Do you ever wonder what is going through the mind of a franchisee? What are they thinking and what is driving their decision to buy a franchise? Our guest today is Kevin Brauer, who is a franchisee and he shares some of his story with us.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Whatever your thinking about doing, just do it. Step over that threshold.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- This episode is sponsored by Zoho, https://www.zoho.com/franchise/
- Schedule your free franchise consultation with Big Sky Franchise Team: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/
- You can visit our guest’s website: https://www.stormguardrc.com/mo/st-louis-southwest/
- Connect with our guest on social:
- Instagram: @stormguardstlouis
- Facebook: Storm Guard Roofing of St Louis West County
- Facebook: @kbrauer4
- Instagram: @brauer.k
- X: @kb1235drd
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Kevin Brauer is the President of Storm Guard Roofing & Construction of St. Louis and an entrepreneur focused on helping people connect their personal goals with meaningful business growth. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Kevin built his career in corporate sales leadership with tesa tape and Fastenal.
For the past 13 years, Kevin has grown Storm Guard alongside his wife, two sons, and brother. Today, the family is transitioning leadership to the next generation while continuing to build a legacy centered on intentional goal setting, opportunity, and long-term growth.
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team.
Big Sky Franchise Team is consistently recognized as one of the best franchise consulting firms in the world, helping entrepreneurs franchise their businesses through a proven 3-Step franchise process rooted in ethical principles, hands-on guidance, and customized deliverables.
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
[00:00:00] Tom DuFore: The most successful franchises share one thing in common. They’re never satisfied with where the business is today. They’re always thinking about the road ahead. That ambition is the fuel that drives growth, and Zoho’s business software is the engine that gets you there. With the right technology, your franchise won’t just run better. It’ll move faster. Candidates will progress through the development pipeline more quickly. New locations will open on schedule. Decisions will get made based on better data and better insights.
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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 if you have ever thought about what goes through the mind of a potential franchisee or someone thinking about buying a franchise. What are they thinking? What’s driving them to make their decision? Well, our guest today is Kevin Brauer, and he’s a franchisee and shares a bit about his story and his vision with us.
Kevin is the president of Storm Guard Roofing and Construction of St. Louis, where his purpose is to help others recognize and act on the opportunities in front of them. He focuses on helping people connect their goals and meaningful business direction and growth. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he built his career in corporate America. Over the past 13 years, he’s grown his franchise alongside his family, his wife, two sons, and brother. Today he’s actively transitioning leadership to the next generation. You’re going to love this interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
[00:02:22] Kevin Brauer: My name is Kevin Brauer. The company name is Strong Guard Roofing and Construction. We’re part of a franchise, and we are in the St. Louis location. I’m the president of the organization.
[00:02:34] Tom: Excellent. Kevin, we interview on our show a lot of franchisors. We also interview experts that maybe support business owners, business leaders, and franchisors, but we have not had as many franchisees on the show. I’m really excited to have you on. Just to share your perspective of being a franchisee, what led you to this whole idea of finding a franchise?
[00:03:05] Kevin: I had been in corporate America. We didn’t start a franchise until I was 45. I spent all my life in corporate America. I was in distribution, industrial distribution, and then I was in tubular fabrication as a manufacturer for a while. Then I was also in a manufacturer, but as a rep for a tape manufacturer. Really had a lot of experience there. My life consisted of a lot of traveling. I missed a lot of my young family’s life growing up because I spent 100-plus days on airplanes, plus overnights. Monday morning I would get up and go to the go to Mybus, which was an airplane, and go to wherever I was at.
I’d get home Thursday or Friday and did that for a long time. Obviously, I was 45 before we started this company, and my wife so kindly put her foot down and said, “You’ve traveled enough. I’m ready for you to be home.” She knew I always wanted to start a business; that had been one of my goals and just one of my markers that I had put up. She said, now’s the time. Let’s see what we can do.
I had lost my dad at a young age. He was an entrepreneur. Her family were in the restaurant business, they were entrepreneurs, and just didn’t feel like I had enough knowledge base to start something on my own. That’s why we went down the franchise route, and we looked at multiple different concepts. A lot of the concepts were multiple sites, where you needed multiple sites to get to the multiples that I was looking for as far as size and such were concerned. We settled with Storm Guard just after a pretty exhaustive search. It took us a good– I’d say we were probably in the search for nine months or better before we actually stepped across that threshold and then chose Storm Guard.
