The Real Franchise – Ep10 – How we steer the ship

Watch the full episode of The Real Franchise Episode 10 – here

Rhiannon Hello, and welcome to The Real Franchise, a video series designed to deliver real information, real answers, and real insights into franchising. This series is brought to you by Jones Home Services Australia. I’m the CEO and Justin is one of our owners and our head of new businesses. Together, we’re going to tackle all of the big topics unscripted, unplanned and unfiltered.

No sales, no fluff. We’re just going to give you information straight up. Today’s topic is all about how we steer the ship. Where are we going? What is James Home Services Australia going to look like at the end of this year? The end of next year and beyond. How big do we want to be. What is our ethos. How do we operate.

What kind of moral compass do we use? Today we’re going to talk about all of those things so that if you’re researching us, if you’re considering a bit of a change, if you’re thinking that maybe a James business might be right up your alley, then you can get a real feel for whether what you’re looking for in terms of a new business environment is what we’re trying to create here at James.

So, Justin, let’s just dive straight into the big question. How do we steer the ship and where are we taking James Home Services Australia in the next few years?

Justin I think just coming right back to the basics, how we steer the ship is driven by this thing we call gold medal service, all of our advertising. you know, for people that are looking into James, you’ll see this logo. I call it a secondary logo of Gold medal service. And for me, it means four key things.

and I say this to everyone when I do the initial information session, that gold medal service means being prompt, professional, and friendly. But the fourth thing, that’s the foundation of everything. And this is how we steer the ship, is it’s by acting honestly and with integrity at all times. And I think foundationally, that flows right through the business.

And it starts with that’s how we steer the ship is with honest acting, with honesty and with integrity in everything that we do. And and I know that’s for both of us. That’s been one of the key things right from day one that we’ve gone right. We’ve got to stay true to our morals and, and, and keep that compass in front of us all the time because it is a challenging business environment.

Rhiannon yeah. You can see that even in this video series. Really. You know, the fact that what we do is we just talk about the topics openly and give as much information as possible. You know, we’re not trying to gate keep gatekeeping us ten years ago. We don’t do that. And, you know, we don’t try and ask someone to submit an inquiry and then jump through ten hoops before we’ll just share information about our network and about where we’re going and about who we are and about what we do, and about what it costs and what the likelihood of success is in the leads that we generate.

We just talk about all that stuff really openly, and that is us living out our ethos of being open and honest and working with an enormous amount of integrity, sitting behind everything that we do and all of the decisions that we make. Yeah, it’s really important. Where where are we going? What what is what are the goals for James Home Services in the next couple of years?

Justin Yeah, this is something I think for both of us. We’ve been really honing in on that. You know, when we took over the company four years ago now, I think we had all these big wild dreams, which were all great. But I think as you start to walk a journey, like we’ve really found, and we’ve been sharing in the previous episodes, you know, the sorts of people that this business really works for.

So that’s really caused us to focus our goals into, you know, we don’t want to be well, we certainly don’t need to be the hugest franchise in this space. And and I don’t think I think you’d agree Rhiannon. And we don’t want to be that.

Rhiannon We don’t we don’t want to be the biggest. We don’t want to be the loudest. We don’t want to be the most polarizing. We don’t need to be out there in everybody’s faces every five seconds. But we want to be the best. We want to be the best at what we do, the best in supporting our teams and the best in terms of the service that our teams offer their customers.

That’s what we want. And I think actually in order to pursue that goal of being the best, it actually lends itself perfectly to being smaller, because smaller means we are not. This careering out of control behemoths. You know, being smaller means that you and I still have personal contact on a daily basis with our team members, with our franchisees who are at the coalface, who are the ones carrying our brand for us.

And on behalf of us, it’s really important, I think, that actually our goals over the last couple of years have been refined down. You know, we did have a goal of being around 500 franchisees strong in the first five years, and we’re four years in and we’re nowhere near that number. And we have since refined that number down.

And now what we’re really aiming for is a network of 2 to 300 really amazing businesses, businesses that are kicking goals personally and professionally for themselves, that are earning what they would like to be earning, whatever that is for them. We don’t stipulate what that is. You know, we obviously had some, some targets around what we know people need to be earning to break even in one of these businesses as well as well.

