Conversations With Coffey

Business Acceleration Tips with Ford Saeks

• Guy Coffey • Season 2 • Episode 2

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In this episode of Conversations with Coffey, I sit down with Ford Saeks, a serial entrepreneur and expert in business acceleration. With over 17 companies under his belt, Ford shares his journey from starting a business at 15 to helping organizations grow through speaking, consulting, and digital marketing. 

We discuss the importance of clearly communicating value propositions, using AI and other digital tools, and fostering a culture of open communication and innovation within franchise systems. Ford also touches on his experience working with various brands and offers practical advice for franchisees and franchisors. 

Tune in for insights on how to maximize local marketing and boost sales in your business.

I hope you enjoy the show.

Connect with Guy Coffey:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/guycoffey
Website: www.guycoffey.com
Instagram: @guycoffey
YouTube: @guycoffey

 Welcome to Conversations with Coffee with me, Guy Coffey. I've owned independent businesses. I've been a franchisee of a global brand for over 17 years, and I co founded and successfully exited our own franchise brand. This podcast is dedicated to growing the lives and businesses of entrepreneurs everywhere.

by sharing conversations with successful owners and some of my own experiences and insights. So please grab a cup of coffee and let's just dive right into today's episode.  Hello and welcome to another edition of Conversations with Coffee with today's guest, Mr. Ford Sakes. I'm super excited to introduce you to Ford.

I had the opportunity to meet Ford when we hired him for our conference and he was Just an amazing speaker at our conference and integrated with our franchisees and all of our vendors so well and gave us a lot of time and he's got so much to offer the franchising industry and just business mindset and AI advice and everything like that.

So I wanted to have him on the, on the show and here he is today. So welcome to the show Ford. Well, I'm super excited to be here, Guy. Well, it's, it's been a while since we've saw each other in person, but we did have a chance to talk around the holidays and you were so generous with your time, which I really appreciated in helping me set up some crazy for me, crazy complicated AI automations  that you just like boom, boom, boom, just jump through them. 

But I know that's just one, one arrow in your quiver. So. Mostly tell us about your your background and then what you mostly do for organizations right now. Well, thanks so much for that question. My background is a serial entrepreneur. I started my first business at 15. I've had 17 different companies, three went eight figures.

So I got to learn and some weren't as successful. I never went bankrupt, but I certainly learned along the way. And, uh, just for those listeners out here, please keep in mind that gross sales are not profit. So just to be clear on that, I just want to be very transparent today. And so I grew up. Really bridging the gap, helping people improve operations, improve marketing sales, and improve the customer experience.

So after having that business experience and having patents and selling multiple products that I've invented through multiple channels of distribution. People started to ask me, how did I do it? How did I take an idea from a napkin and, and, and grow a company? And so then after I grew the companies up, then people said, well, hey, can you come and speak?

So that led to speaking and training and consulting. And then now I've got seven books out. So it really all comes down to the same thing. If you had to bring it down to a couple words, business acceleration.  Yes. And who doesn't want to go faster when you're running a business?  If you're not going fast, you're falling behind, right?

Yeah. And it's doing the right things. It's not about being on the bleeding edge, but it's what, what can you do to increase the average transaction to expand your influence, to, you know, generate leads the cost per leads, especially since the shows around franchising, as you well know, one of the biggest challenges franchisees have is the cost per lead.

Right. And the, and the corporations want their franchisees to follow the system. And the franchisee wants the corporation to do everything and drive the business. So, you know, I, I fit somewhere in the middle to become a third party endorsement for those brands. And, and now I speak and train around the world, helping business owners, especially in franchising, grow their business.

Yeah, and that was one thing that I can tell you from personal experience at our conference you were speaking to all the franchisees but you were also speaking to our team and all of our vendors and Everybody walked away with something valuable and something that they could implement like tactically In their businesses right after that.

So that was huge. It's not just a Hey, this party has to spend more time and money doing this and this one's doing everything just fine It's that's not how franchising goes as you know. Well, one of the questions I had for you is right now You, you work with so many different organizations, large, small, speaking to them, getting to know them.

