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.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Just a little FYI.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: 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: Hello, hello, hello everybody and welcome to another episode of All Things Considered Franchising. I am your host Scott Scotty Milas. I am the founder of All Things Considered Franchising and also a member of the perfect franchise.com Scott milosfranchise.com where we help people research and explore business ownership.
I have a great guest today.
We, we've been trying to bring guests in. We've concentrated on brands. Now we want to start bringing in some franchi.
My next guest is a gentleman by the name of Mark Wells. He is a franchisee with Waxing the City. Relatively new franchisee, just opened up I believe about 66, seven weeks ago.
I got to meet Mark kind of in a point where he had already met Waxing the City but kind of filled in some gaps for him. Questions the education showed him some options and Mark album Lee, along with I think some decisions from family made the decision to move with Waxing the City. Great brand.
So welcome to the show. Mark, good to see you again.
[00:02:09] Speaker C: Thanks Scotty. Good to see you. Also
[00:02:12] Speaker B: the journey. You know, we met at a, we initially started talking, we met at a franchise, so we kind of walked the aisle, so to speak, and many different conversations.
What we like to do here at All Things Considered franchises and really maybe kind of help people who are thinking about business ownership in franchising, kind of that process, that due diligence. But you have an interesting background because you spent many, many years in a family business and so the transition from family to franchising is also a conversation. So why franchising? What attracted you to franchising as you were getting ready to close out those many, many years in the family business, which I imagine was very emotional. Bittersweet.
You know, I'm sure there's some great times you could share, but the transition. Can you help us with the transition?
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Absolutely.
First of all, I appreciate you. And even though I did not get waxing the city through you, you were a class act the whole way, and I appreciate it.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
[00:03:19] Speaker C: We knew it was time to wind down. I was in the business. My brother and I were third generation. My grandfather started the business in 1948. The business that we ended up in bore no resemblance to that, to my grandfather's business. And he would have been happy about that because we stayed in business for 75 years. I was there for 40 years.
It was just time for a variety of reasons, I'm not ready to retire mentally. I like working and. Okay, what am I going to do? I'm in my 60s, nobody's hiring me, and I'm not sure I want to work for anybody at this point anyway.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: Not sure I could work for anybody at this point. So we.
I thought about, what am I going to do? So the thought came for franchise. Why?
I don't want to reinvent the wheel, but I want to still be my own boss.
And franchising seemed like it would make sense to me. So that's how I came to explore the franchise world.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Interesting. Interesting. I think one of the things, and if I recollect one of our conversations, early conversations when we started to talk about that, why. Why business ownership, why franchising kind of those goals, the things that you were trying to set out. One of the things I think I re. I vaguely remember you saying and recall saying, I didn't realize how big the franchising industry was. It's an endless. It's almost endless. It was almost like, you know, I think the conversation went. There is so much more than to Subway, to McDonald's, to Taco Bell that people don't realize there are so many things outside of what people look at. Franchising is traditionally food. And when we look at things like wellness, I mean, did you find it as you got deeper and deeper into the process that you were able to kind of scale in your emotions and really focus in on what you really wanted to do and how to accomplish your goals?
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Very much. Very much. And you saying that was. Yes, it was part of it. Part of the process.
Yeah. It's a lot more Than I realized. And one of the reasons, I don't know if you. You're probably going to get to this anyway, but one of the reasons I chose Waxing the City was it checked the boxes I wanted, which were I had 40 and 50 employees. I didn't want to do that anymore.
This business can be run with five to seven employees.
I also wanted something that was quote unquote, Amazon proof.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Yep, we talked about that. Yep, Absolutely right.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: We did. And this business is a service business. And I know while I've never been in retail consumer facing before, the principles are similar to running a business. So it fit, it just fit me.
And yes, the idea of how much there was in the franchise world. Yes, I had no idea. None.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Great. When you started to connect the dots and look at the 30, 35, 40 years the family business, I'm sure you probably recall the business growing up as a kid with your grandparents and then eventually working in the business, becoming partners, owners in the business with your bro.
