Welcome And The Onboarding Challenge

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 what is your process for onboarding franchisees? Do you have thoughts or ideas on how to improve it? Or maybe you're launching or thinking about franchising your business and you hadn't thought about it yet? Well, our guest today is Ryan Parsons, and he shares with us how he has revamped his company's onboarding process, as well as how he thinks and why he thinks onboarding is so critical. Now, Ryan is the CEO of eVive brands that leads approximately a thousand franchise locations nationally, including brands like Assisted Living Locators, The Brothers That Just Do Gutters, and Maid Brigade and others. Ryan champions a world-class onboarding experience, hands-on training, and continuous follow-up so owners can master systems and deliver consistent, high-quality service. He's a believer that nothing in franchising is automatic and sets clear standards, invests in enablement, and holds teams accountable to data-driven goals. You're gonna love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.

Ryan’s Road Into Franchising

Tom DuFore 1:24

My name is Ryan Parsons. I am the CEO of eVive Brands. Ryan, thank you so much for being here today. It's an honor to have you on, and it's always great to have a franchise person on the show. I always love talking franchising. So just as an intro, I always like asking franchise folks, how do you end up in franchising?

Ryan Parsons 1:46

Well, given the length we're shooting for, I'm gonna give you the shortest version of this I possibly can. But I ended up in franchising because I joined up with two knuckleheads. Me and my brother, you know, he started a gutter company, no intention of franchising or anything. I found myself in between jobs, hanging gutter on a truck. Then we start building something kind of cool in the midst of probably the hardest time in our business was the recession of 2008. You know, he said we should franchise this. And I'm like, this that we have right now, you know, and it was a great idea because we did have good bones. We were just, you know, in the midst of some really hard times. And from that day forward, the goal was to franchise it. And I'm a really systematic kind of guy. Like the emyth was like my favorite book. Like, oh my gosh, it's the systems, it's not the people that fail, it's the systems that fail. So I built systems to every part of that business. And we we we grew it up, hired a business coach, helped us really understand the financials. And it was in 2015 we actually franchised it, the brothers that just do gutters, built it up into an awesome system with, you know, at the time, maybe close to 100 franchisees, so many states that we were in. And we decided, like, you know, it was time to take the next step. And we've got it. I never thought we'd get it that far. Heck, let alone franchising any of it. It was all awesome journey. And we said, you know what? In order to take this to the next level, let's let's partner up with some private equity, let's see what we can do here. So we took some chips off the table. We're able to sell the brothers at just do gutters, but I'm like, I'm not done, guys. Like, you know, I love doing this. I still want to work with the brand and I want to work with other franchisors because along the way, a lot of franchisers reached out to me. Brian, how are you doing this? You know, because it's hard. It's hard to sell one unit, let alone 10, 20, 100, right? So I guess because I was doing something cool and I love it. I love when a franchiser reaches out. So that, like, to me is so fulfilling. Anytime I can help somebody else shortcut their journey, you know, I can only help you get where I got, right? Other than that, I don't I don't know much, but I can I can tell you what I did to get here. So that's that offered me the opportunity to lead the platform that we we joined. You know, eVive brands only had three brands. We were the fourth, and then you know, I've been in that seat for two years, and now we have seven brands. We acquired three in the last, yeah, maybe the last six months or so. So it that that gets us up to today.

Tom DuFore 4:14

How many units are you up to at this point collectively between all of them? Yeah, it was over a thousand units.

Ryan Parsons 4:20

I don't want to over overquote, but you know, uh it's not coming to me quick at the moment, but lots of lots of units. It's awesome. Great, great, like not all mature systems, but some really great brands, concepts. Well, actually, they are all mature systems, actually, if I if I really think about it. But yeah, all varying degrees of stages of you know, white space, territory, the types of franchisees. Really, really great mix of brands.

Tom DuFore 4:47

Thanks for sharing. And you know, one thing we were starting to dig into pre-show here, and and you alluded to this, your love of the emyth. I love that book. I remember the first time I read it, it kind of changed my whole outlook. It just opened my eyes to this world I never knew existed. So I relate to that very much. In terms of when you started franchising with your brother, this is a business of systems, getting to a hundred, you've got to create systems as a franchisor. So training, onboarding, supporting, and now you're doing it for seven brands over a thousand units or a thousand locations, it becomes substantial.

Build Systems Before You Franchise

Tom DuFore 5:26

So I'd love to talk through this idea of training and onboarding. There seems to be a bit of a sometimes a mystique or this mysterious cloak around it in the franchise world. And so I'd love for you just to maybe give a sense of where you started and how it's evolved and what this looks like today.

