Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of all Things considered franchising, powered by Scott Milos, franchisecoach.com. I am your host, Scott Scotty Milos.
All things considered franchising is a podcast dedicated to the entrepreneur people who are looking for information and want to hear from people who are entrepreneurs, franchisees, independent business operators, but just a lot of information on business ownership. Scottmilesfranchisecoach.com is an organization that I started many years ago, consulting organization that helps people research and explore opportunities, kind of building that roadmap, that criteria model, and then introducing you to opportunities that potentially fit the services and guidance that we offer. Education. This comes at no cost to you.
I'm chuckling in the back of my mind as I'm getting ready to introduce our guests today, and I have to be transparent that I've gotten to know our guest and his family over the years that I've been working with them, and I've been able to work with them for several years and gotten to know him. But our guest today is Parker Smith, who is matting director franchisee over at grand welcome for Palm beach and Broward County, Florida, territories. Grand welcome.
If you listen to prior episodes on all things considered franchising, you know that grand welcome is a short term vacation rental property management company.
Excited to have you on board here today. Parker, welcome.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for having me, Scotty. I'm super excited to be here.
Have you had any of the other Smiths on the podcast, or am I the first?
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm glad you asked. I've had your dad. He actually was probably, when I started this about 1516 months ago, he was probably one of my first, not first, but probably within the first ten recordings that I did. So we definitely have to get him back on. And that kind of leads me to the intro here about you. We connected through your dad. Your dad, you have been an entrepreneur in what I would call the family space, the family business. You come from a family of entrepreneurs. Your dad, I believe your grandfather was also, if your father told me, was also a business owner. Your mom is involved in several different businesses.
You're a family that does a lot of charitable work, but your background started working for the family. And just as a short story, your father, I guess, came to all of you, your brothers and sisters, and said, hey, guys, guess what? I'm selling the company to private equity. And this is the plan. And one of the plans that he had mentioned to you was continuing in business ownership, but getting involved in franchising. And I really would like to ask from your side of the story when this was presented to you, and again, I'm verbating here, kind of embellishing a little bit, probably how the story went, but being in a corporate environment and now saying that you're going into another corporate environment, maybe in the franchising space, what was your mean?
How did Parker handle this?
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Well, did you say coming from a corporate environment with the previous business into now?
[00:03:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: I mean, your dad came to you. You were working with your family business, the family business. And then dad comes to you and says, hey, guys, guess what? And now it's kind of like, okay, we're going to all have to go out and kind of reinvent ourselves. And I know as a family, you are looking to do something, but how did Parker react to all this? How was Parker?
[00:03:51] Speaker B: I was cracking up. Because anyone who's worked in family business knows that no matter how large or corporate the company becomes, it's never corporate for us.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: It still felt like working out of a garage with my siblings, fighting, like when we were younger. So even though that business became very successful, became very corporate, and eventually, that's how my dad and his management team managed to sell the business.
It really was working for my family, and I learned from a very young age. I think a lot of people who come from family business backgrounds can relate. One of the reasons we love it is the agency that we have working there. And, of course, vested interest in the back end, having equity, whether it's going to come from older generations passing the business down to younger generations through some sort of transition plan or what have you, that was my main motivating factor for working there, loving, working with my family, was that we will all own this together, and we were going to keep growing it into the future.
I was very excited when they sold private equity. The older generations, who had been busting their ass for years to grow this company, got their payout. And I was sitting there with my sisters after, and we were like, we have to do our own thing.
Now it's our turn, right? And there was zero hard feelings about it for the younger generations. We just knew that we wanted to go out and go strike out on our own.
So we talked about different concepts of going with my siblings and starting our own business in the contracting industry, which is what we come from. We talked about a lot of different ideas. And then eventually, I think this was about the time Randy first met you or reached out to you.
And I realized that I didn't want to stay in a family business. Like, I would have just left that family business and gone to work for a new family business with my sisters. With all the trials and problems that come up in family business, I thought it would be better to do something on my own. And both of them agreed. And now they have their own franchises, independently owned.
Consoled by you, of course. So met you. We started looking at a bunch of different ideas. And most important to me was the fact that I would be able to have that agency to grow a business how I wanted, with everything I've learned from my family over the years. So it was a massive change.
The change wasn't so much the workflow and structure. The change was more a personal change, which I think is so interesting is that I had been working with my family most of my adult life and working on my own. It was an amazing change in the dynamic of our family because we went from, every time we see each other, we're just talking about the business, right? We're talking about the family business.