In April of 2014, we made that step from being employed to being an employer, basically living off of the funds that I had generated myself over the last 30 years in business or 20 years in business. Yes, it was a huge step, a big step, a scary step, but it was probably one of the more important steps that I’ve taken in my life.
[00:05:15] Tom: I think it’s interesting. One of the things you mentioned there was– it sounded like you had this idea of at least either a return or income that you were able to generate personally out of the business. It was helping you evaluate this. I’d love to just hear a little bit about your evaluation process. I think it’s something that a lot of times franchisors take their best guess at or just wonder about what’s going through the minds of someone that was in your shoes when you were at that moment of evaluating and considering a franchise.
[00:05:52] Kevin: That’s really a great question. I have the opportunity and blessing to talk to other franchisees, potential franchisees that come on when we have– they interview us when folks are coming on board. Really going back to that time when I was trying to really understand what it meant, we had already made the decision that we were going to be entrepreneurial. Now at that point, I wasn’t willing to work for somebody else. I needed to try this on my own, whether I made it or not. The evaluation for us really came down to the fragmentation of the market that we were in.
As a franchisor, part of their whole goal is to take a fragmented market and try and pull it in underneath one hood where you can have lots of different locations. We felt that after evaluating the multiple ones, because some of them required more sites, some of them required people, as a people business, which was really heavily in the recruiting and so forth. Some of them were– and to get to the revenue that you needed to get to from a finance standpoint and generate what we had hoped to achieve, the time frames get extended.
As an example, if you’re doing a haircut place, it may be 300,000. A really big one, we’ll do 300,000 in a year. Well, 300,000 if you’re making 10% is $30,000. Well, guess what? I made more than that. [chuckles] I’m not going to be the guy cutting hair because that’s not my thing, right? I can’t take the revenue from the haircuts that I do plus the revenue from the profits of the business to get anywhere close to where I came from. It’s not that it isn’t a great business, it just takes multiples of them.
Look, once you have 10 of them, now you’re making good money, right? You also have properties and other things involved. The reason I went down the road with Storm Guard is because it was extremely fragmented. There’s no nationwide company. There’s still even to this day, there’s not a nationwide company out there that is known in the roofing business. We felt that if somebody could come in and really consolidate and become a branded name that could benefit a system, and that’s why we felt like a franchise might be the right answer because nobody had done it privately. That’s how we really chose this path.
[00:08:18] Tom: How have you found that your business and your personal life are coming together? How has that changed or differed from working your corporate career?
[00:08:29] Kevin: When you own it, you really do own it. It encompasses 100% of your life. I’m sure you understand exactly where I’m coming from. Your conversations at home tend to focus a lot around what’s happening in the business. Especially in the beginning, you’ve got to commit to however many hours it takes. It’s not a matter of if you want to win, you have to commit to whatever it takes. Period. End of story. It doesn’t matter what business it’s in. You have to give the equity, and it’s a sweat equity as well as financial equity to the business to make it work.
Balancing the personal life over time. I’ve been blessed too that my kids– I’ve got a 27-year-old and a 33-year-old. I told them in the beginning, of course, they didn’t like our company because that’s all we talked about. The funny thing about it is after they graduated from college and then they went out, I made them work for other companies before I let them come to work for the business. Both of them did. Both of them decided that the circumstances worked out that they ended up joining our business. Now, my family, I get to see them every day when I go to business or when I go to work. We’re actually in the process of having them be more of the day-to-day and us less of the day-to-day.
To answer your question, how do you balance it? I think that you have to do some– you’ve got to find spaces, and you have to schedule your life just like you schedule your business. If you don’t schedule that private time away, then your business will eat every ounce of it. If you’re not conscientious of not only your relationships, your kids, your outside activities, that third thing that you do that just makes you happy, if you don’t make sure that you schedule those things, the business will consume your life. For some people, that’s okay. For a lot of people, it’s not.
I think if you’re disciplined about those things, you can manage and control that. That’s what we’ve had to do. We’ve had good support from our franchisor to help us recognize some of those things. That’s one advantage of being in a franchise system is you’ve got a whole group of people that are out there that have different perspectives and have gone through things that you maybe haven’t gone through. Sometimes you can unload some of your challenges on some of those folks, and they can help you find answers that, if you’re out here on your own, it seems like an island sometimes. Not to say that it doesn’t seem like an island even in a franchise, but it’s less of an island. Let me put it that way, because you got a group of people around you.
[00:11:05] Tom: You talk about the franchise having a network and people to support you. Are you referring to the franchise or your fellow franchisee?