Ryan Parsons 5:45

I'll give you rewind a little bit to a comment a buddy of mine made. You know, years ago, I was in BI and had all these like, you know, contractors, and we were, you know, all became really close. And uh he wanted to come to one of my sales meetings because you know, he's like, You run sales meetings? Like, you've just this little gutter company. I'm like, I don't know. It's I I don't know. So he came and he saw this sales meeting. He's like, Ryan, afterwards, he's like, you run this business like a Fortune 500. Like it's just you, your brother, you got a sales guy. Like, what are you doing? I'm like, I don't know any other way. And the reason I say that is because you don't wait till you get big to think about training, to think about KPIs, to think about how am I gonna onboard, you know, it's all the problem we want. If you just franchised your business, you know, you're like, oh my gosh, if I could just get some franchisees, everything would be great. Great. And then you get some franchisees and they're all yelling because there's no support. And you go, what do you mean? I don't make enough money to get support yet. Like, you know, like what the heck? So I'm a big believer is you want to run your company today as if it's the company that you want someday, right? So you, you know, I I was fortunate that my brain is built for systems. So when we started to franchise, I mean, we went to IFA and I remember sitting with other people that franchise their business in the last couple of years. And my brother and I are like, dude, we're light years ahead of them. They've got 30 franchisees, they don't even know what the heck they're doing. You know, we have a system for this, we've got software. So we, I guess you could say overbuilt it, you know, because we took so many years. Like we, you know, some people come up with this great idea, and then a year later they've got an FDD and they're franchising, right? That's not necessarily a recipe for disaster, but it might not be a recipe for success.

Monday Boards And Loving Handoffs

Ryan Parsons 7:31

And one of the best things that we have done is we've we've moved our onboarding into Monday.com. Nothing is left up to chance. I got an opportunity to hear Marcus Buckingham speak last year at a conference, and he he he wrote First Break All the Rules, Love and Work. He's he's working on a new book. And he's he he was big on no unloving pass-offs in our business. An unloving pass-off is making a customer go through a phone queue that's infuriating. It's when somebody signs a franchise agreement, you ping pong them from your admin to someone in marketing to a vendor. That's an unloving pass-off. And franchising can be full of them, right? All these unloving pass-offs could be hey, here's all the crap, here's how you do our business. Thanks for coming into town for a few days. Best of luck to you. That's an unloving pass-off. How do we see them through their first week, their second week, their fifth year, right? All of that kind of stuff we want to build into onboarding to make sure that from the if you've got a friend dev person or company, that pass off has to be amazing. Your Monday board should have everything. They shouldn't be furiously writing notes like what what kind of what what cut what size shop? What did you say again? Like, when do I start my marketing? How do I get business cards? Like, you should have everything dialed in for them. Here's what I have to do as a franchise, or here's what you need to do. It's the best thing you can do. Monday.com is phenomenal. It's I I highly recommend it. We've built these Monday boards, it is awesome.

Tom DuFore 9:08

Well, I think that's great. And I think it's good even for you to share for as many organizations as you had and the number of mature franchises in the system. Monday.com is an example. That's a brand and a system that any size business can afford and can use and can get started with. So I've met with so many owners thinking about franchising their business or new emerging franchisors over the years, and they think they have to have this super complex, this large enterprise type solution for technology. More often than not, when I speak with someone in a position like you are, the systems are not overdone. It just they work. The systems work. So I love hearing that.

Ryan Parsons 9:51

I appreciate it. I mean, it really comes down to like if you've ever, if you're a franchise or and you've had to onboard franchisees, you have documentation. You'd be nuts if you didn't. So you've got it in a Word document, you've got it in PowerPoints. It's literally just transferring it into something that you can keep track of and hold people accountable to, set up reminders and automation and all that fun stuff. So that's really, really important.

Only Do In-Person What Matters

Ryan Parsons 10:15

And getting it right, you know, I'm a big believer you only do in person what only you can do in person. I cannot tell you how many franchisors waste the time of franchisees by flying to training for a week or two weeks to sit in a classroom for 80% of it on stuff I could have done over a Zoom. And instead of hitting you with a fire hose, I could have had you digest it over a few months. Hey, we're gonna talk about local marketing for the next two weeks, and here's a couple sessions, I'm gonna hop on with you, my marketer, whatever. Instead, we kind of some of us, we wait, and like you, you know, they get the things that they need, and then we just literally drown them in material. And then as a you know, hey, we showed them everything. They can't say we didn't tell them, you know, but what can they retain? So if you are making somebody come out to your shop, office, headquarters, whatever, they better not be stuck in a classroom all day doing something you could have done on a Zoom. It needs to be interactive. You know, there's a saying you can't learn how to ride a bike in a in a seminar. You got to get on it at some point. So whether it's hands-on training, role-playing, going out to see a franchisee, only do what you can do in person that training week.