I know that when you speak to a, an organization from, again, from firsthand experiences, you take the time to really get to know that organization. I know you took the time to get to know Stephanie and I, and then our team and what were our strong points, what were our challenges. So you know, a lot of franchisors  kind of in a, on a more intimate level than most.

You know, like if you think about someone coming in for a speaking engagement, they're like, yeah, here's my here's my speech and this is what I'm going to do. It's not like that with you. So you  that's a long lined up to a question is like what what's the number one mistake you see franchisors or franchisees making when they're When they're trying to grow, whether it's a unit level performance from a franchisee perspective, or from a franchisor's perspective, where they're trying to go from X to, you know, X times two, something like that.

Well, that that's a, it's a, there's a lot of different answers, of course. And I would, I would tell the viewers and listeners, you know, adapt on a dot. But the number one thing that I see is. Clearly communicating value propositions. You know, I also run a digital marketing agency. So on top of the speaking business, I run an agency.

So I work with brands on their branding and the digital marketing. So it gives me insights from both sides of the table. And of course, being a business owner myself. And so the biggest mistake I see. Is people will point to outside external forces as the reason they're not growing. There's increased competition, there's supply chain issues, uh, costs have gone up and, and I get that and I, I understand that and it's true, but I've always had the belief.

That there's no such thing as a money problem. Now, before everybody blasts us in the comments and, and, you know, if you love this episode, thank you. If you hate the episode, go to me and give me the crap. Don't give it to him because he has no idea what I'm going to say, but I would say the number one problem is they're just not clearly creating the value and communicating it.

Because again, there's no such thing as a money problem. It's an idea problem. If you want to make more money, you should ask better questions. How do I add more value? If you're asking the wrong question. Then the answer doesn't matter. So it's how can I add more value? And then that makes you work backwards from, Oh, am I communicating clearly differently than the competition is to set myself apart?

And so,  you know, my work in franchising is, uh, you know, quick serve restaurants,  full service dining, fast, casual home services, and everything in between. So B2B I always go back to. Looking at their value propositions and typically what happens is they have one value proposition  that they're trying to apply across multiple, uh, ideal client profiles.

And that's a mistake because, you know, how I make decisions is different than how someone else makes a decision, right? So, tailoring that messaging is where they can start to improve leads and sales.  That leads me into my next question is the use of digital tools, you know, and the sophistication level of each organization and kind of like the leveling of the playing field to a certain degree because, you know, everybody can  Almost everybody can get on whatever AI  platform tool they want to use, you know, and there's many and varied of those and they probably change every day, but it's some people are really on the leading edge of that and using everything that they can and others are not doing that at all.

It doesn't have to be just AI either. It could be some of the The tools that the franchisor is providing to the franchisee. Right. And so one of the things that I've seen, and I just wanted to run this by you, is,  you know, the leadership of the, the franchise organization kind of sets the tone on on some of the  willingness to adapt.

Um, and utilize new tools and it's kind of a trickle down, whether it's, it's an accepted part of the culture or whether it's, Hey, no, this is the way we've done it for the last five years before that tool ever existed. And we're not switching that up.  And do you see a danger in that? And um, how would someone change that in a, in an organization?

So absolutely. There's a danger. You know, when people tell me in business, I've got 10 years experience. Okay, do they have 10 years or one year that they've repeated 10 times? Now, a lot of speakers have said that over the decades, right, but it still rings true today. The fundamentals don't change, but the tools do.

So back to the question, one, you touched on it by using the word culture. You know, you want to create a culture of family, open minded, and communication. The franchise brands that have poor franchise relationships and aren't creating, uh, great communication either through a franchise advisory council or franchise marketing council or, or just, you know, roundtable discussions or lunch and learns or, you know, discovery sessions.

They're not in touch because they're, you know, the real, when, when you go to any conference, and I go, I speak to lots of conferences, the value is not just from the keynote speakers. It should be also from the networking and the community and the different events that come on. But back to the tool question and what can they do?

Step one, they've got to be open minded and coachable. They have to be willing to try to do something different. Step two is they need their support system. Go back and look at the franchise tools. A lot of brands. They're not the franchisees. They're not even utilizing the university or the learning management system, or they're on, or they're, you know, whether it's a three ring notebook with, you know, flyers in it, but they're not using the tool.

