Taking Back Control: How to Secure Your Income in Uncertain Times | The Real Franchise – Ep 60

Rhiannon Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Real Franchise, a podcast that goes where others simply won’t. An unfiltered view of franchising, business mindset and everything that we stand for when it comes to supporting a community of small business owners. Join me, Rhiannon, the CEO for James Home Services, and Justin, one of our owners, as we unpack it all with no topics off limits.

Justin, today we are talking about something highly topical right now in our network. It seems that this is the word on everybody’s lips right now, and it is control. Over the last couple of weeks. You’ve told me multiple times you’ve had lots of conversations with people reaching out because they are looking for more control over their income. Do you want to share just a little bit about those conversations, just so that anybody listening can, if it resonates and helps them, you know, with maybe whether they say this video might be relevant to them, what sort of conversations have you been having and why people are reaching out right now?

Justin Yeah, it’s been a recurring theme. So it’s been the conversation has all been around. Quite a few of the people I’ve been speaking to have been recently made redundant where in their corporate job or their what I thought was a secure job, and all of a sudden have realized I’m without a job. And I don’t want to put myself in that position again, where all of a sudden my rug has been pulled out from under me.

So they’re looking for something that they have control of or something where they control their income. I just had a great conversation this morning with a guy who’s in a corporate job at the moment, looking at the current economic climate, and he’s going. His exact words were, Justin, it doesn’t matter how big of a company you work for, you can cop a phone call and be told you made redundant.

So I’m looking for something where my wife and I can get control of our income and know that we are in control. So that’s been the theme of the last couple of weeks. And I guess how we landed on today’s topic for yeah, how do people get control? Yeah. What did we do that steps them into being in control of their business and their income.

Rhiannon Yeah, I think this is also going to become even more of a topic of discussion as we move forward over the next 12 months. Given that, as we’re recording this, just 48 hours ago, the RBA made a decision to actually increase rates. They were expected to at least hold, if not decrease. And they chose to increase.

And some of the commentary that’s coming out at the moment around the impact that will have on the economy is particularly around the impact on the unemployment rate and the prediction that it will increase, and it will increase to a point that means that over the next 12 months, there will be between 100 and 120,000 people, lose their jobs.

That will be up to 120,000 people less in our employed sector in 12 months time. And, you know, it’s it’s just a number. Not until you think about the fact that that’s the whole population of Darwin in the next 12 months, finding themselves in a position of having to figure out what’s next for them. So I guess this conversation is not just relevant right now, but it may be relevant and become more relevant over the coming months.

So yeah, let’s talk about let’s talk about the things that we do in our network to actually give control and ensure that our business owners have control. I think one of the biggest things that we do that, that we do, I think much stronger than most, is we teach people to fish for themselves. What does that mean?

We use that language internally. Our teams all know exactly what it means to fish for themselves. But for anybody who’s not up with our lingo, what does that mean?

Justin We teach you how to get your own jobs, how to land your own income that gives you control. Like I speak to around 100 people every month that that inquire because they see our ad for our subscription model. Yeah. It’s only $1,000. And so many of these people I speak to like. Right. So you give me all the contracts, you give me all the jobs, which on the surface level sounds great, right?

Don’t we all just want everything just handed to us on a platter? But also what that means is you don’t have control. And so if you’re reliant on anyone, just feeding you, what happens when that company or individual that’s giving you all those jobs start? Somebody else ran the down the road. Like this is what we see happen in the industry.

And all of a sudden you’re left sitting here. Oh, I simply haven’t got enough income coming in. So one of the very first things, literally day one of training, and you’ve just done training this week with some new people that have stayed with us. Day one, we take people through a course that we’ve put together that’s called 51 Ways to Generate Leads for Your Business.

So we teach you all the things that the easiest way I find thinking about it right out of this, the things that are in there that we teach the business owner to do, basically things that don’t cost money. Yeah, we have an awesome marketing team that will take care of pretty much all the paid advertising so that, you know, as a business owner with us, doesn’t have to spend money extra if they don’t want it on marketing, but it’s all those other practical things that we really equip them.

