Franchise Freedom

Bloomin' Blinds Franchise: Family, Tech, & First-Time Owner Success!

• Giuseppe Grammatico • Episode 230

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Considering a franchise but don't know where to start? Discover the Bloomin' Blinds franchise opportunity! 

In this episode of the Franchise Freedom Podcast, Giuseppe Grammatico interviews Kelly Macht and Kelsey Stewart from Bloomin' Blinds, revealing their unique approach to franchising, their focus on technology (including AI!), and their commitment to supporting first-time business owners. 

Learn about their business model, ideal candidate, and success stories.

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The Franchise Freedom: Discover Your New Path to Freedom Through Franchise Ownership, Book by Giuseppe Grammatico https://ggthefranchiseguide.com/book or purchase directly on Amazon.


I think we are more of a business building organization that happens to use window coverings as that product, because it's a skill set, running a business, creating money out of thin air, attracting customers. Sometimes franchising gives the mystique or, or perception that it's the easy button in business. And it is easier than creating it on your own, but there's very much still that, that gut check that says that you got to show up every day. if you can't handle validation and research of a brand, how are you going to manage an entire business? Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast, where you can escape the corporate trap through franchise ownership. Here's your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, The Franchise Guide. Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, your Franchise Guide, the show where we help corporate executives experience time and financial freedom via franchising. Thanks for joining us today. Just before we, we start the show, just as a reminder, if you have a burning question, you're looking at franchises, don't know where to start. Just have no idea kind of if franchising is a, is a good fit or not. Give us a call or, or send us over an email at gg at gg, the franchise guide. com. You can go directly to the website. There's a survey there, figuring out if you're a great match and you can book a call directly with me. So it's me, you get, I always get that question all the time. There's no staff or I don't, I don't have a VA handling that. Just let me know. We'd love to help. And just figuring out if a franchise is a good fit and we have a free gift for everyone that contacts us. Excited for our show today. So today we mixed it up instead of hearing me. everyone told me they want me to bring on more and more guests. We have a very exciting show because we don't have just one, but we have two guests, which I'm going to bring on. We have Kelly Mott and Kelly Kelsey Stewart from bloom and blinds. Welcome to the show guys. Hey, just stuffy. Appreciate having you invite us. Yeah, I'm excited. People were sick of seeing me and just hearing from me. So I'm like, all right, let's I got, I got the the clue and we're, we're going to bring guests on. But yeah, really excited. Wanted to, maybe you guys, if you can give, we'll start with Kelly, just a quick little bio, a little, little background, what you do, how you got into franchising, and then we have some really good questions and things I want to review with the with the, with on the show today. Yeah, absolutely. So I am actually in franchise development. So I work with candidates that you pass along to us to guide them through the journey of being educated on the blue and blinds opportunity. And that is my role. I've been in the franchise industry, U. S. franchise industry, for about 12 years now. And now I I actually have known Kelsey for about 10. I used to work at the Franchise Show which is a big regional show all over the country. And Kelsey and his family exhibited with us when they were brand new franchisees. So now I have the pleasure of Working with them nine plus years later doing their franchise development. And it really is incredible to see where that family business started and where they have grown to this point. So I I love what you, what I do and you will see that come through loud and clear in my passion for blue and blind. Awesome. And where's that accent from? That would be my good old Canadian accent. But don't let that throw you. I know the U. S. franchise industry extraordinarily well. Well, I guess depending on who's listening, they can ask where my accent's from. But that's we all know that, there is that. Kelsey, the stage is yours. Okay. Yeah, Kelsey Stewart. I'm one of the founding family members of Blue and Blinds. It was a family company my mom started. And we spent 18 years running it as like mom and, a big mom, I guess, mom and the boys working with Kelly's awesome because now I actually take her calls versus dodging them when she's trying to sell booth spaces. Yeah. We've grown quite a bit. I, I've worn all the hats. Now I am primarily on the. Like the, the stage where people are trying to figure out if we're a great fit as a franchise. And then I help on the scaling and growth once they're actually in operation. So I get to play with like my favorite parts of the whole business. I get to the daydreams and then the executions. I like that. And we got to catch up a little bit in Houston last month and excited to hear updates and dive a little bit deeper. Let's start with Bloomin Blinds. What, what is obviously it is a franchise, but tell us, tell the audience a little bit about assuming they haven't heard of the brand, what exactly is Bloomin Blinds and, talking a little bit more about the business model itself. I'll go high level. Kelly, if you want to add some context, please feel free to jump in. So on the surface, we're a window, window covering company, right? We sell and install and repair window coverings. Primarily inside the house, but there's a ton of pieces that go outside the house too. And it's a mobile service, a home based virtually zero inventory primarily owner operator. And then as