How We Help You Start Fast in Business🚀💼 I The Real Franchise Episode 30

Rhiannon Hello and welcome back to another video in our Real Franchise series. This series is designed to deliver real information, real answers, and real insights into franchising. It’s brought to you by James Home Services Australia. I’m the CEO and Justin is one of our owners and our head of new businesses. Together we talk about all of the big topics completely unscripted, unplanned and unfiltered.

No sales, no fluff. We just we’re all about giving you information straight up. Today’s topic is a really interesting one and it’s about starting fast. If you’ve ever thought about starting a business, you’ve probably spent some time thinking about how are you going to survive whilst your business gets a slow start? You’ve got to think about how are you marketing and how are you attracting customers, and how long is that cashflow going to take to kick in, and how are you going to get those first jobs?

And there are a lot of nervous moments while you work hard, but you wait to see if it works. In our network, we have done so much work in the last few years around making sure that our priority with new business owners is that you’re starting fast. There are a thousand reasons for that, and that’s exactly what this video is designed to be all about.

Justin, I’m going to put the biggest question on the table. First up, what do we do to make sure that any new business owner in our network is starting as fast as possible?

Justin That’s a big question. This could be a couple of hours episode just going through it, showing that what we do well, we’ve done this so, so many times, like you said, particularly in the last 12, 18 months with our subscription model having so many people join and I thought, I’ll be honest, I’ve been in this business 15 years or so I thought we knew a lot about and we’re pretty good at getting people started.

But just in the last 12, 18 months we have learned so much. And like, I’m so proud of our marketing team and the results that we get. All of our coaches, like we’ve fully refined, we’re going to talk about, I’m sure, this accelerated startup program that we’ve put together from these learnings, which sort of grabbed all the marketing stuff, grab all the coaching stuff, you know, because we’re all different.

And as you were giving the intro, then I was sort of thinking, reflecting back to when I started in James and I literally sat down with a piece of paper after my first meeting with the James sales rep to find out more about this company called James. I sat down on the paper and looked at what it would cost me to do on my own, versus what it would cost me to be in James.

And, you know, when we talk about marketing and stuff like that, I had no clue. And, you know, I had a young family, and if I was starting out in business, I talked to so many people that, you know, I think I know what to do. I’m just going to do it on my own. But what if you’re wrong?

What if you don’t actually understand how my thing works? Or this doesn’t work or that doesn’t work and just one piece of that puzzle isn’t right, then you’re not earning money. Well, how long can you survive? And you’ve got a family and responsibilities and it’s just I don’t think people appreciate. And it’s a topic for another video. The do it yourself start.

The massive risks involved. What Accelerated Startup does is really take years and years of learning and put it into a package that we just like literally is, you know, around because you put this on pen to paper and we want our coaches work on this. With the new start a week two, week three, week four, we have a sit thing.

And what we have saying I’m proud to say, and I tell everyone this at the moment this financial year. So we’re 11 months in every single business that we’ve started this financial year is off and running. Like with the network going, well, no one’s quit, no one’s throwing up their hands like. And that’s a testament to that accelerated program working for us.

Because the one thing I find that I think we’re all the same when we start a business, we need to be earning money quickly. You know, we can’t go for 6 or 12 months with trying to build a customer base. We need income in the first few weeks. And, you know, I know that’s a long answer to the big question, but I think that’s that’s what we’ve been about.

And I think we’re really starting to kick some big goals with that accelerated startup program.

Rhiannon Yeah, I’m equally as proud as you are of our team and the results that they’ve been able to get in this financial year, because we’ve talked openly in this series before about the fact that it’s no secret we’ve had businesses fail in this network. I think any franchise network that tells you that they have every business successful is probably kind of elaborating the truth a little bit, because, you know, franchising is not failsafe.

And we’ve talked very openly about that in our network in the past. And, you know, the topic of that video was very much around, you know, our learnings in that when our system isn’t followed. So failure is, is one of the, sometimes realized risks, but also, you know, we take responsibility for the fact that our system needs to be constantly being updated and refined to cater to the needs of that.

Then market. And when you talk about what we’ve learned in the last few years, we’ve learned a lot of things. We’ve learned that starting new businesses is a contact sport, i.e., the volume of contact that you have with us is significant. We don’t just put you through training and then like, you know, shake your hand off to training and say, we wish you all the best.

