Would you ever stop selling new products or services for 10 years in your business? Or maybe, could you stop selling to new customers for that long? Our guest today, Eric Slaymaker, did just that. He and his brother stopped selling franchises for nearly 10 years he shares why they did it in the interview.
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LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Check out Wingers Restaurant & Alehouse: https://wingerbros.com/
- Learn more about Wingers USA franchise opportunity: https://wingerbros.com/franchising-opportunities/
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ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Eric is the Founder of Wingers Restaurant & Alehouse, and CEO of Wingers USA, Inc., a restaurant concept that opened its first location in 1993 in Bountiful, Utah. Currently, there are 23 Wingers system-wide, located in 5 states. Winger’s Alehouse locations are currently growing in several western and northwest states. Eric was also a founding principal and Vice President of Slaymaker Group, Inc. Based in Salt Lake City, the Slaymaker Group, Inc. owned and operated multiple franchise restaurants, including T.G.I. Friday’s restaurants in Utah and Idaho. Prior to founding Winger’s USA, Inc., Eric operated Eric Slaymaker Advertising, a marketing & media buying agency specializing in the restaurant business.
In addition to his achievements in the restaurant business, Eric was also the co-founder of Monarch Broadcasting, Inc., a company that previously owned radio stations in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Prior to his career in the restaurant business, Eric was a business graduate of the University of San Francisco, where he was also a point guard on the USF basketball team. Eric lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Karen, and their 3 children. Eric has also served as the President of the Mountain West JDRF chapter raising money to cure Type 1 Diabetes. Eric’s son, Tristan, was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in2002 at age 12, and Eric also has a grandson with T1D.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:00):
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 the question for you today as we open up is would you ever stop selling new products or services for 10 years in your business? Or maybe, would you stop selling to any new customers for that long?
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:28):
And our guest today, Eric Slaymaker, did just that. He and his brother stopped selling franchises for nearly 10 years and he shares why he did in our interview. So you got to listen in to hear about why he did it and what they did during that time period. It’s really fascinating.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:48):
Eric has been in franchising for nearly 50 years and he’s been a multi-unit food operator for many brands, including Friday’s and Tony Roma’s. He’s also the co-founder and CEO of Wingers Alehouse franchise, which he talks about.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:04):
In addition, Eric has built a broadcasting company and opened radio stations. He was a point guard for his college basketball team, and he’s active in philanthropy to raise money to cure type 1 diabetes. He’s just an awesome guy with a great interview. You’re going to love it. So let’s go ahead and jump right into my interview with Eric Slaymaker.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (01:23):
My name’s Eric Slaymaker. I’m based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, and I am the CEO and founder of Wingers Restaurant & Alehouse brand. Actually our parent company is Wingers USA, Inc. and we have been doing this for a number of years. It goes back to the ’90s that Wingers has been around. And I would call Wingers a great regional brand right now in the Mountain West and we’re really on the cusp of starting to grow, really focusing towards the Midwest in this country, particularly through franchising.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (02:15):
Yeah. Well, thank you for that overview. And one of the reasons I’m excited to have you on the show is you have this very enter resting perspective of previously having been franchisees in different systems and very successful franchisees and multi-unit operators, and then starting your own brand and franchising it. So it’s this really unique perspective I think and I’d love for you just to share a little bit about your experience as being a franchisee with you and your brother and talking through that a little bit.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (02:47):
Yeah. My brother and I are partners in this and we’ve been franchisees for many, many years. And my brother, his name is Scott Slaymaker, and it goes back to our father who got involved as a franchisee back in the ’70s with Sizzler restaurants at the time, which was a pretty hot franchise back in that time. And he was based out of Salt Lake, and for some reason, he went down to Los Angeles, which was Sizzler’s headquarter at the time, and he convinced Sizzler to award him the franchise territory for Alaska of all places, and with zero experience in the restaurant industry.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (03:44):
He was an entrepreneur. He owned a life insurance brokerage at the time, but he was a classic entrepreneur and he was probably the one person that I looked up to. He’s been gone for 25 years now, but I really kind of learned watching, learned the ropes of the franchise business.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (04:06):
And he developed very successful Sizzler locations throughout Alaska, throughout Wyoming at the time, and then became involved and my brother and I became involved later on with a bunch of other franchise brands through the years.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (04:25):
Before my father died, he was a franchisee back in the ’80s I remember with Chi-Chi’s Mexican restaurants, which was a real hot Mexican brand at the time. And did well actually, sold those back in the late ’80s and did very, very well with those.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (04:48):
And then I’d become involved with TGI Friday’s restaurants, was actually one of the first franchisees with TGI Friday’s in Utah, and then with Tony Roma’s restaurants.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (05:01):
And so we’ve been involved and my brother and I have been involved with multiple brands throughout the years as franchisees. So I would say we have a really, really good understanding of what it is to be a franchisee, what a franchisee needs, all of the good and bad, and what it really takes, at least from our opinion, what it really takes to be a good franchisor and the type of support and the type of relationships it needs.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (05:36):