you grow, you add additional employees and whatnot. And I say at the surface, because part of what we really enjoy. is teaching people how to run a business. I think we are more of a business building organization that happens to use window coverings as that product, because it's a skill set, running a business, creating money out of thin air, attracting customers. That is a skill set. And we really enjoy teaching that we're in the window covering space, but that's by and large, the kind of the heart behind the whole thing. Kelly, if you have anything, please jump in. No, I mean, obviously traditional home service window coverings as, as Kelsey said, I think when to expand on sort of what you just mentioned in terms of, creating an opportunity to teach people how to run a business, I think one of the incredible things that I saw the brand do in Q4 of last year was to actually bring its franchisees together and host them for financial literacy weekend. Really helping them understand a lot of these people have never really had to deal with the finances of a business and really teaching them at the core what that means and the ability to pull different levers within your business and, and the outcomes as a result. And I've had tremendous feedback from franchisees that I've placed, but also from consulting candidates that I'm currently working with. You just say, you know what? I'm looking at other brands and, and I challenged them, ask them if they do anything of that nature. And they come back to me consistently say no, like that, that struck them as an odd question. And so I think at the heart of what Blue and Blinds is doing in in really teaching and coaching Kelsey and his family having worked in the industry, it's so critical to understand that, like they've, they've worked in the vans, right? They've done everything we're asking a franchisee to do to build a business of their own before they franchised it. And I think at that essence there's just a real uniqueness to the Blue and Blinds opportunity for sure. I will, I will say they're, they're definitely a huge benefit in that because you get a better appreciation of not just what the business is, but what the future franchisees will be going through. So I ran my business the exact same way. And especially if it's a business you've never been in. Yeah. Just how long a job should actually take. If you're working with an employee or subcontractor, it's going to take you half a day. If they're taking two days, something, something's off. I, I, yeah, I couldn't agree more. Financial literacy is is a big one as well. And I think as a first time business owner, I had, I had my graduate degree. I, I couldn't really. put together a proper PNL, even a pro forma. And I needed a lot of help. A lot of people I'd say over my years, I've been in business. If you, if you consider my side hustle of, of auto detailing 25 years now 20 years in franchising, people don't know the difference between net income EBITDA or margins gross margins, net margins, and it's scary. They're buying businesses, not really understanding the terms. And it's a little bit frightening or they're not factoring in, a note payment that they have to make when, when buying a business. So I think so yeah, applause to you guys. That's awesome. That's a. That's something we don't hear too much about. And these are the things that are overlooked, or maybe a candidate assumes it's all going to be handled, right? It just, Oh yeah, they'll teach me about profit loss. Well, they're going to teach you the system and help you obviously with the pro forma, but reading balance sheets and pro and a profit loss is sometimes not part of the curriculum. So that's, that's awesome. What makes bloom and blinds different? Obviously there are other non franchise brands in the same space and franchises in the same space. What is, the key differentiator? Obviously we talked about a few others, but in the underlying services you offer, are there any standout differentiators compared to others? Yeah, I'd love to tackle that one. So when I'm talking to consultants like yourself, trying to educate you on the brand or our candidates that we have, I really feel there's three things that really stand out with blue and blinds. Number one, we've kind of touched on it's the family aspect of the business. Cause because consistently candidates and new franchisees that we closed, they tell me the reason that they chose blue and blinds was because there was, there's a feeling, there's a, there's a real energy that comes from having, being part of a family run business. If they're looking for. A smaller, intimate, more relationship based franchise opportunity. This is absolutely it. We are not the big engine and you're not going to be treated as such, right? So number one is, is the family aspect and that, that relational side. Number two is definitely the, the notion that we do repairs. It's a simple thing, but it gets us into more homes, Giuseppe. And at the end of the day, if we have that opportunity to get into those homes and create rapport with the homeowner and provide the ability to get future sales, future referrals, great Google reviews, all of those things are going to grow your business. So the more homes that we can get into the better system wide in our current FDD, we showed over 8, 000 invoices, just on repairs alone. And it is a standout. Again, I'll encourage my, my candidates like Google, blind repair near me. Right. And, and it's very rare that they find a lot of options out there. So it does get us into more homes. And then lastly, technology, Kelsey touched on the idea that the window coverings is just the widget. Well, the other piece of the brand is that they are technology heavy. Anytime somebody who's jazzed about technology, jazzed about AI, this is a brand you should really consider because it's a simple widget, but the technology that is the engine behind it is really significant. And it's an area that the brand's making significant investments in. Kelsey, you probably want to expand on that a little bit