If you have thought about franchising your business or you already have, there is no doubt you have thought about how to find great franchisees. Questions like, how do you ensure you have the right people in your system? And, how do you navigate training and support? Our guest today, Leo Goldberger, shares with us his misses and makes about how he has successfully navigated franchising in building eight different franchise brands.
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ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Leo Goldberger, Founder and CEO. Leo is well known for starting Inspection Boys and The Patch Boys prior to starting Home Based Franchise Group. He has helped hundreds of franchise owners prosper and grow entry-level businesses into successful enterprises. “I love niche businesses that focus on providing a service that everyone needs,” Leo says. “I don’t want a business that does 100 different things. It’s far easier to master a simple business, and the consumer has far more trust in a business that specializes in one thing. With Home Based Franchise Group, these are businesses that don’t cost very much to get started, and it doesn’t cost much to continue to operate and grow. There’s very little overhead, which is the most common reason why people go out of business. With our franchises, you can own a simple business and scale it up to be incredibly successful.”
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Check out the Home Based Franchise Group website: https://homebasedfranchisegroup.com/
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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/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Tom DuFore (00:00):
Before we start the show today, I wanted to let you know that we are hosting our franchise sales training workshop on March 23rd. This is an ideal workshop for a new franchisor, a new staff member or a franchise leader, looking to gain some additional insight into the franchise sales process. You’ll walk away with a clear and defined sales process and how to overcome common objections. Plus you’ll receive our 130 page workbook that comes along with it. This is a live seven-hour session conducted all remotely, so you can attend any from anywhere and it’s just $1,500. So go to franchisesalesworkshop.com to register that’s franchisesalesworkshop.com to register. And now on with show.
Tom DuFore (00:42):
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. And if you have ever thought about franchising your business, or you already have, there’s no doubt that at some point in time, you’ve probably thought about how do you find great franchisees? You’ve asked yourself questions like, “How do I ensure I have the right people in my system? Or how do I navigate the training and support?”
Tom DuFore (01:12):
Well, our guest today, Leo Goldberger shares with us, his misses and makes about how he is successfully navigated franchising and building eight different franchise brands. I’ve known Leo for many years in franchising and have seen him, and it almost seems like every time I run into him, he has a new business that he’s starting or franchising really remarkable and incredible. So let’s go ahead and jump right into my interview with Leo Goldberger.
Leo Goldberger (01:40):
But those who don’t recognize this beautiful Southern an accent, I’m Leo Goldberger. Some people know me from my first franchise, which is what’s called The Patch Boys, which was recently bought off by the BELFOR Group. Now we have a company called Home Based Franchise Group with multiple home service brands behind it. So I love franchising, I love talking franchising, and here we are.
Tom DuFore (02:00):
I know you’ve been a great ambassador of franchising over the years and using it as a growth model. What is it about franchising that you’ve enjoyed or that you’ve liked as you’ve grown multiple brands now?
Leo Goldberger (02:13):
Well, obviously everybody wants to grow their business. But for me it really is, it sometimes looks like a cliche, people say, “I want people to be successful.” But I really do want. If you look at Patch Boys we have a little bit of a different system, how we get people into our franchise concept. I’ll never forget when I sold the business to BELFOR I developed a really good relationship with Sheldon Yellen with Dan Tarantin, people that you know in the industry and Sheldon asked me at one point, he says, “I know everything about franchising, but what do you use to get these great franchise owners? You check their credit, you check what… I said, “I have a secret, I can’t share it with you.” He said, “Please share it.” And I said, “Well, I talk to them for five minutes and I see if I like them or not.”
Leo Goldberger (02:54):
And basically what that means is, I don’t care if you have a 800 score or a 600 score, or 15 years ago, you were arrested because you had an ounce of pot on you, or you missed two mortgages along the way, none of this matters to me. I’m looking for hungry people, hungry people who want to get into business. They had enough of giving their sweat and tears to some corporate guy who he doesn’t even know. And we had a guy in Patch Boys, we’re not going to mention his name, but this guy made a big mistake when he was 17, 18 years old, ended up doing 15 years in prison because he was an accomplice to some robbery or something. He came out, nobody gave him a shot after working. We gave him a shot, and he’s right now in the top 10% in that network.