Like, you know, drop us a line if you need us. Like know the level of contact is so significant because we’ve learned that it’s a contact sport. We’ve also learned that, the likelihood and, significance of success is correlated to how quickly you start. And I can only put this down to being, very psychology people. You know, you when you, you’ve taken on an enormous risk, you’re going out on your own, you’re starting this business, you’ve decided to get support from a franchise network, but there’s still no guarantees.

You know, you’ve still got to put in the hard yards. And so we have to keep our end of the bargain as well. And you know, so there’s there’s still that huge risk there. And I think that getting wins on the board really quickly it confirms what we say. So often is those business owners that are physically out there doing jobs in week one, you know, what that’s doing in their brain is, is it’s just confirming to them, hey, this works.

If I, if I’m following that system, if I’m doing the things I’m at here working and it’s week one, how amazing. And look, I’ve already got a couple of appointments booked up for next week. How could this so that psychological boost when you can see things happening quickly, it just motivates you to keep going. Even if those first few weeks feel really hard and confronting.

And so one of the things that our Accelerated Startup program actually does is bring forward your start. So a lot of franchised networks, you sign the franchise agreement, there’s wait periods, there’s cooling off periods. You go through retraining, you do all the practical stuff, and then you’ve got this date, and it’s only from that date that you’re allowed to actually get out and do anything.

And we kind of bend the rules. Don’t tell our lawyer, but, we look, you know, there’s lots of reasons why networks say you can only start from your start date because, you know, we’re sharing lots of information with you. We’re sharing our IP with you. We don’t want to share that until you start date. And we kind of think, you know what, it’s about acting in the best interests of our business owners.

And we know that starting as quickly as possible, whilst they are really enthusiastic, really ready to go, they’re energized. They’re chatting to all their friends and their families and their connections and their networks about what they’re doing. It’s just it’s such an energy filled period. Why not use that to their advantage? So, we actually start.

Justin Yeah.

Rhiannon Telling you how to use your networks to book in jobs. We start teaching you how to do basic marketing and promotional activities about your business in your area. We we get the wheels moving and also we get all of the boring admin out of the way. Well, before you start your training so that once you’re actually trained and operating, you’re not still stuck in the weeds trying to set up bank accounts or register business names or sort out GST registrations with your accountant, we make sure you’ve got all of that squared away before you even get to training, so that once you’re in training and once you’ve completed that, you really are hitting the ground

running, so to speak, that that, in a nutshell, is exactly what our accelerated startup program is about.

Justin Exactly. And that that point you just gave, I just think I was just reflecting back a couple of years ago when we did the normal thing, which is the right thing to do, not to start anything until the start date. And what we found happen is people came back from the training all excited, and then they start. Then the whole marketing thing that you do we do is starting, and it be this gap before anything came in.

And mentally we saw that so many people like, oh, I say my last chat to people before they start the biggest risk now is what’s going on between you two is, you know, if you got in here, right, and you’re following the system and you’re focused and you’re, you know, I know what you got to do, you’re going to be successful.

But when people came back from training and there was just no real activity for a couple of weeks, you just saw people mentally just nosedive. And it’s so hard to pull yourself out of that when you’ve just put so much emotional energy and excitement into starting a new business, and then you open the doors and it’s like, oh, what’s whereas now getting that all out of the way, getting stuff started.

We’ve just seen time and time again in the last what, this financial year, people come back and they’ve got I remember, Dane, who’s just started with us down in Newcastle, came back first behind me, had four quotes already booked up, went out and we got a text that night, say 104 of those jobs and bang, he was off and he’s flying.

You know, it’s just going so great. And it’s it like you said, it’s thinking in the what we call the right laws of exchange. You know, it’s we put faith and hope in our new status. And because we believe that they can act with integrity as well and get in and do the right thing, and it just helps them get going quicker.

So, yeah, we do jump the gun a bit to help people get started quicker.

Rhiannon Yeah we do. I just, delivered eight steps training last week to somebody in Victoria. We got to the part in our training where we were teaching them the software platform that we use for agile management. And I said to him, okay, so we’re just getting into some, you know, fake customers because you probably won’t, you know, you don’t have any yet.

So and he’s like, oh no, no, no, I’ve been doing everything that my business coach told me to do. I’ve got four customers already. And I was like, yes, this is our system at work. I was so proud of him in that moment, but I was so proud of us because we have we’ve worked so hard on what our system is and why it is that way.

And it feels unnatural that there are still cooling off periods and white periods. And we’re going no, no business coach. Now go ahead and start working with your new your new business owner. And it it’s I just I love that we do it I love that we’ve been to those roles. I love that sometimes we throw legal advice to the wind and we do what we think is in the best interest of our business owners, and that is helping them to start fast.

