Tom DuFore: 0:01

Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I'm wondering how transparent you are with your franchise candidates or with your franchisees. Do you share the good, the bad, and the ugly? Is it the good only, the bad, or maybe nothing? Well, our guest today is Dan Klapps, and he shares with us how transparency has helped transform his franchise system. Now, I've known Dan for many years in the franchise world, and I'm excited to have him on. And he's the CEO of Franchise Playbook and its flagship brand, Voda Cleaning and Restoration, one of the fastest growing home services franchises in the market. Since launching franchise development in 2023, Dan has led Voda's rapid growth to more than 100 franchise owners and more than 230 franchise territories nationwide. With over a decade in franchising and successful exit from a franchise lead generation company, Dan is recognized as an industry leader in franchise growth and lead generation. And that's very true. I would echo that sentiment. And I'm so excited to have this interview with Dan and to share this with you all. You're going to love this interview. So let's go ahead and jump right into it. Excellent. Thanks for having me, Tom.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25

My name is Dan Klapps, CEO of Voda Cleaning and Restoration. We're a franchise chain all around the country helping people when they have water damage or need floor cleaning. Been in the franchise industry for can't believe it, but 12 years now.

Tom DuFore: 1:38

Fantastic. Well, I always love to ask longtime franchise folks, how'd you end up in franchising? Tell us a little bit about your story, getting into that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48

Sure. Yeah. I mean, no one wakes up and, you know, as a kid and says, someday I'll be a franchise executive or entrepreneur. I know I definitely didn't. Probably like many on the show, I stumbled into franchising. So pretty straightforward background. I've always been an entrepreneur. When I was a kid, I had, you know, lemonade stands. I sold the crossballs to teammates. When I got to college, I started a staffing and recruiting, you know, side household that turned into a business. And what I always tell people, Tom, is I could teach you how to run a business because I could teach you how not to run a business. You know, someone wrote a book, How Not to Run a Business 101, they could make it about me when I was in college. I was all about, you know, if you want something done right, you do it yourself. I was, you know, I didn't really have systems. I didn't really hire great people. And so I hit a ceiling, right? Because the business was just me. So in my early 20s, I started looking at what to do next. And my dad actually said, What about franchises? They're all about systems and processes. And so in 2014, I started looking at franchise opportunities in the home service and space. Was a little undercapitalized at that time to do something in that industry. So I ended up joining a franchise called Murphy Business and Financial, which was a franchise for business brokers. Joined them in 2016. By 2016, I realized I was really good at lead generation and ended up starting a lead generation company in the franchise space prior to launching Voda.

Tom DuFore: 3:08

Oh, fantastic. Well, and I know we connected, and that's where we first met many years ago through the lead generation space. And talk to us a little bit about Voda and getting into this space. I think you probably had a unique vantage point having been in lead generation before coming in as that franchise or piece of it. So, how would you say that impacted what you've done?

SPEAKER_01: 3:30

Yeah, you know, so through my 20s, I was building that lead generation company in the franchise space. And, you know, I think your 20s are a formative time. And so my main skill that was refined during that period was lead generation. And what's funny is I would go to franchise conferences where other franchisors were where franchisors would be and sponsor and be at the networking parties to basically, you know, get customers. But what I learned was during the day, those franchisors would go to their learning sessions, how to be a better franchise or how to run their system. And all my other vendor friends would go take calls or do something else. And I would go to the sessions and sit there and learn. Now, I wish I could tell you I was smart enough to say I'm learning because someday I'm going to be a franchisor. That's not the case. I just found if I'm in the room, I would be at the coffee or the water cooler and get a little more chance to generate business. But through those years, I learned franchising kind of by accident. And so when I exited that business to private equity in 2022, I went into being a franchisor with a lot of knowledge from all those years that in those classes.

Tom DuFore: 4:33

Being in lead generation, you would have worked with many franchisors, many different types of businesses out there. So what is it that led you to this specific business with Voda that you ended up getting into versus any other type of franchise system that you could have started or connected with?