Leo Goldberger (03:34):
And that’s a perfect example. If you have the will to work, if you have the fire in your belly that you want to be your own boss. And I think everybody should have that. We will find your way with one of our brands. There’s, nothing that stands against the will. And so we do franchising a little bit different, but at the end of the day, this is what gives me pleasure. When I see somebody came from nothing, he used to work in a company, made a couple of dollars every week and struggled to, and all of a sudden he is the owner of his business, and he grows.
Leo Goldberger (04:05):
Because at the end of the day, I constantly tell the franchise owners, and you know it as being in the industry, you’re not partnering up with me, you’re not becoming my partner, you’re not becoming my boss, I’m not becoming your boss. It’s your own business. We’re just that a helping hand. We’re that button on your computer you could always call and we know where to zig and where to zag without you having to spend triple the money to figure it out. So if you have the drive, you become successful. Nothing gives me that good feeling when somebody that I took a chance on and he became successful and he had a second and a third [inaudible 00:04:38]. That does it for me.
Tom DuFore (04:42):
That’s a fantastic perspective and how you approach it. And I tend to agree with you that the people you’re bringing into your system, if you’re only looking at them exclusively by how much cash do they have in their bank account, or what’s their credit score, what’s their background or this or that, you’re going to lose sight on the fact that these people are going out, representing your brand, serving the community they live in.
Leo Goldberger (05:07):
It’s like in the NFL, you can’t win a game by having statistics. You got to bring the game and the passion in the game. That other team might have a better receiver and a better quarterback, but if they don’t have the passion for it, you’re going to know it.
Tom DuFore (05:20):
Let’s talk about some of your different brands. One of the things that’s always stood out to me that I’ve appreciated from you Leo, is your ability to see opportunity with new technologies to see new trends coming down. It’s always impressed me with what you’ve been able to do there. So would you mind talking about some of your different brands and using technologies, changing things and seeing the vision on how you’ve done that?
Leo Goldberger (05:47):
Absolutely. Obviously our first brand was Patch Boys and interestingly enough, when I launched that one, I went to a couple of business professionals and I said, “This is the business that I want to do.” And they all laughed at me. It wasn’t sustainable. It wasn’t doable. Every handyman does it, but I-
Tom DuFore (06:06):
And Leo, sorry to interrupt. Just real quick explain what Patch Boys is because I know it, but just for the audience.
Leo Goldberger (06:12):
Patch Boys was a quick drywall repair franchise company where electrician will come into your home and he will fix something or a plumber will make a hole and put in a new pipe, they don’t fix the sheet trap. Nobody wants to come in just to fix a little sheet trap, a little job. So we concentrated on those little jobs and we figured out a unique way, how to get it done in a couple of hours to make really, really, really good money at it. And nobody has ever done that before. It was something I invented, something I came up with and something I realized that you could do to get a lot of money with it. And along the way, as obviously that was sold to the BELFOR Group and right now, as I’m going through to all my other businesses, and I’m going to go over one by one with it, it’s the same idea.
Leo Goldberger (06:53):
We’re looking for niche businesses that everybody could do. So our first one for the example is Dryer Vent Squad. We’re not the only franchise company that does it, there’s one or two other ones that do it, but we found a niche how we do it, how we promote it, how we do the sales, how we market it, and that’s our secret source sorcerer, but it’s the same exact idea. You might go on to Google and find 20 people who do dryer vent because every handyman will advertise that they do grass cutting and they do dryer vent. Or big companies will do dryer vent and cleaning. But if they have a big air conditioning job, they won’t come for that. We will come down for a half hour just to clean your dry vent. All the businesses have in common, just like in Patch Boys.