There are also some really fundamental things that we do to help our businesses start fast. Things like you get really great business management training. You get really excellent practical training with someone who is already a business owner in our network and can teach you everything you need to know about how to do the job efficiently. We mark it for you.

We start marketing for you a couple of days before your practical training finishes so that if we, generating any leads, you’re already. You’re almost finished your practical training. So you can pretty much line up those. Quite appointments from that first training week. The other thing we do is that we don’t really allow gaps, right. Once a week going, we get going.

So you do your eight steps training, which is your business management training. We roll you straight into your practical training, which is four days with another business in our network. And then we roll you straight into your official training commencement day. We used to kind of stagger it. We used to sometimes do, you know, wait until we had a group of people to go through the business management training and then practical training could be a few weeks after that.

We don’t do that anymore. Even if it means that we are running eight steps training just for one person. We do it so that we can run all that training together and get somebody up and operating as quickly as possible. We just find that it helps so much in them retaining that information that we’re giving them in training.

What are some of the fundamental things we market? We send leads

Justin I find not I sum it up in the initial information session I do with people that there’s two things that have to happen for this accelerated startup to happen. The first thing that happens is like all the paid things from, from a marketing point of view here. So James does all the paid stuff. So, you know, we do all that, like you said, web pages, Google pages, we print 10,000 brochures, we pay to sign, right, the vehicle we, book that big marketing campaign.

So the new started. Well, as long as you’re with James, you don’t have to spend any extra money on marketing. We do this money spend. And the second thing that has to happen to give you an accelerator to start is what you, the business owner, do. You know the business owner is the boots on the ground? You know, we’re not physically in Wyndham, by the way.

That person starting in Victoria that you trained or you know Dean and he he’s in Maitland, you know, he’s the boots on the ground. So this in the training day, one like you would have taken Richmond through 51 Ways to Market your business. So, you know, they get to learn all these different things that you be doing under those first few weeks to really get that momentum.

Like, obviously we’re going to be generating some leads, but that local activity and talking to people and to me the most important things are online. So, you know, our coaches are going to work with you on how to really get the most out of your Google business profile and social media and like to systemised approach. And back to that, which we’ll talk on another episode of the do it yourself start.

Like people say, I talk to people every day and we we think we have an idea we might be good in one little area. You know, we might be really good on social media. And so, yeah, we’re going to start a business. But that’s like one, one thing I’ll describe like one strand in a fishing net, you need all these things operating to catch a lot of fish.

And that’s what we do with our accelerator start. We tackle it from every direction.

Rhiannon Yeah. Another way to look at what you’re describing is that there’s no time wasted on the business owners part. Figuring it all out, you know, starting on your own. And let’s just say you’ve never run a business before. You know, you’ve got to figure out marketing. You’ve got to figure out how you charging clients, you’ve got to figure out how to do a court.

You’ve got to figure out what software you’re using. You’ve got to figure out how you using it. You’ve got to figure out what your follow up process is. You’ve got to figure out whether you’re looking at reporting or whether you’re just doing it off a gut feel. You’ve got to figure out how much you got to charge and how to make money.

You’ve got to figure out, what are you doing this all for in the first place, so that you understand, even on the hard days, why work you’re there and why you’re trying to do it, and why you should keep trying. It’s so much figuring out, you know, how do you collect payment? How do you link your bank account up to your zero or your mile?

Like there’s there’s a million things there is about like there’s literally a million things that you’ve got to figure out if you’re doing this from scratch. And I often describe to people that we’ve taken all of the figuring out out of it. Yeah, because we know what you need to know. We systemized how we teach you what you need to know so that you’re getting only what you need to know, when you need to do it with help, to do the things that you need to do.

Like it’s like a recipe for baking a cake. You know, you follow the recipe, you’re going to get a cake, you go off track. The cake might sink in the middle and not be what you’re expecting. So starting a business in a franchise sometimes can be a little bit like a recipe. If you follow the recipe and you can, you can expect a certain outcome.

One of the other fundamentals just to touch on really quickly is reputation. Yeah. Sometimes people just flatly will say, well, why should I be paying franchise fees? Why would I go with a franchise? And one of the things that I offer up as a, as a, like a perspective on that is, if you start your own business from scratch, you’re going to be working for like 3 to 5 years minimum to build any kind of reputation in your local area for what your business stands for, let alone the expense, and work in developing a physical brand.