SPEAKER_01: 4:52

Yeah. So, you know, decided to be a franchisor, started looking at opportunities, pretty quickly realized that I, while I learned all those things in those classes from a practical perspective, I had never run a franchise. And so I recruited my business partner and chief operating officer, Zach Knolpy, and basically said, I have no idea what I'm doing. You do, let's partner up. Your skills are the opposite of mine, mine are the opposite of yours. And, you know, we had been running a brand for 10 years and in the home services space, mature brand. And so I said, go right down everything you would have done differently and let's start, you know, from from there, right? And so we partnered up. We brought on our chief development officer and our chief marketing officer. And this was all in the fall of 2022. And so I had I had exited my other business in May of 2022. I took a few weeks off in the summer. I had to work there for a little bit, took a few weeks off in the summer. If you get to know me, I don't know how to sit still. So by September, I was scheming up, you know, what I was gonna do next. And by late September, I was at a family event. And my family said, Dan, what are you doing? You got a COO, a VP, and all these people working. You don't even have a business. And my answer was, we're gonna get the right people on the bus and the right seats, and then we're gonna figure out where we go. And that's exactly what we did. We one day we took a piece of paper, we wrote down what we wanted out of the business. We knew we wanted to be in home services, and we wanted, in this order, a business that was a need, not a want. We wanted a business that, you know, was recession resistant, pandemic resistant, AI resistant as much as it can be. We wanted a business number two that was third-party pay, meaning insurance or the government, or like the person paying the bill isn't attached to their, you know, to their checkbook or their credit card. Three, we wanted a business with non-skilled labor. I'll explain that more later. Four, a business where the numbers were uh high average ticket, so that we could generate leads in a predictable, scalable, sustainable, you know, and automated way around the country. And then finally, we wanted a business that wasn't a fad. And so restoration and cleaning checked off all those boxes. One of the main reasons is I knew we could generate leads in a scalable way in that space.

Tom DuFore: 6:52

So now you get into this business and get it going. Talk about some of the growth that you've gone through. I mean, it's really been impressive with what you've done over the last few years. So talk about where you are today and let's talk about how you were able to get there.

SPEAKER_01: 7:06

Well, it's interesting because restoration, I just said all those great things. The only negative to restoration, you know, there's 14,000 water damage cases a day in America. It's not hurricanes. It's pipes breaking, toilets overflowing, your kids leave the bathtub running and you leave for vacation, things like this. The problem, though, is unless I, you know, sneak in your office there and flood your, you know, your office with water, which would be illegal, I can't convince you to, you know, dry your house or your office if it isn't wet or has mold or fire. And so we really wanted a business where we could also generate business, like persuading people, for example, with what we do, floor cleaning. And I kind of felt like we discovered fire because for some reason, no other franchisors were really focused on both cleaning and restoration and the two franchises in one, the two kind of revenue streams in one. So I met the founder of Oda, uh, his name is Dragon Christiak, true American dream story. He moved here from Serbia in 2024. I mean 2004, started cleaning carpets, watching YouTube, started a company in 2009. When I met him 14 years later, had this amazing business, great culture, systems, and really great lifestyle. Have you ever seen the movie The Founder at Michael Keaton that plays Ray Kroc? He takes the brothers out to dinner the next day, like a crazy person is like, you got to franchise this. That was that was me uh in front of Dragon Stores. And so, you know, we started talking in October of 2022, ended up partnering and acquiring the brand in February of 2023, rebranded to Voda, which you could, you know, see behind me. It's a really neat, unique looking brand. It actually means water in Serbian, which is cool, playing roots to the Serbian homage. And then um started franchising in April of 2023. And to make a long story short, we almost went out of business. No one wanted to buy our franchise. We were struggling. I put most of my capital into the business back then. And I remember thinking like I should have just taken a fishy job and saved that for exit money for my retirement. But things changed. July 2nd, we awarded a franchise, another on the eighth, another in August. And now we're at 109 franchise owners in about 32 states around the country.