more. Yeah. Well, on the technology side in particular early last year, early 24. We just kind of sat around in one of our leadership meetings and we, the concept was like, do we really believe that AI is going to be the future? Is there an opportunity to get the brand ahead of the curve to start adopting and bringing on these pieces before the rest of the world? And, and can that get us in a position where we can, where we have like a defense as the world shifts and, and Businesses go up and down. Anytime you can kind of create a mode around you, like that, that's an opportunity that has to be evaluated. So we, we dove in, but in particular, we decided to build out our own AI system. So instead of renting, a lot of people are using AI right now, renting other people's business or renting their models or their information, that means their programs are getting smarter, not yours. So we partnered with Yeah. Yeah. So we partnered with a company. We had our own AI built out of our own data. We're almost complete within a, a, a full tech stack that sits on top of that. So the AI is actually learning from virtually every twitch of the business. And that becomes the base on how the franchisees operate their business. It also becomes the base on how the clients interact with. Us from a marketing standpoint or in the house doing consults and, and by continually growing our data set I firmly believe it's going to put us in a position where we can react and, and improve upon data and are really kind of comes down to marketing and efficiency in a way that even once everyone decides that this is the right path, we'll already have a headstart. And so they, even when they start moving as fast as we do. They won't be able to catch up because we're then running at the same speed. We've just been doing it longer. I like that. We the AI conversations have definitely hit home with people. We've noticed a lot more, a lot more views on those conversations or those kind of segments or snippets. And to your, to your point owning it I think people don't realize there's nothing free in this world. And when you're using free eye, I've tested some, some platforms as well. Friends of friends. I'm basically almost like the guinea pig in a way I'm putting my information and they're gathering it. So although I'm not paying, I'm technically paying with my time and not building something for myself. So I do have somewhat of a free service, but I'm not building anything. And I think that is, that's just, is AI taking over? I don't think it's taking over. I think we all have to step up and use it somewhat in our businesses. I know we've, we've cut it, we've cut our marketing spend down by using AI with a couple of agencies that we've used. I think it's a, it's a must to use, but I don't think AI is going to replace everything. So I like that. Can you, can you talk a little bit? I mean, I know you said it's, it's being launched. Can you talk specifically on any, on any aspects of it or is that yeah, yeah, I, nothing I, in the long run, a lot of it is the stuff. that humans do, we're just doing it with either automation or with more sensitivity and data is really kind of where AI gets its superpower is when it's finally got enough data that it can create what's called predictive analytics. Most of the data in today's world is looking backwards. It's what happened, how that happened. Now, how do I analyze? and guess on how to make it better. AI gets really valuable when it almost gets to a level where it can almost predict at a high degree of certainty what's going to happen. So a couple pieces that'll be actionable for the franchise owners. Our call center will be ran by AI voice agents. We will have people in the background, so if the AI gets stumped or doesn't know the answer, I've got people sitting there ready to pick up the phone live, but it's going to allow us to answer the phone 24 snow days. We're still answering the phone. So that's the phone, right? That's right. Right now I've got seven people who work in a call center. They're taking phone phone calls. I mean, this is like in my office 30 ft behind me. But what happens when there's eight phone calls? Somebody's got to wait. And this thing it's programmed to take up to 250 calls at once. It can do some amazing, yeah, to be able to do smart scheduling. So like we're very route based or geographically based drive. Time is a waste for us. And so being able to present options to customers in like a basically a very smart routing suggestion, like we only give customers options that are geographically appropriate for us with the right people with the right skill sets. My favorite example, and I've already seen this in action, is we use iPads. We're not using, I mean, it can't build AI and still use a notepad. We're on iPads and as the customer is, or as we're having a conversation about how they want the room dark at 7. 30 on a summer night because the kid's got to go to bed, but they don't want strings and they want to be able to push a button to make it go up and down, the AI system is listening to these descriptions and beginning to populate the products and the manufacturers and the follow up questions. That match that active conversation. So in real time, the AI is presenting the products and the real value that the homeowner is going to think it's cool, but for a new franchise owner or a new employee who hasn't yet learned all the variables and hasn't really mastered the, the, the trade yet, we can give them the ability to feel and look like an expert because they don't have to have all that knowledge in their mind. They like, we're going to present it to them so that they can just. Work with the information that's already in front of them. That's that's impressive. This is, this is this is it guys. This is what the future is looking like. And AI doesn't need, as you mentioned, snow days, not feeling well. We lost power. My AI it's, I'm also setting up something on my end. If we lose power, it doesn't matter. It's not running from my home, it's, it's run off servers and it's being hosts