Tom DuFore 11:33

Oh, that's very well said. And thinking of the uh riding a bike, what you could do before they come out to ride the bike is you teach them this is a tire, and this is a chain, and this is a bike seat, and these are the handlebars, and this is what they do, and this is how you do it. And by the way, maybe you want to do some leg conditioning to strengthen your legs so you're strong enough to pedal when you get on the bike, right? So they have that base understanding coming into it. I think that's a great suggestion.

Ryan Parsons 11:59

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the training methods that we learned from a coaching firm called Nolan Consulting is uh no show, do review. Know, no, show, do, and review. I find in franchising, we no show our franchisees to death. Hey, this is why this is important. Here's our CRM, let me show you how to do it. Okay, good luck. No, show. Now you do it. Okay, now let me review it. If you can make sure that all of your training passes that test, you know, I've been guilty of it. You know, like, you know, hey, my, you know, as a franchiser, you want to make sure there's nothing that you left unsaid, right? You know, you think, oh no, I told him about marketing. Oh no, I told him it was gonna be tough in the first six months. You know, it's like great, we you gotta show it, you gotta let them do it, then you gotta review it. There's you know, repetition is the motor of learning. And, you know, franchise, you want to make sure that you can help them get their reps in. You know, it's just like any sport you've ever played, like free throws, whatever it is, it's reps. You know, you can't show them something once, and now six months later, they're struggling to be like, hey, we went over how to do that in training six months ago, among 7,000 other things.

Tom DuFore 13:18

I'll never forget this one franchisee. I was a part of the Frandev side, made a transfer to the operations team and said, you know, a big announcement. Welcome. They're supposed to take lead. And to your point, there weren't controls. Two, three weeks later, I get a text message from the franchisee saying, Hey, I haven't heard from anybody. I said, What? How is this possible? That was a horrible scenario. So that's what they call an unloving pass off. That was a horrible situation. And, you know, fortunately, the the franchisees at that point they have a lot of grace, they're willing to give, but I would rather not use that grace at that moment. Let's talk about that onboarding,

Phased Onboarding And Launch Timing

Tom DuFore 14:01

right? From you know, they sign the franchise agreement, the franchise fees are paid, and boom, here we go.

Ryan Parsons 14:06

We get things moving. You know, I'll try not to get too in the weeds, but I mean, you got to make sure that there's a welcome call. The fran dev person with the FBC, the owner, whoever's gonna be working with them. That's the last thing the fran dev person should be doing. And then there's their passing of the baton officially, and then now you're off running. Making sure that you talk to finance. I can't tell all the states have different things. There's certain states that you can't charge a franchise fee until they've done their first sale or they've opened up here. It's amazing. Nobody likes having the conversation. Hey, Ryan, I just realized we haven't built this franchisee yet. We were supposed to start six months ago. They owe us six months in minimums. Or how awful, right? So, all of these things you're gonna learn. You know, don't get scared. You're gonna figure out things as they happen. But anything that you can button up to make sure, and that's why you want to use something like a Monday board, so you can't forget. You're not relying on some super person that onboarded 10 people, and if they leave you, you've got nothing because it was all in their brain, right? Founders make this mistake all the time. You know, I was great at onboarding, right? But I don't do it anymore, you know, right? So building that system and breaking it into phases. There's the stuff that they like there's urgent, like today, and that's a lot of stuff. Like, if you're gonna start their, you know, launch their website, they need to have a service location. I'm a big believer in launching their their organic website like the day after they sign. You know, I know you can't, but you don't want to wait till they come to training and then launch their website, and then they've got what six, eight weeks, three months of no online presence and SEO. So making sure the right things are in the front of the process, the must-do, must get out. Like if you need a credit card in order to start Google campaigns, making sure you get that at the right time, that they have access to the store. You know, job, like they got to hire most people that start a franchise have to hire. And a lot of people have never hired somebody. I hope you're training them how to read a resume, how to recruit, how to do an interview, you know. And in franchising, we don't fish for people. We teach them how to fish, right? Right. So there are all these steps that you want to break down. And a big mistake I've seen too many franchisors make is launching people too quick. They're like, oh no, you know what? Oh, we got a training in two weeks. If we could we could get you in there. Great. That person just signed. They're in training two weeks later, don't even have business cards, a website, they don't have a clue how to do anything. Awesome. Way to go. And now they can be open for the next three to six months, not having any business. Right? So we want to make sure that we're optimally setting them up for success, that we're not launching people in seasonal businesses in the wrong window. So all of that should be controlled through onboarding. And we have to stick to our guns. When somebody's like, oh, I want to go to that June training, I'm gonna buy tickets. It's like, no, if you're gonna buy tickets, make sure you get the uh trip protection because you don't get to go to we can't approve you to train until you've gotten to this point in the onboarding process, right? There's nothing worse than someone coming too early because they bought a ticket. And you know, it's all about setting them up for success. And get it, I get it. We want them to open. We lose money on franchisees for at least a year or so to get them in, to train them, to give them all these resources for them to produce revenue that gives us royalty. You gotta think on a million dollars, most systems see 60k. You know, no one's getting rich off that. I'm not hiring 10 people to support you off that, right? So, you know, I'm going on and on, but it's just very important that that onboarding phase is correct.