Tom DuFore: 9:06

That was actually one of the things I was thinking about. And you've shared some of these things that I'm familiar with. You've been open about some of the challenges you faced over your journey on LinkedIn. I follow some of what you're doing on LinkedIn over the years. I'd be curious or interested for you to maybe, for example, you shared really struggling early on and wondering, holy smokes, you know, did I make the right choice? What are we doing here? Maybe other challenges you faced and some of the things you've done to overcome or push through those challenges as you face them.

SPEAKER_01: 9:37

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely was a mindset shift. So my fiance, we met right before we awarded our first franchise. So she likes to remind me that it's it's it was really her that came into my life, which I have sure played a part. But what really happened was when no one was buying our franchise, we started to ask why, right? So if you were really far along and you said, I'm out, I'm not gonna move far, I'm doing a different brand. I would say, Tom, that's fine. I'm not trying to persuade you. Just tell me why. And we would listen and we wouldn't make excuses, we wouldn't be defensive. We would go back in the lab and we would build the things that people told us that we didn't have. We've never lost that mindset. And so with our 109th owner, they have new feedback and ways to make the business better, and we just keep going. We don't say, well, we're better than X, Y, Z brand. No, all that matters is our ninth, 109th owner and first owner giving us feedback and applying it as much as we can to the system. So it's like that 1% better every day mindset. And then what I realized was I really believe there's five things the potential franchise owner or investor in any business should think about. And so we started to build these things, which is number one, how are you gonna get customers and how's the franchise or gonna help you? Two, how are you gonna get employees to service those customers and how's the franchise or gonna help you do that? Three, there's already gonna be whatever franchise most likely in your market. That's fine. But how does the business stand out to the consumer? Like what's the unique selling proposition? Four, the numbers, no one wants to be a restoration contractor when they grow up, me either. It's it's if you want to make money. And then finally, the day in the life. Does the day in the life of an owner match what your skills are and what you want to be doing every day? And we really started to refine that in our, you know, in kind of our pillars. And then we started to communicate that better to our prospective franchise owners.

Tom DuFore: 11:24

That's a really, really interesting point there. And in refining the sales process and honing in on what's really important to that prospective franchisee. But one of the things you said earlier that stood out is that you're also listening and you're making changes and adjusting. So, not just on the sales piece, how have you implemented this changing, this learning mindset into the daily operations, into training and supporting your franchisees?

SPEAKER_01: 11:55

Yeah, you know, I say this with a caveat that, you know, when you buy a franchise, you should follow the system. What I tell people is if there's 10 things you need to do and you have feedback on all 10, don't buy a franchise. But if there's 10 things you need to do in your business, and maybe number two is something you're really smart at. You were in HR or you were in finance or you were in whatever, every person in our system has some unique skill that they've done for their whole career. And so it's learning from those people. Like one of our kind of like tenants in our HQ team is they could it says they could be right, which is throwing into a call with the mentality of, yes, we know what we're doing, but maybe in your market there is something different, and you could be right. And how can we apply that and potentially, you know, in your market, it's not one size fits all. Every franchise owner is a little bit different. They're not computers, they're people, and every market's a little bit different. So it's having this kind of seek to understand first and then, you know, try to solve together with the owners. I found that is, and I give a lot of testament to Zach, our COO. We never, I can't name one time that we've said, you know, Tom, you signed an agreement that says you're supposed to do X, Y, Z. We lead with more of a mindset of like, I understand why you want to do it this way, but here's why we do it this way. And here's a bunch of other owners that'll share with you they did the same thing you're trying to do and not making you do something. Because at the end of the day, what does it say on your business card? It says, owner, it's your business. We're not gonna make anyone do anything. We're gonna try to, you know, persuade them. Now, obviously, you can't start selling, you know, tacos out of your hamburger stand, if you, if you will, but we we just lead with this mentality of getting people to buy into what we're doing, not, you know, using our agreements or big bad corporate trying to be big brother.