And you started to see the differences between the systems, the technology, putting it all together as an independent business owner, connecting the dots versus kind of going in there and seeing all the systems.
Did you get comfortable with the fact that, hey, I see myself being able to utilizing Waxing the City systems and best practices and delegating those systems versus trying to create the systems. We able to get past that part
[00:07:08] Speaker C: 100% with very little trepidation. Very little. Because like I said, I don't.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: I'm.
[00:07:17] Speaker C: I've been around long enough to know that I didn't want to reinvent the wheel and I didn't want to have to start figuring all that stuff out and. Yeah. Do you give up some autonomy as a franchisee?
Yeah. Something didn't bother me. It didn't bother me. It didn't bother the autonomy part. You know, I'm happy to use their systems. I happen to think they're good, which of course is a benefit and makes it easier if it was a franchise system that I didn't respect or, or God forbid, I had not done my due diligence and, and found a lot of surprises once I got into it. That might be a different discussion, but no, I'm fine with all that. That's good. Easy.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: We're, we're talking to Mark Wells, who's owner of Waxing the City in Jericho, New York, Long Island. Mark, you talked about due diligence. You just mentioned due diligence.
Maybe you could share with our audience or listening audience what you found to be the crucial or the important parts of your due diligence. I mean, obviously you start talking to the brand, the brand starts telling you about the systems. Then there comes that part of what we call validation, that validation step. Talking to franchisees, asking the right questions help. Help get some of the people who are kind of, you know, in that point now where they're saying, well, do I look at this? Don't I look at this? What kind of questions? Or what are some of the things that you were looking for that were going to be important to you to get to the end game, which is the goals that you had set out? I have always found that people have a tendency to focus too much on the upfront side. And I think you and I had talked about this and don't stay focused on the end result that they're looking for. For. But what were some of the things that you found important in your due diligence to get to that decision?
[00:09:01] Speaker C: Yeah, well, obviously doing some research on the brand itself and seeing what it was all about. I mean, when somebody, when I got presented with Waxing the City, I, I said, what are you talking about, waxing? What do I know? Nothing about it.
I listened and yeah, the brand was good. But what do you ask you. You know what I did, Scotty? I did a lot of listening.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:09:24] Speaker C: You know, I let the brand. I listen to the brand and not just that brand. I listen to a number of brands in a number of different industries.
I ended up mostly focusing. I know they're different on wellness or, you know, health wellness kind of brands. And on pet brands.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Yes. Yep.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: And, and this is the one I ended up settling on. But I could have gone in different directions.
I did a lot of listening and not just listening to the brands.
I also listened to other franchisees.
I forgot what the rule of thumb is on how many calls you should make. Validation calls you should make whatever it was. I think I made about double that amount. I made about that amount on brands I didn't choose and about double the amount on the brand I ended up choosing. I probably spoke to eight or 10 different franchisees across the country from Waxing the City.
And at the beginning, one of the things was I was not totally sold because I'm in New York, on Long Island. It's a densely populated, higher cost area.
Speaking to people in more, less dense areas and less expensive areas, while valuable wasn't the whole story. I finally went back to the brand. I said, listen, I know you don't have many franchisees in my area.
I said, but you got to put me in touch with some people who are in areas more like mine, and they did. I ended up speaking to somebody from Philadelphia. I ended up speaking to somebody from Washington D.C.
areas more similar to what. So if I had to give one piece of advice, when you're talking to other franchisees, try to make sure you're talking to somebody who's going to be in a similar, identical, but even similar place to you to where you are.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: That's great guidance, Mark. I mean, and I, I, I, I, I 150% re agree with you in that guidance. I mean, the focus is sometimes is, is, is to connect with people outside of your market and really can't connect the dots or, or, or kind of align the stars is, is another way of putting it. But when you looked at,
[00:11:40] Speaker C: when you
[00:11:40] Speaker B: were doing this validation, the tendency for people to start validation is to immediately jump into the numbers. And I know in a number of conversations we had, my, the guidance was numbers are important, Numbers are important. It has to validate. But how important was the validation to talk to the brand or even all the brands that you talked to about, you know, connecting with the systems, the best practices, the marketing, the operations team, in your case, brick and mortar, the real estate search, the process, how important of that, how important was that compared to eventually getting to the numbers?