Leo Goldberger (07:35):
It’s not a brick and mortar, it’s a home-based business. You don’t have to have a warehouse. You don’t have to start at the cost of good of all our businesses is 10%. And dryer vent, it’s even less because there’s no cost of goods. We simply take out the link, we’re throw in the garbage, we go to the next stop. And obviously there’s upsells and stuff like that. Then we have Frost Shades business, the first frost shades tinting flat window tinting film company in the world, the franchise company. There’s some people who will do other stuff and they will give you 10% of this, they will offer you the business, but that’s not their core business. And again, we’ve had some copycat since we opened, just like we had with Patch Boys and with all our other businesses, which flatters me a little bit.
Leo Goldberger (08:14):
But the same exact idea, you don’t need a storefront, you don’t need to stock anything. Just to talk a little bit more about Frost Shades for a minute, five years ago, if you came to me, “I want to tint my windows.” I had one question for you, “Do you want a medium, high or low?” Today I could come to your house, do 10 windows and each window will have a different technology behind the window film. So in window number one, you’ll tell me, “Hey, this room is good. I love the sun, but there’s a glare.” So I’ll give you a special dual reflective coating on the film so it won’t allow the sun in there. In the next room you’ll tell me, “I love the sun, but my air conditioner cannot cool off.” I will give you a different coating instead of reflecting, which allows the sun to come in, but absorbs the heat.
Leo Goldberger (08:58):
And the next room you want a privacy, in the third room you want decorative, in the fourth room you want security, I can give you a film where somebody could knock with a hammer for 45 minutes and it’s not going to break guaranteed. So there are thousands of stews in film today to become such a market. You might have cancer, and you cannot allow the UV to come onto your skin, we’ll give you a film that does that. It’s a different world, and nobody has done that ever and we’re simply killing it.
Leo Goldberger (09:28):
The next one is company called Clozetivity. Now people might say, “How many people do closets out there?” We found the niche that nobody else could do. Forget about the fact that today, when we come down to your house, we our average from when we come to your house to when we install it, this three weeks. The national average is about 10 to 12 weeks, but we invented a AI software, artificial intelligence software where usually we come into your home, they’re going to take measurements, they’re going to say,” I’m coming back in two weeks. I’ll make you a stronger tool. And let’s see what we want.”
Leo Goldberger (10:02):
We take the measurements, the computer is going to spit out five different designs for that particular closet, based on the people in your area. We have AI software index. So what we’re accomplishing our cost is less, our cost of good and materials about 40% cheaper than anybody else out there, the same kind of quality. We have our own exclusive cut, where we can get your material in two weeks. And we lower the time. People want a closet, they want it right now. We shorten the time I should say, from when we were there. And other big thing with our franchise is the feedback that we’re getting from our franchises.
Leo Goldberger (10:34):
Eventually I’ll let you get a word in, but when I start talking, I can’t stop. And other feature with our people at, when you go to a gym, for example, the first thing they’ll always want to do is charge you for the year, because in two weeks from now, you might lose your appetite and you start eating donuts again, you don’t want to work out. We’ve done some research from when I do a measurement in someone’s house, so you come back with a drawing about 40% of people are not interested anymore. We have the drawings in less than 30 seconds. It takes us 30 seconds to make five beautiful drawings, and then we can play around with it. So we have all different niches and different software that makes our company go well.
Leo Goldberger (11:11):
And then we have a company called The Turf Boys just to give you a quick preview on that one. The future of grass is artificial grass. Everybody knows it. There are some states they don’t allow you to water anymore to grass. And if you have too big of a backyard, they don’t even let you to put grass in there. So we have that as well, and we’ll just keep innovating and growing.
Tom DuFore (11:32):
Well, and now system wide between all of your brands that you have, how many units total are you up to now?
Leo Goldberger (11:41):
So we’ve been in business a year and two months, and we have over 90 locations.
Tom DuFore (11:45):
Wow. That’s incredible.