Tom DuFore: 13:38

I like that what you said there, you could be right. It's such a humbling perspective to take. And also what allows you, as you're describing, to refine the system at large that can benefit every owner across countries. You discover new things that actually might incrementally, right? It's that kind of that 1% better, right? That uh has been going around for a little while. That's tremendous. One thing I'm curious about is most franchise owners, one of their points they're always thinking about is selling franchises and adding new franchises into the mix. With your background in lead generation, how have you found you have made adjustments over time to lead generation and refining that process through franchise sales? Yeah, you know, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 14:24

I always tell people you can get 50 people to buy your franchise if you got a, you know, a nice sales process and persuasiveness. You don't get 109 in such a short period of time if you don't have systems, right? And validation. And so we teach our owners they need to be the mayor of the town and their community. I try to walk that walk. I'm out there all the time at the franchise events promoting the vote of brand, but that's one side of the of the equation. The time I'm not on LinkedIn and social media and at shows, and it's a lot less time than it probably looks like because content is you know evergreen, it's it's building the model. And so for us, it's laser focus on lead generation and sales, and then a maniacal focus more so now. I wish we did it before we weren't as equipped, but a maniacal focus on the uni economics of each other and looking at their gross profit and helping them get that up. Because if you get the gross profit and the average ticket up, everything else should fall below the belt or below the line, you know, kind of naturally. But as far as a fran dev process, it's the opposite of what you would think. One of my favorite franchisers is Jimmy John, Jimmy Johnson, Jimmy Johns. And he tells a story how during their franchise growth, he realized that he would go into a discovery day for their source and basically say, this is gonna suck. It's really hard. The sandwiches, you know, you know, the people are gonna quit. Like it's it's the worst thing you're gonna do. It's really, really, really hard. But here's what's gonna happen if you stick through it. I've really feel like we've adopted that in our company, where we're as, you know, we try to just be, you know, I'm from New Jersey, direct as can be. It's not easy. Starting any business is gonna be challenging. We're there for them for every step of the way. But I've found the more that we're open and honest about how hard it's gonna be, the more people respect us and end up moving forward. And more importantly, the right people end up moving forward.

Tom DuFore: 16:10

You mentioned the right people. So coming into the system. And an all-important phrase in franchising is that validation word. So bring the right people in, validating. You shared a little bit about this, but how are you filtering or maybe even saying no to folks as they come through? Because that's never a fun thing to do, to have a candidate that just for whatever reason isn't the right fit. So talk through that process.

SPEAKER_01: 16:36

Yeah, so it all starts with your, you know, our chief development officer, Steve Miller. He does a great job in the beginning explaining exactly what we're looking for, and we know exactly the avatar. So that leads people out. And then by their third call, they're on a call. It's my whole leadership team, including myself in a group, and we do it again, talking about what we're looking for. That leads people out. We put a ton of content out and videos that they can watch. But most importantly, is having access to a lot of validation. So they talk to a lot of owners and they can hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. I don't want someone to hear only the good because that's not, you know, I want them to know not everything is perfect. You know, there's the things they need to improve. Hopefully, my franchise owners are saying what they listen and they're working toward improving it, and they've improved XYZ. That was the problem before. But it's just, it's just, again, that's like kind of opening the Komodo and teaching everyone as much as we can about the business before they make the their decision to move forward. And then we have a whole process for us to make a decision. But we're not always right. You know, uh, I've had people that I thought would be amazing end up not being as good. And I've had people that I was unsure about be amazing. I think if someone's thinking about getting into a franchise, the biggest thing to realize is how are you gonna react to adversity and to setbacks? Because no matter what, you're gonna have them. Whether you're part of a thousand location, 30-year-old business or an emerging brand, you're gonna have challenges and how are you gonna react to them. And so I think if I thought of the two things that make an owner great in our system outside, they got to be well capitalized, it's grit and it's being a mayor of the town, being out there networking. I see you at the shows, you're there, you're dressed, you know, to the T, you're networking, you're being a mayor of the town, and you're kind of your sandbox or fishing pond of where you get business. It's the same thing that we need our owners to do in their local markets.

Tom DuFore: 18:18

It's true. The franchise or can help train you, teach you, coach you, but you said it earlier, it's your business as the franchisee. You have to be willing to push through that adversity because it's coming. It will be there. No one knows exactly when, but there will be adversity along the way. I'd love for you to share how can someone learn more about what you all are doing, get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01: 18:40

Yeah, best way to get in touch with us is uh there's two ways. One is going to our website, which is just www.myvota. So v-o-v-a franchise.com, my vodafranchise.com. Or I'm very active on LinkedIn. If they just type in Daniel Clapp's Voda, it'll it'll pop up. They can connect with me. If they send me a message, I'll see it.

