Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello everybody and welcome to All Things Considered Franchising podcast. I am your host Scott Scotty Milos and I've been around the franchising space. Well, seems like a lifetime. So welcome to the show.
Just a little FYI. I help people explore franchise ownership, see if it's the right path for them and more importantly, provide an educational journey to see how a brand that fit can fit your goals and lifestyle. I also educate my clients on how to validate and make a logical business decision as well as an informed decision.
On this show you'll hear directly from franchise owners as well as franchisors leading exciting brands and people within and in the industry of franchising. You can always connect with me at Scotty at the perfect franchise.com that is my email address.
Visit the websites at the perfect franchise.com or Scott Milo's franchisecoach.com. you can also text and call me at 413-935-5111. Now let's get into today exciting episode.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of All Things Considered Franchising. I am your host Scott Scotty Milus, founder of All Things Considered Franchising. You can find all of our podcasts on your favorite podcast channels and of course, all things considered franchising.com I'm also the founder of Scott Milos franchisecoach.com and part of the Perfect Franchise.
Been a consultant offering franchise franchise consulting education services for many, many years. I have a very, very interesting guest today and you know, we, we, we have brands that come on, they kind of fit in mainstream.
This brand I think fits off of Main Street. Main street, it's relates to senior health fitness and it's just I think a fascinating a brand. And we have Corey Chaffee who is the founder president of Live to Be Healthy.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: Welcome Corey. Thank you, Scotty.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Corey, you have an interesting background because your brand has been, you've been.
The brand's origin started from your passion and eventually your wife's passion for health and fitness.
And it graduated into working with seniors.
And a lot of people get into senior care or senior related businesses because of family situation, parents, grandparents.
Talk a little bit about your background.
I know you have a passion for fitness. Your wife does, Sarah as well.
Tell us a little bit how your passion for fitness became something for seniors. And we'll go into the model in a little bit, kind of describe what the model does.
[00:03:02] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah. No, I, I've been a personal trainer since 1999, so I'm, I'm kind of dating myself a little bit here. But when I went to college and then when I was sitting there trying to figure out what I wanted to do the rest of my life, I realized that I really liked helping people physically, you know, um, so I became a, a personal trainer. Um, and you know, I, I've worked in all different realms.
You know, extremely large health clubs, national health clubs, small health clubs, personal training, studios, did in home personal training, bought a small health club, which we still own it today. My wife, my wife runs it. And one common denominator that I, that I noticed inside of, you know, everything that I did with, with training and working in health clubs is that there weren't a lot of seniors taking advantage of utilizing a certified personal trainer. And so that's really how it started where I just realized that that's a population of people that seem to be forgotten about when it comes to having proven exercise programs.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: And you're absolutely right. There is a, a challenge for seniors to stay healthy, active. I mean, look, I'm dealing with my father, he's going to be 91, you know, trying to get him off the couch to stay mobile.
It is always a challenge. But Live to Be Healthy is an organization, a franchise that actually goes to where seniors are versus trying to get seniors to get to you brick and mortar. Explain that. And, and how did that start? I mean, because that solves a lot of issues and it also kind of helps with the excuses of I have nowhere, I, I can't get to, I can't get here, I can't get there.
And it really kind of opens the door for you to go there and really, you know, offer the services.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, you just said it right there. It takes away the excuses, you know, the roadblocks.
And I mean, it really hit me when we bought that health club and I noticed after owning it for a while that if seniors came in, they would gravitate to something that was easy, which would be like a recumbent bike or a treadmill, something like that.
And so.
Going back to when we used to go into do in home personal training, we come to them again, we take the excuses out.
Especially here in Minnesota, it snows every once in a while in wintertime.
People don't want to go outside. And so we just thought we'd make it easy to for them primarily inside of senior living communities because we could capture a bigger crowd all at one time. Instead of going individually to each person's
[00:06:01] Speaker B: house, we're talking to Corey Chaffee, who is the founder of Live to Be Healthy. A senior health and fitness franchise that offers, I guess, fitness services to, as you just mentioned, senior centers for seniors.
You mentioned being in business or started out in, had a passion for health and fitness, was a personal trainer, started bought a gym with your wife.
