Leadership, Leverage, and Legacy: Lessons from a Franchising Visionary with Jeff Dudan

What does it take to scale a brand from one location to hundreds without losing control? In this episode, I sit down with Jeff Dudan, founder of AdvantaClean and CEO of Homefront Brands, to talk about focus, leverage, and the mindset behind sustainable growth.

Jeff shares how he went from running a small painting business to franchising a national restoration brand — eventually refranchising all company-owned stores to accelerate growth. He breaks down what franchisors should focus on, how to evaluate opportunities, and why leadership is about clarity and discipline, not chaos and grind.

Key Takeaways:

• Why focus is the difference between growth and greatness
  
  
• How refranchising created scale for AdvantaClean
  
  
• The mindset shift from operator to enterprise builder
  
  
• Why unit economics define your future success
  
  
• How to use “Who, Not How” to scale smarter
  
  
• The power of purpose and philanthropy in business

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction and Decision to Refranchise

00:22 Welcome to the Franchise Scaleup Show

00:52 Special Guest: Jeff Odin from Homefront Brands

02:19 Jeff Odin's Entrepreneurial Journey

04:16 Lessons from Advanta Clean

07:37 Mindset and Decision Filters for Entrepreneurs

12:54 The Importance of the Right People

16:34 Tools and Strategies for Business Success

20:51 Evaluating Career Opportunities

22:15 The Value of Time and Money

24:11 Philanthropy and Giving Back

29:58 Introduction to Home Front Brands

32:58 Key Factors in Franchise Success

38:35 Final Thoughts and Advice

If you’re a founder ready to grow but not ready to lose control, this episode is your roadmap. Learn from one of franchising’s best on how to build systems, lead with purpose, and scale with clarity.

Ready to go deeper? Book your free franchise growth strategy call at guycoffey.com and let’s build the infrastructure that matches your vision.