And when you join a franchise network, our physical brand has been developed and has been in the Australian marketplace for 33 plus years. You can’t create that in 3 to 5 years in your own business. And also what goes along with that physical brand and the visual of it and what it means and what we stand for is our reputation.

And our reputation is one of quality. Our reputation is not the cheapest, but it is the company you turn to when you’ve tried the alternatives, you were bitterly disappointed and now you want reliability and professionalism. That’s our reputation.

Justin I’ve got a perfect story to illustrate this point. I was on a redeye flight, a little while ago, from Brisbane, the Cairns, late one night, and I was on the ILC. It was a lady on the windows, a lovely little lady sitting there. And as the plane took off, she leaned over to me and I was in uniform wearing basically the shirt, and she leaned over to me and she goes, how are you with that prestige cleaning company?

And and I was just like, everything inside me was like.

Rhiannon Yes. What a weird.

Justin Yes. And it never dealt with this, but that was the impression that everything she’d seen or heard in the marketing or I don’t know, I don’t know if I’m embarrassed, but. Yeah. Are you with the Prestige Cleaning company?

Rhiannon Yep.

Justin Yeah. I thought yes, that’s what you’re getting when you have that brand on your vehicle and you know all the rest of it.

Rhiannon Yep. And you know, when you’re working with a brand that has that elevated perception amongst the marketplace that the marketplace calls you when they’re looking for high quality services, great communication, you know, when they’ve got high expectations. Now that market is also prepared to pay fairly and reasonably for that excellent service. And that’s where we position ourselves. This is by no mistake, by the way, for anybody listening, this is highly tactical on our part because one of the things that we need to do as a network to make sure that our business owners can be successful is all about our brand and our reputation.

So our business owners can charge that higher price point for a high quality service. So it’s it’s very strategic that our brand and our reputation is what it is. It’s we it’s by no mistake, we are in no race to the bottom on pricing. And we hold our ground on that. You know, we’re not for everybody. And that’s okay.

We’re not trying to be we’re we’re very conceited on who it is that we’re, who who it is that our ideal clients are. And, you know, we work with our business owners to help them understand that as well, so that they know who their market is and you just you don’t when you figuring out on your own and when you’re first starting, you know, you just grabbing at anything and everything, trying to create some momentum and cash flow in your business.

Yeah, with someone like our business network is a strategy behind what we’re doing. And you know, you’re not starting from ground zero. You’re not starting charging 30 bucks an hour for your services. You’re starting potential a whole lot higher than that. Our average, you know, our average in the network for cleaning businesses, for example, at the moment is, you know, like at least double like market rates.

And it’s, you know, like those sort of standardized market rates that you see on on Facebook Marketplace. And it’s because we’ve done so much hard work over 30 years to build a brand. And when you join us, you get that by association. You wear our shirt, you are you are that prestige cleaning company.

Justin Yeah.

Rhiannon I’ve got one more kind of sub topic to dive into for a few minutes before we wrap this episode. We often get people who say to us, look, I’m kind of only looking for something just to do on the side. I’m thinking that I’m going to keep my job at the moment. And, you know, I might just kind of dabble my fate in slowly in starting my business.

And then once I’ve got enough momentum and cash flow, then I’ll leave my job and I’ll jump fully into the business and a lot of people have that thought process thinking that they’re actually de-risking that jumping into business scenario. What is your guidance? You talk to people inquiring with their network every single day. What is your guidance around that slow start option?

Justin Yeah, I literally had that phone call right before this before we prerecorded this video. A lovely couple in Brisbane. She’d been thinking about starting her own business for a while. She works a good full time job, so she wanted to start this as a second thing on the side to just let it build. And we have seen that just does not work.

You know, you’re a service business. You can’t serve a customer when they want service. If you know you’re working full time, like, oh, I’ll do it evenings and weekends. It’s like, well, you know, a big chunk of your clientele wants it done during the week. And, you know, when are you getting back to customers? And it’s just a minefield.

And the other flipside is particularly under a subscription model, we’re investing into you. We’re doing this massive advertising campaign that’s totally wasted if you’re not working at full time, like the two go hand in hand, you know, to have the accelerated start up. We were talking about, you know, it’s us spending all that money, but it’s you putting all that time and effort in.

And those two things work together. And, what’s increase the result of, you know, you and I, I’ve often spoken about with we spend all that money and people don’t put that effort in they campaigns pretty much wasted like it’s like fuel each other. And if you’re not putting in the effort when all the marketing is happening, what to me, a slow start is I never stop, you know, it’s just not going to work for you.

