Anniversary 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 welcome to our special anniversary episode of the Multiply Your Success podcast. Today we are celebrating our sixth year anniversary of the podcast. It's really hard to believe it's been that long, and yet at the same time, it feels like it just started. And I just want to thank you, dear listener, for being with us. I'm so grateful for you and your continued support. For our longtime listeners, you may recall that our first episode was an interview that I did with my dad that was released right after Father's Day. And as with all of our anniversary episodes, I like to make it special. And this episode is no different. Today, we interviewed Jordan Levine, the president and COO of Stretch Zone, and he talks about how they conducted a clinical research study and implemented a system-wide grand reopening in 425 locations. And he shares with us his secret about how they were able to do all of this successfully. Now, Jordan is the president and chief operating officer of Stretch Zone, bringing more than 25 years of experience building and scaling some of the most recognized franchise brands in the country. He began his career with Coldstone Creamery, helping grow the brand from fewer than 50 locations to over 1,200 nationwide. He later joined Massage Envy, Well Biz brands, and was previously the COO of Sola Salons, expanding the brand to 720 locations. Jordan is a franchise expert and franchise enthusiast. You're gonna love this content. So let's go ahead and jump right into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Tom, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. It's always fun to tell the story of what's going on in the world here of Stretch Zone. Jordan Levine, president and COO of Stretch Zone. I've been with the brand for going on two years now. In dog years, it feels a lot longer, but I've spent my whole career. I used to say 25 years in franchising, but I think I said that a couple of years ago. So now it's actually more than that, but it just feels good to say 25 years in franchising. I cut my teeth first in early, early, early days of the Coldstone Creamery brand when we were building something great. I mean, we took this from a local hometown mom and pop franchise in Phoenix, Arizona, Scottsdale, Arizona, to what it became all around the world. I spent a number of years with, I mean, I've been with great brands. I mean, I'm very, very lucky. Spent a number of years with Massage Envy brand, and we took that and also kind of did the same thing and took that to really become a household name. From there, I spent a number of years with Wellbiz Brands, which sort of is a platform franchise for Amazing Lash, dry bar elements, massage, several different brands, most recently at Sola Salons prior to coming here. So it's been just a really, really wonderful 25 plus years, we'll say, in the franchise space, working with great people on great brands. And you really do get to learn the things that work and the things that don't work in franchising. And so to come here to Stretch Zone now, I it's not even new anymore, but to be two plus years now at Stretch Zone to take all those things that you've learned along your career to hear, it's just really fun to be in this chair now. Really fun.

Tom DuFore 3:25

Well, you have such a wealth of franchise experience and background

What Assisted Stretching Really Does

Tom DuFore 3:30

and being a part of many different franchise systems. And one of the big reasons for at least part of the press tour here is some research that's recently come out. And so let's talk a little bit about this research and make that the starting point for us today.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Don't mind if we do. Yeah, it's an exciting time for us here at Stretch Zone. So stretch zone has been around for quite some time. And flash forward to today, for many, many, many years, we have heard time and time again how wonderful assisted stretch can be and how it helps people. My father, 82 years old, gets stretched every week. I get stretched, I've been getting stretched for years. I'm a marathon runner. And it sort of crosses the gamut who can benefit from assisted stretching from the athlete all the way to your your your aging parents and everybody in between. And typically, what I'll do when people are unfamiliar with what assisted stretching is in a group of people, I'll have people raise their hand if you think that stretching is good. Every hand goes up in the room. Keep your hand up if you actually stretch and the hands go down. Everybody's hands go down. So everybody thinks it's good and believes that it's good. How many are actually doing it? Very few. So, you know, stretch zone, all we ask that you do is get on a table, lay on a table. We do all the work. You don't have to sweat, you don't have to like we do all the work. And so for years and years and years, we have heard time and time again from folks about the wonderful benefits that they feel. We see it every day, walking taller, feeling better, you know, all the different things. And we said, okay, it's probably time that we put our money where our mouth is and understand what that actually really means. And so we actually conducted and commissioned an action, actual clinical research study to understand the efficacy, the true efficacy of the stretch that we provide. And we were blown away with what it came back with. Well, I should say we were blown away and we weren't because it validated what we thought we already knew. But to actually see it in black and white and to see it published in an actual peer-reviewed medical journal, the Journal of Muscoskeletal Disorders and Treatment, like it legitimizes what we already knew. And what we found is what we thought we would find is it makes people feel better and all these sort of things anecdotally that we've heard. But what we actually now can quantify the actual benefits that 78% of participants saw a reduction in pain. And we saw that 66% got higher energy as a result of it. And it makes sense that 58% reported better sleep. So it's not just about the benefits that they were seeing in their bodies, but it was the qualitative benefits. And I think it also makes sense. If you're in less pain, are you gonna sleep better at night? And to be able to now help our franchisees quantify what this service is doing and then to give them the tools and the scripting to use in the stores, we're a membership-based business. And so if we can arm our franchisees with information and scripting to help sell a membership, then this is just absolutely groundbreaking, earth-shattering. It is an industry first. And