Tom DuFore: 19:01

Perfect. And we'll make sure we include that in the show notes as well. Something that I find interesting is you've grown and surpassed that hundred unit franchise marker, which is a big milestone in franchising, at least in my opinion, to reach that. What advice would you give if you were to look back either to when you first launched or even to a new franchise or that's just launching, emerging, and dreaming of being where you're at one day?

SPEAKER_01: 19:28

Uh first thing I'll I'll tell you is clarification. It's 109 owners and 260 territories. Yeah, one of the things I changed in the system was I don't want to talk about units. What matters is owners were individually affecting and the units will work themselves out. And so it's funny. Well, we crossed 100 when I when we signed our 101, I wrote to the leaders, no, to the whole company, we just signed our first owner. And then when we signed our 102nd, I said our second owner. And today I signed our ninth owner. And the the reason why was the communication was the road to go from 100 to 200, it's a whole new game. We got to start from day one, have that same mentality, as well as with our first hundred owners, but we can't lose that. What got us here is there's a great book, What Got You Here won't get you there. I don't know if I believe in that. Like what got us here will get us there too. It's not losing that kind of day one mentality in Christ. My advice would be, and I know it's you know, it's 2020 in hindsight, and I know, you know, if you have the capital to do it, it's it could hinder it. But when we first launched, I had our COO, CMO, and chief development officer, myself, and our lawyer. So if I think of a business, you've got sales, marketing, finance, legal, and operations. I had a leader for all of those except finance that was outsourced. If I were to go back, now we've brought in an incredible CFO. I would have brought in a CFO or finance leader from day one. And I would have built the reporting at the level we have now from day one. That that report, I don't care if you have two owners, if you can report really well and be able to really manage through numbers, it's gonna help you really take out a lot of the guesswork. And if I were to go back, I would have done that. We tried to. It wasn't as easy, said, you know, I've learned since then, but I think really focusing on reporting is at the beginning is is key.

Tom DuFore: 21:14

I like your perspective on looking at owners as opposed to units, because units can get a little, well, you know, in franchising, someone might say, well, we have X number of units. So you say, well, how many are open, right? Or how many, how many owners does that represent? And it changes the equation. So I like your perspective on that. Well, Dan, this is a great time in the show, and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we'd like to ask is Have you had a miss or two on your journey? And something you learned from it.

SPEAKER_01: 21:43

There was a period in my career where I attached too much of my identity to my business, especially my previous business. And it clouded my judgment. And When I left that business and started over, I heard this quote from Jamie Diamond, the CEO of Chase. He got fired at one point in his career. And he said this thing, which was he realized when he was married in a great family, his job or his business was his net worth, not his self-worth. And now what I've learned, don't get me wrong, I believe for Voda, I love the business, but I've learned to attach myself emotionally. So when feedback does come, I don't, it's not like feedback is a gift. It's not an attack. It's it's it's it's a gift that you can, if you take it and the customer tells you and you use it, it's like, I say you build a great company. So I would say learning how to kind of detach your emotions from your business and lead more from what's going to be best for the business, not my ego.

Tom DuFore: 22:47

I really like that. When let's talk on the other side. We've spoken about some wins or a make or two, but I'd love for you to share a make or a highlight. I mean, to me, it's the team.

SPEAKER_01: 22:58

We've built a team of people that truly love each other. They like to work together. All of our franchise owners are hyper connected through Microsoft Teams and Pauls and groups. And I think like we laid that foundation from the beginning, ended up being a huge win. Uh, I remember when Zach said we're going to do a Friday call with every owner every Friday with the system. That sounds like kind of scary, you know. In the beginning, it kind of was like it was a town hall and it wasn't always the most pleasant call, but we leaned into conflict. We leaned into, you know, where we weren't delivering. And, you know, still, if that's the case, we we do. And I'm I'm really proud of this organization's ability to kind of run right into conflict and solve it instead of you know pushing it off, keeping your owners in silos. And we'll see at the conference. Like we're hyper connected with our franchise owners, and I think that's proven to be a huge win for us.

