Meet the Coach: Greg Morrison | The Real Franchise Episode 43

Rhiannon Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Real Franchise, a video series designed to deliver real information, real answers, and real insights into franchising. The series is brought to you by James Home Services Australia. I’m the CEO, and today we have a new face joining us. New bit, sort of not new. And over the next half an hour we are going to chat to Greg, who’s one of our current business coaches.

If you’ve been around the traps for a little while, this is not actually the first time that Greg has appeared on our Real Franchise series, but for the astute amongst you, you may notice this change title. When we first chatted to Greg and at the time, his wife Gina, it was because they were business owners in our network and we were talking to them about their experience as business owners.

Today, Greg is one of our business coaches working with the head office team to support our business owners, and that conversation. And today we’re going to have conversations all about his current role. Greg, welcome to the Real franchise. For the second time. As I’ve just indicated, you’re not new to James Home Services. You’re new to the head office team, but not to the network.

So can you take us back five, six years ago and tell us how it all started for you and Gina?

Greg Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So back in 2019, we took over. I took a leap of faith to lead a long term, role, to do something for ourselves. we bought a franchise, an interior cleaning franchise. And managed to, you know, make a great life out of what we were trying to do around our work life balances and not needing to commute.

Those sort of things. We built a really solid business. In that time. But got myself back to working, like, three, three and a half days a week. And the joys of not having to leave at six in the morning and getting home at seven, 730 at night. Because I would leave from my front door to start work, not to get to work.

Yeah. So we did that for six years. Decided that we were just looking for something different to do. We’re getting a little bit older, looking to sort of semi-retired, relocate and put our business on the market. Were fortunate in that we had a a buyer very quickly established themselves. It took about six months to transition, but that was great.

As that was happening, Rhiannon reached out to ask whether I might be interested in a business coaching role as one of the other business coaches had indicated earlier that that the to move on. It was something we had talked about over the last sort of two years, potentially of that happening. So yeah, took the opportunity straight away.

No, I didn’t, literally walked straight from running a business to becoming a business coach and relaying all the little things that I’d let slip. Six years of running a business.

Rhiannon Yes. And I know I’m going to come back to those. I do want to ask you later on in the conversation, you know how is that transition from, business owner to business coach Bain? But I want to go back to the beginning again. I’ve got a very specific question. Your background was a corporate one. You could have run your own business with your eyes closed and your hands tied behind your back.

Why did you choose a franchise network to jump into business ownership? What was it about that that what what was it about the offer of a franchise that made you choose that instead of going it alone?

Greg Total lack of experience. I had never actually run a business for myself. I’d never worked for myself, which is a skillset unto itself. And there are a thousand things going through running business that you really are not aware of until you start the process. And so a franchise environment allowed me to leverage, the running of the, the set up and the running of the business effectively without needing to learn or the hardest place to, to get things done.

Rhiannon Yeah. We often talk about the time saving that starting with a franchise network can afford you and we call it the, the, the time spent figuring it all out. And if you’re going it alone, there are so many things that you’ve just got to figure out. And starting with a franchise network can be a bit of a shortcut, because we figured all of these things out, you know, hundreds, literally hundreds of times before.

And so we are a well-oiled machine when it comes to knowing what we need to guide our new businesses on. So fast forwarding to today, or maybe to a few months ago when we were actively transitioning you into the role of business coach. How did you feel? What was that transition like going from business owner to business coach?

Did it without any major surprises for you in making that transition?

Greg Probably the not a surprise, but the realization, which I like, I knew, but you don’t realize how much things change in the background from the requirements, or the way, the way the business. Now the process approaches. It’s business coaching. Scenarios. So all the things that were ingrained in me over six years of working in the friend exact franchise environment.

Had been tweaked, had been refined. And I probably really wasn’t tweaking and refining my own processes to to make those. So things change. There was new management software came in. In amongst it all already had processes in place. I needed to go and really knows to do it. What we now turned on was the James way

So we’re giving our new franchisees the best opportunity to get up and running as quick as possible.

Rhiannon Yeah. Yep. I think I recall saying too early in our, yeah, conversations around, hey, there’s there’s an opportunity here for for a business coach. Are you interested? I think I remember saying to, you know, if you if you want to take this on. No disrespect intended by this, but I’m going to assume that you’re new to the network entirely, and we’re going to take you right back to the beginning and take you through pretty much all of the training, because so much has changed in the last five years, particularly that I didn’t want to assume and throw you into the deep end of being a business coach without making sure that

all those little changes along the way you were brought up to speed on entirely and, you know, I think you coming around, you hadn’t sort of made the tweaks as you go. You know, for anybody listening, really what you’re talking about there is that you had a really well established business that was running successfully, and so you had determined your own methodologies for doing things that were working for you.