Sorry, I know I’m raving, but it’s something I’m passionate about. I just had a great “meet the team” meeting where, people who were going through the information process last night got to meet a heap of our, business owners and got. And they were talking, with one of our newest starters. I won’t mention names because I’d like to be able to mention income figures.

And he’s in his third week, and his business just started. So the people looking at joining, and they were lawn and garden, were keen to find out. How do you go? You know, week one, week two, week three. And, you know, it was really exciting. I think week one was like seventeen hundred dollars. He did, and he was sharing.

Next week. He’s already got 4500 dollars booked in for next week. And that’s next week’s week four. Oh and and what I, I sort of paused everything at that point and just wanted to highlight to the people looking exactly what we’re talking about now because as you know, all that paid advertising doesn’t really kick in and going, well, we don’t start it until certain things are set up in the business and then paid advertising takes a few weeks to really gain momentum.

Yeah. You know, it’s not an instant you turn on an ad and as you know, people just start ringing right. So what’s really exciting about what this individual has done is they’ve taken those 51 ways and they’ve just gone out at 150%. Put those things into place in their community, because the bulk of the work that he’s getting has to be stuff that he has generated through learning how to feed himself.

Yeah. And, and so full credit to him, he’s used the system to be in total control. And now the exciting thing for him, and this is what I was saying to the group and him last night, is our income is just going to keep building on that. Oh sorry. Our marketing.

Rhiannon Yeah that’s.

Justin Great. Building on his income.

Rhiannon That’s exactly right. Yeah. And I think I think for anybody listening going, yeah, but I’ve never done any marketing myself like this is a, you know, it’s an area of uncertainty and I have no skill. And, you know, are you really going to be able to teach me with no experience in marketing how to generate leads? Yes, yes we are.

And, I did just complete delivering some training this week to new business owners that was starting, and we actually had one of our head office team join me for that training, who had never sat in on our eight steps training before. And her comment to me at the end of day one was Rhiannon, I can’t believe that someone can walk into this training with absolutely no experience of having run a business, or marketed a business, or quoted a job before, and by the end of day one, they can literally go out and do this stuff because of the level of detail and how simple the training is to follow along with.

So I think that was a really great reminder to me that our training is really good. We do take it down to a granular level. So if you’re listening and you thinking, okay, it’s all well and good that you guys teach me how to market, but I’ve got no experience. It’s okay. Most people don’t. And you can still get fantastic outcomes just so long as you’re following the system that we train you in.

Justin Yeah. So good. And if you do have some experience, well, great, because this is just going to add to your knowledge. You’ll quickly see yes that’s going to work.

Rhiannon Yeah. Absolutely. I think that the second core area where we really differ from a lot of networks in making sure that our business owners are in full control is when it comes to quality and pricing. There are some networks that, you know, like the networks that say kickback. We’re going to send you all the leads, right?

It sounds great. There are some networks that say kickback, we’ll send you. The job’s already lined up. You just show up at the date and the time in the address that we send to you. Right. Sounds great. Can I hand over to you to MythBusters and to play devil’s advocate? Because that doesn’t put you in control. What do we do that makes sure that our business owners are actually in control of that whole side of the process of their business, and.

Justin That’s another part of the key training as we train you in our quoting system. So we will equip you, the business owner, to quote your jobs, because the examples you just gave of where they hand you contracts, hand you jobs, they’ve secured those jobs because they’ve gone out and quoted the job, they’ve set the price and often and I have had this discussion hundreds of times with people that have bought contracts that have gone down that path for their own business.

And I get great. I’ve got, you know, I’ve picked up X number of thousands of dollars a week contracts from this company. I’m unhappy. And then I go and do the job and it’s like, really? Right. I might as well be working, you know, in a in a cafe flipping burgers because I can’t even pay the bills like it’s because the company is set up and they’ve been able to win the quote because they’ve gone in cheap and it’s easy go and cheap when you’re not the one putting paying the wages to get the job done.

And so I really want to encourage anyone listening. If you’re looking at an organization like that, make sure you’re in control of setting the price, because you want to make sure that your time and effort is rewarded, that you’re not a slave, to just trying to keep the client happy for a very small price. Yeah. So we equip you, we’ve talked, I think, in other episodes about sort of average hourly rates that, that guys, you know, earn across the network, all that sort of stuff.