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

Transcript

0:00

The structure of it was there, but there was no focus on it. And the lack of focus will always lead to a lack of greatness. A lack of clarity, of your focus will lead to a lack of greatness. So here's the decision I made. I decided to sell all of our company stores under the franchise model and burn the boats and give away 85% of our employees and a lot of our revenue. And it's called Refranchising. Welcome to the Franchise Scaleup Show, the go-to playbook for founders racing from 10 to a hundred units. I'm Gee Coffey, franchisor, franchisee, and growth advisor. I know firsthand how fast this game moves and how quickly chaos can creep in. That's why each episode gives you the clarity systems and heart won lessons. You need to scale smart, protect your equity, and stay in control. You've got the vision, I'll help you build the infrastructure to match it. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Franchise Scale Up Show with me Gee Coffee and a very special guest today, Mr. Jeff Odin from Homefront Brands. Jeff is, of course, I only have people that I admire on this podcast, but Jeff is a special guest in the fact that, um, he does a lot of the things that I'm like to do and I'm going down the path of, and he does it in a really good way, and I think he's a fantastic voice for franchising. So, who is Jeff? He is the founder of Vanta Clean. He, sold that. He's a CEO of Home Front brands. He's an author, he's a speaker, franchise, visionary, and host of a, a great podcast used to be called, on the Home Front and now it is called Unemployable. I gotta get that, the story behind that, that title change 'cause I love it. Um, but welcome to the show, Jeff. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be on. So basically what I heard you just say is if it doesn't go well, people will never see this. That's right. Okay. Well, no pressure, no, no pressure for you. That's for sure. With your history. So if you don't mind, I wanna just go dive right into this so people can get to know you and stay. Engaged with this, this episode because I think anybody in franchising, uh, particularly founders of emerging brands, will get a ton out of it. But also people in franchising from the franchisee side will as well, because this is kind of how things should be done and the approach that people should take. So my first question for you, Jeff, is in, in regards to Advant Clean. You were a founder there, you sold. I would love to hear a little bit about that journey first and then go onto your platform. Absolutely. I was an unintentional entrepreneur, really where I, I, I was on my third college and which was Appalachian State University. The first one didn't work out so well. Uh, then I dropped back to junior college and then I got a football scholarship out to Appalachian State University. And it's great on a scholarship during the school year, but you have to survive on your own in the summer. So working the trades in Chicago, I knew how to run a painting business, so I. Started a painting business and became a student housing apartment painter. We won the contracts to paint the student housing apartments. We would paint 15 to 20 apartments a day using athletes that were taking classes over the summer, basketball players, cutting in ceilings without ladders, that kind of thing. So, um, you know, I made, I made, three times as much money in, in a three and a half week period as I would've made taking a job at that time in 1991 when I graduated. So I hung around there and then this hurricane hit South Florida. It was Hurricane Andrew and my partner and I went down there, cut our teeth in the insurance restoration business. Hmm. Moved up to Central Florida in 94. Started at Vana Clean with three partners, and then I moved back to the Carolinas to, uh, get married and raise a family here in 1995. And over the next 10 years, that became a, a large international restoration company. We'd responded to disasters. We opened offices around the southeast in four different southeastern cities in Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina. We worked in the Caribbean, we worked in Hawaii, we worked in, uh, we were government contractor and big box retailer. So we kind of a heavy duty romp and stomping environmental services contractor doing mold, air duct, emergency response, you know, that kind of thing. Water damage. Uh, and then look, you know, you have this after I bought my partners out. You, you have these inflection points in your life and for me. We had responded to Hurricane Katrina. I was at that point, the sole owner of the business, and I was driving back after setting up the storm response in 2005, and I was driving through Atlanta. It was the middle of the night, and what I realized was, is with everything that was going on with the business, I was home less and less, and I had three small kids. For me, it was important to be home for dinner. You know, I really aspired to, to be present in that way. So I just, you know, in these inflection points, you look back and you realize that they have three things. Number one, they've got people involved, people that you're responsible for, people that you care about, sometimes people that you want to do something with, and oftentimes people that you might want to get away from. Uh, the, the second thing is there's an adventure or an opportunity to. Do something bigger better to build on what you've done and to create a new opportunity for you and, and the people that matter to you. And, and then there's a risk of loss, right? So generally you've gotta give something up to get something and, and, you know, we had a lack of focus because we were growing so fast and I had this franchise program that was. The structure of it was there, but there was no focus on it. And the lack of focus will always lead to a lack of greatness. A lack of clarity, uh, of your focus will lead to a lack of greatness. So here's the decision I made. I decided to sell all of our company stores under the franchise model and burn the boats and give away 85% of our employees and a lot of our revenue. And it's called Refranchising. So I