And yes, we have a very specific process that we take people through. We have a specific way that we coach and a specific system that we have you follow. But that’s also very intentionally designed for those new business owners to get the business started. And there is always leeway for somebody more established like yourself to, you know, change it up just slightly and make it work for you in the longer run.

Greg Yeah. Exactly that. And, yeah, the, the core of what I’ve had to relearn was simple because it’s what ran our business.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Greg You know, the, the eight steps, our training program. Not very literally that was new to me. Have. Yeah, 95% of that always was ingrained in our business to do every single day. That’s the 5% of stuff that had only been refined or. Yeah, we’d gotten two points in our business journey where yeah, step 17 wasn’t required.

Rhiannon Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Greg Yeah. Yeah, we we were where we wanted to be. We weren’t trying to continue to push to grow rapidly. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Just decisions we made as a business that meant that some of the steps in the process weren’t. Yeah. As, as,

Rhiannon It just became not as relevant to you. You’re in an.

Greg That’s that’s a little more complex. Yes.

Rhiannon So you okay? Right.

Greg Sorry. Just so to go back now and actually have to. Yeah. As a business coach trained an assist people in the the start of their journey where all the steps are so important was, a bit of, Oh, no, I, I, I’ve been a bit of bit of, Oh, yeah. That’s what we shouldn’t be doing that should we.

Rhiannon like riding a bike though, right. You know, once once you learn, you never unlearn. And you just sort of start taking it for granted, though. And if you haven’t done it for a little while, getting back on it, it just it takes a little minute to come back, but it definitely does. Yep. So you operated business for five years.

Well, and then you were very open at all times with Justin and myself about being interested in taking on a business coaching role in the future, if one ever arose. Why were you interested in a role?

Greg So running your own business is very intensive. Don’t ever disregard that fact. On getting older. And but I’m not ready to retire.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Greg Just was at a point. We made a decision, a point in the last couple of years ago where it’s like, let’s not pull up the train at the drop of the hat and go, yeah, that’s it. Because we want to continue to live, we want to do a bit of travel, but we have things that we want to do from from a personal perspective.

And the opportunity as a business coach with the ability to, to do this role and support people remotely. At the hours that fit into their schedule as well as ours, which which if your business is up and running successfully isn’t 9 to 5.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Greg I mean, you’re looking for assistance. All those things sort of fit into where we would like to go. And the knowledge that I have gained over the the process of working for James. There’s something I’m proud of and would love to be able to help make it a little bit easier for other people. So, yeah, those those conversations did go on for probably 18 months before we sold the business.

Rhiannon Yeah, it’s really important to us. The more that we develop and mature, it’s become, very core to us, actually, both Justin and I that as much as possible, we try and grow our business coaching cohort from past and present business owners. There’s just no substitute for, having done it. And no doubt you’ll agree that, you know, when somebody.

I mean, and a lot of people listening to the real franchise series are listening because they’re considering starting a business and they’re considering franchise networks as or maybe, most definitely doing their research and comparing all of their options, which is what we encourage. How do you think having done it for five years has helped you to be able to step into this role of business coach and help others?

Do you think that it’s going to make you a much better business coach?

Greg Thinking of like, like a it’s going to make me a good business coach for the James network, but also in general,

A franchise is very structured in some ways, that allow people to get an easier start in to running a business environment. But nothing is ever static in this world. Things change. Things you always run into new scenarios, that need a little bit of leftfield thinking sometimes to to make, both parties or all the parties happy that that you can, you can accommodate change.

And every single franchise in this network will be doing that on a daily basis. As I get slightly out of, out of the ordinary requests in regards to services or things to the business decisions to be made, employment opportunities, yeah. For employing staff coming from different avenues and venues. There’s, there’s just so many little things that, you sort of put in your back pocket as learning processes that, hopefully some of those when other people in, in the network run into them.

Yeah. I’ll might have an answer or a solution or a, yeah, an observation that might help them like make a decision that works for them.

Rhiannon Yeah. I think there’s a lot of power in in having done it and the experience that comes with that. Because, you know, when somebody is having a really tough day, you know, those first 12 weeks are really critical. We in our network. We really coach to that first 12 weeks being well that is the period of our accelerated start up program.

And our goal in that period is that new business owners, all reach their own, personalized breakeven point that we help calculate with them. That’s the goal for that period. But, you know, there are some there are some real highs in those first 12 weeks. You know, when you’re when you when you’re hitting goals and you’re getting calls and you want your first quote or you get your first five star Google review, there are some real highs, but there are inevitably going to be some low days as well.

