Welcome And Guest Setup

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, I'm wondering if you might be thinking if your franchise sales are going too slow, or maybe how do you build and grow a franchise system for longevity and success? Well, our guest today is Marcos Mora, who shares with us his journey from working as a kid at a Blimpys franchise to now being the chief development officer with a modest senior care with more than 300 franchise locations. As the chief development officer, he has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs start senior care businesses that allow them to live on their terms and do the work that is meaningful to them, to their families, and to their communities. You're gonna love this interview with Marcos. It is jammed full of great franchise nuggets. So let's go ahead and jump right into it.

An Immigrant Franchise Origin Story

Marcos Moura 1:04

Marcos Moro, I'm the Chief Development Officer for Modest Senior Care.

Tom DuFore 1:09

Marcos, I always like to ask when we have franchise folks on the show. Most people, including myself, we don't end up in franchising on purpose. And for most folks, I find that it just kind of happened or it was by chance or accident or something came along. So give us a little background on your franchise story.

Marcos Moura 1:29

So it started actually, and it's funny to go that far back. But when I was 15 years old, my dad, we were living in Sao Paulo, Brazil. My family's Brazilian, and my dad had just had enough with Brazil. He always wanted to live in the United States. And so he sells everything, and we moved to the U.S. And my dad goes to a franchise show. It's so crazy, right? He goes to a franchise show, sees Subway, and sees Blimpys. There's very few Blimpies left. But in those days, Blimpies was trying to be the other subway, right? So my dad goes to a franchise show, sees a sees the Blimpies, and he needed a business to extend his work visa. So he came on a work visa with a buddy of his. Val's running now, so he's like, okay, I gotta figure something else out. And he goes to buy a franchise. And so I may, like they talk about a lot of these immigrant kids now, right, that are in franchising. My dad was actually an immigrant that got into franchises. So he buys a blimpies in Provo, Utah. We run that for about four years. And man, did we hate it. It was awful. My dad was a national professor in Brazil and business professor. He's a business owner in Brazil. And it was just the wrong business for my dad. Right? Like, like having having somebody come up and say, you put mayonnaise on my sandwich, you know, my dad would would like, he was like the soup Nazi. He would kick people out of the of the restaurant all the time. And so we ran it for four years, and my dad was never really able to duplicate. He thought, I'll buy one, and then you know, like the dream, I'll and then I'll just keep going, right? But just for him, I don't, I don't know that there's something wrong with the model itself. It was it was it was fine, but but it wasn't for my dad. That was my introduction to to franchising back in 1991, Bluntby's franchise for four years. And then through the downturn in 2008, I was a mortgage broker. I was in Las Vegas, Nevada, and that that was an experience, made it talk about total and complete annihilation, right? Like just we had a we had a great business that that failed ethically in 2008 when the mortgage meltdown happened. Great experience. I didn't have any kids, just my wife and I, and my wife rescued me. She was just out of dental school. And so she started practicing, and I had to just figure out what the heck to do in 2008. And and I fell into franchising again in 2008. So yeah, it kind of at this point runs in my blood.

Tom DuFore 4:02

Wow, what a backstory. That's so great. Being a child of where your dad's running a franchise and being in the store and going through it. And I would imagine, just thinking back to Blimpy back then, it was probably not part of their standard practice to ask customers to leave the facility for certain things like you were sharing there.