Yeah, you’re doing this part time hobby business. That’s when you work at your costs, you know, even if you do it on your own, when you work at it costs and whatever and all the leisure time that you’re missing out on, if you haven’t made a cent, then you’ve just added stress and you’re not having a break. And it’s just, yeah, it’s just doesn’t work.

Rhiannon So many people think and and I can absolutely understand where they’re coming from. I think I’ll, I just want to, you know, I want to test the water and I just want to make sure that this is going to work before I jump in. And I totally get it. You know, it’s it is a risk starting a business, you know, that.

That’s why we do our subscription models so that you’re not putting all your money up on the table up front. That’s why we have our income guarantee $1500 a week, so that you’ve got that safety net if you need it. That’s why we designed the Accelerated Startup program so that you could see the wheels getting moving quickly. And so you felt that level of confidence ideally in the first 3 to 4 weeks.

You know, the data on our network performance tells us that, you know, those those that really get in and follow the system and give it their all and, and follow that guidance that we’re giving them within 3 to 4 weeks. They are seeing very, very real signs of momentum. And that’s absolutely true for every business owner that we’ve started in the current financial year, is that we’ve been kind but harsh in in a good way on our new as you know, we’ve really held our new status to account, to, hey, the data tells us that you need to be doing all of these things in order to get the momentum that you need to get,

so that you feel a level of confidence about your business growth. And so we’ve been, we’ve really focused on holding our new business owners to account. And again, with their own best interests at heart. Because if we do that, then it gets a good outcome for them. Then their business is getting a great outcome and that’s the best thing, right?

We don’t want to fail you. We want to see a good outcome. But you know, we do all these things to make sure that people can start fast because the data tells us that if you don’t start fast, you kind of never stop and you’re a much, much higher risk of failure. And look, we have trialed over the years people who say, hey, I just want to kind of do this part time.

We’ve trialed that right. Whenever, whenever, above our own system. We never think that, you know, just because the system’s a system that there can’t be gray areas and we can’t bend the rules within the rules every day or what, you know, and and we do it to test and measure. And sometimes we have started people who have had side gigs.

And evidently we’ve ended up in conversations with them to say, hey, you’re just not putting the time into the business. That’s why you’re not seeing the results. And it’s like anything in life, if in equals outcomes.

Justin Yeah. And one of the, you know, people just and I totally get the financial concerns, like you said, that’s why they have the income guarantee. The other thing I often say to people is, okay, let’s be honest. What are you earning per hour in your job? You know, everyone’s on a salary or a wage. And, you know, because some people’s concern is now I need to make sure I’m earning the sort of money I am earning.

And I’m not, you know, cleaning can’t give me that. And it’s like, well, once I give me that figure, then I tell them what our average hourly rate is nationally in their cleaning businesses. For argument’s sake, lawn and garden, whatever it is they looking at. And I can guarantee you to be very few people looking at joining us that average at the moment in their jobs, anywhere near what their business owners average in their businesses.

So, you know, you if you put the effort in and we support you financially with that safety net of a guarantee, you’re going to get that. And this is why through that information process, we connect you with as many people as you want in our network. You can talk to anyone, go visit anyone in our network because they’ll share with you how they going, what they did to get the the support.

You know, we’re an open book. We’ve. So I own this all the time. It’s no secret. So, you’ll get to if you’re looking at joining us, you’ll get to talk to people and make sure that you feel confident that, you know, if they can do it, I can do it. It’s the same system. You know, we’ve had everyone this year at this financial year.

So over the last 11 months everyone’s off and running. So you know, that’s I’ll keep boasting about that because it’s just proof that what we’re doing is going in the right direction. Yeah. Yeah.

Rhiannon Well, I think that is the perfect spot to leave this episode. I hope that if you’re listening, that you found it helpful. And I hope that that concept of a fast start now is a little bit more alive in your mind, and you have a little bit better understanding of the things that we do to help you start fast.

If you’ve got any questions or comments, leave them down below for us so that we can reply. If you’ve got any, topics that you’d like us to discuss, leave it in the comments or get in touch. I mean, there’s go to our website. There’s a million ways you can get in touch with us. I’m sure you can figure all of that stuff out.

Right. But if there’s a topic that you’d actually like us to discuss openly, then let us know, because we will go pretty much anywhere. There’s there’s nowhere so far that we shied away from, even the really kind of gnarly conversations. We’ve said, no, let’s just hit it head on and have the conversation. Let’s just be real and upfront and really transparent about how it is that we operate our business.

So thank you once again for listening, and hopefully you’ll join us again soon for another episode of The Real Franchise.