How do you build community in franchising? Community with your franchisees, with the local neighborhoods your franchisees serve? Our guest today is Bron Launsby, and he shares how Slick City Action Park, is building community within his franchise system.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Building community internally and externally with your franchisees and the neighborhoods they serve.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Schedule your free franchise consultation with Big Sky Franchise Team: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
- You can visit our guest’s website https://slickcity.com/
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- Connect with our guests on social:
- www.instagram.com/slickcityactionpark
- www.facebook.com/slickcityactionpark/
- www.linkedin.com/company/slick-city-action-park/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/bron-launsby-fec/
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Bron Launsby is the CEO and co-founder of Slick City Action Park, a seasoned entrepreneur, Certified Franchise Executive, and visionary in the rapidly growing industry of active family entertainment. With a diverse background in product development, retail, marketing, entrepreneurship, and franchise operations, Bron has consistently demonstrated his ability to identify and capitalize on emerging business trends. Prior to launching the brand in 2021, Bron was the largest franchisee in the Sky Zone system, operating nine locations across five states. He has also held leadership roles with Belle Maison Decor, Innovative Heights, and Amp Up Action Park. He started his career in corporate roles with national brands including Kohl’s and Cracker Barrel.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or professional advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Big Sky Franchise Team, or our affiliates. Additionally, this podcast may feature sponsors or advertisers, but any mention of products or services does not constitute an endorsement. Please do your own research before making any purchasing or business decisions.
TRANSCRIPT
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[00:00:01] Tom DuFore: 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 DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. As we open today, I’m wondering how you build community in franchising. How do you build community with your franchisees and with the local neighborhoods your franchisees serve? Well, our guest today is Bron Launsby, and he shares with us how Slick City Action Park is building community within his franchise system.
Now, Bron is the CEO and co-founder of Slick City Action Park. He’s a seasoned entrepreneur, a certified franchise executive, and a visionary in the rapidly growing industry of active family entertainment. Prior to launching the brand in 2021, Bron was the largest franchisee in the Sky Zone system, operating nine locations across five states. He has also held leadership roles with Innovative Heights and Amp Up Action Park, and he started his career in corporate roles with national brands, including Coles and Cracker Barrel. You’re going to love this interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
[00:01:13] Bron Launsby: Thanks for having me. My name is Bron Launsby, and I am the co-founder and CEO of Slick City Action Park.
[00:01:21] Tom: Let’s just get things started a little bit here about Slick City. Give us an overview. What is the business? What is it you do?
[00:01:27] Bron: We’re a family entertainment center. Our sizes are between probably 20,000 and 70,000 square feet, but it’s indoor active fun for all ages. We have indoor dry slides. We call it all thrill, no skill, but it’s like a water park without having the water, and you fly through the air, and very exhilarating. We have indoor sports courts, which you can play an elevated game of dodgeball, basketball, volleyball, soccer, all those things. We have a toddler area for our youngest guests. We’re testing mini golf and a host of other things, but very much a family-friendly business. 38% of our guests is actually 14 and above, which is pretty extraordinary in our environment, and do a good food and beverage business, birthdays and events, et cetera.
[00:02:13] Tom: Thank you for that overview. These are larger facilities, right? With lots of people and folks coming through. One of the things is you’ve started expanding through franchising. I’m curious about how your experience as a multi-unit franchisee helped shape the way you lead and grow your current franchise.
[00:02:34] Bron: Well, I started actually in franchising when I was a kid in high school as a Dairy Queen– worked for a Dairy Queen franchisee. I had no idea, really, what a franchise even was at the time. Even through business school, I really didn’t know. I was in a corporate retail for a good number of years, and a friend had said, “You know what, there’s this indoor trampoline park thing that I think is quite interesting. I think you’d be a good business partner.” I was like, “I’m not sure what that is.”
I was interested, but I was skeptical for sure. I went to Discovery Day, learned about that particular brand, and talked to a few franchisees, and really it was a decision as to how many should I buy, how many territories? It’s an exciting business. It’s a new frontier. I start going down that path and had good success with that system, scaled to be their largest franchisee. In that process, some of my corporate retail experience came into my DNA, which was keep the experience fresh for the guests. That became part of the hallmarks that probably helped me be successful in that environment.
Then, as I put a dry slide in that trampoline park, one of those trampoline parks from my now partner, to test something new, I had success. I had conversations with the owner of that company and ended up investing in his company with the idea that we would eventually create a what was called Slick City. That all happened in 2020, 2021. We opened that first location in 2022. Some of the things that I’ve taken from that franchisee experience to my franchisor experience was pretty much everything. I mean, everything about it.