Because at the end of the day, a lot of times, it really comes down you want to lock into a great brand, but also, it’s that relationship that you have with a franchisor because it really is you need to get in with people who have integrity, who share the same values, that you’re working with a brand that has the same values and the same type of goals.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (06:02):
Because I think we’ve all, and I know, Tom, you’ve been involved in the franchise world for years, but we’ve seen a lot of franchise brands that their whole goal is just to grow as fast as they can and to churn franchisees and they don’t really care that much about their franchisees I should say. As long as they’re hitting their corporate or their growth goals and if they burn through franchisees as quickly as they can and their franchisees are not as successful, quite honestly, those are the type of franchise brands I would, if I’m just talking to somebody in general, I’d say, “You really have to steer away from those type of brands. You got to stick with…” There are franchise owners out there who actually have integrity and their really working for their franchisees to be successful and to be extremely profitable. And that’s a part of what a franchise brand is in it for, is for the success of their franchisees, not just the success of the franchisor.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:14):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that’s a great point and it kind of leads me into one of the reasons I’m excited to have you on as a guest is we’ve had a good fortune of getting to work together and learn more about your business over the last several months here. And one of the things that’s been interesting to me has been your focus on the franchisee. And as I learn more about your background, it seems to make sense. You really spent a lot of time as a franchisee yourself and saw both the good and the bad and figured out kind of what to apply.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:50):
And I’d love for you to talk about how you’ve adjusted your system and changed and made decisions even dating back to the, quote, Great Recession, as they call it, from ’08 and ’09 and through COVID now and talk about what you’ve done with your brand and system and just some lessons maybe that we can glean from that.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (08:10):
Sure. It goes back to I actually opened and founded the first Wingers store, and this goes all the way back to 1993. So it’s literally coming up on 30 years ago that that first location opened. And if I look back to that first location, I was an extremely young guy at the time who didn’t have much capital and just scraped and put together some limited partners at the time.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (08:39):
And it was a small 2,800 square foot modular building that was just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, and it got immediate success, but it was a small diner store. And if I jump forward and I look to where the brand is today and what’s really successful, in a lot of ways, it’s night and day and it has been that evolution. It was successful as it is, but we also saw, as a lot of brands are, as we started to grow and we moved into other states, we had to do some things a little bit differently to continue to see the type of success that we had in our local markets, and those are the type of things.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (09:32):
So the brand did evolve. And because we are in the full service segment, particularly as we got outside of the state of Utah, which is a very conservative state, we really saw the need to add that beverage and beer component. That was a big piece, an important piece and a growing piece of what we did that we really didn’t even have in the beginning. Back in the ’90s, it wasn’t really even a part of the brand.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (10:07):
And so that evolved and the stores did get a little bit bigger, although I will say one of the things that we pride ourselves on is Wingers for being full service, and we do have a full bar, but we still keep our footprints really small. We’re only about 4,000, 4,200 square feet, which is significantly smaller than a lot of the other national competitors like Buffalo Wild Wings, for example, or TGI Friday’s or Texas Roadhouse. Those places are all 6,000, 7,000 square feet in size. And so we’re probably half that and it opens up markets that a lot of those people can’t look at.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (10:56):
But to answer your question more specifically, we did go through a real evolution over I’d even say the past nine years. Because after the Great Recession of 2009, 2010, I was not really satisfied with the results that I felt that we were getting and did not fill at the time that continuing to franchise right then was right. I felt like we had to work on our unit level economics and get those to a better place before we really relaunched our efforts for franchising.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (11:35):
And so essentially back then around 2011, we discontinued our marketing, any serious marketing or really looking for new franchise groups. We did have franchisees at the time and we continued to work those stores, but one of the big changes that did happen, and it was back in 2016, is that we did a couple of tests, but we took one of our Boise, Idaho area stores just outside of Boise and we did what we call our alehouse test. And we actually rebranded and re-imaged that store, did a full remodel, rebranded it Wingers Restaurant & Alehouse. We had a full bar, but at the time we had like 10 beer taps. We took that store, added 40 beer taps to it.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (12:26):
So we really put the beer piece on steroids is what I like to call it, remodeled the store, made it look and feel more contemporary, updated the menu a little bit, continued to focus on our real core food items that we’d always been known for and some of our sauces and that. And the combination, when that store reopened, I think we closed for about eight days for a really fast remodel, it reopened, it was immediately up 60%.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:01):
Wow.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (13:02):
Yeah, week one, and that has continued to grow from there. And so we quickly realized that, “Oh, we’ve got something now, this kind of worked.”