Talk to the audience about how you started this transition into senior fitness. I mean, it. You didn't wake up one morning and say, hey, let's service seniors. I mean, there had to be an audience. There had to be some people coming in. I'm just kind of, and if I'm wrong, correct me, but I'm kind of reading between the lines. It's, you know, you didn't, you know, talk about that because to me it's, it's probably got to be a fascinating story.
[00:07:01] Speaker C: Well, it's funny that you, you said that I didn't wake up one morning, you know, just thinking of this. Well, it was actually one night I was going to bed and I got really thinking about how I could help seniors. And as I was laying there, it kind of struck me with what I was mentioning earlier. Let's just go to where they live. You know, I was pretty excited that night, know, laying in bed, I probably had my, you know, the business plan all figured out. I don't know if I slept a wink. And the next morning I was pretty excited about it. But, but again, it just seeing the people that were not utilizing either a health club or personal trainer. And again, that common denominator were seniors. And so that night I, I thought of the idea and it still took about two years, Scotty, to, to really have it finalized because there's, there's a lot of moving parts. It's not just, you know, let's just go into a senior living community and, and teach exercise classes. Because me as a personal trainer, I'd like to, to actually know that what I'm doing is working. And so created some, some assessments for the seniors.
And so, and those would be, you know, balance, upper body strength, lower body strength, and flexibility.
And then what I wanted to be able to do is, is work with them and then come back and do the same assessments and see what the change was. Because for me as a personal trainer, and it helps doing things like that because it really guides me on what I should or should not be working on with seniors. If they're really good at upper body strength or lower body strength, I'm going to concentrate on other things that they're not so good at.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: But just keep in mind, this was just supposed to be for me to do. I Didn't think that night in bed, I'm going to start a franchise.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Well, that's a great lead and thanks for bringing that up because that was going to be my next guest question.
You've owned the business. You're now building the business. You've come up with kind of the, the plan, I like to refer sometimes as the menu. You've come up with the menu.
A lot of people think it's, it's, it's easy to go out and franchise your business, become a franchise.
[00:09:15] Speaker C: They've never done it before.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Right. It's interesting. So talk about how. Well, let me ask you this. What did you know about franchising?
When the idea or somebody presented the idea of, hey, let's franchise this, did you know anything about franchising? I mean, have, I mean, outside of the, you know, the subways, the McDonald's, the Taco Bells, you know, the name, you know, when everybody relates franchises to. But did you know anything about franchising?
[00:09:47] Speaker C: Not one bit. And I learned along the way.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: What were, you know, when you learned along the way? I mean, obviously there had to be some great achievements early and there had to be some, wow, I can't believe we did that. Can you share any of the moments and then, you know, talk about, you know, you formed a relationship with a franchise sales organization to kind of connect the dots, to really start focusing on growth and to really, you know, provide the, the guidance and the oversight to your franchisees. But what were some of the things that really got you by surprise or caught you by surprise in franchising as you were growing live to be healthy?
[00:10:35] Speaker C: Well, like I said, it was just going to be for myself. And then after a couple of years, so I started this in 2008, and it kept growing and growing to where I couldn't keep training myself. I had to start hiring personal trainers to do a lot of the classes for me.
And it really got to a crossroads at the end of 2009. And so my wife and I sat down and talked. What direction should we take this?
Because one key thing that I'm, I should probably mention the very first location that we were at after we did some the assessments the second time and I had these great results. I sat down with the owners of the community and delivered the results. And keep in mind, Scotty, the average age in the class was 93 years old.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:11:30] Speaker C: Some of them using walkers and some of them in wheelchairs and some of them that were fully ambulatory, but the balance increase was 293%.
That is phenomenal. I mean, it's like the baseball talk. That was a grand slam. And so anyway, before I left that building, though, the owner said, corey, please don't be selfish with this program. Please let other seniors take advantage of it. And so the reason why I want to tell you that story is that I always come back to that phrase. And so in 2009, when my wife and I sat down, I was thinking about what they said, and it's like, you know what? Let's not be selfish, and let's let other seniors take advantage of it nationwide instead of just in our little region where we lived.