[00:12:21] Speaker C: Probably more important because I wasn't going to consider a brand that I wasn't comfortable with and didn't like, didn't matter what the numbers were.
I mean, obviously at a certain point the numbers are very important.
This is not doing this as a hobby, but, but very important. I went to wexing, the city's headquarters in Minnesota, spent a couple of days there for discovery days, and I was, I came away extremely impressed with all of the things you just mentioned. You know, we met, they, we got a presentation from every department and I liked that because I wanted to hear. And every one of them seemed to be not just expert in their area, but this was their life. The real estate person, Real estate is what they do.
The marketing people were, this is what they do, you know, and they were specialists in that area. And yeah, you know, and I spoke to them.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: So you had to feel, you have to feel comfortable with that. And that would be your guidance. Yeah. If you didn't feel comfortable, it wouldn't have mattered.
[00:13:23] Speaker C: It wouldn't have mattered. The numbers wouldn't have mattered if I didn't feel comfortable.
And then after that, then was the numbers and then was calling other franchisees.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:32] Speaker C: And I Had to feel comfortable with that as well. Listen, I could have gotten a.
I spoke to one.
I'm not going to even, you know, I don't want to.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you don't have to know yet.
[00:13:43] Speaker C: But I spoke to one place where they.
Not last in the city. I spoke to a different place where they had some, they had some issues with the franchisor. I said, you know what?
Those things, I'm out.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Right?
Yeah.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: And it was a comfort thing. It wasn't a numbers thing.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's important. You know, in the process of getting educated, I always, and I think we discussed this, it's kind of that dating process. You got to get comfortable with somebody.
You don't ask somebody. Right, right. Well, you don't start dating. You don't. You don't ask someone to marry you and then start dating. You date and then, you know, you
[00:14:19] Speaker A: want to have that partnership very much.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Speaking to our audience, if there's somebody out there considering business ownership and really interested in learning more about franchising and the benefits of franchising or how franchising may not be a good fit for them, any guidance on how they should start? You know, one of the things that I always like to address my clients is research is good, but sometimes when you start researching on your own, you're researching as a consumer. Consumer. Because a lot of the information to start strategically thinking about getting out of being a W2 to a business owner is completely different than being a business owner like you were, because you know the ins and outs of being a business owner because you were a business owner to a franchisee. So any words of wisdom or guidance that you can give some of our listening audience on people who may be thinking of best ways to start this education, the guidance or how to go about this.
[00:15:20] Speaker C: Ask a lot of questions, but do a lot of listening and trust your gut. If you're not comfortable with something, it's probably not the right thing for you.
You have to find.
You have to find something that, that you're comfortable with. And if there's going to be unknowns, there's unknowns in everything. But you have to feel a comfort level with the people you're dealing with. People. People are important. And the people you're dealing with at the brand, you have to be comfortable with the product as well. And I knew nothing about this product, but I got comfortable with it.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Right. So it's. It's good to say. It's safe to say that waxing wasn't a passion of yours to Be a business owner in. You weren't. You didn't get up in the morning and say, hey, I want to own a waxing business.
[00:16:07] Speaker C: I'll let you in on a secret.
Over the 40 years that I was in business, we pivoted major pivots about four times.
I wasn't that passionate about any of those areas of business. I'm not a, you know, but I'm passionate about business.
I like asking questions, I like learning, I like thinking about it, I like strategizing.
If you don't like doing those things, you might not want to own your own business.
But if you like doing those things, you will find the right brand for you.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Right. So eventually you found the right fit. I guess that's the point. I was getting to.