You know, what is the general understanding of what people need to be earning then to cover lifestyle costs? Yes, but being smaller allows us to work with people individually and one on one, and in a really consolidated and. Logical kind of a way to get them to their goals. And I just think that when you’re, when you’re enormous, you can’t afford that kind of time and investment in each of your teams.

And so for us, it’s been, it’s been a case of, of actually adapting our business model so that it works at a smaller number so that we feel we can service that number a lot better.

Justin Yes. Let’s totally agree. Totally agree. Yeah. I think yeah, we were originally thinking thousands of, you know, businesses around the country. And that’s a great. But we’ve learned it’s so much better, so much more efficient. And I think our head office to also enjoy having working with a team we know like nationally, you and I both know it.

Well, I, I personally know every single person in this network, you know, business owner and there’s not many huge businesses out there that can say that. And that lends to a whole lot of things that we can be agile. you and I like it a lot better information back, I think, because we’re a lot closer to the coalface, so to speak.

and so we can make better informed decisions. And it’s just been really exciting to see how we’ve been able to focus and get that direction. And really, you know, as we’ve been even developing these episodes, in, in this podcast series that we’ve just become clearer and clearer on who we see does really well in these businesses.

And then ethically, you know, if we’re going to talk about that moral compass ethically, well, that’s who we really want to be focusing and, and working with to help, you know, those groups of people.

Rhiannon Yeah. We, when I’m interviewed for outside podcast series, I’ve, I’ve done quite a few now. And, one of one of the questions I get asked an awful lot is, you know, what are the goals? How big do you want to be? Where are you going? And, and you know, the sort of listeners of those podcasts, I really are listening because I want, you know, that listening to inspirational business leaders talk about growth and development and, and, you know, so, so often the question is kind of a loaded one.

They’re wanting me to give some aspirational kind of an answer, and I kind of have to preface and say, actually, my answer is going to be like a little bit like a little bit boring. But actually I’m not chasing numbers for numbers sake. We’re not chasing growth for the sake of saying that we’re growing really quickly. We’re not chasing growth for the sake of headlines.

We’re not chasing growth for the sake of numbers. We’re not chasing growth so that, you know, all of the like the reporting sheets that we give to directors, like we’re not chasing growth for that. We’re chasing growth sustainably because we know we’ve built a system that genuinely supports people to grow great businesses. And we want to share that.

We know that we’ve got a platform that when you follow our system, the system works for you and you can grow an incredibly successful and sustainable business within our network. And we back our system. So we want growth because we want to share our hard work with others. But we don’t need to be enormous in order to do that.

And in fact, if we are, we lose that personal touch. I often say to our head office team and, and and you and I often talk about this. We have a little bit of a saying at head office. It’s, we steer this ship with sharp business acumen, but a strong moral compass. And the sharp business acumen is what you employ.

a CEO for, you know, the CEO is in charge of making sure that you’re making really sharp business decisions. You know, they stack up financially. You’re heading in the right track. The CEO is implementing, your directions as the directors of the company as to where we’re going. And, you know, you can only do that with sharp business acumen.

You’ve got to know what you’re doing. You know, you it’s not just we think we’re going here, we think we’re going here, and we think we’re doing this. And and it’s sharp business acumen. But the important part of that statement is the second part, and it’s the part about strong moral compass. And frankly, when it comes down to making harder decisions in this network, what guides those decisions is that strong moral compass.

And how we steer the ship really comes down to that strong moral compass every single day. Yeah.

Justin And I think, well, I was just looking at some figures, in our system yesterday and that strong moral compass, you can see the fruits of that playing out there. I was just looking, you know, most companies would go, oh, you got to chase numbers, right? And we have this subscription model that no one else has. People can get in for only $1,000.

Yeah, it’s the cheapest, best like thing out there. So we could have a flood of new people ethically that would be the wrong thing to do. And we’ve in fact got tighter on who we select. You know, you and I have seen we probably halve the percentage who we approve. Now. but when you look at when we took over four years ago, the average hourly rate that people were earning across our network, it’s almost exactly double now.