Tom DuFore 17:50

I think that's very well said. And I really like the point you made about sticking to your guns. It's easy for the franchise or especially I've spent most of my career working in the emerging brand section, and it's easy for that franchise or and even at any stage to get talked into something by a franchisee. It sounds great, or it's a great idea, or they're extra motivated, but sticking to that system, I think that's a really good bit of advice that you shared there.

Ryan Parsons 18:18

If I if it's happened to me 20 times, it's only worked once. Oh I know the franchisee, I didn't want them to, you know, they they made a great case. I I think I even had them sign a disclaimer, and that was the only one of somebody that you know wanted to come to training sooner than they should have, you know, that works. So don't take that as the, you know, oh, I can do it then. It it really doesn't work well.

Implementation Support After Training

Tom DuFore 18:42

I love this piece of it, getting them set up and that initial training, and then now it's time for the birds to fly. You know, it's time for them to leave the nest, and now they're off doing their own thing.

Ryan Parsons 18:54

So what happens then? You know, in a lot of systems, you have a franchise business coach, and in a new system, it's probably the founder. You should not, I mean, you literally should have a standing Zoom meeting once a week. Oh, let me go back to onboarding. It's a weekly Zoom meeting that you're going over what did you do, what didn't you do, what do you need help on? This isn't just some list, you don't just make a phone call and everything is documented. You want everything in this Monday board. So back to that, you're now in the implementation phase. So you went from onboarding to training, and now you're in implementation. Call it two, three months, whatever it makes sense for your system and the complexity of that system, but you're literally now no show due review. All right, you got your first estimate, client, opportunity, great. Why don't we hop on the CRM and let's put it in together, right? Let's not screw up our chart of accounts and find out six months later that they haven't put anything into QuickBooks correctly, right? These are the things that we do and happen because we trained them, they're out there, you know. You want to literally have the milestones and say, okay, business is gonna happen in any sort of order. You might land the you might land a hundred thousand dollar account on your first you know thing, or you might not have any leads. I don't know what's gonna happen. But you want to have the things that you definitely want to cover live, how to order material or inventory, how to, you know, get new business, join a B and I, whatever it is. All the businesses are different out there, but you just kind of systematically go through, and then week by week, things are gonna pop up for the first time, and you're gonna be there to help them through it. This is definitely not, it's like my my son, he's 16 years old, he just got his learning permit. You know, it it would be crazy if I was like, all right, son, like just go drive the car. I mean, you you passed the test, you know, you clearly know how to drive, you've never done it, but you know what? Just take my nice S SUV. Have fun. That's what we can do in franchising. It's it's absurd, right? So we have to be there until they get their legs under them. And I highly recommend if your system is big enough that you have a franchise business coach, that franchise business coach should be onboarding that person. They they are the concierge, right? This is not pass-offs, this is concierge service. I'm with you. If you're in a little bit of a bigger system, you have somebody that helps with onboarding, you don't pass it to that onboarder. They get to do some of the duties, but you're overseeing it as the person that's ultimately going to be responsible and working with that franchisee. That's very well said.