Clinical Study Results And What Changed

SPEAKER_00 6:45

to be able to share all these data points, you know, just to give you another one, I'm looking at my notes here because I haven't memorized quite everything yet. But 61% of participants experienced ease in daily activities. 90% of participants said they saw benefits to their general health. So these are claims that we can now make that we weren't really able to make before, other than to say, yeah, you'll feel better. And our franchisees have responded so, so well. How many brands actually invest in this type of clinical research? How many brands invest this much in their franchisees' business? And to be able to do this quote unquote relaunch of a 425 unit brand, we are literally like relaunching the whole brand with this. We held a national grand reopening event across all our stores, literally a ribbon cutting. And at the same time, it was it was February 21st at 11 a.m. Everybody cut a ribbon and held an entire event in their store. And we're saying, whatever it was before, it was before. And now it's a new day. And the excitement in our system, and we're seeing the results of higher lead flow and higher traffic and better awareness. Listen, we were on the Today Show. How many brands get to say they were on the today show and Fox Business and Forbes and Wall Street Journal and on and on and on and on? We have been getting so much attention for this. So that's sort of where we are as a brand right now. It's an exciting time for us. It's exciting for me in my personal journey to be able to be a part of a brand that can sit here, Tom, talking to you about this.

Tom DuFore 8:20

It's wonderful that you did conducted this study as the franchise or took the initiative to do it. And I'd like to talk a little bit about what really drove you to do that. Because I know many times you have the uh, as you would describe, this anecdotal, you know what your customers say, you see the improvement in what your customers feel, experience, and describe to you. And for most brands that exist out there, that's good enough. And because they know they are making a difference, but you decided to take this extra step and what I would imagine help fund researchers to come in and get these scientists in and medical researchers come in and do all of this and take the time and effort in making that happen. So, what was it internally that led you all to say, we need to do this, we ought to do this and invest in that as an organization?

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah, it's a great question, Tom. I think there's a lot of reasons why we did it. And I think I would start by saying good brands put their money where their mouth is. And what I would say is, you know, you watch TV every day, and it's like, you know, nine out of ten doctors recommend this, or four out of five dentists recommend this toothpaste. And it's like to make those claims, you have to have data and research with which to make legitimate claims. It, you know, it starts with just saying, how do we want to, how do we emulate the best in class brands out there?