It doesn't have to be that passion. A lot of people say, well, I have a passion for this, I have a passion for that. And I think we even talked about this in our early stages of the education that focus on the fit part. What's the better fit for you versus the passion? Because passions change. I mean, look, you may love Corvettes today and tomorrow you love Ferraris or, you know, so it ended up being great fit for you. Waxing the.
[00:17:09] Speaker C: It did, it did. Very much, much to my surprise. But that, I guess that's another thing I would say have an open mind.
I mean, my first gut reaction was, what are you talking about? I know I said that already, but what are you talking about? And they said, they said, listen, just listen. I said, fine, I'll listen.
I'm glad I did.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: In your search, your due diligence and the steps you took to, to ultimately make a decision, was there anything that you found yourself that you made a mistake on and had a backtrack or, you know, you know, was there a certain course that you followed, track to follow to get to that decision that
[00:17:53] Speaker C: you made to get to the decision?
No, I really don't think so.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: And that's.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but I. Right, I got comfortable and it was a step by step process. You know, like we just talked about this, the step by step process. If at any point along the line I wasn't going to be comfortable with it, I probably would have been out on the brand.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Right. So.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: No, no, I don't think so. Again, not to pat myself on the back.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: No, no, that's great.
A follow up to that is how important was the brand's decision to award you the franchise? Because franchises are awarded that you followed the process to get approved, I guess
[00:18:37] Speaker C: it was just, you know what?
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Because it was natural for you.
[00:18:40] Speaker C: It was natural for me. Yeah, I know. Natural for everybody. If you've been in the corporate world, this won't be as natural a process as it was for me.
But, no, it was pretty natural. I mean, I've just done things like this for 40 years.
So, yeah, it was. It was something I could just go along with.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: Right. When we looked at.
When we look at Jericho, New York, the area you're in, the market that you're in, when you started to kind of zone in and really realize that this was for you, and you started to have those development calls, development conversations.
I believe you chose to do one unit to start out, if I'm correct. And correct me if I'm wrong. Correct. But how important was it for you to understand the scalability of a market if you decided to grow into multiple. Multiple locations?
[00:19:37] Speaker C: It was important but not critical.
But that's because I'm at an age and stage in my life where I promise I will never own 10 of these.
I'm just not going to do that at my stage.
Will I own multiple?
To be determined, which is why I started with one. But I am extremely open to multiple.
We'll see. We'll see.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: All right. Well, we've been talking to Mark Wells, who is a franchisee with Waxing the City, relatively new, just opened his store in, I think, April.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:20:12] Speaker C: January.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: January of this year.
[00:20:15] Speaker C: January 15th. I'm open less. I'm open for about six, seven weeks.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: And I'm your host, Scott. Scotty Milos of All Things Considered Franchising and a member of the perfect franchise.com referral network and of course, scottmylasfranchisecoach.com Mark, any closing thoughts? Any guidance, any additional guidance? Anybody out there who's just, you know, generally interested in franchising business ownership? Any guidance, any thoughts that you can share?
[00:20:43] Speaker C: Don't expect the franchise to do everything for you, because they don't and they shouldn't.
They do a lot. They have a lot of systems and, well, a good franchise has systems, has, you know, procedures.
But you're still running your own business and you're making your own decisions, and you have to be willing to do that. And now this is something I wanted to do for most franchises that are, well, the ones I looked at and probably because I expressed this to you, I didn't want to be an absentee owner.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: You have to decide what you want to be when you grow up. Do you Want to be absentee or do you want to be hands on? I'm hands on. I'm not planning right now. I'm spending a lot of time there. I'm not planning on spending all my time there as we get rolling, but I'm always going to be hands on. But that's my personality. But you have to think about what your personality is if you're considering franchise and you know what you want out of it and what you want to put into it.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: But it's also safe to say that that's part of due diligence, that if you wanted to be that semi, semi absentee owner, and I think we had a discussion. Look, if you're really interested in semi absentee, great. But you're still going to need those 15, 20, 25 hours a week. You can't just open a business, turn the keys over to somebody and say, hey, thanks very much. Can you run the business for me?