And so we franchised in 2010. And I will say right away there was some buzz going about with Live to be Healthy, and we got a decent amount of franchise owners coming on board. I became a franchise owner of own system in 2015 for a couple reasons. I wanted to be able to, you know, test ideas out in my area and also be able to prove that the, you know, the process that we were teaching really worked. And then in 2020, we were ready to start franchising again because we took off five years of franchising. Well, then Covid hit, and so we transitioned to doing. To doing classes virtually.
And then when we were able to get the classes back in, we were ready to grow. And then we decided to. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel of franchise development, we decided to work with a company that. That really knew it. And that's. We just ultimately decided to work with Brand One. And I will say, since. Since working with Brand One, and it's a phenomenal company. They. They really care about not just the franchise or they care about their candidates which become the franchisees.
It's been crazy.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Great organization. You and I were chatting before. Before this started, and yeah, a lot of respect for Dave and Michael and the team over there. And you're in good hands. But, you know, it's interesting. You started the franchise, paused, and there are a lot of reasons that brands pause. Pause that they're growing too fast, not able to support their franchisees.
Technology changes things get caught up.
What did you learn in between that time you paused and then started again to franchise? Because I imagine that you had a lot of people knocking on your door initially to become a franchisee. You were hiring trainers, and trainers are going, wow, I can own a business that does this. And I would just kind of read between the lines and think that maybe some of those trainers came in as franchisees. But what was the pause and the restart and then maybe kind of give us an overview of what the model is today.
If somebody was saying and listening to this, wow, this sounds really interesting.
Fitness, health, health and fitness for seniors. No brick and mortar. If I, you know, what are you looking for in a franchisee?
[00:14:52] Speaker C: Sure. Well, I will say the reason why, you know, you said, you know, pausing with franchising.
You know, we had some really good franchise owners but I think they, in their head they were limited with the growth that they could do. And so, you know, remember the four minute mile, Nobody could ever reach it. And all of a sudden somebody does. Now everybody's doing a four minute mile. And so that's really what happened with us is that when I became a franchise owner of my own system, I was able to grow a very big franchise fast. And it opened up the minds of everybody else that they could do it as well. So we really grew as a company with, with contracts, you know, with classes and, and that's, that's how they make their money. And so during that time we learned a lot with, you know, the system, the process, how to get classes a little bit quicker. But also since then there's a lot more technology that's involved now to, to get your name out there. So when people are searching and so forth. So we've grown a lot in the last couple years with that.
But it's still, I will say traditional marketing and you know, picking up the phone and doing drop ins where you just drop in location is also very much our bread and butter as well. And so it's just, I will say, Scotty, it's, it's a relationship building business. It's not a selling Kirby vacuums. And, and so you're creating those relationships.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: I don't know if really dating ourselves
[00:16:27] Speaker C: the reason why I kind of say that our business coach used to do that. So
[00:16:34] Speaker B: you know, and I just want to say this, I think pausing growth and taking a time out as they say, is the right thing to do in franchising. There are too many brands, I shouldn't say too many, but there are brands that just want to continue selling and offering franchises and they're not really focused on the growth of the franchisees. And that's when you know, all the legal mumbo jumbo starts and the arguments start to, and brands and franchisees get themselves in trouble. But as an ideal franchisee, somebody, if I'm talking to somebody consulting with somebody, what, where do you see your franchisees who are successful? What's the common denominator? What, what are you saying obviously probably I have some passion for health and fitness, but where are the connections? Where are you seeing the success for your franchisees?
[00:17:32] Speaker C: Well, if they're a business minded person that can follow a process and they're organized, you know, just this is pretty simple.
That's the type of person we're looking for. And so you, you mentioned earlier about personal trainers originally that's what my thought was thinking that you know, personal trainers would be the ideal franchise owner because they already know the, you know, the personal training aspect of it.
But most personal trainers aren't business minded and what I mean by that is when they get a contractor class, what do they want to do?
They want to train that class and if they train that class, it slows them down from doing more meetings and getting more contracts.
And so if you're a business minded person, like I said, and that can follow a process. I mean if you want to reinvent the wheel in franchising, why franchise? Right?