franchised our company stores in Orlando. Greenville, Spartanburg, South Carolina, Columbia, and Charlotte and I kept our commercial and governmental services division to kind of keep the light bills on and as a feeder for our franchise system. So, we launched to the market and I did that in 2006, seven and eight. In 2009, we launched to the market and I sold the business January 1st, 2019 with 240 locations in 37 states. Wow. I, I, I'm gonna say a, very rhetorical question, but there's a point to it, and that is, did you, um, which class did you learn all this at, at Appalachian State? Well, so I, I was a, I ended up a marketing, management major, like marketing major management classes, that kind of thing. And look, I, but I was a voracious reader. So, you know what I mean? I was not a great student, but I did graduate. I, I did get serious and focused at Appalachian State. Uh, and I did graduate with honors there, but prior to that, you know, it was a lot of, I mean, look, if you're choking on a sausage man, I had cpr R 1, 2, 3, and four when I was in junior college. I had Olympic weightlifting. Man, I had 160 credits that wouldn't transfer. But, um, you know, so, but you know, I, I'm a, I'm a. Traditional entrepreneur, you know, the A students teach and do research and the B students make a great living working for the C students. And that was me. All my kids did great in school and they're doing great. And that is, I don't mean that seriously get a's people if you can get a's, get a's a a's give options. Yeah, that's right. I always, I always tell my sons the same thing, like, you may not use it ever again, but a's give you options, keep on going and do the best you can. Yeah. When people hear a story like that. I just, you know, 'cause our audience is mostly emerging brand founders. Mm-hmm. People, multi-unit operators and, you know, some franchisees that have one unit right now that want to grow. One of the common things that, that all of those people have in common with a lot of the things that you did is like. It's unknown, like, like you never took a class. There's not a book that I, I'm aware of on how to, um, respond to a hurricane or how to open an office in Hawaii or things like that. So I'm really interested to know is how you look at the unknown, because there's gotta be, you see an opportunity and you're like, all right, how do I go from this opportunity to make the most of it? And a lot of people can't make that jump or don't want to, or, you know, the risk of loss is too much. But, um, and you had mentioned you were doing this with a, with a young family. It's not like you're 23 and if everything goes south, you're like, I I get a smaller apartment. Yeah. So how do you, what's your mindset like in terms of that? And you may not know because it's you, you, are you, right. But I bet you, because you're introspective that you have some idea of like, how do you see the opportunities? Where do you like. Find them? Where do they come on your radar? Is it reading, is it conversations, is it trade journals? And then how do you do the next step? That's a really interesting question, and I'll answer it in something that I don't think I've ever shared before, uh, on a podcast or is that I react very negatively to leverage. Hmm, okay. So, and it's just something that I've, you know, I, I think. Entrepreneurs, good entrepreneurs, they're disagreeable, they're impatient, right? Mm-hmm. We talk about franchisee satisfaction. We don't talk about that at home Front brands, we talk about franchisee experience. I really don't want you to be satisfied. That implies that I want you to be sitting there like a baby bird and you know you're happy with everything, and it's just let no, I actually want you to be challenging. I want you to challenge us and, and I want you to be comfortable with us challenging you back. You know, we talk about outcomes. We don't talk about satisfaction. So, and you know, look, outcomes. Has this been a commercial, good commercial use of your time, energy, money, opportunity, cost? Did we always give you advice that was of clearly the best intent for you, your, your business, the four wall economics of your business? Were we good people to deal with? Did we resolve conflicts in a healthy manner or did we, you know, go to the contract? So like, we talk about that, but. From the, from the perspective of leverage. I say we, we rebranded the podcast unemployable because, you know, business owners are really unemployable. Like we, you know, we don't want. To leverage our time in a way that's not gonna give us the maximum return on it. We don't want to be in situations where we're forced to do things that are against the best interest of the business. So, you know, for me, when I, when I look at business deals to get more specific and maybe talk about some tools that I use when I look at opportunities, yes, is where is the leverage in the deal. And where does, where does that create, you know, is this gonna be something that I'm gonna have to spend a hundred hours a week for three years to hopefully get up? Or are there places that I can create leverage that are gonna increase the probability for success, reduce my input, but, you know, at the same time, create certainty in, in the outcome. Couple of things here. I got two tools for you. Great. You know, the first, the first one is. The questions you ask yourself about a business are like the standard business school ones, which I never went to, but like, um, well that, the question I hate when I get from candidates is what keeps you up at night? Mm. Like, okay, that's, yeah, that's that. Like the first day of business school, they must teach that class to, at MBA school 'cause that's, you know, what keeps you up at night, Jeff? A bit of a negative framing. Yeah, and I mean, I'm 57 so it's frequent urination. Um, that's always, that's, that's always my answer. And then we. We go on with it. But, um, but I think, who is the customer? What's the problem that we're solving? What's the size of the market? I mean, we did something with duct cleaning in the governmental space and we spent all this time, energy, and money only to find out it was only a $10 million