Four years on, we’ve nearly doubled the average hourly rate of people in our business owners earning twice as much per hour. So in fact, our company has doubled without any increase in numbers of people on the ground. All right. And and that that I think is just such a huge win all around for our business owners. And it’s all hinged off that moral compass thing.

You know, we’ve got a great thing, a subscription model where we could let the world join. Yeah. But it’s like, no, no, no, we need to be focused on working with people, helping them be successful. And that’s how we stay the ship.

Rhiannon Yeah, that’s exactly right. You’re it’s such a great point. We have got this world first product in a subscription model. And we have seen over the last few months, particularly inquiry volumes skyrocket. You know, it was it was it June. We received almost 450 inquiries now for other networks in Australia that are much larger than we are. That number is not significant.

However, for us, 450 people in one single month making an inquiry about joining us is and enormous amount of people showing an interest in our network. And it would be so easy just to open the gates and say, if you can come on in, you all feel like really great people come on in. And for us, instead, it’s a case of saying, actually, we have some really strict criteria that you must meet in order for us to invite you in, in order for us to grant you a franchise.

And that’s not to say that the bar is impossible to jump over. It’s just to say we really have learned who is more likely to make a successful business in our network and ethically. Now we are only going to offer franchises to those people who we know are statistically more likely to make it work, you know, and it’s not impossible to meet those criteria.

You know, so many of so many of those criteria are just basic things. A clean police check being an Australian citizen, having some basic I.T and admin skills to you, you know, if you’ve got previous experience in sales or admin or management to your advantage, but also not necessarily a requirement, we can teach you those things. Well. We actually mainly look look for is your attitude.

Are you prepared to take ownership over this? You’re not our employee. You’re a business owner in our network. So you have all of our support. We are on call. We will hold your hand. We will give you a gentle, healthy nudge in the right direction if you need it. We’ll do all of those things. But we don’t employ you.

You, your own person. You own your own business. Are you prepared to take ownership for that? And what we say is that people who really are make it work, and they are successful in our network, and when they follow our system, it results in a strong, healthy business. So we’ve gotten really good at identifying those individuals, and they are the ones who we offer a franchise to.

And other people who are just looking maybe for, for the work to be sent to them more in a subcontractor kind of model or, you know, looking really essentially for another employment kind of opportunity. We just know that you’re not going to be the right fit for us. So, yeah, we could offer you franchise, we could get you in, we could sign you up.

We can train you up. You know, we can do all of those things. But at the end of the day, it’s not it’s not ethical for us because we know that you’re going to find it really hard to build a business. We know that we’re going to spend an enormous amount of time supporting you, and we don’t have any issues in spending time supporting someone.

But we like to see that support translate to outcomes for the business owner. And in cases where we just know that that’s not going to be the case, I just don’t feel like it’s ethical to offer a franchise. So yeah, we’re we’re chasing growth. We absolutely are. We think that we can be 2 to 3 times the size that we are now, and be a very healthy network, but maintain control over our brand, our reputation and, and maintain control over the quality of support that we’re able to offer our business owners.

But I don’t think that we need to be enormous. We don’t need to be the loudest. We don’t. We just don’t need to be. And I think our head office team, I mean, what what do you think? I tend to think that our head office team operates so well together at the moment. If we were to grow and then need an enormous expansion to our team, what kind of impacts do you think that might have?

You know, it’s, Yeah, the team at the moment work really effectively, right?

Justin It does. It does then. And I just think this journey steering the ship is part of us as a leadership team each step of the way, just reassessing, making sure we’re staying true to to our moral compass, which is to do the right thing by people to act honestly and with integrity. Yeah, yeah.

Rhiannon Yeah. That’s exactly. And you know, I want to share something that, honestly, it feels slightly uncomfortable to share, but when I first sat down with your business partner and he said to me, oh, I’m thinking about buying a national franchise network, talking about James Home services that at the time, I was working for him as a special specialist business advisor.