And I think that, you know, I think it’s important that we don’t glorify business. Ownership is something that’s really simple and easy to do because it’s not it. It can be a real slog. You know, there are some great rewards on the other side of business ownership. And but it it takes sometimes a bit of pain and a bit of resilience to get there.

And I think that the power of having business coaches in our network who have been there, done that, bought the t shirt is that, you know, you can celebrate the highs, but you can also wrap your arm around their shoulder on the low days and say, mate, I’ve been where you are. It doesn’t feel good, but tomorrow we’re going to get up and this is what we’re going to do.

So I think there’s an awful lot of power to that. Do you think that too?

Greg Oh, absolutely. My business coach. Yeah. Help steer us through the, realigning that goal setting all the time throughout to us. Yeah, it’s part of the process. And, but also when, you know, we dropped a couple of clients early in the piece that hurt. That hurt, from bottom line, from a pride perspective, all sorts of things.

And just to have someone to listen to your downtime, and dig up and keep going. And the other thing I found the actually probably the best thing I ever got from my business coach was that when my boss and I were in, we’re in a partnership. If we didn’t totally agree on a decision, sometimes we needed a third party to.

Yeah. Listen to both sides and give advice. Not give an answer, but give advice.

Rhiannon Yeah, I think that really sums up our whole approach to business coaching, doesn’t it? It’s not about giving someone all of the answers. It is. I mean, how would you sum our approach to business coaching? You’re actually wonderfully positioned to kind of talk pretty objectively about what it is that we do from a strategy perspective and how it is that we help people because, you know, you haven’t been a business coach for a while.

You’ve been now sort of working alongside us now for 4 to 6 months. So, you know, we’ve we’ve finished the transition in process now and you are well and truly up and away and off and running. How would you describe how we help people and the kind of support that we offer?

Greg In the first instance, it really is trying to smooth out the bumps in the road. To try and guide people down best practices, practices. From both the, you know, from from running the business, everything from admin to marketing to. Yeah, doing the job. And that’s all supportive, supportive, supportive. But we are also part of that job is to look at the data that’s going through the system and to and to go, you know, identify when things aren’t quite going.

As you know, we would like to think that they could go forward. And sometimes that does involve a little bit of, a harder conversation, I suppose, in regards to how we’re seeing these sort of results. Our assumptions are that these things are or are not happening. Talk to us, let us know. Yeah. Because it’s because it’s we let it just run its course.

There’s every chance things could go sideways really quickly. So. Yeah. No, it’s it’s it’s support. It’s assistance. It’s gone. It’s, it’s but it’s also to try and keep you on the rails in regards to keeping the business moving forward. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, there are some tough discussions that need to be had. Yeah. But it’s never, never done from a, you know, a personal vindictive perspective.

It’s always done from a, you know, we want to see your business succeed. We want you guys to be happy. And right at the moment it’s tough. And or we don’t think you making the right decisions.

Rhiannon Yeah that’s right. Yeah, yeah. Business coaching is really tough actually because I think a lot of people hear the word coach and just think it’s all about the rah rah support and the, you know, like the you know, being a loud cheerleader and pumping people up and, and it’s all of those things. Right. But it’s also being prepared to have a tough conversation if it’s needed.

And that can be really tricky. And it’s something that all of our business coaches, from time to time, we have to go there and we have to do it. But you’re absolutely right. It’s never personal, and it’s never out of malice, and it’s always rooted in a data that, hey, we’re looking at your numbers and things aren’t going right here, but it’s also rooted in, you know, one of our core philosophies, which is if we just if we just allow you to do things the way that feels comfortable to you all the time, that’s not necessarily what’s required to get you the outcomes that you really, genuinely want to get in your business.

And our focus is that, yeah, main priorities that you’re getting, the outcomes you want. The only goal we have for our business owners is that they get to that break even in those first 12 weeks. Beyond that, we are working with you to help you get to your own goals. The beauty of a business coach is that sometimes you don’t quite know what’s holding you back from reaching those goals that you have for yourself.

And we’ve done this so many times. We’ve seen what works in our system and what doesn’t work, and we can bring all of that experience to each individual business in our network and say, right here is where we think it’s not working for you. Let’s see if we can change this up. So yeah, our our approach to coaching is it is the rah rah support.

Absolutely. It is the shoulder around you on the hard days. But it’s also if there’s a roadblock we will identify it. We will absolutely roll up our sleeves to help you blow it up. But sometimes that conversation around identifying it and acknowledging that it’s sitting there can be a little bit tough.