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (13:17):
And then the other joke that I like to tell people is we’ve always been known for our Wingers Original Sauce that we ship it all over the world, that’s kind of our signature flavor sauce. Even we have 16 different flavors, everybody else calls it our Wingers Original Sauce. And people say that we have the best wings and sticky fingers around, and we really added the beer component to that. And I do joke with people, I say, “Well, it only took about 20 years to figure out that wings, fingers, and beer go together.”
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (13:55):
It is kind of a combination though of years of experience. It doesn’t all immediately happen at once. It really evolved, but particularly the last few years is it is time for us to really take that next step because we have the model that is really working at this point and it’s clicking, and it is time to be able to introduce that to some new markets.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (14:33):
So maybe that was a long-winded answer to that question, but I do think you go back to 1993 and that little 2,800 square foot stainless steel diner that we had, and what we’re doing today is leaps and bounds and the evolution that that went through. And so it’s come a long way.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (14:59):
Yeah. Well, and thanks for sharing that detail. One of the things, Eric, here that stood out to me is that when you talked about, number one, a franchisee, and I don’t know if you had to convince the franchisee to go along with the change or if he was kind of part of that process for making the shift to the new model. So that’s one critical thing that I’d love for you to talk about. And I’m very interested in this idea of halting franchise sales and marketing, basically new franchise recruitment efforts for an extended period of time.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:35):
I’ve been in franchising a long time and you’ll hear brands, they’ll pause it for maybe a quarter or six months, maybe even a year, and then kind of kick things back up, but you did this for an extended period of time to really focus on the franchisees. And that’s a tough decision to make and love to understand kind of just your internal culture and decision making processes that you go through to help determine when to stop, and then when do you determine to turn it back on again?