elsewhere. And I don't know about you. I openly tell people I utilize AI. We offer our services are free. We were able to, to assist you, but one way to cut back on expenses, just I utilize AI on the, on the intro end and then kind of handle it from there essentially to set up appointments and I'm very open and honest and just say, you'll have an AI agent. They'll be contacting you to set up that appointment and then we're going to talk from there. I think the more you people realize what it is, because I, I saw my parents last night, I mentioned AI and they, I don't know, they're, they're, they're, we're talking about Terminator and the robots taking over. I don't think I really understood exactly. What it was. So it was a pretty funny conversation, but I think we just have to accept it, right? Accept it, embrace it. And this is the future. when people are looking at switching gears a little bit, so off of AI, just looking at the business itself, we, the audience, a lot of people have never owned a business before. They're, they've been looking at individual businesses. They've been looking at, Kind of franchises and they're like, you know what, I don't even know where to start marketing, call center, all that kind of stuff. Who is the ideal candidate and what can they expect to kind of, help them with all their fears and things holding them back such as who's going to do the marketing, the call center, and I don't know anything about window coverings. Yeah, so I'll tackle that. So at the, at the core of it, we've looked at who, and very recently, we really looked at who's having success within the organization. And what role they've played and how they started in the business and really kind of stripped it back to say, you know what, we want an owner operator in this business, we're not going to try to be everything to everyone. We want somebody who dedicates their time and energy fully to bloom and blinds. We want you to learn to crawl before you can run. This is a highly scalable business, Giuseppe, and we want people to recognize that, but we want them to understand the foundation of their business. before they try to scale it themselves. So yes, that owner ideally is coming up to training. They're getting in the truck. They're doing the reps before they begin to scale. People come from all walks of life, not knowing the window covering industry. That's probably a big asset. We like those newer owners that, that, that don't know it. And so we can teach them the Blumen way of doing things. So we've got men, women, we've got people of all ages. And, and I think that's important to understand, too. We do have a good female base of owners here at Bloom Blinds and, and absolutely support that. So the fear is, I, I, I don't know how to do window coverings. I don't know anything about that or I'm not super handy. You can hold a drill, you can work a drill and drill two screws and, we'll work with you. We can teach you. Training is phenomenal at Women with Blinds. They've got a full training center that they do take franchisees and their extended teams through, but we really are looking for people, people it's super important. We are in home consultative sales, right? This is an opportunity to connect with the homeowner. People buy from people they like, right? So we're looking for people that are outgoing. They want to be connectors in their community. They want to be problem solvers more than sales people. With bloom and blinds because at the end of the day, the homeowners called you into the home because they've got a problem they need you to solve, right? They're not looking for you to be their decorator necessarily, right? So if that's, that's something you have concerns about that's what, I'm the primary buyer of window coverings, the female in the household. I can promise you I've chatted with my girlfriends, seen their design style. I've been on Pinterest. I've read the magazines. I like, I have a pretty good idea of what it is that I want. But I'm looking for you to come in and solve the problem that I have no blinds in my new house or in my newly renovated kitchen or, redecorating my office and I want a different look. So that, but at the end of the day, we need people that really, truly are people, people outgoing, friendly smile, right? That's what I'm looking for. And what, and what does the initial kind of team look like? T and staff, employees, vehicle how quickly are you up and running? Can you talk a little bit about that as well? Yeah. I think one of the big benefits of Blooming Blinds is that you can start lean and mean, right? Like you can start in a business where, as Kelsey mentioned earlier, we're low overhead. There's no brick and mortar. There's no inventory to be carrying. We outfit the vehicle for you with your tools and all of your hardware and your samples and repair items, whatnot, and, and put you out on the road. If you're willing to start in the business on your own and learn it from the ground up and do the sales and the installations and repairs, and really get a foundation on a knowledge base on your business. You can keep your operating expenses really low. You're going to hit thresholds where you're going to want to talk about scaling. You can only manage so much business out of one vehicle, right? And so as those thresholds are hit, I think this is one of the things that Kelsey's just so adept at. He really enjoys. Having those dialogues with individual franchisees about their, their scalability of their business, whether they've got one territory or four territories and, how quickly they're looking to do that and what that means. Does that mean buying more territory? Does that mean putting a van on the road, hiring an employee? It can be different things depending on the model that that business owner is running. So we're not cookie cutter. It's not just, there's not just this standard blueprint. You've got to hit these milestones in order to move to the next. And I think that is something that's very appealing to a lot of people that can scale at their own pace But keep their