market. You know, it's like, yeah, we wasted a bunch of time 'cause we didn't do the market size. But here's, here's the real question. Who is the natural owner for this business? Okay, so if you're gonna build something. You should have, you know, you should be solving a a big problem. It should be clear. The problem that you're solving, there should be a minimal viable product, should minimally viable solve the problem. And then if you're successful in doing that, and you can get the business to a certain point, who is the natural buyer for that business that can use now we have leverage because we've created this, but there's somebody that can take that business and win with it. Now you might decide to keep the business, but at the end of the day, if you build a business into a market that nobody's gonna wanna buy the business, then you just bought yourself a a nice job for a really, really long time. Right? With a lot of work. The natural. Yeah. And then here's the second. Now this comes down to people, right? Because businesses are really just people and math. People are the art, and the math is the science. And the math is always the path to profitability. So on the people side. And I tell my kids this all the time. I said, before you go into business with somebody, you need to find out how they make their money. Okay? So think about this, like some people are transac, so business brokers. Stockbrokers, it's transactional. You know, they want to get as many transactions in a day as they can. The relationship doesn't matter. It's it tallies at the end of the day, up or down, and it starts over the next day. And you know, there's transactional people and if people are transactors, then you know what to expect from them. Probably not gonna be a lot of loyalty inside of the business deal 'cause it's really just about the transaction and you know, it's kind of, you either win or lose. It's kind of binary, right? And zero sum. Yeah. And then there's, there's creators. So there's your artists and there's your authors and stuff like that. So there's really creative people. You could look at this in personality profiles. Like you, you don't wanna put a person like that as a president of a business because they're just gonna be philosophizing about things. Right. So, you know, if they're a creator and they're creative, or, I've had some marketing people like that where I've gone into business with a marketing person and man, they give the most eloquent three hour dissertation about marketing. They can't do anything like from a, you know, they can't execute. Right, right. It's just. They want to go right back to the philosophy of things. So there's creators, there's individual contributors, like your IT guy. There's team contributors that make great managers and directors and people like that, but if they're a team contributor, then like, do you really want to go into business with this person because you know everything, they're gonna be looking for people to do it with, which is fine, but just knowing how people make their money, right? Right. And then you get into these, and then you kind of get into this category of like enterprise builders, you know, people that really wanna build a quality asset, people that really wanna solve a big problem. People that. Are thinking about scale, and they've got that engineering mind. So they're thinking about, okay, what's the quickest, most viable path to get there? So if, if you're dealing with somebody that's had a career and you can clearly see how they make their money, then you can anticipate how they're likely to behave going forward, and they can help you choose it. It gives you an indication as to if that business partner is right for this deal. If you're in a transactional business. Like you want a transactor, you want the person that's just chopping, you know, chopping ham all the time, every day. And that's gonna be their role in the business. And let me deal with the strategy. Let me deal with the sales, let me deal with the account development. So, so that's, you know, one of the ways that I sort opportunity, it's a decision filter that I use. Okay. That is really helpful. How people make their money. That's a really good question to, to answer for yourself. Yeah, I mean, like I think Brian Tracy said, you know, the easiest, uh, direction in which to ride a horse is the direction with it's going. Right? So I mean, if you, you continue that, people are gonna continue doing what they've done in, in, with some slight variation. Right. And the second part of his quote is, if the horse is dead, get off. Okay. Yeah. Good time. All right. Well hey, thanks for that. That is a great tool for people. I think that's a, a great filter for people to have, whether it's franchisee selection, whether it's a business partner, whether when you're dealing with. Vendors and suppliers, you know what Yeah. What they're gonna be like as well, because you're looking for someone to partner, someone more relationship based always helps. Right. So I know you, that was the first question, but I've got two more things for you. Oh, great. Let's go. We'll do the whole podcast on one question. Okay. So the, there's a great book called, uh, who Not How. Hmm. By Dan Sullivan. Are you familiar with Dan? Yep. Very. Yeah. Yeah. Dan's great. I was just with him last week in Phoenix for a couple of days, and two times is, uh, 10 times is easier than two times, right? Yeah, yeah. Yep. 10 x is, is is easier than two x. And, yeah. Uh, so who not How is like, instead of the, the first thing you should do when you're looking at a business opportunity is not to ask yourself how you're going to do it and start solving the minutia. Say, who is the best person in the world or in my universe at this, and can I get them to do this thing? It could be a vendor, it could be a supplier. It could be a potential business partner. It could be an advisor. But at the end of the day, I mean. Very, very few. There's, you know, there's 8 billion people on this planet, and I don't know when the last time an original idea was. I mean, somebody's done it. Yeah. You know, so it's, we're not splitting atoms here. Gee. I mean, you know, it's Right. I