Greg Yeah. And from my perspectives. I had very little idea this. What was involved in this role in regards to helping steer the ship. Where some of these discussions were coming yet being brought up with my business coaching, you just think day you go, what are we talking about? Finished conversation. Yeah. Oh, well, that makes sense.

Yeah. And resetting of goals and stuff. But yet now sitting on the other side of the fence to really understand the the logic behind why we do what we do.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Greg Sorry, I, I think it’s very exciting. And you can never, I don’t believe as a franchisee you never really. Understand well, where some of this stuff comes from and to you finish up and you going, well, in my case, having to go reread the reread the rule book. Yep. And go, that makes sense.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Greg I mean, that’s what we’re we’re getting that that’s what I thought was bothering me.

Rhiannon Yeah, I think I think so much of it is that we’re thinking bigger picture for you for for our business owners. And that is the very role of a business coach. Right. You know, if we were only there to, you know, send you leads and help you with your marketing and help you with a bit of bookkeeping, well, there’s not much value in that, right?

You can go learn that stuff off. Would be cheaper to do a bit these days, right? So I really say that the role of our business coaches is, is much elevated from the day to day operations of the business to, hey, this business is a vehicle and it can get you business owner any way you want to go.

You tell me what direction we’re pointing this vehicle in, and then my job is your coach is to help you get there as much as I possibly can. And so I think that maybe, maybe what some of our business owners don’t necessarily realize at the time when they’re in the weeds and they’re doing it and they’re at the coalface, is we are your strategic direction, we are your guide.

It’s at that high level, and we are the ones going, hey, you need to pull more, more out of this than just, you know, a little bit of flexibility now and, and a decent kind of an income. You know, we want to make sure this is getting you where you actually want to go in your life and beyond.

So I think that’s very much how we view the business coaching role. It’s it’s a much higher level strategic role than I think maybe people think.

Greg And I know with that push from my business coach in regards to resetting goals, I would have I know I don’t quite easily, but I would have got to a point where I was like, I don’t know, I can get much more out of this.

But having someone come along and go, where do you want to get to? Where we need to get more out of it. Let’s sit down and look at the ways that we can get more out of it, rather than you just physically doing more work, which is what most of our business coaches don’t want to do. So most of us.

Yeah, yeah. Business owners that don’t want to do that. Yeah. So when that when their business is very successful, but you don’t want to be on the tools from. break of dawn to. That’s, that’s what we got out of this. Got out of that environment to, to run our own businesses. Yeah. And there’s ways and means of making that happen.

Yeah. Sometimes you just need a bit of understanding to, if I do these things, I can back off a day or so.

Rhiannon Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So you you’ve now sort of started working with a couple of, very new business owners, so new that they are not yet operating businesses in our network, but our process is that throughout and onboarding period, the business coach is highly involved, and we really do a lot to start to get the wheels of somebody’s business moving very, very early.

Can you talk just a little bit about what you’ve been doing in the very early onboarding stages with some of your brand new business owners?

Greg Yeah, absolutely. Because it is literally the last couple of days of what I’ve been doing with a couple of them. And it is, everything from, you know, ensuring that I have IBM numbers, registering new business names, discussions around ensure the relevant insurances for the type of businesses around organizing practical training places, dates, times, sessions, yeah.

It’s just that this the checklist is about 120 items. And we just what works for them.

Rhiannon And that’s what we do. By the way, for anybody listening, your checklist is not 120 items. That’s 120 things we do for you to help get your business started. That is a little bit of a checklist for you guys as well. But part of Greg’s role in any business coaching networks role is to prompt you and guide you as to when you need to do the things on your side of the checklist and otherwise.

We’re working. We’re working our tushies off behind the scenes to try and help you get started. Greg, what’s the goal of that? Because most franchise networks just kind of wait until you get people into training. And then kind of all happens just from that training day. We have such an emphasis on starting all of these kind of business setup admin tasks well before you even come to training with us.

Why is our emphasis on getting you started so early?

Greg Quite simply, we want you to start your business and stop. Literally start your business, not set up your business.

Rhiannon Yes.

Greg On day one, we want you to be able to go out there and get our first job.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Greg Your marketing will already be in process. We will have prompted you to be talking to friends and family and groups at your, you know, community groups that you’re a part of. Just to let them know what you’re doing. You know, you can be amazed how much support you get from from people you already know. Yes.