Marcos Moura 4:23

No, probably not. No, it was, I mean, man, I I got so many stories of my dad just just being, you know, this this aggressive entrepreneur, right? It wasn't a he wasn't a customer service type of guy. And he was so involved in the business. And I think that's so interesting that that people end up acquiring franchises that are so not the right fit for them because of some dream or some emotional attachment to what it's going to be. My dad had this idea that, man, how fun it would be for me to live in the United States, have my children work with me, have my wife, wife work with me, and we can we could do this business together. And I don't think he ever expected that he would hate the business so much that, you know, he it wouldn't matter that we were working with him. And so he was truly miserable for four years. It was an unbelievable experience for a 15-year-old to help dad run a business while I was going to high school. I'm super thankful for it. I'm, I'm, I mean, no effort is wasted, right, throughout our lives. There's there's always something that you learn from an experience like that. So I'm I'm incredibly grateful for my dad, who's who's now 83. He got back into teaching. So he's he he retired at like 82, which is which is kind of cool, you know. Retired at 82. He used to tell us, boys, our two brothers, boys, I'm gonna die in the classroom someday. I'm gonna be in the middle, little uh in the middle of my lecture, I'm gonna have a massive heart attack, and I'm gonna go in a blaze of glory. That's what he wanted. That's how weird my dad is. Like, that's what he's like, this is gonna be amazing. But then that happened. So he retired and he misses teaching a lot. He really misses it.

How Amada Starts Franchising

Tom DuFore 5:58

Well, thanks for sharing that. Well, hearing his enthusiasm for teaching and finding that, and realizing in the midst of owning a franchise that maybe this wasn't the right franchise for him. In your role and as a leader with Amada and doing what you do, you're helping folks find a franchise for them. And I'd love for you even just to maybe talk how you've taken some of those lived experiences and seen that, and how you help people through this process at Amada and some lessons learned or some maybe even best practices for someone that tunes in and says, wow, they're really doing great things. What are some things you found to be effective for your own system?

Marcos Moura 6:43

When we started Amada Senior Care franchise, it was in 2012, and it was somewhat accidental. We had a friend of ours, Robert Christensen, who reached out. He was a pharmaceutical rep in Washington. He was getting fired. And so he called us up and he said, I'm getting fired. We're like, dude, I'm so sorry. He goes, No, no, I'm so excited. I want to take my severance and I want to become an Amada franchisee. And we said, Well, you can't. We're not a franchise. Because there wasn't a plan to franchise Amada. There were thoughts of it, but not really a plan. And so Rob goes, no, listen, I'm doing this. You guys have no choice. Give me a franchise agreement, I'll pay the franchise fee, and that's what we're gonna do. And he did. He he acquired the franchise in March of 2012. And and here's I think what happened is this is when your first franchise partner is a dear friend, a second, the second franchise partner, Ken Jensen, was a dear friend. And there was probably in the first 20 folks that we knew, that we knew their kids, we knew their families, like that these are these, and I think that mattered. That when we would go to bed at night, there was a there was a an unbelievable responsibility that these folks needed to be successful. Because if we were gonna see them at Christmas, we were gonna see them at Thanksgiving, we would travel together. Like Rob and I, Rob Rob is is here, uh, our first range of parties, he's here in town. His kids are my kids' ages. Imagine, not just somebody from a franchise show like my dad, not somebody who answered an ad, but these are folks that you know. And I'm not saying that franchise don't care about the franchisees and who's gonna be successful, but we felt incredibly just an incredible pressure to ensure that these folks were successful. And I feel that that has carried through throughout from 2012 till now. And it wasn't like we had this explosive growth. We had two franchise partners in 2012. We had, I think, four or five in 2013, and and we just had this slow, slow growth and just focused on who is the right entrepreneur for Amada senior care. That's that's an important question. I didn't want to have my dad. I didn't want to have that experience again. So we we go through this process. We are we're unbelievably honest about the business with every entrepreneur that comes through, telling them the things that are wonderful, the challenges, what they need to overcome to be able to be successful. And so I think that that has allowed us to build a pretty impressive business that I'm I'm really, really proud of.

Tom DuFore 9:12

I find it really interesting that a very dear friend reached out to you for the very first one that kind of helped encourage you to go down this franchise pathway. It sounded like he maybe didn't give you another option, but and certainly we're in the business, and what I do is help companies go through this franchise process. And so obviously, your friend saw something that you had a business that was working, but also saw in you and in your family and in the business that was going on, something more than just financial gain, that there was something more behind it. So, how you do business, this idea of character, right? And so I'd love for you maybe to talk about kind of both sides of that, how you were able to help him and other franchisees that are coming in to maybe find that right fit for your system and things that you have found to be important.