It was really the stay relevant as an operator because a lot of times in the franchise environment, a franchisor opens a location or two and becomes an expert at selling that experience or that business to somebody else and maybe loses a little bit of a how to do it every single day. We’ve been very relevant in opening corporate locations as well as me as a franchisee of my system to stay relevant and know whatever we do impacts a franchisee: opening costs, marketing, et cetera, et cetera.
The other thing was best of class service. I know I needed to create a great team that really understood how to operate the business, but had worked for a franchisor and major franchisees before in their past. I hired my COO, and everybody on that operations team has really came from a franchising environment, which has been really, really good. It was also just creating that best of class system, franchises, business for yourself, but not by yourself. In doing that, you need to have a great system. One way you can tell a great system is hopefully by the culture, but they’re better than average or higher average unit volumes, and the profit potential, because that’s part of the reason why most of us are in business.
Another thing was collaborative leadership. We need to stand tall together. I wanted to be a franchisee that collaborated and listened to the franchisees, because again, as we know, they operate day to day and they know as much as us. We’re trying to stay up with them by staying as operators ourselves. Again, it’s really important to have good relationships with your franchisees, and that’s been a hallmark to what we’ve done.
Then, another thing that we did was economies of scale. As a franchisee, I didn’t like to pay more than the mom and pop next to me for certain things. We’ve really created a park in a box. When a franchisee buys a park or buys a territory from us, we source and develop from the attractions to the flooring to the furniture, but at better cost than what they can get in the marketplace, which I think is super important.
The last thing we did was bump down royalties. As a franchisee grows with us, after they scale to a certain volume of their average unit volume, as well as the number of locations, there is step-downs in that. Our goal is to, because that was a frustration as me as I became the largest franchisee. I was paying the most into the system, and I was probably getting the least out of it at some point in time. Because I had a marketing team. I had a support team that supported my growth. I just wanted to make sure that we were better stewards of that capital for our franchisees.
[00:07:06] Tom: You mentioned there just being better stewards as a franchisor coming into this. I’d love for you to talk about this idea of responsible franchising. It’s becoming talked about a lot more within franchising. What does that look like to you? What are you all doing that? It’s a nice idea and a nice theory, but what does that look like in practice?
[00:07:29] Bron: Yes, great question. The one thing for us was we didn’t want to start selling franchises until we had at least two units open, different parts of the country, for more than a year. One was a retail mall environment, and one was industrial flex. We want to have as much variety in what we were doing, and we wanted to show what the results were. In order to do that, we had to operate. We couldn’t start franchising until we had a good base.
The other thing was just full alignment. Today, approximately a third of our location are corporate locations. Our corporate locations pay into the brand fund, pay the same costs from the manufacturer, et cetera. The same thing with affiliates, which are basically owners of the business, like myself, who are franchisees who pay full franchise fees, full ad fees, full everything. We’re in it equally with our franchisees. Then again, the royalties are paid off of revenue. There’s not a lot of fees that are paid for without revenue attached to them. We think that that’s super important.
The other thing is franchisee governance and just involvement. We talked about collaboration before. We don’t yet today have a franchise advisory council, but I can tell you I talk to our franchisees on a daily, if not weekly basis, as does my team. We provide lots of avenues for them to share best practices together, collaborate, and all those things is super important.
Another thing is just the smart multi-unit strategy. A system I was a part of before sold a lot of territories to or sold a lot of territories to one individual or two individuals. That wasn’t probably the best thing for the franchisor, but it also wasn’t best for the franchisees because territories were already kind of taken. Again, it put that said franchisee in a financial problem where they couldn’t actually get the next ones open in a timely manner. What we’ve done since the very beginning, regardless of the experience and regardless of how much capital they have, we cap it to no more than three territories we’re going to sell any individual coming into it.
Again, we have a good mix that are single-unit operators and a good mix that are three. Every location that has opened up so far was already a multi-unit operator that asked for more, or was a single-unit operator that’s asking for more. Again, being responsible and not loading it up too much, not having aggressive timelines to get these things open and all those type of things is super important.
Also, with our territories, we sell a good-sized territory, but if franchisee is looked diligently in that territory, and there’s still space, there’s still a territory available adjacent to them or multiple, we’ll allow them to move and look in those areas because, again, our goal is to get franchise locations open. It’s not to sell another territory.