Tom DuFore 21:42

It's funny, this conversation is bringing memories out that are resurfacing. I was a uh multi unit franchisee for a little while in the home services space, and it was a business I had no background in previously. I was not an active owner operator, I was kind of uh semi absentee. I guess in today's terms, but uh had an operator that was running day-to-day. And in the first 30 days of business, at the time it was the single largest job the franchise system as a whole had ever won. And here we were, we had one van, a little bit of some equipment. And this was like it ended up being, I think, a seven-figure project that we had to call in. Thankfully, to your point, we did have some communications and things set up so that if in the event there was the just in case emergency situation popped up, here's what you do. And thankfully we had that and were able to have a very senior franchisee that was close by, close enough within one state away that was able to come in and essentially manage that for us. And I guess another power of franchising, right? I mean, if if we just launched out with no franchise network, we were toast. So anyway, it's just our conversations bring you back. Oh man, I remember when that happened. Oh my goodness. So let's talk a little bit about the FBC, the franchise business coach that's in, or for an emerging brand, very often it's the founder or maybe a key employee, a general manager that's been there for a long time that might be doing some of this coaching. Talk through what this looks like as a franchisee. They get through some of this initial push.

Ryan Parsons 23:23

What's some of the longer-term engagement and relationships start to look like over time?

Coaching With Budget Vs Actual

Ryan Parsons 23:29

I mean, the number one thing a franchise or should be providing to a franchisee when it comes to coaching is a budget versus actual phone call. Every month. I can't fathom success without it and people who are successful without it. But my goodness, you just started a business that you've never done before. You've done all these pro formas on your own because you know you can only do what's disclosed in an FDD. So you're like, all right, this guy does $500,000 a year. He said his material or his this is this, and you put all your percentages, you're like, hey, honey, I think we could make like a hundred grand the first year based on my calculations, right? There's all this stuff, and then all of a sudden you're in the business, and now you you have access to everything because you signed, and then some franchise just oh, hey, uh you you know your expected ramp is 250 in the first year. Good luck. Okay, well, break that down. What is it? Okay, great. That's the year, then break it down by month, break it down by first month, help me out with the marketing spend. If we're our initial marketing is 12k, what's the average cost? Like, like my goodness. So now if my budget for month one is 10 grand, my FBC should be saying, All right, it's the 15th of the month. The goal's 10 grand. Where are you at? I'm only at three. All right, did you join BI yet? No. Have you knocked on any doors? What can you do? Like, let's help you get that, you know? All right, because the goal is here. And then at the end of a month, all right, books are closed. The goal was 10 grand. You did 12, that's awesome. But your labor percentages are super high. Oh, I can only get this employee for 500 bucks an hour, you know, whatever. All right, well, we want to work on that, right? How do we coach somebody if we're not keeping score? I look at it like, you know, when little kids are playing soccer in the beginning, they don't keep score. I think it's ridiculous, but it's like they're just having fun. Well, that's how some people run their business. They don't keep score. They're just like they look at their checking account and go, I think I'm doing good. And they look at their checking account, like, I'm out of business. You have to play with a score. So all the major KPIs, your budget versus actual, think of a PL. Here's the goal from every line item down and the percentage that we believe it should be for your system. Here's where you're actually at. I don't have to have run a business for 20 years. A lot of people think, what's an FBC gonna tell me? They never did this, dude. They just need to look at some percentages and help you unwrap, open up the onion. Yes, they need to be able to do some training and some other stuff, but I'm a big believer that that is the core of the relationship. And again, they're their own owner. I'm not telling them what to do and how to do it and all that kind of stuff. It's like, look, you told me you want to make a hundred grand a year, you want to, you know, have a legacy for your family. So here's the budget that we work out together, and this is when you have to go to a second team, you know, like based on your goals. And so, man, it's just an awesome way to help pivot. And a lot of times if you see someone struggling, like I need more leads, and you're like, uh, no, you don't. You just suck at selling, you know, and you say, but you know who's good at selling? This franchisee, this person. Why don't you retake our training on how to overcome objection, right? These are the things that we want to be able to provide for somebody when they need it. And that's the thing about business. In the beginning, they might not care about marketing because you say you handle it for them, or they might not care about third truck or this or that, these things that, like, you know, so you give them what they need in the beginning. And then as they mature, you might have to re-circle and say, all right, let's go right, let's go back now to how to do networking. Now that you're you're saying, hey, Ryan, I'm ready. I, you know, I got my business stable. Tell me again about networking. Great, let's go do that training again.