Why Proof Matters For National Accounts

SPEAKER_00 9:40

And to do that, you really want to have legitimate claims to be able to make. I think there's a lot of other reasons for it. We've established a whole arm of our organization that we call national accounts. And national accounts is a new vertical for us. And we get calls every single day from organizations saying, we need to contract with you. We need, we need to help our employee base feel better and work better and be more efficient, or when there's an injury, we need like there is a need for stretching to help the workforce. And so we get calls from companies all the time. And we said, okay, rather than just field a call every now and then when somebody comes in, we can go out and we can actually seek the best in class companies. I mean, we're talking Fortune 500 companies that can benefit from their labor force feeling better, working harder, working better hours, whatever the case may be, calling in sick less often, or when there's an injury, we can provide a solution. And so we said, like, if we're gonna go down that path, we need to have information and arm ourselves with that information. So there were so many different reasons, but I think, I think some of it can also just be personal. I think, you know, you think our business was founded by a gentleman who really, Jordan Gold, who is our founder, who really just believed so deeply in his heart in what this service did. And this provided some personal validation to us all that that it's not just a feel good, that this is truly something that can benefit the world. And to give ourselves a little bit of validation, when you ask folks what is assisted stretching, I think they're still, we're we're still sort of new in many ways. A lot of people don't know what assisted stretching is. And this gives us that platform to be able to tell them what it is with great legitimacy and efficacy. And I think some of it is from a business reason, some of it's very personal, so that we can help tell the story of why we're here and what we're doing.

Tom DuFore 11:37

The national account idea makes a ton of sense if you're an organization to add this as a value add, a benefit to your staff and team. And if you're going to offer this to have some facts and research to validate what you're saying, to provide that support to them. And I think it's a brilliant business move, but also to be in a position where you have established the network, the network's large enough to be able to support it and enough data points to pull enough information, to have enough data points

The Protocol That Keeps Quality Consistent

Tom DuFore 12:10

for this research to be meaningful, right? It's not just, it's not just a few uh case studies or a few examples. I mean, it's it's a wealth of information that's going into this.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

I I think the the the legitimacy of being published in a peer-reviewed journal, it really makes us stand out. What was what was in the study was not assisted stretching. It was the stretch zone method. And the title of the research study, the the article was the stretch zone effect. And what's great about that is it really validates not just the category, but it validates what we do. And our method is proprietary and it's unique and it's different from everybody else. We are a protocol-based model, meaning that we we know with great certainty that the stretches we deliver, they are programmatic and they are gonna be the same quality anywhere you go. We don't hire folks off the street and say, go do what you do. You are going to do the stretch zone method. And so the efficacy and the results that you're gonna see are gonna be the same no matter where you go in the country. We train every one of our practitioners and certify every one of our practitioners all over the country. And that's a big differentiator. So we know that this research validates stretch zone and it validates the stretches that we deliver. And I can tell you, as someone who gets on the table quite often, when I get off the table, I feel all these benefits myself. I sleep better, I have more energy, my pain goes away. Like I said, you know, I've been running for longer than I care to admit to, and my body ain't getting any younger. And so, you know, to get those benefits, it just gives me that energy, that vitality back. So I personally, you know, research study aside, I can tell you how wonderful getting stretched actually is.

Tom DuFore 14:01

Well, with this new study and the research, and as this new

The 425 Location Grand Reopening Playbook

Tom DuFore 14:05

information's come to light, how do you take this and integrate this new information into training programs or supporting franchisees or changing what you might have already found success in, if at all?

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Well, you know, I've said this a couple of times and I I uh how long I've been in franchising, and I promise not to say it again, but in all my years, I don't know that I've seen a launch like this. And what I mean by that is you think about how to launch new data or a new marketing campaign, and usually you hit it from one angle, maybe two, maybe three if you're really good. We hit this from so many different sides. And so you think about like starting with the the grand reopening event. So, grand reopening event to do a ribbon cutting at 400 plus locations in one day, that's great. We did a media tour where we were all over New York City and beyond, you know, like I mentioned today show. Then we we we went to our email database. Listen, we have 2.5 million emails in our database. What are we doing with that? So we go to that. We we've done in the store, we've done an in-store marketing blitz in all of our years. We've never really rebranded or re-energized the store. So when you walk in the store now, you know something's different. You know something's different. The research study is plastered all over the store in different places all over the place. So when we did that, we did what we called an unboxing party on the night of February 9th to open February 10th with the store sort of redone. The excitement level that our franchisees and our team members felt and the pride that people felt when they welcomed people on in the store on February 10th to tell a new story. And people walked in and they noticed, they felt something. We have done store contests in the that we've done several different contests to get people excited and energized. We did a 26 city roadshow tour. Again, never did this in 25 years. Uh 26 city roadshow tour where we went all over the country doing some remedial training on this. I mean, we had almost a thousand people in attendance in our 26 cities. Me personally, I did almost half of them. I was in almost half of them myself. And so to go from city to city to city to tell this story and to feel the energy in the room that people were feeling and the excitement, I think you can launch something this exciting. And if you don't launch it well and you don't launch it right and you don't build the excitement, what are we doing here? Why are we doing this? And I can tell you time and time again, brands that they get the mind, but they don't get the heart. And if you don't get people to believe and to understand and to be excited, you miss something. And I think franchising is the simplest business in the world. When everybody feels the feelings, magic happens. And that it's about connectivity and it's about relationships. And there's a lot we can do on Zoom, and there's a lot that you can't do on Zoom. And to literally look eye to eye in person is the magic. And to do 26 cities, big undertaking and well worth it. And so you kind of put all these different things together that we did down to retraining the staff and giving new scripting tools on how to incorporate the research findings into the scripting that we use. And and to incorporate these as discussion points. Like I said, it's working and it's exciting. And I think this is probably the best launch in my humble background that I've seen. And I say that I guess in many ways, it takes away from all the other launches I've done in my career, but it's still exciting to uh to be part of this now.