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (16:04):
Yeah, I mean, we could argue that we maybe held off too long to start to really kind of kick off franchising again. Maybe so that might be the case. Maybe we were a little too conservative on that. That’s fine. But I think just from a culture standpoint, we wanted to make sure that we were really hitting the franchise world with the product and the unit level economics and that we were ready to go.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (16:47):
And we’d franchised before, but I still have seen a lot of franchisors start to franchise when they’re really not ready, and it may be too soon and they don’t have everything or all their ducks in a row. And obviously a lot of that support is the other piece for a franchisor like ourselves, is you want to make sure that you have the support team and the support structure, infrastructure I should say, to really be able to adequately take on and make sure that new stores that you open are successful.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (17:32):
And so I think we were. I think we were heavily conservative, and so we really wanted to feel right that this was the right time and we were hitting the market with the right product and that our numbers were really doing what they needed to do. Because, at the end of the day, the ultimate goal for us is we want successful franchisees. They need to be successful, highly profitable, because if that doesn’t happen, there’s not a winner for us and there’s not a winner for a franchisee. And so from that, we were conservative.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (18:19):
To your other question, that initial test store, it was in Nampa, Idaho that we did the alehouse test, it was actually at a franchise store. It was with our Boise area franchise store. And he was dissatisfied at that point with the sales level that he was at and was looking to do something different. And so we approached him and said, “Here’s an idea that we’ve been looking at,” at the time, and he was very open to it. And actually, maybe this is a rare case, his name’s Brad McDougall, been a great franchisee, he was very open to wanting to do this and be an active part of helping test and develop those.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (19:08):
And it becomes one of those stories where I know lot of the franchise stories, where, hey, franchisees are part of developing something that really works, and this was actually one of those cases. I think we all heard those McDonald’s stories about the Egg McMuffin started at a franchisee idea or something like that. And so this was certainly a collaborative type of situation, but our franchisee was highly active in doing this and testing this and actually wanted to do this.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (19:42):
The next step of that once that’s been proven successful is we have other franchisees in the brand, is now we’ve had to go back and remodel all stores. Now the other piece to that whole equation is once we started proving the alehouse model, as we called it, we had to go back, and we probably spent $3, $4 million in our company stores renovating, remodeling, updating stores, and then also proving numbers so that we could go to franchisees. We don’t like to roll out things systemwide until we actually have some data and some experience, and certainly we’ve been able to do that.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (20:24):
So we’ve gone back, and that takes a couple of years to work through the system and to really have all of the data that you’ve tested it adequately. It comes back again to that experience as a franchisee. When you roll something out to a system, you want to make sure that they’ve tested ideas and that they’ve had results and that they can actually show it. They can show the numbers. We’ve been able to show that pretty much our old franchisees who’ve had the old prototype stores, if they remodeled to our new alehouse, that they’ve typically seen anywhere from 30% to 60% sales increases. And then our new stores that have opened up as an alehouse have opened up at dramatically different unit level sales volume levels.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (21:22):
And so it was kind of a two step process, as you ask it, and then we get, again, Tom, you asked the question why so long, then we get through all that process and it’s finally time to say, “Okay, now it’s time to start bringing on new franchisees and new markets and we’re ready to go.”
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:46):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and seeing what you’ve done, I mean, your average unit, the AUV has really grown and is really I think a star for your brand and for your system. You have a very strong average unit volume and it’s clear that it’s a testament to your diligence working, going through this, being patient, waiting to see results, and then implementing. And certainly it sounds like you have to have solid franchisees in your system too that are willing to make these changes and implement and execute and follow through on it.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (22:26):
Yeah. And we’ve been lucky. I think we have a great stable of franchisees at this point, and we didn’t always. We’ve had to go through those learning curves of being a franchisor too. We’ve taken on some franchisees over the years who probably shouldn’t have been in our system, who didn’t really have the operational capabilities are the operational standards that we require. And as a franchisor, when you have that, you have to be a steward of the brand. You have to protect the brand and you can’t let operators, whether they’re on the company side or corporate side, stores or franchise stores, you can’t let them continue to operate a store if they don’t hold up to the brand standards that we demand and we require. And we do think that we set the bar pretty high in doing that.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (23:28):
And so, yeah, you’re right, we have a great core of franchisees right now.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (23:34):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and Eric, at this stage here, what I’d love to do is jump into the little formula for the show, and we ask every guest the same four questions. The first question we ask is has there been a miss or two along your journey and something you’ve learned from it?