operating expenses extraordinarily low to give them the opportunity to do that faster and to see an roi in their business Faster. I like that now What would you say lean lean lean and mean to to get started? They want to keep the expense low They want to get up and running fast. I mean, those are, those are some common themes and some common requests that I get when I'm, when I'm working with someone. Operator, I think so many of them are, they're leaving full time careers. They ultimately want to be able to replace some income. Right. And taking that leap and not having that safety net of doing something semi absentee where I can keep my job and just kind of incubate a business over here. It's very different. We want you to leap in two feet. But we, because we are so lean and mean. We really do give people within a certain range of income, the ability to to see that very, very quickly and, and keep their, their quality of life while they're building this asset that is a business of their own. Yeah, I like, I like that. Giuseppe, you asked a question, or part of one of your questions was expectations, like, what are they, like, like, what do they get? What, what support is there kind of, so to go back on that, because I think that's a really important topic. We kind of build all the systems with the overarching concept. There's going to be a lot to do, but you're not gonna have to figure out what to do. And, and by that, again, we, we do really enjoy that first time business owner. And so we know that, in that environment, there's a lot of questions on like, how do I get this set up? How do I do my marketing? Who do I talk to? What do I say? And for one reason or another, we've just really gravitated toward that coaching role of walking people through that stage. The business setup, the infrastructure of it, the business checking account, how do I, all these little elements of setting up a business, we walk candidates through that. The marketing can be broken up into two categories. You have your digital presence. And then you have like your community interaction, the digital side. We pretty well automate that for the owners. In fact, we've got AI running SEO and PPC for owners. Pretty effective there on the ground level. We'll tell you exactly where to go, who to talk to, how to get engaged, how to become known in the room. You're going to have to go do it, but you're not gonna have to figure out what to do. And that's really kind of the theme throughout the first, probably first year of the business is most of these things are going to be brand new to you and you're going to have someone who's excited and willing and wanting to walk with you during that kind of saying, Hey, go over here now, go over here and now do this thing and now do that thing you have to execute on it, but we will walk with you and kind of point you in the way so that you can at least head forward with some confidence. knowing where you're supposed to go and what it's supposed to look like when you get there. I like that. And that's, and that's what people are looking for. I think that, I had someone just say, I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed and They were only on after the second call and, and I said, well, the franchise or is, and you have to ask these questions, what is included, what, what they will help you with kind of step by step. These are the questions to be asking. We haven't made a decision on the brand yet, but you want to find out the support. And as we mentioned, first time business owner, it is extremely overwhelming because you don't know what you don't know. You don't even know the questions to ask or the things to do. What are these legal entities doing? How do I set them up? Who does that? Do I do them online and the attorney so I get it and that's where there was just a an interview Forget who shows on but it was the president of the IFA said that three quarters of people in the u. s Have have X. Oh, we have at some point in time thought of owning a business and of those three quarters of those people So those 75 percent 75 percent of the 75% said, well, they never got into business because they didn't know where to start, which which is crazy in this, in this, in this day and age with, with the internet and the amount of information we have. So that was the one thing holding them back. It was the fear of the unknown, the fear of not knowing where to start or who to contact. So hopefully we've, we've gotten rid of that fear. There, there are people not, not to say it is going to be a good fit for everyone. Obviously I'm going to, I'm going to say it is definitely not a good fit. Business ownership, franchising for everyone. You need to be qualified. You need to set some expectations. My question of the year or of last year was I heard you can't lose money. When you buy a franchise and, and my, my response was, if that were true, I wouldn't be speaking with you right now. I don't them all. As a joke, obviously, but that was, it was someone just out of college and said he heard somewhere on a, on a podcast, you can't lose money. So there's some, yeah, and, and, and even if you heard that, that's a question to bring up with the with the franchise company because. Not every brand is built the same you talk with a, if you're looking at franchising and window coverings, you can't throw everyone in the same bucket and say this is the industry. Each brand will kind of function differently. One may be owner operator. One may have you actually doing all the installs to start or maybe they're not doing any marketing or call center, not utilizing AI. You need to see the differentiators between the brands. And I think too many people just say, Window coverings or flooring or painting is this. And they kind of think all the brands work, that kind of functions. And that is absolutely not the case. Yeah. Yeah. You're a hundred percent right about that. Yeah. We're quick to point out our differentiators and we stand by those wholeheartedly. We're so fortunate to work with consultants like yourself who we do get an