Tom DuFore 17:43

Well, certainly. And and of course, all those previous launches, it helped get you to this point, right? You know, it was it's kind of stacking on top of one another. One thing that I was curious about and listening to you describe this in this multifaceted approach in this single launch day across country, which is phenomenal, with hundreds of franchisees in your system. It's interesting to start thinking about okay, well, how do we get people on board with this, right? Making sure all the franchisees are on board. I'd love for you to talk through maybe some of the strategy and operational or logistic components just to get this thing to happen and to undertake it. It's not, this is not saying everybody come

Franchisee Buy In Through Weekly Communication

Tom DuFore 18:25

out for conference to one location and book your own flights and you set up an event and it's at one location. Hey, okay, that's uh it's still a job, but this is every individual location, getting the buy-in of all the franchisees to do this all at the same time. That's a significant undertaking. So I'd I'd love to just dig into some of that a little bit. That's not something you hear every day.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Isn't that the art of franchising? It really is. That that is at the heart of what every franchise, good franchiser is hoping for is to get everyone around the table, to get buy-in from everyone, to get excitement from everyone. And I'll tell you, it it took us probably a couple of years to get to this point. You know, leading up to this point, we've spent a lot of time over the last couple of years putting in a lot of work to get here. And so standardizing the memberships that we we put together, launching memberships, bringing on a corporate team. We brought in a whole team of field FBCs to support our franchisees. It took a lot of different steps to get to this point. And so we're finally at this point where everything feels right and we're moving in the right direction. Everybody is excited. And now you layer on something that everyone really understood the vision of this is going to really transform this business. And every franchisee understood that. And again, that's really unique in of itself that everyone, like truly, everyone got it. We tried during this launch window, and I say launch window, we we were extra communicative from January through February of all this. We met with our franchisees on a system-wide call every week leading up to this, and we gave bite-sized chunks of things you need to be working on. Then our FBCs would talk to the each franchisee, and we kept logs and trackers of every franchisee. And and have they, did they attend the call? Did they do the three follow-up steps? And every single week we were sort of on it, and we couldn't afford to have a franchisee not attend or not be in the know. How can you be part of something this big and a franchisee is not aware of it? It doesn't work, it doesn't work in a national brand. And I think everybody in our system understood that. And that's rare and unique and exciting. And but it but it didn't happen by accident. We spent a lot of time working on this in the years leading up, and then even during the window, the amount of communication, you know, brands daily get dinged for communication. That's probably something you could not do, if not maybe overcommunicating. But nobody could ever say that they didn't know what was going on because we made sure they did. We made sure they were informed and trained. And again, like I said, we even went to their cities and said, we're not taking any chances here. We are going to make sure this thing is successful. And I think generally our franchisees all leaned in. It's very hard to not see the vision on this. It's very hard not to see the investment. It's very hard not to be excited. I just can't imagine somebody would buy into a brand where the brand is investing in the business to understand the efficacy of the business. And then the results come back saying it's even uh better than than what we thought, and then you wouldn't be excited. Can't imagine that being the case. So I I think our franchisees are just really, really on board, really excited. They get the picture, they get the the big picture and are completely bought into what we're doing. And frankly, it's working. So a lot of great stuff to talk about here.