So first be open minded and coachable. Second, go back to your brand and look at what tools are actually available. Third, who are the top producers in that brand and how can you build a relationship with them? Maybe you can create a mastermind or even send them an email and say, Hey.  You know, I've, I've had this problem with staffing and I'm trying to solve it because there's probably someone who's solved it and then four, it would be leveraging the tools and you mentioned briefly about AI and if, if organizations, if those listeners here, I don't care what your role is in the business, whether you're an entrepreneur, a franchisee franchise, or in the industry, a  Or just, you know, you just tuned into today's podcast to, to listen to  you're exploring maybe what franchising is all about,  you know, all boats rise with the tide, everybody can do it.

A 900 word blog post in chat, GBT now. So if you really want to be competitive, you really need to map out your customer journey.  And look from the suspect to the prospect to a qualified lead to the customer or client to an advocate and you want to look at that journey and you want to look at all the different touch points you have in your organization because every touch point is marketing  and all the market in the world won't overcome poor experiences, right?

So you can throw millions of dollars into marketing, but if they're not taking care of the customer, you know, the whole thing matters, as you well know, and so. They should use technology to look at how they can make better decisions and, uh, stay innovative, but they need to get into the game. And so, you know, you and I both talked, you've got the book behind you, the AI mind shift book that I wrote, and we've talked about that and it's available on Amazon.

You can just Google my name and, and go to, or go to my website. But the key is, it's a tool for how do you navigate and the biggest fear  and the biggest problem isn't adopting AI too soon, because even now I spoke at a conference with 2000 people and I said, you know, stand up if you feel on a scale of one to 10 that you're using AI over a five and out of 2000 people, maybe a hundred people, you know, 10 percent or 2%, 5 percent stood up. 

Because they're sitting on the sidelines waiting for the dust to settle. And I would say the time to use it, the greatest fear isn't adopting it too soon. It's waiting too long and falling behind. So it's not about learning everything. In fact, I don't get seduced by technology. People say to me, well, Ford, you're such a techno guy.

No, I don't have any interest in AI unless it's going to help me expand my influence. build my lists, increase the average transaction, but how do I communicate more value? And how do I improve operational efficiency? If it doesn't, if it doesn't look through that lens, I don't care about technology. So I don't get seduced by it.

If you like this show, would you do me a huge favor and share it with one more person? It's super quick and easy to do. And it will help me impact more people in a positive way. Thanks. Now back to the episode, the lucky thing for us in business entrepreneurs, whether they're independents or in franchising is we have this game that we play, it's the unending game and we can apply these things and. 

I've read some AI books before. To be honest, I'm not a super tech guy. So a lot of it goes there. And I think some of them were written by AI because it doesn't sound that great.  Literally no editing afterwards,  but your book through the lens of like, application to the real world. So anybody that's in business already that reads, reads that book, they can like,  you know, I just, I just, I just actually, this is a little bit embarrassing.

Yeah, there you go. AI mind shift. It is a very readable book, very applicable to business. And, you know, one of the distinctions that I've recently come across is I'm, I'm a huge reader, right? But when I start a book, I had this thing, like, I got to finish that book, you know, and. I'm not going to go to another book until I finished that book.

And sometimes the application of the book, you know, something I could have read in the second chapter, I should have stopped reading the book and applied the lesson, you know? Uh, so it's also a reference point, like, Hey, if you've got one specific instance in your business that you're having challenges with, like you have one in there about, you know, a crisis management.

Like I haven't seen crisis management, how to use AI and crisis management and any other AI book before, but if you're running a business, you're probably going to have some kind of crisis and it's great to be able to go there and be like, all right, what do we do right now? You know, so, so much of the AI stuff that I've, I've seen.

Is, you know, how to  just things that don't apply to business, to be honest, and like how to create a cartoon character that looks menacing or something like, I don't care  if I have a crisis, I want to, I want a tool that can leverage my speed, accuracy and communication level, right? Um, so that's the, the applicability of the lessons in that book are, are fantastic.