And so I would advise on sort of investments and opportunities that he was looking at. And he said, I’m thinking about buying a national franchise network. I’m going to put you into the due diligence team, and due diligence is just a fancy way of saying that before you buy a business, you do a deep dive and you make sure that what you’re buying is worth worth it with what you valuing at it and be you know exactly what you’re about to walk into if you do end up purchasing, he said.

So I think, you know, I’ll put you in on this due diligence team to do a deep dive on James Home services. And I remember sitting opposite him that day and when he said the words, I’m thinking about buying a national franchise network, and I might put you in on the due diligence team. I remember kind of thinking, or a franchise network.

I don’t really know if that aligns with my morals and ethics. I’m not sure if that’s anything I want to be part of, and honestly, that feeling was based on nothing. It was based on pure naivete and based on never having had any involvement previously in a franchise network. And what I realized pretty darn quickly when I got in after meeting you for the first time, and after talking more with your business partner about what you wanted to do and where you wanted to take this, I realized that actually the stigma around franchise networks and the stereotype around franchise networks for being unethical or for being not truthful, not acting with integrity, doing the wrong

thing by their franchises. Yes, there are those stories out there. There’s a reason why the stigma exists. There are those stories, however. We, you and I and our leadership team here at James, we decide how we operate this network and we do not fit that stereotype. We do not submit to that stigma. There is there is not a decision in this network that we’ve made that doesn’t have our franchises and their best interests centralized, frankly, and even sometimes the hardest decisions we make and we make the decision that is in the best interests of our network and not necessarily in the best interests of, say, the ownership at the time or our leadership team at

the time. We find a balance, but at the end of the day, what we really want to make sure we’re doing is steering our ship with that moral compass and I’m I’ve now been engaged by James Home Services for four over four years, four and a bit years now I think. Yeah, for four years. And I now have no hesitations whatsoever about being involved in a franchise network.

Justin And it would make a good episode or for another podcast talking about franchising and, and, where maybe that stigmas come from and what’s reality, what’s what’s truth. And there’s obviously there’s a reason people there’s a reason a valid reason for your initial reaction.

Rhiannon Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There is. That’s right. But four years on, I can honestly say that, and four years of experience in this network has determined that we don’t fit. We don’t fit that stigma, but we don’t fit that stereotype. We do things very differently. And I think sometimes we don’t actually act like a franchised network. You know, we act as a bit of a hybrid.

You know, there’s there’s lots of things we do that are synonymous with franchising. And then there’s lots of things we do that really kind of fit that bill as like a, a really entrepreneurial startup. You know, the way that we operate, the pace with which we move, the agility that you mentioned before that we’re afforded because of our smaller size, you know, there are networks in our sector that just couldn’t offer the subscription model because they’re so large that that volume of change is just almost impossible for them to be able to achieve because of the sheer size.

And I think something that’s quite important to us is that our a smaller size means that we maintain agility, and the world moves at such a pace that agility is really important. And yet it’s become a buzzword. Everybody says it, but we do it. We make decisions fast and we move fast. We implement fast. We change strategies on a dime.

You know, one day we’re going this direction, the next day we’re changing it. And that’s not to say that we’re erratic in our decision making, but we are responsive and we are proactive. And that’s the important part, I think, and staying smaller allows us to do that.

Justin Yep. Yeah, it’s good.

Rhiannon Well I think that may and that is a natural place to leave this episode. I think you very naturally hinted, however, at what we should talk about in the next one. So, thank you for everybody who’s listening. Thanks for tuning in. If you’re if you’re enjoying the series, if you’re finding it really helpful, throw us a like on the video.

It really helps our channel. It helps to be able to show this video out to more people who might actually also gain some value out of listening or watching it. throw us a like and leave us a comment if what we’re discussing has been really helpful, leave us a comment, leave us some feedback. Or if there’s a topic we haven’t tackled yet that you just want some straight up answers to and look frankly, even if you’re not interested in James, even if you’re just looking into franchising generally and you just want some straight up answers about how this industry operates, throw us a comment down below and and we’ll chat about it.

We’ll have a discussion, and we’ll give you some information and some insights that are relevant to us, but might also be valuable to you. So we’ll leave this one here, and hopefully you’ll join us in the next episode of The Real franchise.