Tom DuFore 21:51

As you're talking in you know, the couple years leading up, your FBC's supporting what's going on from corporate communication to Franchisees. As you're going through that, I think from the franchise business coach and thinking about what they're doing, there's still the standard stuff that they have to do in addition

Doing The Relaunch Without Dropping Ops

Tom DuFore 22:10

to this. So the next thought that crossed my mind was saying, okay, well, Jordan, in your role in the organization and supporting operations and helping through this, how do you see your FBCs and other people supporting franchisees? How are you able to maintain that standard support all the while now having to give the extra support for this relaunching effort that you did? I'd love for you to share a talk through that. Uh, because I think that, you know, you don't want to do the relaunch and drop, you know, on the other side.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

The day job doesn't stop. And that's that's the big the headline is, you know, when when you're doing extra more, the the day-to-day, your regular day job does not stop. And that's the case for all of us, whether it's the FBCs or our marketing team or myself or our training team, we all had to say, and and frankly, even our franchisees that we were asking a lot of during this period of time, they're still keeping the lights on in the store, the day-to-day operations. And I think when you see the bigger picture and when you are excited about the vision and you feel the energy and the excitement of where we're going, everyone is willing collectively on whether franchisee, franchise, or both sides of the equation, is everyone's willing to put in a little more time and a little bit more work and a little bit more elbow grease when you see the big picture and you see the vision and you are excited. And so part of that really started with us here at our corporate office of building that picture internally and getting our team to really be excited about what we were doing and to see how how groundbreaking and industry leading this is for them to be a part of. And we spent a lot of time even talking about to our team about this is a special moment. How many brands do this? I mean, we we try to celebrate a lot of our wins as an organization. Last summer we hit our 400th store. And I remember when we did that, I'd been a part of a lot of these milestones in different brands, whether it's a hundred stores, 200 stores, a thousand stores. I've been a part of a lot of those. And when you celebrate those moments, they're exciting because not a lot of brands hit those numbers. And to be able to say, we're at 425 stores without a single store failure is unique and it's exciting. And I think sometimes you have members of your team that don't realize that because maybe this is the first brand they've worked for and they just think this is normal. This is not normal. And so when you can tell people they're part of something special and exciting, you get people to really amp up their ability to do more and to do better and to really lean into the excitement of the moment. And I think we were able to do that. And it started internally. And then when your team is all excited and when your team is bought in, it's a lot easier to get franchisees bought in as well because it is not for the faint. It is not easy. If it was easy, everyone would do it. If it was easy, we probably would have already done it. Probably done it five times if it was that easy, but it's not. But this was the moment and this was the time, and all roads led to this moment. A certain degree, it's also very nice that we can take a seat back and relax a little bit because of the many, many months and years of work leading up to this moment. It's out now. Now we get to enjoy the fruits of our labor a little bit, but the work never stops. You know, the work never stops. We got to continue to tell the story. We got to continue to do what we do every day and execute at a perfect or near perfect or as good as perfect as possible level as we can in our stores every day. So the work doesn't ever stop.

Tom DuFore 25:39

That's really, really helpful. And I'm thinking from your perspective, Jordan, you've been a part of a bunch of different franchise brands, many of which you've been early on in the launch and helping them launch and grow, maybe through this kind of the launching, the high growth period. And then as it the brand starts to mature, well, now you're coming into a brand as you've come into it that had a footprint nationally and had certainly room to grow. I'm