The Real Differentiator In Home Care

Marcos Moura 10:04

You know, I think I think for somebody looking at a franchise, I do believe that the people involved behind the franchise, right, behind the model, are really, really important. I wasn't a founder of a modest finger care. The two guys that founded Amodest Fenior Care are Chad Father and Amitopha Jefferson. And when I got pulled in to start the franchise, it was me and my two brothers-in-law. What what I remember was looking at each other going, did we just stumble onto like the Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan of home care? There was there was this unbelievable passion, knowledge, differentiators that these two guys, these two founders had in the business. And I think that that is that that is so important. It's still today a huge driving force for them, for us is what these two guys did as founders. So I love businesses where the the founders and the team are the like a the slide pippin and Michael Jordan of the industry. And I think that's what that's what that's what we had. And he and here's really what it was is home care is a very commoditized business. Our caregivers work for other companies as well, right? So so if I go to you and I say the reason you should work with AMADA is because my caregivers are the most loving people who have ever walked the face of the earth. That's actually not true. Because my caregivers also work for XYZ home care and ABC home care. So I don't have the most loving caregivers in the world. I do have great caregivers. So what I do have in AMADA is the ability to help the families figure out how to pay for caregiving. And so our differentiator is the advocacy of ensuring the family can come up with the 10, 15, or 20 or $25,000 that it could possibly cost for you to have a caregiver. People don't really understand this, but I don't know if you know this, Tom, but if you need a caregiver for your mom and it's 24-7, it's about $25,000 a month.

Tom DuFore 12:05

That's substantial, and I'd imagine that's not lying around for most people that have that need.

Marcos Moura 12:11

Right. So so it's not, so sometimes people say, aren't you kind of like a cleaning company? You're sending people to the home, they show up a little bit, and then they go on to the next home. No, not at all. Right? Most of the time, if you need help with dressing or eating or bathing, going to the bathroom, getting in and out, like those are not things you and I did that multiple times today, right? So, like, it is not something you do for an hour. So our teams are our caregivers, they're in the home for eight hours. We have folks 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So it and and caregiving is on an hour here and an hour there. And so it's always, almost always going to be expensive. Like that, it is going to be expensive. Families are paying anywhere between three to thirty grand a month. So you start to understand that that home care is a much more concierge, much more advocacy, because, like you said, you know, that money isn't just laying around for a lot of people. But we have ways, and that's the differentiation. We have ways to figure out how to get that money from a lot of third-party payers and stack it. So that I think is what is the most impressive thing about Amada is our ability to help entrepreneurs, help the families put that budget in place, and maybe figure out how they're gonna take care of that. And that's actually very rare in franchising. So that's demonic. What that means is you need to have an entrepreneur who has the heart, yes, but is also very committed to this advocacy part of it, right? That when you meet with a veteran, you're gonna go and make sure that the VA coughs up all the money that that that veteran earned from serving our country. That when you meet with somebody who has long-term care insurance who's in a big payer, that you're gonna go and extract the money from the insurance company and make sure that that family gets the service that they need. It's not just about hiring caregivers. There's a there's a higher calling that we're looking for. So our our entrepreneurs need to be special that way. Kind of Jacqueline Hyde, I need you to be heart focused, and I need you to be, well, you're a bad A mother scratcher, because you're gonna go and you're advocate for these families, and you're probably gonna be invited to speak at the funeral, right? Like that it you change the lives of the families that you serve. And it's it's it's amazing. And so you you you better be uh you better be a good entrepreneur and the right person and be able to do that.

A Deep Discovery Process That Filters

Tom DuFore 14:37

It makes me think of your own process of helping people that inquire or come into your system, especially as you've grown now, you become more well known, likely leads to more inquiries with or without marketing, people that are just finding out about what you're doing as maybe a customer or a family member of or a friend of another franchisee in the network and they come through. How do you help them figure out and kind of self-select if they're the right fit for this? You know, to make sure that they have, like you described, that heart, but also the ability to really advocate and fight for the customer and on these financial pieces that sometimes, you know, can get messy.