I appreciate that.  Well, sometimes it's, you know, for franchisees I've known, 'cause I've been on both sides of this franchisee and franchisors, they're not even using the tools that, that are provided to them. Right. They're not even using the basic training tools or the Yeah, it's so crazy. And, and I'll go to a conference and, and we, they'll introduce a new tool and I'll bring it up and I'll say, raise your hand the last time you went through it.

Like, maybe they have a local store marketing guide. Right. And no one knows about it. It's like you've been in a franchisee for six years.  One of the things that you touched on earlier, and one of the reasons that we love franchising so much, um, not trying to sell anybody on a franchise here, but it's, it's something that's changed our lives.

So we really believe in the model is. It's an amazing community in terms of people will share their best practices with you. At first, I thought it was just because someone ran an anytime fitness in another part of the country and we weren't competing. But later on, I realized talking to other people in the beauty industry, they were just as willing to share.

Like, if you're having a challenge and you haven't had five conversations with somebody  that's been through that challenge before, you're not doing your job. As a leader, right? You know, it's like you got to pick up the phone and call people or email them and see if you can set up a conversation. You know, those those I'm sure you've seen it.

The systems that you've presented at and, you know, worked with go from big to small and I would love Gander, you know, I take a guess that like the ones that had this like open communication culture about it, like everybody's talking to each other and not just, you know, complaining. Have you seen some organizations that they just, they just have this culture of everybody seems to be talking to everybody and like that all ships get, you know, raised by a rising tide.

And if so,  what do you think made, made that Happen in that organization, because I think communication and people just masterminding, which is basically a franchise system, you know, if you're running the same model as somebody else, you have a lot in common with them. So you can talk to him. But how, what is the, is there a secret to that?

You know, is it leadership? Is it it?  Well, I think it's a couple of different factors. First, it's the open mind in the culture to allow that. So some franchise brands, the ones that are successful allow it. So, you know, I was at, I spoke at Tropical Smoothie and, and just for the purpose of listening today, we are not endorsing any franchises.

This isn't an attempt to sell a franchise. And this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Okay. So we've got the disclaimers out of the way. So I'm, I'm speaking at Tropical Smoothie and Charles, the CEO. Came down about 20 minutes before the obviously opening keynote and he walked on stage and he sat down with a microphone And he just said, you know guys we're gonna start officially here in about 30 minutes But I just want to have some you know, open Q& A.

What are some of the challenges you guys are facing and People stood up and said the supply chain, the cost of this, our menu items, like they brought things up and he was candid. They, some people, someone said, well, are they going to offer, um, salads or some other, I can't remember what it was now. So hypothetically, I don't remember, but, but he's like, no, we've tried that.

So instead of skirting the, skirting the question or saying, yeah, we're going to, I mean, he was really transparent. And I think that. Transparency and authenticity is, is what I sort of, just like when I worked with you guys on, on your, you know, Frenchies on your brand,  the transparency of you and Stephanie, she's a little rockstar.

So if you guys don't know who, who Stephanie is, you got to check her out because she's, she's a super rockstar and I know you are too, but I mean, she's, she's really powerful, a great speaker, by the way, too. And, um, but I think it, it goes into. Really having that communication. And then the other thing is taking the, the person has to take personal accountability for their own success.

You know, on top of being open minded and coachable, they need to be proactive. If you're sitting around waiting for someone else to solve the problem. It's not going to happen. Now, I know like when we went to dinner that night, you were talking about that program. You're do what's called a hard 50 or what's it called?

I always forget. 75 hard. 75 hard. Well, I'm sure. And for those listeners, if you've ever been on TikTok, you've probably come across Goggins, right? David Goggins, right? And so we're not going to go down that road. But, but I, it really resonates with me because it's straight talk. It's no BS. It's and BS stands for belief system for those of you listening.

And  But it really, it really resonated with me. Now, my wife is a Pilates instructor. She's into yoga and Zen and, and she doesn't, Gagans doesn't do anything for her, like, is it like, why are you listening to that? So back to the point, you're going to have to find the, the narrative that matches your style and it's not a one size fits all and the franchise brands that, that create tools and opportunities.