Leo Goldberger (11:47):
Basically a year.
Tom DuFore (11:48):
That’s incredible growth and Leo, as you grow through this, one of the things that I think in order to make this go, you can certainly sell it, but then once they come on board, you have to train and support and go through all of that. Talk through your process, how you’ve been able to accommodate for such rapid growth for your current brand and previous brands.
Leo Goldberger (12:08):
And I’m glad you asked that because I’ve watched plenty of your shows and usually one of your famous questions is, what’s your multiplier? And I know that’s coming soon, right?
Tom DuFore (12:15):
Yes, that’s right.
Leo Goldberger (12:16):
That’ll be good and right now over here, because my multiplier is multiple multipliers. One of my multipliers is a gentleman called Thomas Scott, which I’m sure you know, from Brand Journalists, he’s partner in my business and obviously Kurt Swanson, who I had with Patch Boys. So we’re a three guy team over here, but what we have done, that’s a very big secret to our success because nobody knows marketing like Thomas Scott. Absolutely nobody. He’s done marketing for the top 500 franchise companies out there. I think I saw last month, they came out with the top 100 franchise designs. He hit seven out of the top 10 and about 40 out of the top 100, that’s how good the man is. So he’s one of our multipliers.
Leo Goldberger (13:00):
But in addition to that, what we’ve done, our headquarters is in Nashville, Tennessee. We bought a building and we made our own unique training center. For all our brands we have a training center into that building. We’re always two steps ahead. If you got to get the secret to our success, what it is the secret to all this? It’s always that we always have people. We have the girls in the office, Andrea and Kayla and Chris. In addition to brand president, we’re not just, “We have a brand, let’s go with it.” Every brand has a president to it. Danny Mac is doing dryer vent, Joseph Katz is doing The Turf Boys and Peter Kauffman is doing Frost Shades and Brian Terrell is doing Clozetivity.
Leo Goldberger (13:44):
And in addition, we have a marketing team, we have a compliance team, we have a sales team, we have a training team and we do constant training. We have a field team that goes out to every single franchise that have after training and goes through them the first couple of days to make sure they do it right. So as everybody knows, support is the number one, but we have taken support to an absolutely extra level, to the next level. And our support is just absolutely amazing. We have more people than when we need at this stage in the game and we are still continuing to go. So that has been our key push for success.
Tom DuFore (14:23):
You’ve jumped ahead to the final question we’d like to ask everyone, so let’s go ahead and roll right into it. So the first question is typically, has there been a miss or two along the way and something you learned from it?
Leo Goldberger (14:36):
Oh, there’s been about 20 misses. I always tell people that people think I just come up with an idea and I put it out there. Every concept that I put out there I do in a pilot program for about six to 12 months. I’ve probably had 30 other ideas. Some of them are still in the pilot program that might come out. We have a company Move In Klean, we just succeeded and we’re going to open it very, very soon. It’s a moving company before and after construction and stuff just to clean your house before you move in. And we have a couple of different ones, but absolutely I fell, but this is the beauty of our companies. I don’t just go out there and put a franchise. And I use five people with a franchise to tell me if it’s good or not.
Leo Goldberger (15:18):
I go out there and I open my own locations. I do some pilot programs. I do it in different places. Dryer Vent Squad, we tested in Virginia and in Iowa and New Jersey. And we learned a lot with the different areas, what people are looking for, how to price it. That’s how you learn. We’ve had other companies, too embarrassing to say how many but plenty of them that we piloted and we realize that there’s no need for it, or there’s no way of making good money for it. So, absolutely probably for everyone that I put out there, I failed about four, but I failed it on my own. So I’m not taking the chance to failing with other people. If it goes through fine with my pilot program, then we continue going.
Tom DuFore (15:56):
Well, thank you for sharing that. And how about on the other side, you’ve shared a bunch of makes along the way already. Is there another one or two that stand out you’d like to share?