What Great FBCs Actually Do

Tom DuFore 27:19

You said something that I've seen many franchisors struggle with, but especially franchisees as they come into a system about the FBC and this franchise business coach, where sometimes there's this expectation of the franchisee, I think, where they're expecting their franchise business coach to have been a highly successful franchisee in the system that's bringing this wealth of experience. And sometimes I've seen there's a bit of a resistance to an FBC that maybe hasn't run a franchise location. So I'd just like for you to maybe talk through that in a little more detail in the purpose of the FBC in this regard.

Ryan Parsons 28:00

So, yeah, they should be knowledgeable on all things of the brand, obviously, right? They should be able to help you in the CRM and this stuff. But really, they their their number one job is to have a really good flashlight and help you peel back the onion. You know, if they're looking through a PL and they're like, whoa, you know, hey Tom, have you noticed this? Yeah, what's up with my labor percentage? I don't know, what's up? Uh well, let's open it up. Let's let's take a look. How many employees you got? I got this. Well, what are you paying them? Oh, and what it what is the like, oh my gosh, I think we have got a oh yeah, we do. They're milking me in overtime. Thanks for helping me. I didn't, you know, I'd have to run a business to to to operate a flashlight, right? When you're so close to in your business, you know, it's hard to work on your business when you're a brand new franchisee. So a good FBC is gonna help you do that. A great FBC is gonna be able to actually train you through it, right? But you know, people ask all the time, well, why don't you hire people that's like, dude, they're the people that are running the businesses, you know? There's not many FBCs that have had this long history of owning businesses that now that that do it. Same with when a founder exits, they're like, you know, hey, I'm I'm out. You know, it's hard to get somebody who's done that business for 20 years. It's like, yeah, they're called founders and business owners. They're not the CEO sometimes of a franchise system. So I think it's very important that they know as much as possible, that they're the go-to resource, that they're not getting ping-pong. Oh, that's a marketing question. Don't ask me. No, they need to know base level marketing. They need to be able to read the Google Analytics and say, hey, you're doing great. You know, your average cost per acquisition is this, and your lead to estimate, whatever, all that kind of stuff. They need to know the basics, and they also need to know when to say, hey, dude, something's not right. I'm looking at your web performance, your SEO, you're trending down the last two months in in estimates, but your leads look good. You know, they might see, oh my gosh, who's answering your phone, Tom? Oh, I just get to it when I can. Well, do you realize that you have like a you you know, you have like 40% of your clients are going unserviced, or you're not getting back to them without it taking you six days to get back to people? Oh, I've been busy, right? So these are the things I don't have to be a business owner for 20 years to help someone do that. So hopefully that helps.

Tom DuFore 30:19

It absolutely does. I mean, you can think of some great coaches out there that coach professional golfers, right? These coaches, they may have played golf and they may have been good golfers in their time, but they're not a professional golfer, or they're not this great over the top, or thinking of uh football with uh star quarterback, right? Your franchisees kind of like that star quarterback, and there are quarterbacks coaches that maybe they played in high school, but they just kept developing skills and learning techniques and strategies, and they're just really great at coaching, right?

Ryan Parsons 30:51

And helping the player be better and perform better. Most great coaches were mediocre players, they loved the game, but they just didn't have they didn't have what it took to be the best. So I'm a big believer in the FBCs and and making sure that, and again, like if you can get somebody who's got that experience, I mean, in some of our brands, like executive home care, I mean, that's a really specialty in home care. So when we've got FBCs that have been around and in that business, oh my God, it's a it's a night and day difference than somebody who hasn't, right? It's not that somebody who hasn't couldn't provide value, but their value just can't go as deep in certain areas, you know? And again, it's you're you're a resource. If I don't know the answer, it's my job to find it for you.

One Template Across Seven Brands

Tom DuFore 31:36

Now, in the position you're in, you have seven brands that you're essentially doing the same thing for with having franchisees sign on, go through an onboarding, go through a training, launch, etc. It makes me think, okay, well, for these seven, is the process relatively similar that someone goes through? Have you found that it's actually no, it's pretty different? Talk through your experience with that.