For their community and culture treated like a family are transparent, create feedback loops. Those are the ones that accelerate. It doesn't matter whether they have two franchises and you know, there's those different tiers, right? So under a hundred, there's certain processes and then under 500 and then over a thousand, I mean, the, the, the dynamics change because obviously they have to, like with you, with anytime fitness and now, you know.

Self esteem brands has turned into that new company. And now they've got orange theory involved in the, in all their other brands underneath that.  That's a much different dynamic than say, um, you know, I'm a strategic partner on a startup brand. They've only got 20 units. It's called cookie dough bliss. 

And, you know, I'm, I'm their strategic advisor and I'm helping them and, and, but, you know, they're down to 20 units and they're just trying to set their systems up and their email and the tools and the training and the store compliance. It's in. When they took over other stores, every franchise was different.

Like some had coffee, some had this, some had ice cream. And so I said, look, you know, you're going to have to streamline some of these things.  You know, you're not a licensee, you're a franchise. So, you know, it was, it's a challenge. And I know you've been through that in the startups and things that you've done. 

Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, that streamlining and making it as simple as possible is gigantic. And I think, you know, I think some of the  examples that I've seen, you know, people that are leaders in the industry show me as, as we've gone along as has really helped. Um, not that I can't improve, but I remember when Chuck and Dave, who found it, you know, are the founders of Anytime Fitness, you know, they, they, at one point they made us buy all this, um, Anytime branded, you know, power bar, uh, power bars and stuff.

And it was, it was a, it was a debacle. Like the supply chain wasn't there. They tasted awful. You know, we had to buy like a closet full basically. And that the next conference, you know, to their credit, Chuck and Dave stood up there and like, Yep, that really stunk. And, um, sorry, we're going to make some mistakes as we grow because we're, we're trying different things, but we're not going to stay stagnant.

So they apologized.  They acknowledged it. And they said, like, but also know, like, we're trying stuff out. Like, we're not going to just do what we kept on doing to get to if we want to be relevant, we have to keep changing. And some of those ideas are going to just be, you know, home runs. And some of them like anytime health food.

Not so much. Right. And so that, that sets a tone for the whole organization. Like, yeah, we're going to make mistakes. Just  learn from them, move on, you know, so forget the mistake and learn the lesson is the key. You know, forget the mistake. Okay. We did it. And my team has to remind me of that. I mean, I'll be on a zoom call with my team and I'll be, um,  talking.

Some people might spell it differently, but I'll be complaining about something and, you know, Devin, my CMO will say something like, Hey. Forget the, forget the mistake, learn the lesson and like, okay, it kind of reframed. So I've created a culture where they can call me on my stuff so that I can be better.

And that's, I think a real key, the scariest people to me are the people who think they know everything. But don't know what they don't know and obviously your listeners wouldn't be listening to this episode if that was who they were and So I think that's really the key as you listen to this podcast and hopefully you're a subscriber to it You know, it's important to remember that it's it's not about us or any host or guests giving anybody the answer It's a catalyst for critical thinking and so a critical thinker is able to listen to the advice and go you know what? 

I, I'm going to take advice from someone who's been there and done that and be careful though, taking advice from those people who give book reports. And the challenge I have with AI right now is, and I'm in, I'm on the national speakers association board. I've been a member for 34 years. Yeah. And I'm in also one of 200 in the hall of fame. 

And what I can tell you is every speaker, anybody who can fog a mirror right now is speaking on AI. I don't care what their topic was yesterday. Today it's AI because it's a hot topic. But the problem is They're talking about, like you said, from a theoretical perspective, if that's the right way to pronounce that word, and they're talking about it, um, in theory, not in practical application.

And so I think the key is, whatever you're trying to learn, Look at, you know, vet the person, you know, like anybody here can Google my name, they can go to any AI tool and say, who's Ford sakes. And it knows who I am, you know, because I've built a brand, right. And I know for you with the success you're doing with your podcast, that's what you're doing right now is you're building the brand.

So I'm on this podcast because now I'm reaching the people. That are in your sphere of influence. And when I promote this episode, it'll go to my sphere of influence. And so business owners can do the same thing. I tell local franchisees, get on local podcasts, talk about your business, you know, find out the local micro influencers and the influencers and go build a relationship with them.