You know, I be business. You need to be getting rewarded for your extra efforts because it is more effort than just being an employee.

Rhiannon Yeah. And look, my argument, frankly, would be that if you’re in an organization that just simply send you the jobs and you show up, you are just simply a glorified employee. That’s it. Because you’re not really in control, right? You’re not in control of your schedule. You’re not in control of the money that you’re making. You’re not in control of whether you want more work or less work.

That is going to be completely and entirely determined by that company, and whether there are multiple people in your area, and therefore they spread the work between you. You know, you’re not able to get on the front foot, you know, imagine that something happens to your fridge and you need a couple of thousand dollars to replace it. In a model like ours, where you’re fishing for yourself as well as our, the leads that we send you and you’re able to quote and price for yourself.

If something happens and you need extra, you can literally go out and find extra instantly. If you go reliant on another organization to feed you the work, you’ve got to sit back and wait for something to come to you. And it’s really it’s not business strategy, the strategy of crossing your fingers and hoping that somebody else sends you your income.

It’s not a savvy one, and it doesn’t get you in control. Not at all.

Justin No. And it costs you, because in those models that we’re describing, you’re not getting paid super. Now you’re covering your own workers compensation insurance. And I guarantee most people that work under that model don’t have insurance to cover if they get injured or things like that. Yeah, it’s all on you. And you’re working for lower dollars. Yeah. You’ve got to be savvy and look after yourself.

Do your research.

Rhiannon Yeah. Hundred percent. I think the third core area in our model where we really help people to get in control of their income, is actually probably something most people don’t think about. It’s coaching mind set. Justin, back over to you. Talk us through this one.

Justin This is something that that staff person that you were just for our head office team member that was in the training this week. She just raised with me yesterday that just, you know, as Aussies, so many of us want to have our own business. You know, it’s like the ivory tower, you know, we want to be in control.

And that’s what this episode is all about, which is all great. And yet we observe so often people go out on their own and crash and burn. They had all the desire or the passion. They might have even had the opportunities. But yet for some reason, like crashed and burned. And to me, I just put it simply this way.

We don’t know what we don’t know. And in business, when you’re stepping into it’s a whole new world. And one of the things that you and I have changed about our James business model is we have introduced business coaches into our network, and all of our business coaches at the moment have all had James franchises for years. They have all built successful franchises.

They have all had teams of staff running their business. Most of them, all of them by one, have since sold their franchise and now are on board, as a coach with us. And so if you join us, you’re going to have one of these individuals walking the journey with you. And literally a couple of times a week in the first week, they’re going to be catching up and then, you know, but you can call them any time they’re there to support you.

And they’ve done it before. So a lot of what they’re going to be working on, a lot of what we work on is just mindsets and how to handle them. When you get a roadblock that you weren’t expecting, how do you navigate around it? You know, because the challenge, if you’re just out there on your own, if you don’t get it right.

You know, it’s your family’s livelihood. It’s it could be your home. It could be, you know, it really set you back. So just we call it an accelerated start. Right? And I think to me, that’s one of the huge pluses of joining our network is it just accelerates your success. If you just get in and work with the team.

Rhiannon Yeah. One of the things that we’ve noticed over the years and we’ve categorized it now, but we were noticing this trend in our really successful business owners. We came up with this theory that we’ve tested now over the last three years, and it still rings true. And it is, skills versus willingness. We have a matrix and it’s like an x y axis.

And you would think that someone with a high skill set in business ownership is going to always be the most likely to hit success in our network, but actually the most likely to hit success in our network and then stay there consistently are those that have a high willingness. And we talk about willingness, and we talk about willingness to follow a system, willingness to engage with the business coach, willingness to grit their teeth when it gets hard and keep going, determination, persistence, willingness to work with us, willingness to be coached on mindset.

Willingness wins out every single time. If we’ve got a business owner that’s willing, we know we can get them there. The minute that we start seeing someone sign off on the willingness we know that we’ve got an awful lot of, we know we’ve got a hard road ahead of us to sort of bring them back in, turn them around.

Because mindset trumps skills every day of the week. I will say it again and again and again and again. And I am not in home mindset Trump skills. We’ve seen some very skilled business owners not succeed because their mindset was one off. Blame everybody else for what’s happening in their world. Their mindset was one of wait for somebody else to solve the problems for them.