Ryan Parsons 31:59

Each brand is uniquely different, right? But they're all the same in the same sense of like somebody signed an FDD and they need to be trained, right? Some instances they need to go get a license and approved by a board and all this nonsense. And other ones, they can just start tomorrow, right? So, yes, but at the same time, if I'm looking at my Monday board, you know, I if I've got a template, I'm I'm I'm adjusting 20% of it by brand. Obviously, you know, if if you're in in-home care, you don't need a contractor license, right? But you need a medical license, right? When it comes to you know hiring, they all got to hire somebody. You know, maybe some of the questions are different. So a lot of the template is the same, and we have varying degrees of success throughout our systems. Like, you know, when we buy a brand, we only we only have what they had before we bought them, right? So we've had some with really no onboarding, they were just kind of winging it, you know, or the founder might have been doing it. And to others that had some pretty sophisticated onboarding, but they were using like PowerPoint. So we've converted everybody over to Monday.com and we're working with each brand that they're actually following through all the steps, you know, and and there's misses, there's you know, there's supposed to be a survey that goes out after their training's complete. And I just found out that you know, some are doing it, some are doing it through a different form that I'm like, but where does that go after? So it's not perfect, but it's the goal is my goal is that if Tom, if you were to buy any one of the franchise in our portfolio, I could without a doubt be like, oh my gosh, you're gonna have the best onboarding experience ever. You're gonna take. I just want to be able to know that it's the same process. A lot of different things are gonna be in it, but that is my goal, and we're dang close. We've been working on it for for about a year to get to get that really dialed in. And I think we're we're we're we're looking really, really good. Again, all the onboarding is good. It's just I want to make sure everything is documented right to avoid, you know, the unloving pass-offs we found were between the franchisee signing and finance, not knowing certain things, you know, like some of that could be, you know, hard. And some of the training that we could have done before they got to training, we we buttoned up so that when they're in person, and then making sure that we're following them afterwards, you know, out into the real world. So we've buttoned up like a lot of really, really crucial areas so the franchisee can have an unbelievable experience.

Tom DuFore 34:27

Well, Ryan, for someone who listens into this and says, wow, this sounds great. How can they find out more about what you're doing, connect with you, connect with the brands that you're representing here?

Ryan Parsons 34:37

Sure. I mean, it's evibrands.com. You can go that way. You can find me on LinkedIn, you can email me, rparsons at evibrands. Happy to have a conversation.

Tom DuFore 34:47

Perfect. Well, Ryan, this is a great time in the show. We make a little transition and we like to 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?

Ryan Parsons 35:01

I've had more misses than hits on this journey. I would say the biggest miss, and this is a long time ago, was in the recession, you know, when we almost lost everything. The good news about that is right before the recession, my brother and I diversified, and we were doing, you know, new construction and kitchen remodels and all this, and gutters. Having almost lost everything, we said, you know what? Let's just refocus, forget all this other stuff. The riches are in the niches, you know, and we are the brothers that just do gutters. And out of the worst time in our business history came the best name in the industry. The brothers at just do gutters was not the name. It came out of, you know, nope, we don't do this, we don't do that, we just do gutters, we're brothers, and we just do gutters. And before you know, we got this magical saying, you know, that's now branded all over all of our trucks and everything. So yeah, I would say the lesson there is, you know, at your lowest lows, you're you're really it's a springboard for some of your biggest highs. Don't give up. It it's a it's a learning lesson. And you can, if you track it, the worst times in your business are always followed by some of the best because you learned something.

Tom DuFore 36:12

Oh, very well said. Well, Ryan, we ask the next question, which is have you had a make or to a highlight?

Ryan Parsons 36:18

It's all been a highlight. I'd say the highlight of my journey is when a franchisee calls you unsolicited and says, Thank you so much for allowing me to be part of this system. I'm sitting here in front of my dream home with my family. I'm looking at my truck. I I cannot even believe that this is where I am from where I came from. Thank you. There is nothing better than that. So that's a huge success.

Tom DuFore 36:49

Yeah. Wow. Well, the name of the show is Multiply Your Success. And we always ask folks have you used a multiplier to multiply yourself personally, professionally, or organizations you've run?