mean, we're building bi willing kind of regular businesses, right? So there's somebody out there that does what you do. So you, you always, who not how is a great easy read by Dan Sullivan? I recommend everybody buy it that's looking to build a business because it. Reframes how you go about looking, you know, like you might not start a business. I know people that are so disciplined in their who, not how, that they won't go into a business until they have the right who's, yeah. It goes back to leverage, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And they, and they have collaboration. The last thing I'll share is everybody needs to have a model around their time and their return. So I have a dollars per hour. Mm-hmm. And the way that I calculate that is any compensation or fees that I'm gonna get, any other dollars, any other benefit that I'm gonna get, and including the anticipated exit of a business. All right? So if I know I'm gonna spend five years in a project and I think that, and I model it out and I say, well, if we can get this business up to a $20 million exit. You know, I'm this percentage of it, and I can get this along the way, then I know that I'm gonna get X dollars per hour, right? So think about it, if you're, you know, a lot of people out there, I mean, a hundred dollars an hour is $200,000 a year, right? So to make a hundred dollars an hour, there is a million things that you could do, right? I mean, there's a lot of things you could do to make $50 an hour. There's a lot of things you can do to make a hundred dollars an hour. I challenge our franchise owners. I say, if you wanted to make a hundred dollars off, if you wanna make $200,000, let's say you're gonna work 2000 hours full-time in your business and okay, and your business is gonna do X dollars, have to do X dollars to generate the$200,000 owner's benefit back to you. Sure. Now that doesn't include whatever they can sell that business for. Let's do, keep the math simple. Sure. And then I say, alright, what decisions would you have to make differently if you'd said that you have to make $500 an hour? Hmm. Okay. Now what happens is you don't have a million things you can do. You probably got 500 things you can do. You, you can't, you know? And maybe the answer is you make$250 an hour, but you find a way to only spend half the time. So now that makes, so now you're starting to have to say no to lots of things. Yeah. Right. What it does is it, it is, it brings that no forward. And so now you're like, all right, well if I'm gonna make $500 an hour up, including, you know, the exit and you gotta be realistic with an, you gotta be very conservative with that number.'cause you don't wanna be working a hundred hours a week in, in favor of something that never happens. Then you like, then you make a dollar an hour. Right, right. Yeah. So, you know, uh, but look, so, you know, and then you get up to, I mean, I know that, you know, I know a guy that won't do anything for less than $25,000 an hour. So if he coaches you, I mean his businesses, he knows he's he has an academy and he invests in businesses and he does a lot online and this kind of stuff. But if you want this person to coach you for one year, it is one hour a month for $300,000. Okay. And people would tell you it's prob, it's worth it. People that have done it would tell you it was worth it, right? So, but he has to deliver that much value. So there's only a certain clientele that. We'll do that. But that's an, that's kind of an extreme right, but think about as you go through your career and you're trying to sort opportunities, using that as a filter or, you know, you, you've built some great businesses and you've had a lot of businesses and you know, you can look at it and, and maybe you go back at Frenchies and you figure out how many hours you had. Yep. And then like total compensation, lifetime plus exit. And you say, what did I make? And I did that with Advanta Clean. And did you, you know, I was like, oh yeah. I was like, okay, well, you know, I made this much an hour, you know, based on. The time that I invested in it. And so then I, I use that going forward, as to kind of help me decide what's in and what's out in my business life. Right, because you had a lot of opportunities coming towards you and you had to choose 'em. Um, but it's also, yeah. What you're saying is, is a great filter so that you're not spending time on things that are. Potentially, even if they work out well, they're, they're low value. They're not gonna return what you need. And if your goal is X, you can't be doing things that aren't gonna get you there no matter how hard you work or how much you work. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And that's, that's that bringing the no forward line. I like that line actually. Yeah. And look, I'm not about absolute dollars. In my life. I don't need to, I don't need to die with a certain amount of dollars because there's other things in my life that I value much more than money. Sure, yeah. But that's just for the business. But what that does is it buys back your time, right? Yep. It's like, okay, well I'm only gonna do these things and then I can buy back my time to invest in in other ways. Yeah. And it frees you up to. To be able to do those things at are higher value and Right. Um, and prioritize, you know, like the kids and the family, the community building and things like that. It totally makes sense. Mm-hmm. So thanks for sharing all those, those are yeah. Great. Uh, you know, everybody should have a goal. Everybody should know what it takes, like is no matter what level you are, frontline worker or CEO, like what your, what the value you place on each hour, and so that you can focus your time. Time and focus and energy, so that's great. Time and love, baby. It's the, it's the, it's the two greatest things we have in life. Time and love. Yeah. Yeah. Time. The only resource that you can't make more of no matter what. Money, you can, but, time. It goes, you know, and especially, I got a couple years on you, but it seems to be going faster and faster, all the time. No, there's no way You're older than me, sir. Yeah, no way. I noticed total aside, but