Leadership Chapters And A No Failure System

Tom DuFore 26:05

curious what you have seen with having what you described. No units have, you know, failed and having that. That's definitely rare, is an understatement. I don't I don't know how you can overstate how significant that is. What did you notice or see in the system in Stretch Zone that really stood out to you that maybe helped get it to that point to keep such a healthy franchise system built? Is you thinking back when you kind of first came in with your franchise eyes that came on to this?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Frankly, that's why I'm here, is all the things you just said. I joined this organization for for a number of reasons, is what I remind myself of every day. And I think it's a lot of things. I think, you know, you look at the leadership that got us to this point well before me, and uh, of how did we get here and the amount of passion and the amount of grit that got us to this point. You know, we we often talk internally here, and I've talked for many years about leadership, and there's sort of in my mind different chapters of leadership: chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. And our leadership team, this chapter one group of folks that came in that were just passion and grit are the two words that keep coming to mind. I came in at chapter two, like you said. And and and I think of myself as a chapter two leader. So you've got sort of this chapter one where you kind of build this foundation and it's scrappy, and you roll up your sleeves and you you just do what the hard work that has to be done. And there are no systems, and there are no tools, and there is no real success. And there is like you just do it, you just get it done every day. And and where I see myself as a chapter two leader is that's done. Now we have to professionalize. Now we have to mature. Now we need systems and tools and protocols, and now we kind of got to write the book, and now we can refine, and now we can take a step back and be strategic. And there will be a day where chapter three hits, and I'm not the person anymore. And it's a little bit more of a press, play, and go type of role, and that's not for me. But there's this sort of evolution to where you are in your leadership life cycle. And so I came in at that beginning of that chapter two, and I was sold because chapter two, chapter one was so strong. And then you look at the franchisee base. This is a group of franchisees that is so passionate about what we do here. We're not selling widgets, we are selling wellness, and it's meaningful. I was a stretch member for many, many, many years leading up to this. And so I understood what this was. I saw the passion play. I saw these franchisees. I fell in love with the leadership and the scrappiness of this chapter one and what got us here. There's so many reasons why I think on a very personal human level, why I fell in love with this brand. And that's why I joined the organization two years ago. And to see where we are today versus where we were then, like you said earlier, it's the culmination of a lot of years of my career to get to this point. And it is so exciting

Where To Learn More And Try Free

SPEAKER_00 29:15

to be here.

Tom DuFore 29:16

For someone who listens into this and says, This sounds awesome. Stretchzone sounds really cool or great, or I'd love to learn more. Where can they go? How can they connect?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Yeah, I mean, listen, start with stretchzone.com. Stretchzone.com, learn a little bit about the business and the brand. In fact, I would actually direct all of your listeners on our website on our main homepage. There's a link at the top that's specifically a research link. And you can watch we produced a documentary on the research itself and how we got here and what the research study was, but has all the research claims. It has a link to the journal article for someone that wants to learn more about franchising. We have a franchising website that you can link to from there. You know, I think the simplicity of this brand, you know, we I said earlier we don't have, we don't sell widgets, but we have one product and one service only, and that is stretching. And the simplicity of the model is what really excites myself and our franchisees alike. I would really recommend everybody check out the research site on our website, learn more, reach out to us, ask questions. You know, certainly myself, anybody on our team would love to chat with any of your listeners. And we'd love to have folks come in for a stretch. I know when I joined stretch zone, before I joined stretch zone, I remember being told it's the best brand of secret shop because your first stretch is free. And so, you know, we do that with purpose. A lot of the population doesn't know what assisted stretching is. It's very hard to tell people, hey, Tom, you don't know what it is, but just come in anyway. Well, when they're when it's when it's free, first stretch is always free. It's a lot easier sell to get somebody to try it. And so first stretch is always free. We'd love to have you come in, experience it for yourself. Make an appointment, either stretchelling.com or you can download our app and make your own booking at whatever time works for you. Experience it for yourself. Don't take our word for

Misses Wins Multipliers And Success Definition

SPEAKER_00 31:05

it. Our staff in our stores would also be delighted to educate you on not just what they're doing while you're on the table and the stretch that they're delivering, but educate you on the service as a whole. So I would invite folks to our website. I invite you to come in and get a free stretch. It is the easiest service to market when it's free. So please come. We'd love to have you.

Tom DuFore 31:25

Well, Jordan, there's a great time in the show. We make a transition. 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?