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: We already have a proven process, please follow it. And also it sounds silly but if you're organized, you also do a lot better than if you're not, is what we found out.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: How many locations, territories you up to now?
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Oh, I think we're around 43 territories and around 30, 30, 31 franchise owners.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Okay. Are you seeing your franchisees coming into this and exiting corporate and focusing on this or are they doing this as a, a passive, semi absentee type executive role, hiring a manager, quote that salesperson, general manager to go out and get those contracts? I mean, are you seeing a combination of both? Or I guess the better question would be Corey, what works best?
[00:19:11] Speaker C: Well, we are seeing a combination of both. We have people that, you know, still love their jobs but they see a very upside of having a business like this. So they, they hire a business manager to be able to, you know, grow their business and then eventually, you know, maybe get out of their job.
Or we have part time workers to where they have still a part time job and then work this part time. Plus they also hire a part time business developer.
But then we also have the full time franchise owners which those are the ones that I personally like working with because they're 100% into it.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:49] Speaker C: We don't have to work with their business development manager, then get back to them about what we've talked about.
But when, when a person has 100% of their time invested into, you know, something they put a little bit, it's, to me it seems that they put a little bit more of their heart and soul into it.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: Okay, great. Corey, this has been an interesting conversation because as I started out and I mentioned earlier, it's a very interesting brand. It's unique, It's Live to be healthy, and it's Live two. The number two, Be healthy. Just to clarify that.
It's an interesting brand.
It's very community driven, I imagine. I mean, you're getting involved in the community. You get to work with seniors and see seniors smile. I mean, that's worth a lot right there.
[00:20:37] Speaker C: I will say. I mean, we've heard time and time again, it's a highlight of the day, you know, And I will. The other thing too is the types of locations that we go into. It's not just senior living communities. And when I say senior living communities, the type of communities would be, you know, skilled nursing or nursing homes, memory cares, assisted living, independent living, 55 and up communities. But also we go into churches, we go into community centers or senior citizen centers and parks and recs, anywhere we can actually teach a class for seniors.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: One of the questions, I imagine our audience is saying to themselves, well, wait a minute. A lot of the community centers already have this. A lot of the, you know, senior facilities already have this. They're doing it internally.
Is it that they're doing it, but they're working with or an organization like yours to put these programs together or maybe explain to our audience how that works. So if you were a Live to be healthy franchisee and now you're going out and building your client base, what is the advantage of using an organization like yours versus, you know, ABC Senior center trying to do all this on their own?
[00:22:00] Speaker C: Sure. Great question.
When I first got started with this, I would say about 50% of the meetings that I would have, sales meetings, communities had some type of an exercise program.
And that exercise program could have consisted of throwing a DVD inside of a DVD player and they can watch a video or an activity director teaching a class that's not certified or another senior teaching a class.
But at least they had something going on. And I would say it was always harder to have the community relate to me. If they did not have some type of an exercise program because they just weren't there yet, they always would come back and say, this sounds great, but our seniors are too fragile.
And so, but, but today, if I were to do a sales meeting, probably 90% of them have something going on still. It's not 100%, 90% realize how fragile they are. They still need to be doing something with their seniors. And I would much Rather be talking to that crowd because they already get it right. They should be doing something. But now it's my job to be able to prove to them why ours is much more superior than what they're already doing. You know, and when you describe, we have certified personal trainers that come in and teach proven customized exercise programs to their seniors on daily or three days a week or whatever it is, and then be able to prove to them that it works with the measurements that we do the assessments. But it doesn't just stop there, Scotty. One thing that we realized after a couple of years of getting this going is that if you have a program that works and you have phenomenal numbers to back it when it comes to this, you know, the senior population, why not tell everybody about it? Why not tell the world about it?