It's what we all lived and breathe. And now when we get together, we have more time to spend time with each other on the personal side. But when we talk business, it's about each of us growing our own independent companies and we can support and help each other without having any of that friction that sometimes it's such a wonderful, amazing thing for my family.
It's really cool, it's interesting.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: And just to connect the dots here for our listening audience, your father and I connected. Your father had reached out to me, saw some information on me, and had some general questions about a business that they were looking to invest in. And I won't get into the name of it, but was in the food business. And after listening to Randy's story and Lenny's story and of course, the kids, my suggestion was, hey, look, guys, this particular opportunity, I would suggest you go work in the day in the life of a franchisee. And your father was like, well, why would I do that? The brand seems really good.
And I just said, well, randy, look, I said, I don't know a lot about you. I mean, I'm junking the gun here, but I just got a sneaky suspicion that this may not be for you and I may be wrong. And I said, if I'm wrong, call me. If I'm right. I mean, if I'm wrong in the sense that it's not for you, call me. I said, if I'm wrong in the sense that this is for you and I wish you all the best. Well, I expected never to hear from your father again. And two and a half, three weeks later, he called me up and he says, I think his words were, God, thank you so much, because there's no way I'm doing that. But anyway, your family went in a direction totally different than you did, and you just touched on this. I remember when you and I were having your initial conversations when your father asked me to kind of talk to you and your siblings about what they're looking to do.
You really have this passion to kind of stay connected to your family because they're a wealth of information. Your father is a very successful entrepreneur, your mom, your whole family, but you wanted to establish your own identity, as you called your own asset.
Tell the audience about your journey on how you got to grand welcome. What are some of the things that you learned that you can share with our audience about people who are considering business ownership? The first time that you remember clearly about the questions that you were asking to get to where you are today, if you could, if you remember.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. That was one of the most exciting times of my life.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: Right?
[00:09:46] Speaker B: You go into to make this decision, like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to open my own company.
Where the hell do I start, right?
[00:09:54] Speaker A: What do I do?
[00:09:54] Speaker B: So I think it was one of the most exciting times of my life, is realizing that what I thought my previous path and trajectory in life was going to be with my career, it just completely went another direction. And new is always fun and exciting, right? So it was a wonderful time. And like you briefly touched on, we looked at going into the food industry, and it ended up not being for us.
I knew that wasn't really going to be for me all the different concepts we talked about, what I wanted to do was use the knowledge I had gained over the time working at the family business and be able to utilize the knowledge resources in my family, which was contracting, construction, real estate, property management. So you and I very quickly weeded out options that were in food industry or other service industries, and we started looking at different concepts, like mold removal.
We did look at a car wash business for a while.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: The reason we discontinued the due diligence with them was because it wasn't our background, it wasn't what we did best. So everyone has to chase in life where they find opportunity. And to me, it just seemed foolish to chase an opportunity that I knew absolutely nothing about or had no history with. It's like, even if I would have preferred to do a more fun or exciting industry, more fun or exciting franchise. I wanted to go somewhere where I had really good resources that I could pull from and continue my education.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Fresh.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: That's interesting. How important, let me interlude here because you're onto something really important here. How important was you to go through this criteria, search, consultation, whatever you want to define it to help you really kind of understand where your end zone was, what you really wanted to capitalize as far as your assets, your skill sets and the type of business that you wanted to. I mean, how much of a process, inner process was that to kind of weed this out? Weed that out or. I don't want to do that. I know you and I went through some extensive conversations about certain things, but how important is it for people if you're giving guidance right now to really understand their why and their no know about what they want to do?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Well, it's funny. You already know how much my family appreciates and loves everything you've done for us.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: Right?
[00:12:42] Speaker B: I mean, first things first is you have to have a coach. I talked to so many new prospective franchisees through grand welcome, my current franchise and they have no coach. They have no experience with franchising. They don't know where to start. They might have found grand welcome just by a Google search.
[00:13:00] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: The first thing I tell these people is find a coach or read some books on franchising because franchising is a whole industry in itself. Right. Not only are you selecting a franchise from an industry that in my experience you should at least have some knowledge on or be comfortable in or be very passionate about, you're also going into a new industry which is called franchising.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: And navigating how franchising works between all the compliance in your contracts and territory and negotiating with the franchiseor, I can't imagine doing that by myself. Right, right. I can't imagine even doing that with just my family and my dad, who's a brilliant entrepreneur himself, he had no experience with franchising. So first thing is you were unbelievably helpful with this process and with selecting the next is not just besides finding out what works and clicks with you on a personal level like I talked about, for me that was like agency and equity, not just the industry. It's also finding a brand that you're proud to represent and be a part of.