SPEAKER_00 31:36

How much time you got? A lot of misses. I, you know, I know that that was one of the questions that you ask every time. And I debated which one of the misses should I should I share when when, you know, listen, we're all perfectly imperfect and we've all made our share of mistakes. I actually think about one of the mistakes that I made earliest in my career. I I had the opportunity in my early days of my career right out of college. I worked for 10 years for Coldstone Creamery. And again, on the corporate side, but I was also on the franchisee side. And my business partner was my first cousin right out of college. And we became the area developers for Coldstone Creamery for the state of Massachusetts. And we opened up 20 plus stores in our years there. And when I tell you that was my unofficial MBA program, you know, I came out of college and I thought I knew everything. And boy, was that humbling. The mistakes that we made along the way, every last one of them, I'm grateful for them, but tell talk about mistakes. And I think the biggest mistake that I made is not understanding the finances of the business. You know, you look at like your report card as a business owner is your PL. I couldn't spell PL back then. I didn't know what a PL was. And we spent money we didn't have. We brought on team members that we didn't need because we thought that it's what you had to do to build a business. And I think the biggest miss that I had is I just wasn't educated on how to run a business, but I thought I knew everything. There was a certain degree of arrogance and ignorance. And I think the lesson that I would impart on people that are maybe newer into business is find a mentor, find somebody that can help steer you. And and as grateful as I am that I learned these lessons, and am, boy, it would have been a lot less expensive to not have had to have learned the lessons. So I think that was probably one of my biggest misses is just really not understanding business before being in business.

Tom DuFore 33:36

Oh, very, very well said. Well, let's talk about the other side. Let's talk about a make or two, a highlight.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Yeah. Okay. So again, I I've been very lucky. I've been very, very fortunate in my career to have had great mentors and to have had great opportunities fall on my lap. You know, whether, whether and I think I don't default, I you know, after this many years being out of Coldstone, I exited that business in 2008. It's been so long that I really don't think about it often. And this podcast really has given me an opportunity to reflect. That was where I cut my teeth. And that was where I learned so many lessons. And that's where opportunities were handed to me. How many people out of college get an opportunity to own a business in a national brand? And how many people are given that opportunity? And I am so grateful for that at bat. Again, I learned a lot, wasn't perfect, but I am who I am today. And I've had the opportunities I've had subsequently thereafter because of that. I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud, flash forward several years, many years later, I started my own consultancy and I was consulting with franchise organizations of every size for a number of years. And, you know, people sometimes often say consulting is code word for unemployed. It was actually probably the best time of my life from a financial perspective. And I'm very proud of what I built. And I think when I talk about the wins, I'm grateful to be part of an organization today where I sit in the chair that I sit in. But I'm very, very grateful for the opportunity to also be an entrepreneur and to build my own businesses. And I think it's given me a lot of credibility or street cred, as the case may be, to sit in this chair today, to be able to talk about the wins and the loses, losses from being a business owner of different types. And so I think those are the wins that I would say more than anything else. And again, wins come with losses. They come together. I'm grateful for all of it.

Tom DuFore 35:34

Well, the next question asks about a multiplier. And if you've used a multiplier to grow yourself personally, professionally, or organizations you've run.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

I I think I'm just grateful for the people around me. I think, I think the people around me is is where I've been very, very fortunate. And I think it's it's in many ways accidental. I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people in the world. And I think luck, you know, people will say there's no such thing as luck. There is such a thing as luck. And I think my life has been very, very fortunate and very lucky. And I think I'm very fortunate for the people that I have in my life, whether it be my parents and the way I grew up and the lessons that I learned as a child, all the way to every team member that's crossed my path thereafter, every boss and leader I've ever had in my life. I think that is really the big, and you call it multiplier, but that that's the big factor in my life that has given me so many gifts. Um, very, very grateful for all that.