yeah, you went to Schaumburg High School. I went to, I went to Carl Sandberg in, in Orland Park, Illinois. So we're both Oh, cool. Illinois. Illinois guys originally. Lot of, lot of great entrepreneurs. People come outta Chicagoland. Yeah. Yeah. And um, it was a great place to grow up. I'm loving Colorado compared to that. Just 'cause we have 300 days of sunshine and I'm sure you've been all over the country. Yeah. It has a lot more sunshine than Chicago, but, um, great people down to earth and there's always something with Midwesterners that's just like solid. A hundred percent might be a little biased, but, um, yeah. I know we're kind of coming up on our time here, but one of the other things that I found interesting 'cause I followed you, I, I listened to your podcasts, your LinkedIn posts are great. Um, and I know I, I would definitely wanna touch on your Phil. Philanthropic. Wow, that's a hard word. Um, because you do a lot with giving back from the success you that you've earned, notably with St. Jude, and I think you have something with a education system too as well. Right. St. Jude was our charity. We participated pretty deeply with Advanta Clean. And when you choose a cause, if you want to really get legs on it, you should choose something that really. Aligns kind of with the, the way the brand is going, right? So for us, clean, safe, healthy homes and businesses, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, free treatment for pediatric cancer, they would send these kids home and if there was a air duct, if there was anywhere in the country through St. Jude in Memphis, or any of the hospitals that ran the St. Jude protocol, we worked with the one here in Charlotte. And they would send a kid home, they'd do an in-home visit, and if there was a mold problem or an indoor air quality problem, then our franchise owners would go out and if there was a need, do those jobs for free. So think about that. Yeah, we raised money, but we couldn't raise money like Domino's Pizza. Like we weren't that big. So, you know, we raised. As much money as we could, but like we got our partnership with them through service and it meant a lot to our franchise owners. And there's so many stories of our franchise owners going out and just saving the day for these families that make, because when, when your child gets cancer, like. Somebody's moving to Memphis, somebody's quitting their job. You, you probably have other kids. So now you're a single parent back home. Somebody's 18, 24 months living in the hospital or living in the, the housing that they have there. It's financially devastating. Mm-hmm. For families. And it just, it's a huge interruption. So. A lot of times there was a, a financial need, but they needed something done because these children couldn't go home to an unclean or unsafe or unhealthy home. So that was, um, yeah, that was really cool. I loved that. And we would go to Partner Summit and we took our franchise advisory council out there and. It's just if you haven't spent any time, if you go to Memphis, like, okay, you can go to Graceland, fine. But like drive across and spend a day, they will welcome you with open arms at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. It's an unbelievable place. I've never been anywhere like it. I mean, it's like the Disneyland of, you know, pediatric cancer. It's so well done. And then today, we have three causes here and one is children's literacy. And it's very special to me because, again, I was a voracious reader, but not a great student. But I saw the world through the eyes of books and magazines and I just read, read, read. My daughter is an incredible, she's in law school. She's a voracious reader. All my kids, read, but like my daughter was like. I mean, she read Glossaries, this Girl. So we partnered with Ben and Candy Carson, uh, Dr. Benjamin Carson, the pediatric neurologist, uh, surgeon. And, uh, him and his wife created Carson Scholars Fund some 20 plus years ago. And one of the things they do is they build reading rooms in schools. And so for $20,000, uh, it might be more than that now. I think it was now it might be 25 or 30, but for, for some amount of money, uh, they have a program and they've built over 300 of these reading rooms across the country. And so we are committed to build two of these reading rooms a year through home front brands and our franchise owners. Aspire to build these reading rooms in their town. So you basically go to a school that might be underfunded or, uh, you know, have an opportunity and they convert, uh, a large space and they furnish it and they load it up with books and programs and get, and all of the, all of the good type stuff that, you know, that, that the kids, need. So it's just a, a great, safe place that they can go and be comfortable and just explore all kinds of books and things like that. So. That's our charity there. And then the other thing we do is with a charity called Operation Home Front for transitioning military veterans and their spouses and their families. That charity operation Home Front, you've probably never heard of 'em. They raised $141 million last year, and all of the money is, well, I mean, a huge percentage of it goes to where it's supposed to go to. They don't advertise. It's run by a brigadier general and we're partnered with them. So we do events at our homecoming event. Where we do a lot of, you know, canned goods and all, like, we pack up all the stuff, and we also kind of go dollar for dollar there. And then we also use, in our call center, there's a, a company called Instant Teams. And they use, they use spouses of active military people who struggle to get full-time employment because they move around so much. Okay. And they're highly educated and they're great. And so two thirds of our call center is staffed with instant teams people, which is another way for us to support our, our military veterans, people that have served us. Geez, that's, those stories are amazing, Jeff. I, I saw it on the surface, but the story behind them is even more impactful. Thanks for, thanks for doing that. I always tell my sons and people, anybody else that they have to listen to me, but, um, other people that will