Marcos Moura 15:19

It's an extensive process. We we don't just, I mean, we're we're with these prospects for a long period of time. And and the way we design it is our our calls are not to sell you something, and our meetings with that prospect are not to sell you something. Each meeting is to deeply go through each topic of the franchise, of the business. So we have one call, for example, where we just go over the payers. I was talking about like who's paying the bills of this? Is it VA, is it Medicare, is it Medicaid, like how does the money flow through this industry? Uh, we have another call that is just designed on how do we hire the caregivers. So each of these stages we go through with the entrepreneur is to give them deep information and we don't hide anything, right? It's not, it's not glossy. It is truly what's really happening in our industry and how do we do it. So by the time we finish our process with an entrepreneur, with somebody who's looking at Amada, they should almost have like a mini MBA in home care. And they can then make the best decision for them. So we've had about 25,000 people inquire about Amada senior care, and we're only in about 300 locations. So we're okay. We're okay with the fact that you might come to the end of this process and be like, you know, I don't think it's for me. And it's totally cool. It's okay, hey, maybe we got you closer to figure out what is. That's still a victory for us. Like, let's let's go find what it is that you really want to do. Or you went through this process, you identified it, your family, you, your partner, whoever is in this journey with you, and you've decided that this is the best business for you. And then we are also, as you know, voting on that too. Like, it do we believe that this is the right business for you? And we'll always be super, super honest with that prospect if this is right. If all everything aligns, let's go. Let's let's get this business going.

Tom DuFore 17:09

I like how you describe that. And one thing you mentioned about having that conversation with someone during this discovery process of buying a franchise and really awarding franchises, right? Is that whole idea. How do you have that conversation with someone? This comes up every once in a while. People say, Well, I know so-and-so is not the right fit, but they're a little nervous about having that conversation to say, I don't know if this is going to be the right franchise for you. How have you all handled that? Where maybe the person is still interested in the franchise, but it just doesn't seem from your end, as you said, Amada has that vote too in the process. How do you address that or handle it?

Marcos Moura 17:49

With my dad, right? I I somebody should have told my dad, hey, this is probably not for you. I think there's a lot of signs that my dad was not supposed to be a restaurateur and own a black be franchise. So I think there's a lot of kindness in telling somebody this is not for you. I would expect the same thing. If I was looking at a business opportunity, I want that person to help me make that judgment. What is cool though is one of our most successful entrepreneurs with somebody we said no to. We we have the phone call. And you know, it it's um uh it's an art more than a science, right? Because you read certain things about somebody and we call them up and we said, I don't think this business is for you for XYZ reason. And he stopped and he said, he said, Marcos, do you know that I run marathons? And I said, No, I didn't know that. He goes, I have run multiple marathons. The reason why I'm able to run marathons is that I have a plan that I put in place before I run that marathon. I know I need to do certain activities every single day to prepare for it. And I do them. I am consistent, I know exactly what I need to do, and I perform. It's like it's like the guy that joins the gym and never shows up at the gym and is wondering why a year later he has no muscles. He's like, that was the example we gave. He's like, I'm the guy that joins the gym, and then a year later I will have everything I've wanted because I'm consistent. He said if you are gonna show me exactly how to run this business, and you say you have a system, then I am exactly who you need in that system because I will be consistent and I'll do exactly what you tell me to do every single time. And we said, sold okay, we okay, we you're in. And you know what's so cool? He built a business over about a four-year period in like record, just grew it, sold it, and and he's doing something else now. He's still a dear friend. So those are the conversations that are so cool. The fact that we said, here's a concern, and he any any was like, okay, I hear it. First, it tells me what self-awareness this dude has, right? To not just crumble and be like, oh, yeah, sorry, you know, go away. But you know, saying, no, no, no, wait a minute. I want this badly enough that I'm gonna tell you exactly who I am, and I'm and and I want it, right? So it's just it's such a cool experience. So I think that not having a conversation is a tragedy. You need to have it.