[00:11:16] Kevin: It’s both. I was the third franchise in, so I was very early in this business. As you’re doing all the interviews that you do, you know that no business starts in one spot and ends up in the same spot that it started. It just doesn’t happen. It evolves. They all change. They become something different than what the original idea was or the original intent. Now, the concept may be still similar, but it changes. It just does because you have to respond to the markets and respond to what’s happening out there.
With that being said, being a very early franchise, none of what they taught me is what I do today [laughs]. I had to be pretty entrepreneurial. With that being said, we had very close friendships that we made inside the franchise system with franchisees that have become part of our family and have helped us tremendously through a lot of different stages. The franchisor has been great, and they’re adapting and adjusting too. We’re pretty independent from our location in the respect that we understand that we have to make it happen living inside the rules that they put forth.
We don’t fall back on them to expect them to help make our business because honestly, the franchisor is not in charge of my success. I’m in charge of that. I have to make sure that we function as a team through the great times and through the really challenging times because you get all of them. No matter how good the concept is, you get times that just don’t seem to be working as well as others. Then sometimes it’s just to the moon, and you’re like, “Oh man, this is the best thing since sliced bread.” Other times it’s like, “Holy mackerel, well now, what do I got to do to make this thing happen and get it back on track?” Every business, I think, goes through these cycles. We’re not unique to that.
[00:13:07] Tom: If someone ends up listening into this or they’re interested in learning a little bit more, how can someone learn more about what you’re doing or get connected?
[00:13:16] Kevin: LinkedIn. I’m certainly lots of folks are unconnected there on LinkedIn, as I’m sure many of them are. You can follow our Storm Guard page that gives some information about our business and what we’re doing. My wife and I are pretty active in it. She runs all the social media stuff. You’re getting a feel for what our conversations are every day. I’m always trying to find groups to be a part of that discuss business because I just enjoy helping people in business.
My purpose is to help people find opportunities. That’s why I’m here on earth. That’s what I do. Whether it’s through my business, whether it’s through my spiritual side, or whether it’s through my friends, whatever it is, through golf, I hope that I always bring that aspect to the table, that I listen to what people are doing and hopefully can help them find opportunities that are in front of them. That’s why God put me here. I have to live that out each and every day. I’m always looking for opportunities to find camaraderie and conversation. I think those are probably the best groups somebody can email me.
[00:14:24] Tom: Perfect. Kevin, this is a great time in the show, and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. We like to ask if you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it.
[00:14:36] Kevin: Yes, I think we all have misses. There’s no question there’s going to be misses. Bringing family in is not a miss. It’s been one of the greatest benefits, but it certainly could have been a miss. I would say be conscientious on that standpoint. We actually wrote contracts with each one of our family members that gave us exits and outs and expectations. If there’s one thing that– and maybe that’s more of an on-the-win side, I don’t know, but it’s just if you bring family in, be wise because your family unit is more important than what the business will ever be.
As I said to you, I’m more of a forward-looker, so I don’t look back at my misses too much, but they definitely determine my trail and my path going forward. I used some lead generation stuff that got me in trouble from phone calls back in the days where they had the no-call lists, which is pretty much gone away now. I had some phone calls go out through another vendor that were to somebody that was predatory. The lawyer that was setting that up, which gave me a real insight into how business works. Have a thick skin, understand that there’s always somebody out there trying to take a nickel from you, and they will try and find a way. I learned a lot from that.
I don’t use those types of services any longer. I think another miss is I’ve had a lot of people misses. Hiring people is one of the hardest. This is a people sport, and I think every business is what I would consider a people sport, and really understanding the recruiting side is a huge piece of it. I’m still not great at it. I’m still not super good at it. Even 14 years later, I can still say that if there’s a room or an area for improvement, it’s understanding people and how to hire people for those roles. Do yourself a favor if you’re getting into business. Make sure you learn about how to hire, because it kills so much time and money when you miss.
[00:16:39] Tom: Very, very good. Thanks for sharing that, Kevin. Well, let’s look on the other side. Let’s talk about a make or two, a highlight.
[00:16:45] Kevin: Having the family in there is definitely a highlight. I would have never thought that I could create a business that would provide income to all of my family members. I’ve got my brother, my wife, and my two sons that are involved in it. That was a dream that I didn’t ever have that we aspired to and created. That was super, super cool. We’ve been able to build a portfolio of buildings and properties that are in conjunction with what we do. I’m not depending on this business that I currently have as my only source of income now going forward.