Leo Goldberger (16:05):
There’s so many different ways that makes a company run. To me, one of the big things is you have to be humble. You have to understand that you are lucky enough that people came and trusted you. They gave you $50,000, they gave you a $100,000. Sometimes we get lost in the shuffle, “We sold 50 units, 100 units, 300 units.” And it’s like, 50K here, 50K there. But the person who brings the 50K, 75K that might be their whole life savings. That might be the last shot, where they decided, they sat down as a family and they said, “You know what? We going to take our last shot, make it or break it. This is it.”
Leo Goldberger (16:40):
And you got to be humble about it. You got to respect that people are coming in here and they give the trust in you. And they’re willing to give you franchise fees because they want to learn everything. Don’t assume like, “This is simple I’ll just dump him off to this guy and this lady and this one and they’ll teach him.” So I’m probably one of the very few franchisees, the first two phone calls to any potential franchise owner I meet. We have plenty of people in the office that work, but nothing goes through before I make that one phone call.
Leo Goldberger (17:09):
Because I want to explain it to them, I want them to hear from me that I’m not trying to see, “How could I get 50K out of you to buy a franchise?” Before we get there, how could I get to make sure that we’re a good match for each other? Did you understand what I’m saying? I understand what you’re saying. And once we get past that team, then I’ll switch them over to the team to work with them and to see which brand is better for them, or if they’re good and finance is in there. But the first thing is you got to be humble and respectful to the people that they come and they give you their money and you can never forget that or you in their own business.
Tom DuFore (17:43):
Oh, thank you. I think that’s great. And you talked about the idea of a multiplier. You shared one, you said you had several, so any others you wanted to talk through?
Leo Goldberger (17:53):
It’s basically teamwork. That’s basically what comes down. Multiplier is all about teamwork. You have to understand it. Something’s very hard as an owner when you start with a new business and, “Oh, why do I need two people in every brand? Why do I need a training department and every brand? Why do we need to buy a new building? Why do we need marketing? Separate people from marketing? Separate for social media? Separate for advertising? Why do we need a field team to go out on the team?” That is the multiplier.
Leo Goldberger (18:19):
You will never lose on advertising. You’ll never lose on support. Support is the number one thing. There are plenty of people who tell you they’ll give you the support, but they don’t follow through. And I’m not embarrassed to say I’ve learned from some mistakes that I made in my first company Patch Boys where my support wasn’t always spot on. And it took me a while to get there. And in addition, if you don’t give the support in the beginning, it’s a trickling effect and people don’t feel the connection. People don’t feel what they got over here. As it is 90% of franchises after they learn the business, a lot of then say, “Oh, I could have done it myself.” It’s just a natural reaction what people do. So that continuous support for us is huge. And there’s nothing bigger than that for me.
Tom DuFore (19:02):
And the final question we like to ask everyone Leo is, what does success mean to you?
Leo Goldberger (19:08):
Success means to me is to make people more successful. It might sound like a little corny or a little cliche or a little like something like I’m trying just to give an answer, but that obviously when people are successful, we are successful. But it’s much more than that. When people are successful, you have a healthy environment. You’re surrounded by people that care. As I’m sitting here, Clozetivity of Ocean County, just hosted two other Clozetivity owners from the area who wanted to see how he does business. He doesn’t work for corporate. He’s just part of the team. He’s so appreciative of what he does. “Sure. I’ll show you, I’ll share with you.” And that’s the environment… We have that family environment for that. And for me, that’s huge success when we can come in at the end of the year and do a conference and everybody comes in and anybody wants to share.
Leo Goldberger (19:53):
I look a whole day. We have totally different groups for all our brands on Facebook and our LinkedIn, where we talk to each other. People post pictures and people ask, “Wow, what tool do I see you over there? People bought a new tool. I found a new way how to do a cut. It’s so much easier.” People share. But to me, success is when everybody’s on the same page, everybody enjoys what they’re doing. And obviously the major success is going to come down the road as you grow when you make some money and so on and so on. But to me, the success right now is getting a very healthy environment of franchise on this.