Their mindset was one of an employee, I’ll somebody else will deal with that. That’s not my problem. That’s not my responsibility. He said something mean to me, so I don’t like him and I’m not going to deal with that. The people that succeed are the people that understand that business is about responsibility and accountability and taking control for the decisions that you make.

Yes. And that mindset is not inherent. It’s not natural in all of us. And where we have a business owner that it’s not natural in, we coach them until it is because we know that’s what it takes to be successful in business. And I don’t know, Justin, I don’t know if you’ve ever come across another network that focuses on the soft skills quite as much as we do.

I think it’s really easy to talk about the hard skills, you know, of business ownership. You know, we’ll teach you CRM and we’ll teach you how to market and we’ll teach you how to price a job and quote a job and how to answer the phone. All good and well, all really important. Absolutely means nothing at all. If you don’t have the correct mindset backing at all in day after day.

Justin Yeah. And if you’re listening and you wonder wondering what did they mean by that? Well, one of the things as an example, I was just thinking that coaches go through with this as we talk about and show you things like rationalizations, what does what does it mean to rationalize and so if you’re listening, just to explain what to me, one of the biggest setbacks in business is, is our own rationalizations when when something doesn’t work, like you were saying, with the people who sometimes come to us with super high skills, and if it’s not going, if their business isn’t going the way they want it to be going, it’s not their fault.

It’s because, you know, the RBA put interest rates up or they you know, or.

Rhiannon John area like.

Justin There’s all these excuses. If you want a simple words rationalization excuses we make excuses. The people like succeed okay you know what. If it’s to be it’s up to me. Yeah right. It’s my business. I’ve bought the Ferrari of a business model in James. If I use it, I’m going to succeed. If it’s not quite working the way I want it to, what am I doing wrong?

What do I need to change? That’s the mindset that succeeds.

Rhiannon Yeah, there’s a just there’s just such a stark difference that, you know, there’s a there’s a scale and everybody I mean, as I say, what I’m about to say, you will be thinking of a person in your life that does this right. There are people in life that just simply explain everything away. Yeah. And then there are other people in this life that go, okay, what am I going to do about it?

How am I going to get where I want to go? How am I going to make this thing work? How am I going to make that revenue more than what I want it to be? How am I going to do that? I’m going to get up tomorrow, and what are the things I’m going to do? You can either choose in life to explain why things didn’t go the way you wanted them to, or you can go off and take control for getting them exactly how you want them.

And that is exactly what we’re talking about when it comes down to business. Own a mindset.

Justin You know.

Rhiannon I think the final piece to this puzzle is it’s smaller, but it’s also equally worth mentioning. There’s some things that our model just does that indeed does allow our business owners to have more control over their income. The first thing we do is allow mobile numbers on vehicles and out there in the marketing sphere for your customers to say, Justin, it sounds tiny, right?

Actually, we might group two together. We don’t have lead fees and we allow mobile numbers. Can you explain to us why I’ve groups them together? And why having something so small, like a mobile number visible, might actually make a big difference?

Justin Well, the lead fees, Firstly, something that most of our competitors now do and simply what a lead fee is, is when you receive a lead through the marketing. So in our system, you’ll get a text message in an email instantly. If someone’s call their call center or going through a website or things like that, and they’ll have the customer’s name number often what they’re chasing and sometimes they write address.

So, you know, you call that customer, you’re in control. You call the customer, find out exactly what they want, book a time for a quote, and way you go in most other networks, that lead will cost you anywhere from 1750 to $50 a lead, whether you win the job or not. All right. And so two things about that is the firstly, those leads that you’re receiving.

I’ve just had the title Mind Blank saying.

Rhiannon You can’t switch them off. You know what? This is what I’m thinking about those leads. You can’t switch them off right. So like for example.

Justin Well you can’t switch them off in gyms.

Rhiannon Oh okay. Cool. All right. Well that’s good. Let’s pay credit where it’s due. You can switch them off. But I just have this example in our network of a business owner. We started a couple of weeks ago. We turned on our marketing and 34 leads in the first week. Now, imagine if you’re paying, let’s just say 20 or 30 bucks per lead, right?