I think the other thing that we’re kind of a unicorn in some ways in that we haven’t had to use any franchise brokers or FSOs at this point in time. It’s really been word of mouth, it’s been LinkedIn, it’s been digital ads that have really driven in that. I think anytime you eliminate that, you probably have a little bit better of a clearer path. You’re talking to only people who work for the brand, and all of us have opened locations before, as opposed to somebody who may be trying to make a sale, and it may not always be in the best interest. A lot of them are great. They’re not trying to talk bad about it at all, but just in reality, I think not having to rely on independent people to sell your concept is also responsible.
[00:11:26] Tom: One thing you mentioned about capping multi-unit purchases at three, I think that’s interesting that you do it that way. Is there any guideline that you use internally for an individual or a group that comes in and purchases three? Are they allowed to purchase more later on, or is that kind of it? Are they capped?
[00:11:43] Bron: No, they very much are allowed to buy more later on. Number one, the only way we’ll sell a three-pack to begin with is obviously a fair amount of working capital, but then also some multi-unit experience from the get-go. There’s two franchisees that are multi-units that are already– actually, three that are already open, and each of them have all expressed interest in purchasing more. Some of them opened their second already and already have purchased additional territories.
[00:12:15] Tom: Being in the family entertainment business and the franchising business, so much of this is built on the inner relationships with other people, relationships with your community, with the people that are there, as well as with your franchisees. How have you found success in building this long-term trust or relational trust with franchisees, with your guests, with the communities that the franchisees are working within?
[00:12:43] Bron: I think a lot of that starts with your franchisee selection. You know what I mean? I think if you’re selecting the right people who are going to be brand ambassadors, kind of the mayor of the city, and passionate about the brand, it’s going to take you a certain distance. Again, they’re going to have to be pre-qualified, they’re going to have to have some business experience, and all those type of things. Then also, team member, the hiring and onboarding of those, and just who you hire is how we really scale. That is super important to have that in line.
Then it goes back to our training process, training our franchisees, training new employees into the system. One of the things that can be difficult as you grow is protecting your culture and just enhancing your culture. That’s something that a good bit of our time is spent on. This is what our core values are, and how are we living up to this, and does this match with that? Then, ultimately, if we do those things well, if we’re ethical business people, if we support our community, if we support our franchisees, if we provide them the tools to be successful, and they’re having good results, it’s going to result in them wanting to purchase more territories or be happy and just be good stewards in their community.
[00:14:12] Tom: I really like how you described that. It made me think about responsible franchising, not just from the franchisor standpoint, but how you’re supporting your franchisees try to live out in that way. Would you mind sharing anything that you’re doing in that regard?
[00:14:26] Bron: From a franchisee, one of our core values is love our community. Again, there’s some national programs that we stand behind, but it’s really instilling in each individual location that we’re locking arms with other community partners. For example, most of our locations will do fundraisers with schools, and there’s a lot of really good programs out there with other brands that do it. Ours is really we’ll give up to 40% back to said organization that can bring in just say 50 people on a Tuesday through Thursday.
A lot of times, those have resulted in a $10,000 check to a school district. It ends up being a situation where they’ll, “Hey, let’s let’s do a meetup at at Slick City on Thursday from 6:00 to 8:00.” Again, a lot of times, we’ll put food packages together, and we’ll create an environment for the school that is really good for them to collaborate with with their students or whatever they’re raising money for. Principal can get involved because it’s just a very– who wouldn’t want to play dodgeball with their teachers and all that type of stuff? It ends up being a really fun environment, but it is that because the school supports it so much, because they’re getting such a large contribution back to them.
Again, I love Chick-fil-A just like everybody else. A $10 meal at 10% sharing can be a good number with a lot of people, but 40% on a larger transaction with something that kids and adults love to do is also a great option, too.
[00:16:14] Tom: Certainly adds to the variety for the school or whichever type of organization you’re supporting with that cause.
[00:16:20] Bron: Yes, definitely. In each one of our grand openings, part of the playbook is partner with a local charity with free passes to an adoption agency or lots of different things, or cash donations to help those groups as well.
[00:16:35] Tom: One thing is you’ve grown relatively quickly here and continued to expand. We see in franchising, and you’ve been in franchising a while, so have I, and we’ve seen brands that have grown very quickly, and you see them sometimes, unfortunately, fizzle out as quickly as they grew. What have you seen that some of these common mistakes along the way that these fast-growing brands might make?
[00:16:59] Bron: I think one of them is scale your staff or your people before you scale units. Again, for us, we had an advantage of being a manufacturer who was selling equipment even outside our system in the beginning to drive some revenue. We opened a corporate location that was successful right away. Then I started a personal location that I was a franchisee. We call it an affiliate, paying franchisees before we were a franchise. We had revenue coming in that helped us build a team before we actually started. A lot of times, that is debt, and that is a lot of other ways. That, for sure, helped us in that process.