listen is like, you have no idea. Like how much Great. Comes from people being successful because they have the time and the resources and the desire to give back 'cause they're so grateful for their success and you and your team are a, uh, the epitome of that. So thanks for doing that. At the end of these, I usually ask people for a book recommendation, but you've already given us a book recommendation and I wanna make sure that if someone is interested in franchising, that and they're like, wow, I wanna, I wanna be in this guy's fear somehow some way. What are, what are the home front brands right now? And, if you could just tell us a little bit about that and then, you know, any trends that you see, in franchising or just in general that you think it'd be great for people to get out ahead of, because all that reading and, industry knowledge and everything that you're doing, we'd love to get a glimpse into like. What are you seeing that maybe it's around the corner for us, but first, just a little bit on the home front brands. Yeah. Thank you. We have five brands. We have Top rail fence, which is a typical fence gate, uh, business. So residential, commercial, agricultural fencing. We have Window Hero, which is an exterior building washing business. We use drones for commercial building, cleaning. It's very cool. And we also do residential services, house washing, gutter cleaning, window cleaning. We have the designy kitchen, bath and closet, which is just what it sounds like, but we have, it is the one business we have that has a retail location. It's kinda like a high finish apple store feel with video design and 3D headsets where you could look at your designs as you're building 'em. So. Cool stuff like that. Mm-hmm. Then we have roof scientist, which is a roof replacement and repair business, but we also have a proprietary resin system, so it's basically a coating system where you don't have to replace your roof, you can use this application, and we're very excited about that roof scientist business. We think it's gonna go really, really fast. I think it's a great offering for everybody. And then we have a B2B offering called Temporary Wall Systems, which is a. High-end rentable containment system that you would see in airports, those white walls that you see around construction sites and things like that. We're very heavy in medical. We're very heavy in retail as well. So temporary wall systems. Uh, another, another great business. We, you know, we have been so fortunate with our franchise owners. Our franchise owners are amazing. They're collaborative. We have a large number of high net worth sophisticated, uh, people that have been business owners before or operate other businesses, and they're looking to add to their portfolio with a home front brand. And these are all high quality businesses that have real, real potential, for people like that. They're the businesses that people like that are looking for. Wow, that's great. What a great offering. And then this is gonna be maybe too broad of a question, but I I'm gonna put you on the spot really quickly. So, I imagined, based on your, your history, you know, a founder, you had a franchise development company, you're well known, you're probably seeing deals. All the time. Are you asking me if I'm running for president? The answer's, well, you know, you and Ben Carson. You and Ben Carson, right? Like he's, I, I did go through the process to be an ambassador to a foreign country, but I didn't make it very far. Really? Okay. I had to pull out, I had to pull, we, you have to move. Yeah, that's important. Yeah. They, they like you in country when you're an ambassador for it, but How cool. It was fascinating. It was fascinating. But yeah, I bet. Yeah. I decided to, do this home front brands thing instead. Right. Well, franchising's happy franchising one. But when someone's, when you're looking at a deal, what's more important number of units or you liking the founder neither. Ah, okay. The unit economic, the, the unit economics of the business. Does the business have the characteristics that we're looking for? What are the unit economics? Does it have, what does the supply chain look like? Can we optimize the supply chain to find more money for the franchisees? Does it have both commercial and residential opportunity, which we view as a positive in most of our brands because we wanna make sure that we can raise average ticket size, uh, through these commercial opportunities. If you can blend big, you know, higher margin, higher absolute dollar jobs in with routine residential. Services and things like that. So we look for things like that. We've been very fortunate that we had a first to market with temporary walls, which has been very fortunate. And then fast followers in terms of our top rail fence, followed right behind Superior Fence. And then, you know, designery and roof scientists are large ticket items. And then the nice thing about Window Hero is just, it does not have a lot of supply cost in it or whatever. So, you know, it's a labor model, but like it's, you know, it's so all of the businesses are are different, but they all have characteristics that we like. And at the end of the day, I mean, and we've seen it, I mean there's over 400 actively growing franchise brands and there's a lot of people that know how to. Shine 'em up and get 'em out there and get people in 'em. These businesses need to perform. Yeah, because you can, you can get 'em out there for a while. But if they don't perform, then you know you're really gonna be spending a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of money and you know, so really what it comes down to is, is there a path to profitability? And it might be, I mean, some of our businesses are long to revenue. Some of our businesses are. Lower profit margin because they have a higher material and supply cost. So, you know, but they're, but they have a much higher revenue potential, so they each get their, each Rubik's cube is a little different. Right, right. You know, how profitable as a percentage and then how profitable and absolute dollars can somebody be at certain revenue levels. All of the businesses are different, but