a little bit more comfortable. But there's certainly we have uncertainty out there with the straight of Hormuz and you know, we're over there in China. There's lots of uncertainty in the global political theater and, and things people are worried about. But I don't know, things just seem to be steady and continuing to grow. People are buying things, people are spending money, people are continuing to invest in franchises and open businesses. Maybe some of the IT people out there that are a little bit more concerned about their future are showing up a little bit more in our franchise pipeline because they're, you know, they're, they're, they're a little more concerned if they're coder or something like that. But I mean that's, but I think these are just all data points. What are you seeing at the Titus Center? What are you, what are you hearing? What are you talking about with your board members and, and anything like that?
- [72:31]
Dr. John E. Hayes
So less has changed. In almost 50 years of my life in franchising, not much has changed.
- [72:38]
Jeff Duden
Okay?
- [72:39]
Dr. John E. Hayes
If the system doesn't work, it doesn't matter what the industry is, it doesn't work. If the franchisor doesn't have the right temperament and a heart to help people succeed, it's not going to work. Whether it should be food or it should be non food retail service business. Well, I will say this has changed. So I told you I'm going to go to the International Franchise Expo. I've been doing that for 40 years and I teach these seminars. If I have 100 people in the room 25 years ago, I would say at the beginning, those of you who are here who are going to buy a franchise, how many of you know that if you buy a franchise it'll be a food and beverage franchise? 50% at least of the hands went up. I'm going to ask that question on May 29 and May 30 when I'm in New York City teaching, there'll be a hundred people in the room. I'll be surprised if 10 hands go up, right? They're not buying food and beverage, they're buying service businesses. And we have more of them now than we had 25 years ago. We've always had service Businesses, but, you know, people didn't even understand what that meant.
- [74:00]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [74:01]
Dr. John E. Hayes
And home services. Yeah, that very, very valuable and popular. But still, that's the only part of service business education. Teaching students, not homeschooling necessarily as a franchise, but teaching young people, maybe tutoring. That's still very popular. Senior care, one of the things that I think about more often now, whereas I never used to think about that, what happens if I need to go somewhere to get help? Or what happens if I can't take care of myself, but I want to stay in my home? There's senior care franchises. Amazing. People gravitate to those. And that's new in the last 25 years or so. Probably 35 years.
- [74:56]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. Shelly's son got that one right.
- [74:59]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah. She did a great job. And she spends her money at the University of Tennessee in a franchise education program.
- [75:07]
Jeff Duden
That's right.
- [75:07]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Bless Shelley's son.
- [75:10]
Jeff Duden
Do you have you feel competitive pressure with that, or are you happy that franchising is getting served?
- [75:16]
Dr. John E. Hayes
I wish there were a hundred.
- [75:17]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [75:18]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Franchise centers.
- [75:19]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [75:20]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Universities do call me. I've had two or three this year, this academic year to say, how could we do what you do? Do you mind telling us. I don't mind telling you. I will come. And if you want to defranchise the Titus center, I know Mr. Titus would love you to do that. We're having that discussion in other countries where they want to bring. Where they want to have a franchise center. Yeah.
- [75:45]
Jeff Duden
Do you see any influx of brands from other countries? More now than you used to?
- [75:53]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yes. Croatia.
- [75:55]
Jeff Duden
Really?
- [75:56]
Dr. John E. Hayes
I mean, can you imagine Fish Delish? He's underway in the United States. This is a real story. I took a group of students, another professor, and I took about 15 students to Budapest, Croatia and Greece on a franchise study tour. And I wasn't so sure what we were going to find in Croatia. Wow. There is a lively entrepreneurial franchise community in Croatia doing wonderful things. And this young man, his brand is fish Delish. And his aunt, he's in Croatia. He's got like 120 outlets in the Croatia and nearby countries, but his aunt started one in New Jersey, and he said, now we got to go franchise there, and came to the Titus Center. He's about one year into it. I see him on social media. They're building. They're selling Fish Delish and building new units. So, you know, that's just one of numerous stories where people from Mexico, people from Europe all the time coming into the United States and people like that at the ife there will be a lot of exhibitors from outside the United States who want to break into our market, which is the greatest market in the world.
- [77:23]
Jeff Duden
It is. It is. All right, well, hey, John, we need to kind of tug on the reins and turn this podcast towards the barn. Is there anything that I should have asked you that I haven't.
- [77:38]
Dr. John E. Hayes
We covered a lot of good information.
- [77:40]
Jeff Duden
That's a lot of good information. Now, I always enjoy my time with you. I really appreciate you being on.
- [77:45]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah, I appreciate talking to you.
- [77:47]
Jeff Duden
Okay, I've got a curveball. I've got a curveball and a fastball. But before we do that, tell people how to get in touch with you or how to get connected with the Titus center or palm beach Atlantic.
- [77:59]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Tituscenter.com. that's all you got to know. Tituscenter.com or go to LinkedIn, put in Titus center, put in my name. It's going to pop up there.
- [78:09]
Jeff Duden
T I T U S. That's right. Center dot com.
- [78:12]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [78:13]
Jeff Duden
Okay. All right, sounds good. Here's the curveball. If you gun to your head, that's a terrible way to start, but gun to your head, you have to start a business in the next 30 days, but it can't be something that you're currently doing. What business would you start? Where do you see the opportunity in the market?
- [78:32]
Dr. John E. Hayes
AI it's going to be either providing AI services to franchisors and franchisees. That's probably what it's going to be. AI Got it.
- [78:41]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. It's hard to. That's a common answer.
- [78:46]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Yeah.
- [78:47]
Jeff Duden
And my inbox is full of those companies right now. Absolutely. Okay. Fastball straight down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [79:00]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Love. Gotta be about love. Oh, that's not a sentence.
- [79:05]
Jeff Duden
No, I think it. I think there's. I think if you put a period
- [79:08]
Dr. John E. Hayes
after it, it is love people beginning with yourself.
- [79:11]
Jeff Duden
Love people beginning with yourself. All right. Perfectly said. All right. Thank you for being on Dr. Hayes. Really appreciate.
- [79:24]
Dr. John E. Hayes
Was a pleasure.
- [79:25]
Jeff Duden
All right, well, I am Jeff Duden. We have been here with the incredible Dr. John Hayes on the unemployable podcast. Thanks for listening.