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (23:51):
Yeah. I’ve been doing this a while, so I’ve had plenty of misses. And Tom, I’ve talked to you because we’ve gotten to know each other very honestly, and I talk freely about this.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (24:10):
Probably about 20 years ago, my brother and I went through a really rough time, primarily because we had gone through and we were at the time the largest franchisee in the late ’90s for the Tony Roma’s World Famous Rib system. And that brand slowly was going away. You don’t see a lot of Tony Roma’s. They’re out there internationally, they’re trying to come back, but we had 14 stores at the time and they were slowly not doing well and we were in a few different states.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (24:47):
So we were at a point where we we were a franchisor. We had Wingers and that was doing pretty well for us actually, but we had to close a number of stores and it was painful, and financially it was painful. And we easily could have gone Chapter 11. This was probably the early 2000s. And in hindsight, we had a lot of people who were suggesting that and that could have been an option and a way out, but Scott and I looked at it and we decided to sit down with all of our banks, our landlords, and start to do workouts. We actually brought somebody on who specialized in this.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (25:41):
And so we decided to work with all of our lenders and banks, and we were in a big hole at the time. And essentially, instead of just filing Chapter 11 and dismissing a lot of that, we did workouts. And it probably took us about 12 years to get all of that paid off and settled out and done with.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (26:11):
So for a lot of years really, any profits that we had was going back to pay some old debts off. And it wasn’t easy, but I still look at that and it’s a part of my career that I can say I’m proud of what we did. I think it said a lot for us from an integrity standpoint that we didn’t take maybe the easiest road, but we took the road that I think had integrity, if that’s the best word for it, or character. I don’t want to do it again, but we did it and we got through it.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (26:56):
Yeah, and I was just going to say, I mean, I think that’s very honorable. I think that there’s great honor in that. And like you said, you could’ve taken the easy road and filed bankruptcy, but decided to work through it, honor your commitments, figure out a way to resolve it. The scenario didn’t go as planned and figured out a way to work through it. So I think that’s very commendable and respectable. I think it’s really, really great.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:26):
Well, let’s talk about make. We’ll look on the other side of things. Can you share a make or two? You’ve shared several already throughout the interview. Is there anything else? Or reiterating one you’ve previously mentioned.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (27:42):
Yeah. I’ll try not to repeat myself off, but I think that even just through our Wingers brand, we’ve had a couple of great makes, because I think to be around this long and to create the great regional brand that we have, we have had to reinvent that. And so I think that’s a great one.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (28:09):
A make for me is if you think about it and as we’ve talked about, we’ve been involved in franchising, whether it’s on the franchisee or franchisor side, for a lot of years, as have you, Tom, working in the franchise world, and I still at this point, the longer I’m in it, the more I’m convinced it’s such a great model. And that to me is a win. I’m even more today that it’s such a fantastic model for franchisees. It’s a great way for entrepreneurs to really get started and to get in with brands and systems that work and have some proven track record.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (29:08):
And on the flip side, as a franchisor, I just think it’s such a great vehicle to work with great franchisees who are operators, who are entrepreneurs at the same time. It creates such a cool win-win situation. Because I’ve run into that situation. We talk to different brands all the time who don’t franchise, they don’t like to franchise, and they have their reasons and they like control and they raise their own capital and that’s great and that’s fantastic, but I have learned that if you understand the franchise world and you understand how to be a franchisor, and you particularly understand how to use the franchise vehicle to continue to be a steward of the brand, I don’t think there’s a better system in the world out there for really building and creating a great brand.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (30:20):
And so franchising and being a franchisor and a franchisee to me over the years has been a really, really cool win.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (30:30):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, certainly, I’m a big proponent for franchising as well. So I share very similar sentiments.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (30:40):
Well, let’s talk about a multiplier. The show is Multiply Your Success. Has there been anything personally, professionally, anything you’ve really liked or stood out as a multiplier?
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (30:51):
Yeah. The multiplier in my mind is relationships, is the relationships that you’re able to develop and that I’ve been able to develop over the years through different partners, through different people that we’ve worked with. Not everyone has always worked out perfectly, but I do think over the years, some of the people that you work with and you really find out… When you end up working with people who have great integrity and who make the right decision when sometimes it might not be in their best interest, but it’s the right decision, that’s important to me.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (31:40):
Because at the end of the day, yes, everybody wants to be successful, they want to be financially successful, but I also feel like it’s the relationships and how that is created, particularly through what I have been able to do and with all the different people that we have associated with today with our Wingers brand, but what I’ve been able to develop both business and personal relationships with, that to me is kind of priceless and that is a multiplier that is a benefit of what I’ve been able to do in my career. And I really value that because that’s important. If I stop[ed today and sold everything, which I’m not planning on doing, but if I did, I would still be able to carry a lot of relationships. And so those last for a lifetime.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (32:37):
Yeah. Wow. Wow. Well, and the final question, Eric, that we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (32:52):
For me, it is being involved and working with a team and with people that continue to be able to grow and to continue to learn every day and to get better all the time.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (33:19):
I guess a better way to say it is I think we’re on a journey and I don’t know if that journey ever really ends. As long as we still have a heartbeat and we’re still alive, we’re on a continual journey. And success to me is to continue to grow, to continue to learn, to continue to find how to be better at what we’re doing and to not be stagnant.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (33:47):
And that’s what I’m trying to achieve every single day. I want to continue to get better at what I’m doing. I want to continue to get smarter at what I’m doing. I want to continue to always try to learn something new every day, meet new people every day. And in doing so, obviously we’re building a brand, and that brand is going to continue, it’s going to grow along the way.