Yeah. It’s just so that the that massive administrative burden of getting a business up and running, you know, we want to try and have as much of that is not all of that done dusted up so that when we come to actually doing the business training and the practical training, your focus is on those things, not,

Oh, got a storm on Sharon Stone. Yeah.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Greg Yeah, yeah. So that way the focus is truly on that fast, scenario where when you finish training, you at the door and you, you’re not you’re not hamstrung by still lying to get paperwork done.

Rhiannon Yeah, exactly. That’s boring. We want to get all of that squared away. Well, and truly, before you start, so that you can focus 110% of your efforts on actually getting work and getting paid for it. And, and so much of that is just in acknowledgment of the practicality of this, which is that starting a business, can be really scary, particularly if you’ve gone from a salaried position full, you know, most of your employed life, which is, you know what most people come to us with a background of is, you know, having been an employee.

And it’s really scary to go from just show up to work and they’ll pay you to actually now I’m wholly responsible for the income that I see in my bank account. So our fast start principle is just wholly in recognition of how fearful it can feel. And, you know, our process that we put you through is to try and give you some comfort that we really are focused on making sure that you are earning an income in your business from as early as practically possible.

We don’t want to tie you up in the adventure forever. We want to get that squared away so that you can get to growing your business really quickly. Greg, before we wrap up, I’ve got one last big question for you.

Over the last sort of 4 or 6 months that we’ve been transitioning you into this role, I think that, you know, you’ve you’ve developed definitely an appreciation for the scope of this sort of role that the time it requires and also the passion and the dedication that you need to have as a business coach in our network to be able to help our business owners.

And there’s a lot of energy that goes into being a business coach and being a successful one. Why, why, why do you do this? Why do you want to spend your days helping other business owners in our network?

Greg Realistically, I like to help people.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Greg I have you know, it’s not been a 30 year journey for me. It’s been five years of running my own business. And even with all the support we had, it’s still, you know, there there were things that you had to learn the hard way. Yeah. I it step outside the scope of the franchise. Yeah. Don’t don’t go and quote over the phone.

I did it once.

Rhiannon Yeah I think everybody does. Then I then I learned really quickly why we say hey don’t quote over the phone.

Greg And email that don’t quit over the phone. We also acknowledge that you will. Yeah. And then you figure out why you don’t quit over the phone, because.

Rhiannon You’ll also give an hourly rate at some stage, just out of pure desperation to win a job. And then you show up to the job and you realize that you’ve wildly under quoted and again, you realize, hey, this is why they tell us not to do that.

Greg But yeah, now there’s just so many little things that, you know, you, you encounter in your journey on your business journey. And yeah, I personally, I just want to be able to help people discover those or discover a way of getting things done that at times will be less painful than the way I did it.

Rhiannon Yeah, yeah. Helping people to learn from what I was like. Your process was different.

Greg And that was right or wrong wasn’t always right. I can tell you.

Rhiannon I think that’s the story of business ownership. You you learn, you learn a lot constantly. And I think all our business owners learn that very quickly, that this is not something that you pick up in two weeks of training. That’s and that’s and that’s why we have business coaches. That’s why you have the role that you have.

Greg Yeah.

Rhiannon Well I think that that’s a perfect place to leave this episode of The Real franchise. Greg, thank you so much for being willing to come on board into the head of this team as a business coach. We are absolutely stoked that someone who has successfully operated the kind of business that you did, it was large. It had staff, it was well-run.

You had an incredible local reputation for the quality of your work. Having someone who just absolutely personified everything about our brand, then be willing to share that bank of knowledge and experience with new business owners is it a pinch me moment for Justin and I that we have such incredible knowledge and experience? Willing to share that and help our next tranche of business owners?

And I, I feel very privileged to have you as part of the the head office team. So thank you for joining and thank you for the dedication you have already shown to our new business owners and our existing. And I am very keen for many more business owners in our network to have your support as their business coach.

Greg Thank you. Thank you guys for the opportunity to take on this role. And you know that there’s a yeah, a high percentage of franchisees out there that as their businesses. Yeah. Or as that they want to move on from running their own business. We’ll be wanting to. Yeah. So say that there’s sort of opportunities that have been made available to me.

Yeah. So onwards and upwards.

Rhiannon Absolutely. Yes. Well, we’re going to leave this episode of The Real franchise right here. Thank you so much for anybody who has listened all the way through. We hope that was helpful and insightful, and we hope that maybe it’s given you a little bit of a window into Greg. Potentially we may have sent you to watch this video if you’re coming into our network and if we have paired you with Greg.

So I hope that’s been helpful in, giving you a little bit of a get to know Greg opportunity. Thanks again for listening. And we shall see you very soon in the next episode of The Real franchise.