Not to talk bad about any other franchisees, but there were any other franchises, but there were some brands we looked at where I didn't want to wake up every day and put on that hat and wear that shirt. I wanted to find a brand that jived with me personally and professionally. Interesting.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: That's a good advice.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Yeah. When we found grand welcome, it was kind of the perfect match of everything.
[00:14:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: It was a newer franchise, or, which was important because I'm very young.
Established franchiseors have very strict rules on who can open a franchise.
Newer franchiseors, from what I've seen, are usually friendlier with entry requirements.
It was property management and real estate, which I have a ton of resources to pull from my family to help me with that.
And also, I just liked their brand. I liked that we were the brand that has a big national marketing revenue booking team helping us on the back end. But the local markets are owner operators, entrepreneurs, boots on the ground, running their own market.
[00:15:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: That was so cool and important to me because that's exactly what I wanted to build.
We briefly talked about how my family ended up going a different direction. All of their franchises are in the salon suite. Space is much more of like a commercial real estate play.
And from looking at that concept, which I did go all the way to Discovery day, I believe, with some of those companies that seemed like it was better built for someone who was more established in their career.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Certain net worth or experience standpoint where they could pursue that commercial real estate play. I was looking for something where I could go into and build from the ground up.
Being a younger franchisee with a lot of time ahead of me and less personal responsibilities than my siblings had.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Dedicate more time than capital.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: So instead of going out and borrowing a bunch of capital to start a business where it would have been a little strange, where I'm at right now, I would have rather spent all this time that I had.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: The sweat equity.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah, the sweat equity from leaving the family company. And now it's like, God, I have so much time on my hands. Let's take that know, turn it into sweat equity and build something from the ground.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: So that's interesting.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that was kind of like a perfect match. Finding grand welcome.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: That's good. Well, let's talk a little bit about grand welcome. As a reminder, we're talking to Parker Smith, managing director of grand welcome over at Palm beach in Broward counties. I'm your host, Scotty Milas, of all things considered, franchising.
You and I have had the chance to stay in touch over the last couple of years. We've actually had two dinners together when I've been down in the Delray area with your family. And I have to say, when I got back from our last visit.
I sensed a real hop in your step, a sense of, wow, I'm riding that wave right now. And we were talking about this before we started to record this versus the first time I talked to you when I think there were some things, some mistakes you were making. So how have you adjusted to being a business owner? Because you are an owner. You're an independent business owner with grand welcome as your kind of your partner and working in the property management short term vacation rental market. I mean, talk to us a little bit about your adjustments. Any advice, guidance you can give somebody that's first starting out similar to you, that is making that investment into a business? Any confidence or words you can share about how you handled the first couple of years? And I always tell people, look, first couple of years, take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth. Just listen.
Follow the systems.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Follow the systems. And it's so cliche, but it's like you have to make mistakes in order to learn.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: Right?
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: I am extremely lucky and feel very blessed that I have such a great entrepreneur for my father in everything he's taught me. I like to tell people, like, I've been an entrepreneur since I was entrepreneur training since I was five years old, because he would tell me, you're going to have your own business and here's how to do it right. So I've spent my entire life learning from someone who's made these mistakes in a similar industry and didn't follow a system, had his own system. And even with all that background and that training that I received my whole life, I still came into this not knowing up from down. And even with the guidance of the franchiseor, you're still going to make a ton of mistakes. And that's okay. Every single mistake you make is just an opportunity to learn. And I know this has been said a million times, but I came into this thinking that if I followed this system and used all this training I've had my whole life, that I was going to be able to build the fastest, the best company very quickly. And I had all of these goals and expectations of myself that I was going to hit within the first six months, first year. And I was very quickly humbled to realize that no amount of training is going to prevent you from making those mistakes.
[00:20:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: And it's great to be part of a team with a bunch of other franchisees going into this for the first time or more established franchisees that I can call and learn from and see that what's happening to me is happening to everyone.
[00:20:40] Speaker C: Right?
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Right.
That's interesting.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: I looked at doing this vacation rental management concept of outside of grand welcome, just opening my own rental company based here in Delray Beach, Florida. And before, when I started researching that, I called independent managers. So I called people in my industry who did the same thing grand welcome did, but not part of a franchise or. And they all had the same problems in their business.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: And for my industry, that was managing bookings, managing revenue, know, national guest marketing reach.