You would have done the due diligence and reached out to franchisees that were potentially semi absentee or semi absentee owners, correct?
[00:22:14] Speaker C: Yes, 100%. You want to ask those questions when you talk to owners and, and I spoke to owners with one franchise and I spoke to owners with multiple franchises. So yeah, you do need to know that up front.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: So last question.
So last question for you.
A lot of people start, a lot of people become interested in franchising, but they start hearing whispers in their ears. I call it head trash of franchising. You really don't own the business. They take all your money. They do this, they do that.
Do you see a value being a franchisee versus starting your own business from scratch? I mean, is there, you know, is there any rumor that you went into this with and now you realize, you know, that was just a rumor. It was, it was head trash. You know, it's head trash.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: It's head trash. It is still your business.
Are you. Do you have to follow their systems and their rules and something that I liked? I didn't want to have to think about it. My studio is beautiful.
Had nothing to do with me. It was all brand standard and to their specs.
I'm happy about that. I'm willing to give up some of my autonomy in order, but I'm getting something in return for it. You have to keep that in mind. Getting something in return for the giving up some of your autonomy, but not all of it. You still have to make decisions. I hired everybody.
I was the final say on the location. Even though I had a lot of help from the brand on it.
Just for a couple of examples. No, the design of the studio was not me. And if you're a junior designer and you think you'll want to put your own spin on it, you're not. Don't get. Get that out of your head. You know, certain things you can't do.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: Is it safe to say then, as we close out here, that.
To have done this by yourself, let's just say you woke up one morning and said, I'm going to start my own waxing business.
To have put all this together yourself would have been a deeper challenge for you than having the part would have been impossible. It would have been impossible. Okay, all right, I'll go further.
[00:24:26] Speaker C: It would have been impossible.
I mean, even. Even if I went to the point of saying, okay, I'll bring in a partner or something who has the experience in it, there's so much stuff that I wouldn't have known and wouldn't have gotten the education in. No, there's no way.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: And you would have had to pay that partner and give up part. So it's.
[00:24:46] Speaker C: It's not too.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Right, right, right. All right, great. Well, Mark, I appreciate you being here. You know, I. I really enjoyed working with you over the years, and I. I hope we can get back on the show in another 6 months, 12 months. Talk about, you know, some of the.
Some of the achievements and things, uh, the success over that time period. But, uh, I really appreciate you taking the time to be here.
[00:25:12] Speaker C: Just so you know, Scotty, I am, besides being a guest today, I'm a listener. I listen to every episode. I find it interesting.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: That's great. I really appreciate that. It's. It was a lot of fun working with you and ultimately for me, and I think you know me well enough now that, as I said to you, the goal was for you to get to that right decision for you. This was about you, my process. I appreciate it wasn't about anybody.
[00:25:35] Speaker C: Like I said at the beginning, Scotty, you're a class act, and I'm. I was. You. You. You helped. You, definitely.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. All right, great. Well, we've been talking to Mark Wells, like I said, who's the franchisee with Waxing the City in Jericho, New York. So if you're out of New York, Long Island, Nassau county, stop in his store. You could definitely look them up. Find more information About Mark on LinkedIn as well.
I am your host, Scott. Scotty Milas. If you have any interest in learning more about franchising business ownership Feel free to reach out to me at Scotty attheperfect franchise.com or give me a ring on the phone. Yes, the phone. I actually have a desk phone. 413-935-5111. You can also text me at that number. But until next time, feel free to listen to all the episodes. I think we're up to 135, 140 episodes now. This is our third season at All Things Considered franchising.com or go to any of your favorite podcast channels and look us up there. Mark, wish you and your family all the best with the new business. This is Scott, Scotty Mila, saying good night, goodbye, and until next time,