opportunity to educate. And so many of the candidates that, that people like yourself, Giuseppe, send us are already have a sense of who we are and what we are and, and why we're going to be potentially a little bit different. I think Kelsey and I do work very closely with, with the candidates and I think because it's their family business, I think because I've bought a franchise before when I wasn't super well versed in franchising, I, I really do take care to hold people's hand through this process to educate them to not assume that assume that when we talk about an FDD, they know what I'm talking about. Right. And to really walk them through the basics of franchising as much as we're educating them on on the blue and blinds opportunity. And but you know, we, we also rely on great consultants like yourself to help educate their, their candidates and provide us with candidates that are the right fit for this opportunity specifically. Yeah, we try our best. We work with the willing. Someone said in our group not, not everyone to people that are open to learning and experiencing and knowing the differences. We, we try our best. I think we should change it to, if you work with a franchise consultant, you can't lose money. There you go. That'll be a, that'll be a snippet. That'll, that'll get me in a lot of trouble, but there you go. Yeah, that'll be, that'll be my last interview. Yeah, it's it's great. It's great. I mean, just for someone to say that, that really kind of, that really bothered me. I mean, I'm sure he misunderstood, but. It's kind of bothersome if that actually was said or maybe it was taken out of context, who knows, but having said all that, I think there's one point that I want to bring up on Blumen, and there's, in the, in the FDD, which I just mentioned, which is the Franchise Disclosure Document, the very large legal reading that every brand has, there's a section in that called the Item 19, and that's financial performance representations on that specific brand. And when you, they're not all created equal, right? The amount of information a franchise system wants to put in there can be varying widely. And I think I'm really blessed to work on a brand that Kelsey and his family have decided to put a tremendous amount of information. There's 13 tables of information. There's seven different P& Ls. We show you consolidated P& Ls for a single van owner versus a multi van owner. So you can say, Hey, why would I not want to scale my business down the road? Right? We even show you a consolidated P& L for our owners. For whom in that calendar year, that was their first full year of operation with us. So you can see what brand new owners are doing with us. And we're just really transparent. The information is there. It works for you or it doesn't. We continue to move along or we don't. But we'd rather give you as much information as we can to help you digest that and really determine if we're, I use the term moving the needle, if we're moving the needle in your decision making, you should be going forward to keep working with us, and if it's not, then maybe this isn't the right brand for you, and that's okay too, right? We'll wish you well to find something that is, but I think having a very robust item 19 in our FDD is something we do get. Continual praise on in terms of just being able to disseminate the financial financial opportunity within the organization. That's, yeah, that's good to know. And someone viewing an FTD for the first time will have no idea. That's a very good point. I've seen a paragraph, I've seen it empty. I would say full listed PNLs. I've seen it before. I don't think it's as common as people would think. I think they expect the PNL for every single franchisee. And I think setting the expectation of what you're going to be seeing in the differences is big. Can you, can you share a success, maybe a recent success story? Some of that, and, and it could be, they've been in six months, a year or, or, or more, but can you share any, any success stories of franchisees that maybe invested in a bloom and blinds and expanded maybe, into, into other territories? Yeah, I'll jump on this one. maybe I shouldn't be giving his name, I don't know, but I mean, he's a franchise owner in the North end of Philly. Came in as a school administrator wanted out of that world, was having desires to kind of move into his own business, jumped into blue and blinds, jumped in the van brought on a part time employee right off the bat that way he could focus on the sales and the marketing and the growth of the business. And then he had someone who could help him out with the labor side. Most of our owners don't have that part time addition right off the bat. It's an option. It's just most of them don't. It's been with us about three and a half years. I started off with a total of four territories. So he came in with an ambitious plan and he's executed it. He's added just recently he just picked up two new territories. So he's up to six now. And he's just, he's running and gunning and having a really good time. He's living. He's purposefully driving towards the goals that he set forward, and he's using the systems and processes and the infrastructure that we've built around him, and then he's putting in the time, the work, and the energy to make the most out of it. And that's part of what I really love, is he'll tell anyone, they're not here to do it for me. I'm here to use the systems as a catapult or as my ability to stand on the shoulders of giants is a phrase he used. He's using the framework to get the most out of it. And I just feel like that's a really good healthy mentality. Sometimes franchising gives the mystique or, or perception that it's the easy button in business. And it is easier than creating it on your own, but there's very much still that, that gut check that says that you got to show up every day. And so you got to follow the system. Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not a set it and forget it. That was the Ron Popeil said it. I don't know if you remember him, the inventor, he had the pasta sausage, make it had, it was always after, after midnight, those infomercials just set it and forget it. And I go, it is a lot easier than starting from scratch, but you have to execute. Nope. They're not gonna, the franchise or is not executing for you. You need to follow the blueprint, the process. And I think some people don't, they, they just think they invest and the business kind of runs on itself. I haven't found that business yet, but I'll keep looking, but to my, to my knowledge, it doesn't exist. I think Kelsey brings up a good point when you're talking about some of our franchisees and some of our success stories. One of the important things that you should be doing when you're vetting any franchise opportunity is having an opportunity, not only to. Speak to the leadership team. You've got to get to know people like Kelsey and his brothers. And, we put them up every week on calls that our candidates can join in on, but we do the same thing with our franchisees. Then Blumen is very fortunate to have a wide variety of franchisees on our validation calls is what we call them. Giuseppe. And so each week we hold one hour zoom calls, open format, Q and a, for them to just talk to a franchisee. Like, what are your pain points? What are the things that you've had challenges? Would you do this all over again? Where are you having success? What are your growth plans looking like? Are you meeting those? If not, how is anybody helping you with that? Right? Bring those questions. But we put brand new owners. We've got two owners that just opened with us in 2024. So people can talk about like, what does it look like the last few months for you? We've got legacy owners, some of our most successful owners that are in the system. The gentleman that Kelsey just mentioned validates with us and can talk about, scaling his business. So we've got people that have come from all walks of life and they've got all different stories. They've got different territory sizes, some are in big major metros, some are in smaller. So there's really, you can see yourself in a little bit of, of different franchisees, but we highly encourage, like, you've got to talk to franchisees to understand. From their perspective, is this something that you really want to dive into and do? And I, I often say, if you're not on those validation calls, or at least making some calls of your own, like, you don't really look at you as a serious candidate, because without validation, you can't really determine if the vision you have in your head or the stories that we've shared with you really make sense for you, and validate that this is the opportunity that you want to move forward with. It also gives us a chance to get to know the franchise candidates on a very different level as well. They get time to spend with the leadership team and they, along with myself, can kind of pre vet them before we have them out to Dallas to meet the team eventually, right? You would think that's common sense. I know for me it was complete common sense to speak with other franchisees, but it's not. You need to, you need to remind, I, I've been shocked that people come with that so hard. It's what I wouldn't do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I tell my candidates quite frankly, look, if you're a couple of weeks in, you're not on any validation or leadership calls, I'm going to assume you're not interested in this brand. Right. And I get it. Life happens. There's all kinds of things that will happen that prevent people from being on calls. But you know, the fact that you're working or the fact that you've got kids in the evening or the fact that like none of those are enough, you're going to, you're looking at being a business owner. You, you're going to have to juggle responsibilities. You're going to be investing your time. You can't do that now. This is the easy part. Running a business is going to be a lot. If you can't, if you can't handle validation and research of a brand, how are you going to manage an entire business? So yeah, it's the three stages. I always say you talk with the franchise or you learn about the brand. You talk to the franchisees validation. And then stage three is you talk to the captain steering the ship. You talk to the franchise or directly virtually in person at a discovery meet the team day. Or some, some brands aren't even doing that. They're doing that within their due diligence calls and just asking where, where is the ship going? What are we adding revenue streams? What others, talking about AI, this is something new that we're going to be adding on. There's no, there's an added cost. There isn't a cost. This is included here or we're changing something else up, but you have to have that complete picture. In my opinion, to be comfortable with it and to make the best informed decision. All stages equally important. Yeah, at the end of the day, you as the consultant and myself as the franchise development person are not going to be part of the picture. The relationship lies with the franchise system, with the franchisor. If you haven't invested in them, if that's not where you're making your decision based on. that interaction, that potential relationship, that's problematic. Absolutely. You and I are going to be gone. Yes. Yeah. Right. Right. We're not, we're not going to be here. I mean, it's, it's exactly it. And I think they, they for kind of forget that Kelsey we're, we're approaching the hour. What advice would you give? Yeah, we have a lot. I would say we've run some polls that had some surveys, 80, 90 percent of the people listening in have never owned a business franchise or not. They've just never owned the business aside for maybe an Airbnb or, or, or some real estate on the side, but I've never just truly owned a franchise or non franchise business. What advice would you give to someone that is in the beginning stages? They're usually a corporate exec. That's who we're, we're getting a lot of feedback, corporate exec. Been in the workforce, long commute, long commute, hate my job. And there's