[00:21:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: I called all of these independents and they all had the same issues again and again and again. And what grand welcome was offering was a solution to all of those issues, right. Those are the three main things that they handle best and for us. So I realized, yes, I could go independent, but here's a company that already figured out the most difficult parts of the industry and solved it for us, right? So even though I'm going to have to grow organically, learn how to build an ops team down here, and learn my local market and how to do marketing down here and all the issues that come with running a business, the main items were already kind of solved and handed to me when I signed my franchise.
You know, a lot of people ask me, who are prospective grand welcome franchisees, say, if you did it again, if you could rewind, know, two years ago, right, would you do it yourself with everything you know, or would you stay with grand welcome? And without a doubt, I would go with grand welcome again, just because they kind of paved that path for me.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: That's great to hear. I mean, that's an attestment to your success and hard work that you've put in, as well as the brand supporting you in your journey, initial journey.
I always tell my clients that if business ownership was easy, everybody would be doing it. But it's a challenge. I mean, it takes time, effort and energy. And to your point about making mistakes, I'm not sure who quoted it or who said it, but I read somewhere that in business that if you're not making mistakes, you're not learning. And it's an interesting cliche in the sense that you're right because you have to make a mistake, because if you're not making mistakes, you're not learning anything new or it's it. Parker, we're closing out here, and I hope to get you back on here again so we can spend some more time. Any shared guidance advice you can give to. I mean, you're the younger generation of franchisees coming into the franchising space now. An old dog like me has been around and I've been working with a lot of multibrand operators, people that have been in with multiple brands for 25, 30 years. You're the new younger generation and I disagree with all the conversation about your generation that you don't want to work. I disagree with it. I just think that your generation wants to work differently. As a matter of fact, I probably think your generation wants to work smarter than I did and that's just my intake. So if you were giving a guidance or advice to your generation or people are thinking about picking up that phone or researching or getting into business ownership, any quick guidance or thoughts you can share with them?
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah, two things, kind of. First, the follow up where I was going with being part of grand welcome and a franchise in general where they pave that path for you, especially with newer franchiseors. Don't be afraid to innovate and be creative and do your own thing, right? You are not an employee, you're a business owner. You can make your own decisions within reason, within the parameters of the parameters of the Sops of the company. But I think especially with newer franchiseors and to younger generations who want to be entrepreneurs, is don't be afraid to be creative with it and do your own thing and present it back to the franchise. Or there's so many things I've done with this business where I present it to grand welcome or present it to fellow franchisees and it's like I'll go on our knowledge base and I see a document that I created a year ago now being used to train newer franchisees. And it's just so exciting to be able to change this company from my experience and my learning instead of it all just being told to you. And also, like you said, it's never easy starting a business. Even though the franchiseors will give you the tools to succeed, it still is a difficult path. And there's a lot you have to figure out and do on your own as a business owner. And it's never going to be easy. Doesn't matter if they give you the whole manual from how to run the business A to Z, you're going to take that manual and you're going to rip half of it up and change a bunch of things. And I think what's cool about being younger is that I have different ways and different values of working.
That's probably typical of my generation.
And so that's how I run my business and it's worked really well for me. Other franchisees, we have some older franchisees who come from more established businesses, they have different ways of managing their team, different ways of managing their owners. And I don't do it that way. I do it my way. And it's cool to see other franchisees adopt my way.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: Right?
[00:26:39] Speaker A: And it doesn't matter.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: Both work.
[00:26:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: We've proven that this way works as well. So, yeah, the thing would be just don't be afraid to be creative.
That's the most amazing thing about being an entrepreneur, is you get to be creative and run your business you want to.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Right. And everybody's a little different. That's great, Parker. It's been great to have you on the always.
I certainly hope we have the opportunity to stay in touch. I'm looking forward to it. If anybody's interested or has any questions about grand welcome. As a business opportunity, you can connect with Parker on LinkedIn. Shoot him a message. Of course, you can reach out to me directly with any questions on grand welcome as well, Parker, thanks again.
It's been great. I look forward to getting you back in, in the next six months and seeing how things are going. But it sounds like you're on the path of being a successful entrepreneur. And I know there is a lot more ahead for you because we've talked about it on what your plans are to be a serial entrepreneur. So that sounds exciting, but absolutely, that's the next chapter.
Well, I'm your host, Scott. Scotty Milas of allthingsconsidefranchising.com. You can check all of our episodes out on all of the podcast channels. You can also go to allthingsconsoredfranchising.com. You can also check out my website, scottmylasfranchisecoach.com. Fill out the inquiry form if you have any questions regarding investigating and researching business ownership. This is Scotty Milas once again, signing off. Until next time, make it a great day.