Tom DuFore 20:17

Would you mind talking through a little bit about maybe some of the things you figured out or your team figured out that was really important to you, that you really looked for along the way? We've talked about some high-level things, is there a process or a system or certain things that you all do to help figure out the right person for your franchise?

Marcos Moura 20:34

Yeah, we talked about the fact that we we are teaching the entrepreneur how to go after the business, how to get the business. And that's a very important part of the success. Your ability to get people to refer you business, and your ability to sit down in front of a family and get the business. The other part of this is the caregivers. So you're gonna be hiring a tremendous amount of people who make anywhere between 14 and $25 an hour. And so you want to have somebody who is going to enjoy that part of it. So we have a franchise partner, actually Ken, he was our second franchise partner ever. Ken is one of the largest home care companies in the United States today. Like among large, like the single unit operators in the country, he's one of the biggest, not just in Amada, but like overall. He has a system where his office sends him, I can't remember if it's one caregiver a week or one caregiver a day or something like that. Or when he's driving to an appointment, he calls that caregiver and and he says, Hey, this is Ken. I haven't seen you for a while. He's got notes on the caregiver, right? The name of the kids, any information. And he calls his, and sometimes the caregiver goes, Why is the CEO of the company calling me? Do they do something wrong? He's going, I'm gonna get fired or something like that. But Ken, when he calls, he goes, I just want to call and say hello. I just want to see how you doing, how's how's your son? And and he has this conversation. He says many times when he calls, the caregiver is Tears because the CEO of the company, every week or every, I can't remember if it's every day, every week, he'd call a certain amount of caregivers just to see how they're doing. He'd done that now since 2012. Every, every, like, like you, is that all consistency? He just does it. He just does it. He just does it. What I mean by that is if you're going to get into a business where your product, your, your, what your output is caregivers. Our little factory, like we have a home care company, it's right here. We have caregivers in training. They are here, and when when we train them, we nurture them, we and we do everything we need to do, they go out into the world and they serve our seniors. So if that's what you're going to do, calling a caregiver once a week or doing that type of activity should fill you with, that's awesome. I want to do that. If it fills you with, oh, I don't, I don't want to do that, then this you shouldn't be doing this, right? This shouldn't be the business for you. Now, there's a caveat, which is you don't have to enjoy every part of your business because you're going to have somebody else do it for you, right? So it's not that you have to be Ken and call people for the for the for the next 12 years, right? And do that. But you should have a pride and a joy and an affection for being an employer that is going to employ hundreds of people that make between 14 and 25 bucks an hour. That you now are known in the community as a great place for veterans, for seniors, for nurses out of work, like a great place for people to come and get a job, right? You you have pride in that. So those are some of the things that we talk about and we openly talk about, and we we're looking for that reaction, right? We're looking for the reaction in the entrepreneur. Are they are they recoiling? Are they going, yes, yes, I love that? Do they have experiences where they felt great about doing that, about employing people, right? So those two things, aggressively going after the business, loving the caregivers, that's a great marriage.

Tom DuFore 23:53

A common concern that I have from emerging franchise ours is they're nervous about going through, as you described, a lot of the detail on the business. And they get worried to say, oh, if I showcase all of this information, am I creating a competitor? Are they going to copycat us? So I'd be curious on what your take is on that kind of an idea or sentiment.

Advice For Emerging Franchisors

Marcos Moura 24:15

I don't think it's really ever bothered me. I listen, I think if somebody goes through our discovery process and at the end, they feel like, you know what, I've learned a lot. And I really believe that the best option for me is to start Bob's home care, Susie's home care, great. I think that is wonderful. Listen, there's about 250,000 providers of home care in the United States. If Bob goes through my process and he starts a home care company, we're gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. Hopefully, Bob becomes ultra successful and great. We're gonna be fine. So I don't know, there I don't believe in a scarcity of opportunity, right? I mean, hey, all the power to them. If they get to the end of the process and they go, I believe that a MADA is going to de-risk my startup, that I can go do it on my own and take on more risk and maybe have the benefit of that. Or I can start with a MATA and I believe that they will help me get from zero to X with less risk and less time and more support. And that's what I want to do. Then that's a marriage, right? Then that's great. And and and it's going to allow us to work with an entrepreneur to get them to their goal faster than if they were to do it on their own. I think sometimes people look at a franchise and they have this guy, oh, maybe I'll do it on my own instead of doing a franchise. Just because you acquired a franchise doesn't mean that that's the only thing you'll do for the rest of your life. You can start a franchise like my buddy I just talked about, right? Who was very successful. You can start the franchise, build it, sell it, take that experience that you just learned, de-risked because you have a good franchise over behind you, and so, and then go do something else. Go, go open your whatever it is that you wanted to do. We we don't need to have a scarcity mentality, right? There's there's so much you can accomplish within a franchise, and there's some stuff you can accomplish without it. It's just kind of what's best for you.