Because at the end of the day, it's the relationships. It's just like me. I've got, you know, seven books. I've done three that are really good right now. Superpower accelerate for franchising and AI mind shift.  And they don't sell unless I talk about it. Like I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm not Tony Robbins where they're just going to buy the book on Amazon.

Right. So, you know, what gets sold gets, you know, is what gets promoted and talked about. So whatever business you're in and you're listening to this,  how much time are you spending reaching out or creating outbound content or inbound content where people can consume information? And I tell people when they say, well, I don't know where to start.

Make a list of the top 10 questions you get asked most frequently  and create content about it. So if it was Anytime Fitness, what are the top 25 questions that people have about joining Anytime Fitness? Why would they join Anytime Fitness versus Planet Fitness versus Bally's versus the YMCA? Like there's reasons.

And so some people are like, oh, don't say those names. Well, look, people are going to Google it anyway. So, so what I do, like, I actually know who my competition is in the speaking business and I've written blogs about that other speaker. And so I don't bad mouth them. Of course you'd never want to do that, but I'll say, you know, why is Ford Sakes different than Scott Greenberg?

And Scott's a friend of mine. Scott's a great guy. He's got a great book out right now called the shift show, stop the shift show. I love Scott. We, you know, we rotate on the circuit together and again, I'm using his name on this podcast because people might've seen Scott and they're like, Oh, he knows Ford, let's bring him in.

So typically what happens is you want to know who your competition is and then create content with those keywords in it. Because if someone's looking for a franchise speaker, Google knows who the top franchise speakers are. And then I'm more apt to come up in the listing if I've got fresh content. Yeah.

And the whole, you know, not saying other people's names or competition or anything. It's like, those days are over. They were over 10 years ago. There's no hiding anywhere. People just didn't know it.  If you're interested in learning more or from our guest today, please check out the links in the show notes.

If you want to learn more about me, please check out my LinkedIn at Guy Coffey. That's G U Y C O F F E Y. Or for more personal and behind the scenes info, check me out on Instagram, which is at the same handle, at Guy Coffey. Now let's get back to the episode. So to kind of land the plane here, um, one thing is, you know, you have multiple books.

If someone is a franchisee.  One unit they're in this beginning stage, you know, maybe they're just approaching cash flowing things like that It takes a bit depending on its brick or mortar service or whatever What's the one book that you've written that you think that they should pick up? That would like have an impact next week for the the Most practical, tangible book would be accelerate.

So I'm gonna hold it up for the camera. I'll read it,  but it's accelerate the ultimate guide for franchisees to maximize local marketing and boost sales. And it's a book that's designed to go with a franchise system. So it's not going to compete or replace whatever you have in your franchise brand. A lot of franchise companies.

Buy my book in bulk and give it out to the new franchisees. When I speak at the conference, they buy it and give it to their attendees as a gift because it's a quick read. And just like the AI mind shift book. You know, it's not a novel. It's not something that's going to, you know, create drama. It's a tactical how to book.

It's the kind of book that you can scan quickly and read once and then earmark the different sections you're going to go to. And then when you're interested, okay, I've got a crisis with, in your case, you were talking maybe about companies that might overcome  a crisis. Well, then you can go straight to that chapter.

And it's the same thing that I did with this book. With Accelerate is I wanted to create a book that was tactical because, you know, if they listen to me for 90 minutes, and again, we've been going out for the shows, this episode's almost over, you can't capture all everything we've talked about in an episode.

Imagine 90 minutes, right? So it's important that they get a chance to revisit it. And that's what books do. And that's why I recommend everybody has a success library. And that could be podcasts, it could be notes, it could be PDFs. But you know, once you have all those tools, then use AI to talk to AI, Like a mentor, so it can actually help coach you through it. 

Right, right. It can, um, you know, combine all the information, put it in a readable form, something that you can actually compare and contrast ideas for. This is fantastic. Thank you so much, Ford, for, for taking the time to share with me and, um, and the listeners, um, your. In depth knowledge of running successful companies, building companies, guiding companies from everything from marketing to operations.

Um, you know, it's, it's, it's a real generous use of your time and we sure do appreciate it. So thanks so much. Thank you for having me. Yeah, take care.