like, there needs to be a clear path to profitability where an owner, they can't be jet airplanes. Right. Like, you know, 99% of the people will crash a jet airplane. They need to be businesses that an average person on an average day following the plan can make a predictable amount of revenue and profit. And you know, then within that you'll get your exceptional owners. Your top 20 or 30% are just gonna run away with it. You're gonna always be working with your bottom five or 10% to help them figure out if this is the right thing for them. And then you got your 67, 70% in the middle. And for them, what you need to do is, you know, I, I explain it to 'em, I say, look, you're in the middle of a hill. You're walking and you're in an intersecting path, and you come to this path and you look up the hill to the left, and there's a bunch of people up there that are doing what you wanted to do when you got into this. And then you look down at the bottom of the hill, and then there's some people that are just kind of spinning themselves into the ground, and you have a choice as to where you put your eyes. Mm-hmm. And wherever you put your, there's this football thing, okay. About getting dirty eyes if you're playing defense. You're playing man to man, and you look in the back field, you're looking where, somewhere where you're not supposed to. You get dirty eyes that receiver's gone. Mm. Same thing if you're, if you're a linebacker and you're reading keys, I mean, in a linebacker, you're basically reading through the guards to the near back. You're reading in that instant, quickly, and if you look at the wrong thing, you will be late. You'll be in the wrong place. You'll be swept up in the wash, right? So part of being a good business owner is not getting dirty eyes. And it's about are you burning 60% of your battery? Your will, your dopamine before eight o'clock by scrolling two hours of TikTok. Or are you doing a journal? Are you reading a book? Are you reviewing your numbers? Are you doing the things that you need to do? Right. So, so much of our success in life is the things we do in, you know, kind of in the, when nobody's looking, we get rewarded in public for the things that we do in private and. The music is kind of made between the notes when, when you see somebody on Sunday, uh, you're scoring a touchdown for an NFL football team and they've got a thousand days of torturous work to, to lead up to that eight second while that guy's good, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's the same thing with business and that's my book, discernment The Business Athlete's Regimen for a Great Life through better Decisions is, you know, if, I mean, I was a college football player. 360 days a year, two a day, weightlifting sprints, catching a thousand passes on a, on, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, all for that eight seconds where the ball's up in the back of the end zone and you've gotta try to make that play. And then you get business owners. They join a franchise and they put their money down and they, they show up, but they don't even watch the videos. Right. You know, it's like, it's like, man, like how hard are you willing to train to be who you need to be to be successful in this business? Right. I, it's just like, it's just not gonna happen for you. So it's small, it's small business. There's, there's no way around it. I mean, it's Right. You gotta train, you gotta train your mind, you gotta train your body. You gotta, you gotta show up. So. Yep. Anyway, I, I don't remember what the question was, but there was six or seven. There's six or seven answers for you. There you go. There you go. Well, I, I, and the takeaway from that is it's like where you look is probably where you're gonna go, you know, so you can either a hundred percent, you can focus on what's going wrong with other people in the system, people that are doing at the same level as you or lower, or you can look at the ones that are top performers and be like, all right. And the cool thing about franchising is, and I'm sure you've found this, is. It's incredibly open in sharing, especially within a system, but, just even amongst competitors and systems and things like that.'cause I think the ones that have been in it for a while understand it's, it, it's not the secret sauce, it's the execution of what's in the secret sauce. And, you know, a lot of people either won't or can't bring that, that level of execution. Um, but I think anybody that's. Looking at the right thing and looking. Pointing the finger at themselves rather than outward. As like, what can I do better today? What am I gonna move here? They tend to do well in, in systems that are performing well. I'm always like, Hey, if, if there's a, even a handful of people performing well in a system, it's. Means it's possible., Let's go, let's focus on what they're doing and what the system's recommending. So Jeff, this has been wonderful. I really appreciate all the wisdom that you shared, your story, the outcome of the story on how that's affecting people that aren't as in greater positions as, some other people. The outcome of that is, is bigger than, jeff's big boat and, you know, and things like that. It's like, no, it's affecting communities and families and, and it's just, it's wonderful to hear and it's just a good reminder of this model and how good it is. Um, and just really appreciate you sharing the story and, and the wisdom. So thanks for being on the show. It's been a pleasure and an honor, and thank you so much. All right, take care. That wraps up today's episode of the Franchise Scale Up Show. This gave you a strategy you can put into play. Please share it with one founder who needs the help. You might save them months of pain. If you're ready to go deeper, whether it's building your support infrastructure, accelerating territory sales, or preparing for private equity, go to gee coffee.com. That's G-U-Y-C-O-F-F. EY and book a free franchise growth strategy call. I only partner with founders who are committed to scaling without losing control. If that's you, I'd love to connect. Until next time, protect your vision. Move fast and scale smart. I'm Gee, coffee Talk soon.