this fear of leaving this job. What advice would you give to them from someone that's, that's obviously done it? Well, the fear part is tough because I mean, there are obligations. There are, lifestyles that you are kind of accustomed to. So those golden handcuffs can be quite debilitating and that's fair. Like you have to take care of your family. No one's going to fault for that. I think, I think I could point to a couple of things. There's probably, I could write a big list down, but before anyone really wants to invest in getting into a business franchise or not. Like, you gotta have a real honest gut check with yourself about your ability to stay motivated when nobody's watching. Something I see as new franchise owners coming from corporate America, there's this framework of accountability, like a subtle threat. If you don't do it, then you're going to have these repercussions. And when you, if you move out of that, some people thrive when they move out, but some people miss those guidelines. They don't know how to work when the whole thing's opened up and there's no border. And so you really have to be very good about being self motivated. I'm not an extraordinarily disciplined person, but I will work when chasing a goal. So in that regard, I am. So I think the gut check on is business ownership right for you. I think that's an important step. The other piece is as you get good at something in business, stay humble, assume that you have more to learn. I see too many franchise owners who get good at the thing and then they think they're great and they just stop this learning process. And part of what. What I think is the magic in business is recognizing that there's always more to learn because there's, I mean, your next great thing is just right around the corner. But if you stop looking, you just stay stagnant and, and that's dangerous. And that's not, you're not going to achieve a lot of really good things if you just stop learning, right? So stay humble enough to believe there's always more to learn. Either from somebody or situations and environments, Kelly, anything you'd like to add. I think, I mean, I think Kelsey really summed it up like that. That's exactly what we're looking for. And it's a hard tangible to recognize through this discovery process, right? Sometimes it involves a really direct question to a candidate to ask them to really think about. You don't have somebody Reporting your reporting into you don't have somebody standing over your shoulder. You have somebody telling you to get out of bed in the morning, right? You're on your schedule. You're on your, your plan. And yeah, so those hard conversations have to be had as part of the discovery process. They really do. Can I add and I'll add 11 and there's plenty more. We I'm sure we can all add, but. If you're married, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever your situation is, people, the people in your household, let them know what the hell's going on. That's it's amazing how many people I talk with the spouse, the other spouse has no idea what's going on. They'll jump on a call and they're just like, wait, what are we doing here? So let everyone know what you're doing, why you're looking into it. That let's set the expectation the first year, maybe a little lean, I may be working twice the amount of hours than I, than I did in the past. Whatever the case may be, because I am looking to create time freedom so that we never miss the kids, soccer games, the girl scouts, the dance recitals, all that stuff. That is something that is missed. And I can tell right off the bat, yeah, they're, they're, they're on board. I go, how about you? You just jump on a call and yeah, I get to say hello when they will not get their partner or spouse involved in calls. Absolute red flag that we, we can only take them so far without that conversation that involves parties for sure. We'll do it. We'll do a red flag episode. I know, I know we're coming. I know you have a call coming up and we're at the top of the hour. That'll be a whole day that we'll do the red flags. Yeah. That's a whole nother, that's a whole nother show. So we'll, we'll do that. Maybe we'll get a bunch of people on and everyone will have their own top red flag and we'll do a dozen of them or so. But I wanted to thank you guys. This is awesome. If anyone wants to learn more about bloom and blinds, where, where can they go? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we've got our website and that'll show you something, but I think having a tour guide through the process of discovery, like working with you, Giuseppe, I think it's really probably more of the safer way to go. Because not only you learn about Blumen, but you can learn about a bunch of other different concepts as well. And so to kind of have like a franchising realtor, if you will, to kind of help you walk through the houses of franchising. I think that's one of the better benefits you guys provide to this entire thing is, is that tour guide process. So yeah, you can come to us, but I'd go to Giuseppe. Appreciate that. We'll put all that in the, in the show notes. If you're in the car and you want to check out the link, we'll, we'll put everything in there, guys. I really appreciate it. This was awesome. Learned a lot. We just, just learning about home service in the home versus out, out of the home, been doing this a long time and I, that never really. There you go. Be humble. I just learned today guys, and I've been in franchising 20 years, so I'm sure I have a lot to learn. But thank you very much. I appreciate you guys. Coming on the show and we'll let you know as soon as the show is ready to go live. Thanks for letting us share your story. Thanks again. If you want to learn how to make the transition from corporate to owning your franchise, join Giuseppe on the next episode. You can also follow on all social media platforms and achieve financial and time freedom today.

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Giuseppe Grammatico

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