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (34:13):
And in my mind, that’s the enjoyable part. That’s the fun part of what we’re doing. I guess it’s the pursuit of excellence. You might never completely get there, but as long as you’re constantly pursuing it, the financial rewards follow that. If you pursue excellence, the money will come. And that’s pretty much a proven formula, but I think it’s a life formula too. And that’s what I enjoy and that’s what success means to me.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (34:53):
Yeah. Thank you. I love that. And, well, Eric, as folks are listening in here, maybe they’d like to maybe come to one of your restaurants or just learn a little bit more about the franchise. What’s the best way for someone to learn more about Wingers and what you’re doing?
Eric Slaymaker, Wingers (35:11):
Well, probably the simplest way is they certainly can go to our website, and it’s actually wingerbros.com. And depending on where you are in the country or in the world, if you are in the Mountain West, like I said, we’re based out of Utah, and so we’re throughout Utah and Idaho and Nevada and we would love you to come into one of our stores. We know not everybody is in the general geographic area right now, and so we would love to have you visit wingerbros.com or you can search Wingers and you’re going to find it there too through Google. So yeah, come visit us and see what we’re all about.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (36:00):
Eric, thank you again so much for a fantastic interview.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (36:04):
So let’s go ahead and jump into our three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when Eric and his brother decided to stop selling franchises in 2011, and he that because he really wanted to make sure that he was able to provide the right kind of support to his franchisees because their ultimate goal was to have successful franchises. And he decided before he brought new or additional franchisees in the system, he wanted to improve that system.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (36:36):
So that leads us to a takeaway number two, which is during that time period when he took that break in franchise sales, he decided to improve the system operation. And one of those big things was that they converted a franchisee in 2016, they converted a location to their new franchise model and sales jumped by 60% in the first week.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (37:02):
And it was pretty exciting to see [inaudible 00:37:05] and that was a great collaboration between the franchisee and the franchisor. And now, since then, all of their franchisees that have converted it have seen a 30% to 60% growth once that conversion has been completed to the new model. I thought that was really great.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (37:21):
Takeaway number three is when Eric shared about a miss that he and his brother had when they were a franchisee for the Tony Roma’s brand and their units started to decline and they had to shut a lot of franchises down. And they were at a crossroads and they had to decide, “Do we file bankruptcy or do we honor our agreements and figure out a way to work through this with all of our lenders and suppliers and landlords and people that we had made agreements with?” And they chose, in my opinion, the harder path to go, which was to honor those commitments.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (37:56):
And I think that that is just such a great takeaway about the character and integrity of Eric and what they try to do. Just a great, great thing to do. And while it was very challenging and difficult, they still figured out a way to make that work. And it took 12 years to get there, but they did it.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (38:17):
And now it’s time today’s win-win.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (38:22):
So today’s win-win comes from the multiplier when Eric talked about relationships are his multiplier. And I thought that was really interesting, because if you really think about all of the things that Eric talked about, honoring the commitments that he had instead of filing bankruptcy, he honored making sure he paid back whatever was owed and took care of all of the people that were supposed to be taken care of, and stopping selling franchises to make sure that the systems and processes were ideal and in a better place, updating the branding, all of these things that he’s shared really tie back to the relationships that he has with people. And he values and honors those relationships and shows that through his actions.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (39:14):
And so I think as the multiplier to take away for the win-win for the episode today is really to be thinking about the relationships in your business and in your life and in your family, and how are you taking care of those relationships? What are you doing to maybe learn from this episode to maybe pause for a moment? Sometimes just pausing and reflecting and thinking about those relationships and think about maybe how it might be maybe repaired or improved upon.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (39:50):
And 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 bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