It’s really changed my outlook and how I finish the back half of my life, or the back quarter, I guess, or back third. I’m not sure where I’m at, but I’m trying to do better. I’ve also learned that as I get to the stage that I’m in, which I’m 58 years old, about a month and a half. My job is my health now. My job is no longer trying to drive the business forward because I got people that can do that. My job is my health because I want to see what it’s going to end up being and where the people that are involved in it take it. Those are my big takeaways.
[00:17:55] Tom: The name of the show is Multiply Your Success. We always like to ask, have you used a multiplier to grow yourself personally, professionally, or organizations you’ve run?
[00:18:04] Kevin: A big multiplier for us was EOS. That has been a big change for me. When we ran EOS, we started about five years ago, and I would highly recommend EOS or systems similar to EOS to any business owner that’s out there. It really dials you into how to make a business successful and keep it successful because it’s easy to get off track. It really is. Other multipliers, I’ve used coaches. I’m a big believer that coaching is a huge part of it because you just don’t have all the answers, and sometimes you’re in the weeds so far. I’ve got a CFO, a fractional CFO. I’ve also got coaches for both my sons to talk outside the business too. Those are absolute multipliers for us.
Then, of course, local networking groups with Chamber of Commerces and things of that nature are also big multipliers for us, not only from a lead standpoint, but just so we can cheer on other entrepreneurs so we can help be a part of the community. One of the reasons that I stopped traveling was because of my wife, obviously, but also, I wasn’t a part of my community.
These give us a chance to give back, and we can sponsor different things, and we can advertise and sponsor at the same time, and do things that we never thought we could do when we were working for corporate America. Those have absolutely been multipliers to what we do. I think the title of your show is spot on, because all of us that are out here trying to do these things really use multipliers. Sometimes we just don’t give it all the credit that we need. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
[00:19:38] Tom: The final question we ask every guest, Kevin, is what does success mean to you?
[00:19:44] Kevin: Helping people. If I can just boil it down, it’s just helping people. Success to me is that we deliver for our employees, our family, our friends, for anybody that comes in contacts, that we help. At the bottom, we can be depended on, and that we can help people, and that our entity will go on for here until whenever, and that’s what it will do. If we do those things, then the rest of it happens. Success to me is that we live that mission each and every day, and that our every single person that comes in contact with our organization either lives that example or they experience that example. That’s the goal of where we want to be.
[00:20:41] Tom: Kevin, 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?
[00:20:48] Kevin: Your questions are great. I hope that anybody that’s on the threshold or that’s looking to go down this path and gives a serious consideration that make it happen. You’ll never regret it. You’ll learn more about yourself than you ever have. Whether it’s franchise or whether it’s a personal ownership, it doesn’t matter. I think franchises have their place and personal ownership has its place. I would encourage each and every person that listens to the podcast to step across that threshold, even as hard and maybe as steep as that climb may seem, just do it, because every day that goes by is a day that you haven’t learned what this will teach you.
[00:21:26] Tom: Kevin, 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 he talked about what led him to franchising. He had, in my opinion, what sounds a lot like a classic franchise experience where he had been in corporate America for a long time and traveled a lot and was gone a lot and decided it’s time to do something on our own and thought that he didn’t quite want to do his own business, but rather a franchise business and go that direction.
Takeaway number two is when he talked about changing from corporate employee to a franchisee. I loved the quote he said, “When you own it, you own it. When you own it, you own it.” Meaning you have to commit to whatever you’re doing to find success and to make it work. I thought that was great.
Takeaway number three, toward the end, he was talking about a multiplier and how he’s created a community-based business to connect with his community, with his family being involved and being involved with the local chamber and other activities and organizations. It’s just another reminder that franchising is locally owned and operated. Just a reminder of that, even though there might be a common brand and system that everyone’s following, having that local ownership goes a long way.
Now it’s time for today’s win-win. Today’s win-win is from the tail end of the episode when Kevin was talking about when you’re thinking about maybe buying a franchise, maybe you’re thinking about franchising your business, maybe you’re thinking about joining into a franchise system, or taking a new product or service or a new marketing campaign. I loved what he said. He said, “Whatever you’re thinking about, just do it.” He said, “Step over that threshold.” The reality is you’ve probably already done the research and the preparation and the thinking and the analyzing and the review, and now it’s just time to do it. I thought that’s just a great way to close.
That’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to our 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.
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