This is like, just be careful when you’re when you’re comparing franchised networks, really make sure you’re actually comparing all of the information, you know, because some franchise networks will have like a fixed weekly fee. And then I will have a lead fee as well. So just really consider whether that lead fee bumps, that fixed weekly fee up so high that it makes it a little bit difficult for you then to control the amount of income that you want to learn, learn.

earn we’re both having a moment over here today. It is real and unfiltered, raw and here you go. Here you go. Yeah. So no lead fees I think is important. And I think that, the other thing.

Justin Just on lead fees before we go ahead like to make fundamentally I disagree with lead fees because when you oversee our marketing grant and you see the leads and generate across the company and you know. Yes, and you know which franchisees are active because of the leads being generated, right? So all this training we just talked about earlier about the 51 ways to Market your business, you if the business owner gets out and does that stuff, they’re going to generate lots of leads.

And yet in these other business models you then cop a big bill for that. You’ve done the right thing. You’ve gone out, got active, you’ve generated work, and then you cop a bill. Yeah, it’s like smacking a kid when they do the right thing. And so it’s just it, it’s fundamentally I don’t like it.

Rhiannon We get a bit passionate about this don’t we?

Justin We do. And then like the other thing about, where they don’t allow the mobile numbers, you know, and you have a look if you’re in your area and you drive around, if you see other franchises and whatever you’ll see on the trailers and vehicles, I might have a website and 1800 number or 131 number, but no mobile number.

And it’s simply what we were just talking about that trying to encourage people to contact them so they can charge a lead fee. It’s a major source of revenue for these organizations.

Rhiannon Yeah, because you might have thought listening to that. Oh, okay. That’s fine that they charge lead fees. But if I go out and I market myself, then those leads will come direct to me and I won’t have those fees. Not possible, because some of these networks that charge lead fees when you market, you’re not allowed to market with your mobile number.

So all your marketing work is channeled through that core website that call one 800 number or 1300 number. And about 5 or 6 years ago when you and your new business partner took over, we absolutely just we’ve really stopped using, Our 1800 number much at all. I mean, not that we charge lead fees anyway, but people just want to talk to the business owner directly.

And so you know, we we’ve just really moved to, you know, advertise your mobile number. We want to help you create a successful business. We want to help you control the income that you’re making and the schedule that you’re working to. We don’t want to put any barriers in your way that just don’t need to be there.

Justin That’s right. Yeah. You are in control. Like I think most of these are. I don’t know if you’re like me and personally, I hate being ringing a call center.

Rhiannon Yeah, yeah I’m the same. Yeah.

Justin If I, if I was looking for someone to help, you know, clean the office or clean the house or mow the yard or any of that sort of stuff, I’m going to pick up my phone. I’m going to Google businesses near me, and I’m going to check out a few reviews, and then I’m going to ring the the the guide, the person or the group, the business that I’ve been just reading about.

Right. And if it’s a one through one number or I’m not going to rant on, I want to speak to the person to see if they can help me out. And that’s exactly how our marketing works. Yes, we have one 800 numbers. Like you said. We’ve got the website, we’ve got all that stuff. However, it’s all about funneling that person to you as a business owner so that you are in control.

You manage that relationship. You can get straight on it and it’s just so effective. It it’s so effective.

Rhiannon It is. And it genuinely puts the business owner in a far greater level of control over their business and their income than some of the other options.

Justin Yeah.

Rhiannon I think the very last thing that I want to touch on quickly, we’ve sort of danced around at this whole conversation, but it’s fees and it’s franchise fees And in our model, our franchise fees are a percentage, but they are a low percentage of your turnover. Justin, why does a low percentage franchise fee actually help someone to be in more control of the income that they’re earning.

Justin Because that what you pay is proportional to what you’re earning? You know, pretty much every other business model in our industry in this space that we work in charge is a set fee, right? So it’s a once you sign up that contract, you’re going to be paying X number of dollars every week. Whether your business is going great, but you’re paying that as well.