Ryan Parsons 37:00

I'd say the biggest multiplier for us, the first multiplier we ever did was uh was reading. Like the emith, that was the first book I read since high school, or maybe even college. I don't know if I read any books in college, right? I was not a reader. I became an avid reader, listener, going to seminars, conferences, whatever. But the biggest multiplier for me personally was when we hired a business coach in 2012. That we learned our business, and and he never owned a business. How about that? A business coach that didn't own a business, right? So that guy was phenomenal. He helped us understand our business, our KPIs, all the things that we were missing. We had good instincts, but we didn't know what the heck we were doing when it came to some of the other stuff. So that was a giant multiplier. Partnerships have always been great. And the biggest multiplier is the people you hire. I'm telling you right now, that is how you multiply your business. You hire great people. I'm a big believer in I've got to be replaceable to be promotable, right? So if I'm doing everything, I'm not making any opportunity and I can't move the company. So I want to replace myself so I can promote myself to the next level and take the business even further. And the final question we ask every guest, Ryan, is what does success mean to you? Success is spending time with my kids and my family doing really cool things and helping them be the best people they can be. You know, I feel like I've done everything I have ever wanted to or thought to in a career. But I mean, success earlier on was having both time and money. That to me was like you could, you only you only had one or the other, you know, in my journey. If I had time, it means I had no money because nothing was happening. If I had money, I had no time because I was working like crazy. So I really think that that's success for a lot of people. But the older I get, the more I've as I've accomplished things, it's really the the smaller things. It's it's my kids, it's my church, it's making a difference for people and blessing people in ways that just knock their socks off. That's a lot of the fun. So I don't have a one takeaway there. It it seems to be a moving target.

Tom DuFore 39:07

A lot of our audience are either that emerging franchise or or maybe someone that's thinking about franchising. What advice might you give to someone that's in this launch phase? They're trying to get maybe their first 10 or first 50 franchises sold.

Ryan Parsons 39:21

Yeah. I mean, it's the best thing we ever did is franchising our business. But I would just say make sure that you have the foundation right so that you're not you're not doing a disservice to your future franchisees. You know, make sure it's profitable. Make sure you've got the systems in place. I I think of this like, you know, when you watch like Texas Hold'em, most of these people that buy a franchise are actually going all in. They're pushing their 401ks, they're pushing their chips in, they're saying, Ryan, I believe that this business is the vehicle for my dreams. Most people that buy a franchise is not what they've wanted to do their whole life. They see it as a vehicle for the thing they've always wanted, which is either a legacy for their family to make a difference in the community, you know, to to whatever it is, we're being entrusted with that. And I would say if you're doing a great job, that when they put write that royalty check, imagine them writing a thank you in the memo. If you can always provide more in value than they receive, right? And like that, you what you provide more in value than you receive in cash. So if they're writing you a check for $2,000 for the month and they're going, ah, suckers, I'm getting like $10,000 worth of value, then you're doing a good job.

Tom DuFore 40:36

That's very well said. Well, as we bring this to a close, Ryan, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

Ryan Parsons 40:43

No, as you can see, I'm passionate about onboarding. So I appreciate the opportunity to be on the show. I love franchising, I love emerging brands. I love the the journey, it is awesome to go through. So appreciate it if you're in this journey. It is awesome.

Takeaways, Win-Win, And Next Steps

Tom DuFore 41:01

Ryan, 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 Ryan was talking about the importance of onboarding and how critical that is to the success of the franchise system. And he talked about how he's moving all of his franchise brands and all of the franchisees into an onboarding platform through Monday.com. And this is not an endorsement or an advertisement for Monday.com, but rather it's for those of you that are listening to this to realize that even Ryan with a thousand or so franchises in his system, he's using a technology tool that's accessible to even the smallest business. So the point is find a tool that works for you. I find sometimes, especially with new and emerging franchise, so much time is spent over analyzing the kind of software or technology or tool that you have to use to help grow or manage your system, trying to find an answer to a problem you don't even have at the time. You just think you might have a problem in five years or at franchise number 50 or 500 or whatever it might be down the road. And so I think the takeaway here is that he's prioritized what's important with onboarding and found a solution that's going to work. And most importantly, is using the tool for it. So I just think that's a really, really important takeaway. Takeaway number two is he said, he's a big believer that you only have to do it in person, what you need to do for training. And so he said, while training's important, he has his no, show, do, review model where you know it, show it, do it, and review it. What portions or parts of that can be done remotely or long distance or before they come in for hands-on in-person training? Takeaway number three is he said the number one thing a franchise or should be doing after the franchisee is on board is having those monthly financial reviews of budget versus actual. And he said, that's a tremendous value add to the franchisee. And he said, Imagine if you were to do that and your franchisee won the royalty payments due, says, Boy, I actually got five times the value of that royalty payment I just made. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win is the topic that Ryan brought up when he said he read a book and got a great idea of this idea of no unloving pass offs. So no unloving pass offs. And I think that's a great mindset and philosophy to go into onboarding new franchisees, training them, supporting them, launching them, and so on, is to have no unloving pass offs. And if you think of it that way, it really helps you. Make sure that as a franchisee is transitioning from one step to another or one stage to another, that they are transitioning well. 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.