Tom DuFore: 23:48

The name of the show is multiply your success. And so we always like to ask have you used a multiplier, kind of like a force multiplier idea to grow yourself personally or professionally or any of the organizations you've run. Oh, yeah. I mean, that one's easy.

SPEAKER_01: 24:04

Uh I joke, I have no skills and I have no talent outside of the maniacal ability to recruit great people. And so for me, if I'm ever in a role where I'm the best at it, I'm in the wrong role. I need to elevate. And so it's just in constantly replacing myself in roles that I'm, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're not really an ops person, you're not really a salesperson, you're in this weird kind of middle. Uh, I know where I am strong and where I'm not strong. And so, you know, it's it's all about getting people that are better at each thing than you. And all of a sudden you have this company that, you know, really kind of not just runs without you, but even makes decisions without you. And the decisions are the ones you would make or ideally even better. And so that's the biggest thing. I, you know, you don't build a business, you build the people that build the business.

Tom DuFore: 24:50

And Dan, the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?

SPEAKER_01: 24:55

Well, I'm 33. In my 20s, I would tell you, making a bunch of money and, you know, traveling around and, you know, all kinds of superficial things. Now it's completely changed. I have so much more respect for someone that is successful in their business and their family and their marriage and their health, you know, and their faith. And so, like to me, that's really hard. That's a lot of things. And so to me, success would be, you know, and I'm not there yet and working towards it, but you know, really, I don't even want to be a 10 at all of them, any of them. I want to be a seven at seven at business, a seven at family, a seven at marriage, a seven at health, you know, a seven at faith versus a 10 in the two. And at other times in my life, I probably wasn't as balanced. And so still not. But I think to me, success is what are those four things, four or five things, you know, kind of being really good at all of them, but not being off kilter on one or the other.

Tom DuFore: 25:47

As we bring this to a close, is there anything you are hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet? No.

SPEAKER_01: 25:53

I mean, if someone's listening to a show, I mean, my only last piece of advice, if someone's thinking about becoming a franchisee, just take a step. Doesn't mean you have to do it. Go talk to some companies, you know, learn. If you think about franchising your business, you know, talk to you, you know. You know, I'm sure you're the same way. Not everyone's meant to franchise, you'll help them figure that out. And so just take one step. You know, you don't have to do everything in one day, just take one step. It's great to listen to podcasts, but take this and go take that first step.

Tom DuFore: 26:22

Dan, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So, takeaway number one is when Dan saw that they weren't selling as many franchises, and they started asking why and kept asking that over and over. And they tried to learn things. And what they learned is that there were five key things that they need to talk about in the franchise sales process. How you get customers and how does the franchiseor help, how they're going to get employees and how does a franchiseor help? What's their unique selling proposition? How do they in general make money? And what is a day in the life like for a franchise? Takeaway number two is a lesson he talked about when we learned from Jimmy Johns. The more honest and the more open that they are, they are able to attract and find the right people in the franchise system. And he said by doing that, it also helps create better validation and that they encourage franchise candidates to talk with as many franchisees as possible. Takeaway number three is when he talked about this continuation of transparency and openness with his franchise network. And I love what he does here, where he has every Friday a franchise call with the entire system. He called it kind of like a town hall. And this is a way for them to stay hyper connected with their owners. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win comes from when Dan was talking about one of their tenants, which is they could be right. They could be right. And it's a win-win because it's really putting the emphasis on listening to their franchisees or maybe to their employees at corporate or to other people that are coming in, but most importantly, listening to the franchisee and thinking they could be right. He or she might be right as whatever thought or idea they might have, and just to pause and listen to it. So I think that's a win for the franchise or for the franchisee, for the staff, for the team at large to just pause, listen, and that's going to create a win-win environment that tells the behavior of the franchise or shows the franchisee that they really are listening and that they really do have their interest in mind. And so that's the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to our podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise your business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com where you can schedule your free no obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.