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:56] Speaker C: And so why do you hide the numbers that we. If we're doing these assessments and they're. They're great numbers. Why hide it? And so what we end up doing was creating marketing material for the communities so they can market their own wellness program that we're teaching.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:24:12] Speaker C: So, you know, people that are looking to bring their, you know, move their mom or dad or, you know, loved one into a senior community, if, if, if this community can be able to show you that, you know, the, the falls have gone way down. We do fall prevention programs with our. With our exercise program.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: I was just going to get into that. Yeah.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: And people live there longer and so forth. I mean, it's a tipping point. It really is a tipping point for people that are, you know, they're shopping around, they're looking at six different places or however many. And then if we can help be that tipping point to where they say, you know what, I want to move mom or dad into this location, because why are we originally looking for them to move it into a location because they've been falling. Well, this is the place that can help them with fall prevention.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: Right. So that was what I was going to close here.
We're talking to Corey Chaffee, who is the founder of Live to Be Healthy, a senior health and fitness organization that goes to seniors senior centers and. And provides health and fitness options for seniors. And I imagine a lot of this is in group form, correct?
I imagine you do offer some.
It's there as individual, but you're doing mostly this in group form, is that correct? Yeah.
[00:25:23] Speaker C: Our bread and butter, how we started. It's. It's a large group format. It could be anywhere, you know, 15, 20, 25, 30, depending on the lifestyle. People, but we also do small group and one on one personal training as well.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: Right, but you mentioned prevention of falling. So this isn't always about just keeping somebody mobile, keep the blood flowing, as they say. There's prevention here.
I would imagine that a lot of what you do when you're getting somebody feel good, a senior, about themselves, it helps on. I'm not a doctor or a medical person, but I would imagine if somebody who's feeling better about themselves and taking care of them, memory care, things like that, there's a, there's a cycle here of how someone feels, especially a senior, after going through an exercise program, a fitness program.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: Correct. Yeah. And you know, I mean, you and I aren't there yet, but from what I've been told numerous times, when a senior falls once, what do you think they think about whenever they are going to stand? They think, I don't want to fall.
And so if you can, if you can get, you know, feeling stronger and more confident and, or, and, or you know, prevent their first fall from happening, people are just going to be happier.
And not just that. I mean, falls lead into a lot of things.
Sadly, about 50% of the falls people pass away after about a month.
You know, seniors. And so the others that do not, I mean, they're in agony and they move out of the, you know, senior community that they're in and maybe into a hospital or you know, some skilled nursing to get rehab and that's where they end up staying the rest of their life. So really we concentrate on falls because it's a big need.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Right, right. Well, Corey, this has been great.
The growth of the organization has been, you know, is definitely, definitely a story itself. Hopefully we'll get you back on and kind of talk about it and kind of get an update.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: But I would like to, I would like to say a little something, Scotty. I want, I, I like, I would like to, to thank the perfect franchise we've had. We've grown in six months. We brought on, I believe it was 20, 22 to 23 territories and you guys, the perfect franchise brought on at least 90%, at least 90% of those new franchise owners. So I want to thank, thank you.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: I appreciate that. Yeah, we love the brand. I mean, and again, you know, when we look at brands and we're walking people through this educational process of business ownership, we want to make sure that we're presenting options to them that have strong support mechanisms.
You know, the, the story of the, the franchise, the business model, is there leadership like yours and of course, you mentioned Brand One, which is, you know, regarded as one of the top franchise sales organizations in the country. And not only in the sense of building and putting organizations like yours, Live to Be Healthy, on the mat, but it's the back end of what Brand One is doing for your franchisees. The support, the training, getting them up and running, marketing operations, training. There's a lot to franchising that, you know, a lot of people don't realize on the back end.
And that's why you join a franchise, because you want that support. So.
But Corey, thank you for joining again. We've been talking to Corey Chapey, who is founder and president CEO of Live2Be Healthy. You can find Corey on LinkedIn. If anybody wants more information about becoming a potential franchisee with Live to Be Healthy, you can reach out to me, Scotty, at the Perfect franchise dot com. You can also visit my websites, the Perfect franchise dot com, Scott Myles, Franchise coach dot com and of course, all things considered, franchising dot com a website for all of our podcasts. Corey, great having you and hope to get you back in the next six months and get an update.
[00:29:37] Speaker C: Thank you. I appreciate it.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: And go Twins.
Thank you very much.
[00:29:45] Speaker C: I don't hear a lot of that.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: I'm a believer, Corey. I'm a believer.
Thanks much.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: No, I appreciate it, Scotty.