If it’s not yeah you’re paying that as well. If you quit and decide to go back to your job or, you know, change of circumstance or whatever, it’s locked in a contract. If I x number of dollars every week or every month. On top of that, you pay the late fees in other networks. One of the things that attracted me 15 years ago to the James business model is that it was a percentage, and, you know, and I say this every day to people, how does James make money out of Rihanna?

And if Rihanna was a business owner in our network? Well, if Rhiannon takes a subscription, she’s going to give us $1,000. We’re going to go spend over 15,000, right? If she takes a subscription and she’s going to be paying that back, this paying a subscription of 125 a week. So it takes years for us to make any money on selling around on a business upfront.

So that’s not where we obviously make money. Every other network, a massive chunk of their profit is made in that upfront. So so we don’t make money out of that. So the only other way we can make his fees and as we say, there’s no hidden fees. It’s a percentage which said to me 15 years ago that James was going to make money out of Justin as a business owner, James has to make sure that Justin’s making money.

Rhiannon Yep.

Justin And that’s why we do all this stuff we’ve been talking about today, putting the person in control. This is why we do the coaching. You know, we don’t have to go and employ half a dozen business coaches, but we do because it helps accelerate people’s business. It helps them grow a significant business. We take care of all the paid advertising that never used to happen in the old James, right?

The business owner had to pay for all their own marketing. We now do that because we’ve seen the value of supporting people. But marketing is a technical guy and I don’t know much about it all. And yet we take care of that so that the business owner can be earning good money because our fees are a percentage. If they do well, we do well.

It’s the only way we can make money out of our business owners. Yeah.

Rhiannon Yeah, I think that it’s a really good, telltale sign in a franchise network. If you’re looking at a franchise network and you sort of questioning, are they actually getting the support? Sounds great. Is it real? Have a look at their franchise model that will tell you whether the support is real or not, if their franchise model is a fixed fee where they get paid no matter what your business does, then do your due diligence on what they’re telling you the support is, and really make sure that whatever they’re telling you is truth in practice because they’re not incentivized by their faith structure to actually help you build a business.

All right, you our model. We make money when you make money. And our fees aligned to the incentives, we are incentivized to help you perform in your business, because that’s the way that we make money. And so if you’re wondering whether the support that’s being promised is real or not, it’s far more likely to be real. Where the franchise fees are aligned to your performance as a business owner.

Justin Absolutely. And then the other thing that you and I did a couple of years ago with the fee structure to even sweeten that even further. The more you’re turning over, your fees actually decrease, the percentage decreases.

Rhiannon Yeah, totally. Because if you’re working that hard, you should. You deserve more of it. And we we we have it decreasing at a certain point. And that certain point is just about where someone needs to start employing staff to handle the workload that turns that revenue over. And so it makes perfect and logical sense that when you reach that point, you’re starting to look for a staff person.

And so we decrease our fees so that you are far more financially able to look at a staff person. So yeah, we reduce our fees basically so that you can grow your business even more.

Justin Yeah, yeah. And it’s working like it’s just then I encourage anyone listening, pick up the phone and speak to a business owners, you know, every, every business. And if you join us you’ll have your own web, web page done up. You can jump on our website, everyone’s web pages, they can read about them. Their phone numbers are there.

You can call them and talk to them and the proof is in the pudding.

Rhiannon It is, it is. I think this is a perfect place to leave this episode before I do one final thought. Control is not handed to you. It’s earned. And, a lot of people make the mistake of going into business looking for control, but they go into business prioritizing freedom and flexibility and kicking back a little bit. If you want control, it is an outcome of hard work up front.

And so, you know, what we’ve been talking about overall is choosing a model that aligns with your goals. If your goals are to kick back in that freedom and flexibility and, you know, not having that level of control is is what you prioritize, then the other models that you know, sent just send you the work or market all on your behalf might suit you best.

If you’re genuinely looking for legitimate control, where you do not want to be dependent on another organization’s actions to support your revenue, then please recognize that you do have to put the hard yards in upfront. Getting control is a process, and that process involves hard yards. But I can promise you every single one of our business owners that would classify themselves as having got them to a place of control definitely will tell you it was 100% worth the journey.

Yeah.

Justin That’s right. Yeah.

Rhiannon Excellent. Let’s park it there. Thank you so much for joining us on another episode of The Real Franchise. We hope that you join us again soon.