Tom DuFore 26:22

Well, and going down this same idea here is thinking of an emerging franchise system. You've grown from right from the beginning all the way to where you are today. And, you know, what advice might you give to someone that's maybe an emerging franchise or that's kind of getting things going? What advice might you have for them?

Contact Info And Four Closing Questions

Marcos Moura 26:41

I have a buddy of mine here in town, Scott. Scott is a disaster recovery guy when your house floods. So runs to lunch, he's a good friend of mine, and he's like, Man, I've been thinking about franchising. And I was like, Oh, tell me about it. He goes, Well, I I'll I'll do about $8 million this year. I was like, What? He he owns the entire company. He started from scratch. He was a he was a name, he was in the Navy, grew up poor, like just a just a salt of the earth great dude, right? And so he's I'm gonna do eight million dollars this year, and his margins are amazing. I'm like, okay, check, that's amazing. You actually have a model that works proven. And he goes, Well, I don't have all the systems to teach another entrepreneur yet. Like, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Does keep you built, but I mean, check. And I was starting talking about, well, how do you feel about this idea of you becoming like a university? And you're gonna, you're gonna be like what you do is what you do as far as your business of flood and recovery, and you know that intimately. And by the way, he was like the Michael Jordan of disaster recovery, like nobody better than Scott, how to get the business, how to deal with insurance companies, how to deal with the homeowners, eight million dollars in revenues, right? Dude knows his stuff. But when we start talking about this idea of starting another company, which is a training company, a company that potentially is gonna see him on the road training people, visiting sites and helping other entrepreneurs throughout the country. And I started talking about this, and he starts to kind of get like, like kind of kind of pale, and kind of like, oh uh, you know, because and and he is very devoted to his family, and and he's like, Well, I don't I don't know about that, you know. So I think for it's very shiny and very exciting for you to think about turning what you built and you're so good at into a franchise. But in my opinion, it's well, then are you ready to become that university that's going to have a love and a passion and a preoccupation with ensuring that franchise number one, number two, number 10, number 50, number 100 are gonna crush it? That they're gonna crush it because you are gonna make sure they're going to. It's your freaking responsibility to give them every opportunity to become successful. Is is that does that bite you up? Does that fill your bucket? Does that make you feel excited? If it doesn't, then then run your business, right? Grow, grow in a corporate fashion. That and that's what Scott, you know, Scott's aiming at about 12 million next year or this year, and love it. You know, that's that's Scott. That's a great, great model for him.

Tom DuFore 29:17

Thank you for sharing that. And Marcos, what's the best way for someone to get in touch with you or the company or to learn more about what you all are doing?

Marcos Moura 29:23

Just go to modestseniorcare.com, modestseniorcare.com. I'm sure there's a button on there that says franchising. It's gotta be there somewhere. Just click on that, send send the uh send the form in. And then if you if you ever want to connect with me, just go to LinkedIn. And every Marcos Mora on LinkedIn is in Brazil except for me. So they're all Brazilians. So just find the one that's in the United States and it'll it'll be me.

Tom DuFore 29:48

Well, Marcos, 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 ask is have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

Marcos Moura 29:58

In 2008, I I lost my my business like overnight. It was crazy. I was a mortgage broker in Las Vegas, Nevada. And it's probably by far one of the best business and life things that I've ever gone through that was that failure. I am so unbelievably thankful for it. Uh I'm so thankful that that my wife was able to rescue our family and she worked while I figured out what to do. So I learned tremendously from that. I'm super thankful for it.