Another thing is just codify before you multiply, is what I’ve heard other people say. It’s definitely having SOPs in place, training, safety protocols, and all those type of things. Again, stay relevant in your space, become an expert at being an operator. I think we are strong operators before we were strong franchisors, and I think that that’s important part of it. Also, we had to build a safety culture around. Again, this is an active entertainment place, so having good, honest reporting, leadership that’s specifically over this group was very much part of our DNA since day one. It was just simple things.
We had a guest in our first location that we had polished concrete on the floor. It wasn’t a bad thing. It just happened. That was the flooring that was there before, and it actually worked, and it seemed like a good idea not to spend a lot of extra money. Well, you put a slick mat on a slicker surface, and there could be a slip and fall. Said slip and fall happens. After that point in time, we put gym floor or rubber floor on all of our locations on a go-floor basis.
We’re constantly learning, and we’re constantly tweaking the offering. Sometimes it’s with our attraction, sometimes it’s with our flooring, sometimes it’s in our parking lot. There’s a lot of things that we can do. I’m proud to say that our general liability and excess insurance is significantly less than a lot of entertainment centers. I think it’s for a lot of reasons, but one of them is the safety culture that we’ve created.
Another is you got to protect the unit-level economics. Things start to slip when profits slip sometimes, and so being able to hold people accountable to higher-level standards. One of those things is you got to make sure that there’s financial incentives for that to happen. I think that making sure our franchisees are as successful as they can is for sure allowing us to grow quickly without as much compromising.
Iron sharpens iron mentality. It’s benchmarking, it’s KPIs, it’s understanding that man, that location over there had 67 birthday parties last Saturday. What in the world did they do different for that, and sharing that information or a location that we own corporately. We kept the experience fresh by adding a couple of new slides and share the results that sales were flat before and they were up 15% afterwards, and those type of things. Whatever we can do to share best practices and acknowledge best practices are happening in our franchise parks and sharing that information with others, just makes us all stronger.
The last thing I would just say is a disciplined franchise selection, bringing people, like we talked about before, who have some experience, have a lot of passion, who are capitalized well, that that is also going to go a long way in growing rapidly without compromising.
[00:20:51] Tom: In a similar vein, we work primarily with emerging franchise brands. We help entrepreneurs go through the franchising process to launch and get started. A lot of folks that might tune in here are maybe new franchisors or just getting going, emerging brand franchisors. What advice might you have for someone that’s a new franchisor to help them get started with their best foot forward?
[00:21:16] Bron: Yes, it’s a great question. Some of the things that I would recommend, number one, is making sure that their business is going to have success. I mean, we all have great ideas, and we all think they’re all going to be great. Then, unfortunately, they’re not all great. It’s pressure checking that. I think the best thing to do with that is corporate location or two to be able to get out there and then just understand that there’s probably going to be tweaks to that. There was things that we had to tweak after our first unit. Now that we have 30 of them open, we’ve continued to tweak along the way. I think the more polished your business model is, I think the better success that you’re going to have.
Then I think another thing is just hire well. In the beginning, you got to multiply yourself. I know that’s part of your DNA and how you grow. In order to do that, you have to– whether that’s family or whether that’s a true hire, but you really need to know what your strengths are in order to hire somebody that’s better than you in a lot of other areas of the business. I think that’s one thing that’s probably difficult for many of us. We think that our hands need to be on everything. In reality, that probably really slows down our growth a lot of times.
[00:22:36] Tom: Bron, for someone that tunes in and says, “Boy, this is interesting,” or “I’d like to learn more,” how can someone get in touch with you or learn more a little bit about Slick City?
[00:22:44] Bron: I am on LinkedIn, and it’s Bron, B-R-O-N, and then last name, L-A-U-N-S-B-Y. That’s about Slick City Action Park. We also have a Slick City franchising webpage, and we also have a just a normal guest-facing webpage as well. Would love to further connect with people for sure.
[00:23:07] Tom: Bron, this is a great time in the show, and we make a transition, and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. The first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey, and something you learned from it?
[00:23:18] Bron: Well, there’s always lots of misses. I think the biggest miss I think I had, though, is really just– again, I think we have similar backgrounds. I worked for a franchisee a long time ago. I went through business school, got my master’s, and I still didn’t really know anything about this franchising concept. I think that was a huge miss on my side, because if I knew I could be an entrepreneur within a franchise environment earlier in life, I think I would have been more happy than where I am today.