Tom DuFore (20:25):
I love it. Well, Leo, what’s the best way for someone to reach out to you, learn a little bit more or get in touch to learn about what you’re doing?
Leo Goldberger (20:33):
Well, we have multiple brands, so the best ways to go to our umbrella company, homebasedfranchisegroup.com, that’s homebasedfranchisegroup.com that will lead you to all our different website, all our different videos and give you a little bit of an idea of who we are as a company and what our mission is, and always reach out I’m available. My cell phone is on the site. I’m not embarrassed to talk to people. And I like to talk to people. I like to explain to them, I like to tell them this is for you, or this is not for you. And we’re not trying just to see how many franchises we can sell. We’re trying to see how many quality franchise owners we could get.
Tom DuFore (21:11):
I think that’s great. And Leo, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you are maybe hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Leo Goldberger (21:18):
Not really. I’m appreciative that you got me on your show. I know you for a long time, we’ve done a lot of shows together. We’ve done a lot of traveling. Some of them were better than others, but nevertheless, you got to take the good and the bad and congrats on your success. I remember you when you used to stay in the boots in the Javits Convention Center and talk to people and look what you’ve done for yourself. So, but no, this is all about growing as a franchise. You look at right now, there’s almost an exodus from the corporate world right now. People talk about how people don’t want to work, you can’t find employees, those people didn’t die. Those people are going into business for themselves.
Leo Goldberger (21:56):
The home surveys, there’s basically four sectors in the franchise world like the food, the gym, the workout sector, and the beauty, and the home service sector. The home service sector in history has always been at the bottom, right now we’re not only on the top but we’re projected. I’ve seen some numbers to grow by 35% year over year. And people caught onto it, you could open a business. Once upon a time you needed half a million dollars to open a restaurant. That’s all people know, when you spoke franchise they knew you could buy a gym or a restaurant. You could make yourself a really good a financial life and a financial planning with less than $100,000. And there’s so many brands out there. We would like to think our’s the best ones, but there’s plenty of brands out there to do so. Go out everybody and work for yourself and make yourself a good life.
Tom DuFore (22:45):
Leo, thank you again for a great interview. And let’s go ahead and enjoy up into our three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is, when Leo shared with us, how he helps identify great franchisees, he said he gets that question often, “How do I find great franchisees?” And his response was that he talks to them and he has a conversation and sees if he likes them or not. That’s just a great small little assessment that he does. And then he also likes to see, is the franchisee hungry? Do they want to be their own boss? And he said, if they do, then he’ll figure out a way to get that person into one of his franchise systems or one of his brands.
Tom DuFore (23:23):
Take away number two, came from when he shared about one of his makes, when he said that you have to respect that people are giving you what could be their life savings when they’re joining your franchise system. I thought that was a great point that he made, oftentimes in franchising, it’s easy to see big numbers and franchise sales and new units and high franchise growth. But at the core of this, you have to remember that these franchisees that are joining your system, they are people and they are looking to change their life. And you are part of that. You are catalyst that’s helping do that. I thought there was a great takeaway that he shared.
Tom DuFore (24:04):
Takeaway number three, was the multiplier that he talked about. And that’s where he shared about his multiplier being teamwork and support. He has said he has a great business partner and that he puts a leader in charge of each of his different businesses or brands that he’s running to let that leader run the operation and run the business. And now it’s time for today’s win, win. So today’s win, win came from when Leo was talking about what success meant for him. And he said, success for him is when he likes to make people more successful. And when people are successful, you create a healthy environment. And I thought there was a brilliant takeaway.
Tom DuFore (24:52):
So when people are successful, you have a healthy environment. And I really like how that resonated and how he communicated that. So if you’re helping them that environment’s getting created, that healthy environment spurs further growth, it’s going to spur happiness within your network and system, and it’s going to create the right kind of fuel and energy to grow your brand. 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 a business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us @bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in. Looking forward to having you back next week.