Tom DuFore 30:29

Let's talk about the other side. Let's talk about a make or a highlight.

Marcos Moura 30:34

I would say this is for a lot of the entrepreneurs out there that I think you run so fast and so hard building your business that sometimes you kind of forget your family and your ability to stay present for them because you're you're building this thing. Last year was a year that I turned back to to my family. I didn't even know that I that I needed to, but I needed to. And so I hope if if anybody's listening to this, if you ever are wondering if it's time for you to make sure that you're connected with your family, it is. It is there's there's no question that that should be the North Star is you know, your wife and your kids and your family. That is the most important thing ever, more than anything that you're trying to achieve.

Tom DuFore 31:28

Well, the name of the show is multiply your success. And we ask every guest have you used a multiplier to help grow yourself personally or professionally or organizations you've run?

Marcos Moura 31:39

The people that we've that we've brought into Amada Senior Care to help us grow uh along these years, so many of the folks that are here, folks that have been with us for like seven, eight years, it's been it's been wonderful. It's been wonderful to see them grow with us. And I think it's been an amazing, amazing multiplier. And so, yeah, just hiring good people, paying them well, and helping them become successful, I think is the best multiplier.

Tom DuFore 32:06

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

Marcos Moura 32:11

That I'm deeply connected with my wife and my kids. That I think is as a as a North Star, when you have that as your North Star, everything else aligns your business, your money, your goals, like absolutely everything in your life will will fall in place if if your your spouse and your children are your absolute north star.

Tom DuFore 32:34

Marcos, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. I really appreciate your time and all of the great information that you shared with us today. Let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So, takeaway number one is when he talked about starting franchising in 2012. And he said he had a friend reach out to them about buying a franchise. They weren't even franchising. And so that led them down the path of franchising. And as they grew, their first 20 or so franchises, many of them he described, were people who were friends or family or customers, people they knew and they felt a responsibility to help those franchisees be successful. And I think that's a key, key takeaway because he said they sold just a small amount of franchises, a couple of franchises in the first year, a few more the year after that, and so on. It was a slow growth to get to where they are today. And I just think that takeaway is really important, especially for emerging franchisors that maybe get discouraged or they're not quite sure on what to do, because ultimately, this first takeaway that he shared is remember to tap into your network. And I see this all the time with clients I've worked with, where they just want to pay someone to find everything for them instead of looking internally at some of their own network of people who very well might be willing to take some time together. So I know that's a long takeaway, but boy, that's really important to think about all those aspects. Takeaway number two is when he talked about their franchise sales meetings and how much detail they go into. I know it's common. A lot of emerging franchise oars and new franchise oars that I've worked with over the years ask often, well, am I just going to create a competitor or a copycat if they come in and do this? And my experience has been that most don't end up trying to copycat or knock it off. It's very, very rare that that happens. And to Marcos's point is that if at the end of the meeting the candidate decides that they want to own this type of business and not buy your franchise, well, it's probably better off that they go and start it on their own anyway, because they may not be the right franchisee for your system. And takeaway number three is when he talked about advice for the new franchise or and to really think about yourself as a university or an academy, a training institute, as you are helping coach, train, teach franchisees to find success using your system. And I thought that was just a great way to look at it. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win came from when Marcos said the following. He said, just because you buy a franchise doesn't mean that you're going to do it for the rest of your life. And I thought that was a wonderful quote in message that he shared. I really liked how that can resonate with a franchisee that's going to buy in. Maybe you buy it and run it for five years or eight years and then you sell it and you go and do your own thing. Or maybe you franchise your business and you build it for five years or 10 years and you sell it or pass it down to your family or whatever your vision or goal is. Just because you buy a franchise or that you franchise doesn't mean you have to do it for the rest of your life. I think that was a great, great message because it's a win for you. It's going to be a win for your staff and a win for your team. And so that's the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their 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.