It’s been a great journey, but that is a miss, I think, in our education system or in my process getting here. I think you’re a big fan of franchising as well, so I’m hoping that we can collectively get the word out on what a great business franchising is.
[00:24:09] Tom: Well, let’s take a look on the other side. Let’s look at a make or a highlight or two.
[00:24:15] Bron: I talked a little bit about what brought me some success within my previous franchise experience, which is keeping the experience fresh. I think that that’s super, super important, no matter what business that you’re in. For me, as a retailer 20 years ago, it was how do you come up with new product or a new promotion or something to make it exciting so somebody would buy more the next time they came in or come more frequently? In family entertainment, it’s no different, but it’s an experience at that point in time. Again, that first step of putting a slide into my trampoline park led to where I am today. There’s a lot to be said on that alone.
Another thing that I think I overcame, and as did a lot of people, is just the whole COVID situation. You had a time period where you’re selling experiences, and we’re closing down experiences. We shouldn’t be experiencing stuff too close to each other and all that type of scenario. To operate 10 family entertainment centers at that point in time and to have the wherewithal and the support around to keep the head up and still be close for a good period of time. Basically, the bounce back was definitely something I don’t want to ever live through again, but it’s definitely a highlight being on this side of it now.
[00:25:35] Tom: Well, the name of the show is Multiply Your Success. We always like to ask, have you used a multiplier to multiply yourself personally, professionally, or organizations you’ve run?
[00:25:46] Bron: That’s an interesting question. There’s many ways I think you can multiply. I think that the biggest one for me, though, is just collaboration and building a strong team around me. Again, we would not be anywhere near where we’re at without a host of other people. Most of those people I had previous working relationships with. We could hit the ground running day one. There was trust already built up. In this environment, as you know, it’s kind of like flying an airplane and building it at the same time. Having a strong four team with you that you’ve been in battle with them and you’ve won some battles together, you really just have a good working dynamic, and trust will, for sure, multiply any singular person’s efforts for sure.
[00:26:37] Tom: The final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
[00:26:41] Bron: For me today, it’s really about impacting the future generation. I have six kids. A few of them are still at home, and a few of them are married. I think impacting them in that generation is super important to me. There’s various ways that we can do that. One of the core aspects for me is just trying to teach the importance of a side hustle, the importance of work ethic, and a lot of those intangibles. You have more college education than I do, but we both have good college education, and that’s a building block. It, for sure, is. I can’t speak enough to the importance of that, but also it’s getting your hands dirty and just grinding it out sometimes. The combination of both of those, I think, will take a lot of people pretty far.
[00:27:34] Tom: Very well said. Bron, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you’re hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
[00:27:41] Bron: Yes. I think we hit a lot of things. The one thing I would just mention to anybody is just if they are interested in franchising or becoming a franchisor, I would love to share the knowledge that I have. Again, I think that I’ll probably learn just as much from the conversation with others as they will learn from me. In business, I think that’s just super important. It’s super important for us to collaborate together, share experiences, and build something great.
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[00:28:10] Tom: Bron, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. Let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is when we talked about how he builds community. He said, for him, he starts first with looking to bring in the right franchisees and train as franchisees to find the right cultural fit for the staff that they hire. One of their core values is love our community. I thought that was great. Love our community. It’s a great challenge to the franchisees to do that. A practical tip, he said, is that they do big fundraisers with their community that provide opportunities for local organizations to raise a large amount of money through a fundraiser.
Takeaway number two is when he talked about what causes franchisors to fail or struggle. He said what he’s found that helps avoid this is if you scale your staff and people at corporate franchisor before you scale units, having strong operational experience before franchising is helpful. Be disciplined with franchise selection. He caps multi-unit purchases to just three in the beginning. That’s the max that someone’s able to buy. The final thing he said is he shares best practices within his franchise system. They’re sharing and trading knowledge with each other to help one another out.
Takeaway number three is when Bron talked about company-owned locations and how all company-owned locations pay the same fees and the same structure that all the franchisees do. I thought that was just a great little takeaway there. Now it’s time for today’s win-win.
Today’s win-win is really about building community internally and externally with your franchisees and the neighborhoods that your franchisees serve. I think if you focus on that, as Bron has shown that he’s doing, it really creates this upward spiral or this virtuous cycle that is going to help your franchisees be ingrained and become a part of the neighborhoods and the community they serve, which in turn will grow and foster and build a stronger franchisee community. That will build and foster positive working relationships between the franchisor and the franchisee.
That’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. 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 bigskyfranchiseteam.com, where you can schedule your free no-obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