Tom DuFore 36:30

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

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Boy, you asked tough questions, you know that? Um you asked some really tough questions. And I got to see these questions beforehand. Sorry, audience, that's uh you get to know that I got to see these questions before, and they're still hard. I I don't think success is money. I think, you know, a lot of people tie success to money. I don't think success is money. I think success is is how you feel when you go home every day. It's a feeling. Success to me is do you feel good every night getting in bed, going to sleep, feeling like you did something positive for the world? And it's not to anyone else. It's how do you feel in your inside? Do you feel like you have done something that has benefited the world? And it doesn't have to be grandiose. It doesn't have to be, you know, I cured cancer. It could be, I helped one person today. And, you know, I've had so many fulfilling situations where I've gotten to mentor somebody who's called me up a year, two years later and thanked me. And I didn't see it coming. I didn't even know I mentored them at the time. And I've had these opportunities where people have done these things towards me. And and and and it really it warms you on the inside. It makes you sleep well at night, knowing you contributed to the greater good. And listen, if if if if that again, people tie success to financial wins, sometimes it does. Sometimes, you know, that that's great. But but if I feel great about the contributions that I can make, and it's again, not about you, Tom, it's not about anyone else. It's how do I feel in my heart? If I can go to bed feeling better that I have contributed, then that's success.

Tom DuFore 38:05

And Jordan, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Tom, we've covered a lot of ground today. And I appreciate just the forum and the platform to tell the strike's own story and to talk about some of the um wins and the advice. And again, you know, maybe, maybe it's this podcast that makes me sleep well tonight, sharing some of the insights and the the learnings that we've had. If some of your if one of your listeners hears this and says, you know, maybe there's something here that I can do and something that I can take and and apply to my business, then then I can feel really good and successful today, just for for for even being able to share some of this. And so I appreciate the time. I I always appreciate the time to uh tell the story of this brand that that I'm very lucky to be a part of.

Tom DuFore 38:55

Jordan, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is when

Key Takeaways Win Win And Closing CTA

Tom DuFore 39:05

he talked about conducting the research itself. And I thought that was just a great focus. They said, we wanted to test the efficacy and see how this works. He said, just think about how many brands invest this much research for their entire system. Probably not a whole lot. Takeaway number two is when he talked about why they did what they did. Good brands put money where their mouth is. I thought that was a great crow to say, okay, we want to see what this actually says. And he said he was trying to emulate, or they were trying to emulate other successful brands. And they have another component to try to grow local business for their franchisees if they could validate through research what they were already experiencing and seeing in their customers that they want to be able to build national accounts. I thought that was great. And takeaway number three is when he talked about how he got this done. So he talked about the research itself, why they did it. And takeaway three is how did they do that? And I thought it was fantastic. And he said, it's really the art of franchising and it's communication. He said they over-communicated with their franchisees, holding a regularly scheduled weekly, almost sound what it sounded like, town hall session, where they were letting the franchisees know what was going on, kind of a re-grand opening checklist of meeting up, and then having their franchise business coaches, the FBCs, if you're not familiar with that term, FBC or franchise business coach, having them make sure the franchisees keep the franchisees on track. And I thought that was great. And when I asked him, well, how did you do that and your regular field support? He said, Well, we just did it. We had to do both. Our FBCs had to keep that support in place. And so I thought those were some fantastic, fantastic takeaways from the show today of what they did and why and how they decided to do it. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win comes from Jordan's quote of he said, good brands put their money where their mouth is. And to me, the win-win here is what he's trying to say is if you're gonna talk about something, have a differentiator, do something with it, talk about it, do something to help the franchise system, help your franchisees, help your customers. This research that they did, I thought was just a fantastic example of something that a franchisor can do that will benefit all of their franchisees, provide a differentiator in the market, and add value to their customers, the end customer at the end of the day as well. So to me, this was a win-win across the board. And really the takeaway also in this win-win is for you to think about how you can apply this kind of idea to your own business. Maybe it's not a study, maybe it's a marketing project, maybe it's a unique differentiator. If you're a brand new franchise or you probably have limited budget and limited resources and limited staff that you're working with. But there are things you can do. And we help our clients through things like this all the time. And so think about this and how you might be able to apply it to your own franchise system. I just think it's a great, great example of something that you can do that will help provide and add value to your franchisees and to the end customer. 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.