The Receipts Are In: Let’s Talk Real Results I The Real Franchise Episode 48

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 HomeServices Australia. I’m the CEO and Justin is one of our owners and our head of new businesses. Together, we tackle all of the big topics in this series completely unscripted, unplanned and unfiltered.

No sales, no fluff. We just give you information straight up. Today’s topic is numbers. And today is the first time that I have done a little bit of planning. I know I just said that this whole video series is unplanned and unscripted and unfiltered. It’s all of those things. But I did have to look at and pull some numbers this morning so that we could talk about them, because today’s topic is, results.

Results of our new business owners over the last six months. We’re going to go there. I do not believe there would be another network in Australia that would talk about the results of their new business owners in the last six months for a whole variety of reasons, but we’re going to go there. So, Justin, today we are going to have a discussion about how our new business owners over the last six months are tracking.

Before I throw to you for, a little bit of a lead off with, what’s happening in our network? I do have to issue a couple of caveats to our listeners. Thank you for joining us for this discussion. I’m sure that this video is going to get probably more clicks than any other, because this is going to answer the question that everybody wants to know, quite rightly.

The challenge in franchising is that we cannot make a representation to you about what you might earn in a business, in our network, and that’s not an US rule. That is an Australian government rule. We are legislated and regulated highly to make sure that we are protecting the franchisee. And what that means is that we can’t say anything to you that would make you feel with absolute confidence that you could earn a certain amount in one of our businesses.

However, what we can do is give you actuals. We can give you real live data. And so that is exactly what we’re going to do today. So this is not us saying this is what you specifically could earn in one of these businesses. This is us saying, here is a selection of the new business owners in our network in the last six months.

And this is what they’ve done. And behind all of these numbers, it’s a real person and a real family and real effort and a real genuine intent to follow our system. And it is the combination of effort and following our system that gets good outcomes. So we’re you’re hearing big numbers today. Just know that individual, that partnership that mom and dad have followed our system.

And they’ve given this a 150% of their effort at all times. Justin, one of the things that you take really seriously in your role is not just simply walking someone through the information process and then handling them to a business coach, and then never speaking to them again. You make a real effort to stay in touch with the business owners that you bring into our network, and so what is the feeling at on the ground, at the coalface at the moment?

In this video, we’re just going to talk about new business owners that we’ve started in the last, sort of six months, this current financial year, of which there are around, there are around 25. But really, what we’re talking about today are those that have been going for at least 3 or 4 weeks. And we’ve got that data because we’ve started seven in the last two weeks alone.

So what’s happening on the ground?

Justin Lots. And it’s exciting. Oh, and we were just talking about fear in the last podcast and getting information. And that’s what I love about this, because I love the way we’re transparent and open. Yeah, but I had someone talking to me the other day about another franchise, and they were looking at that, and I just said, well, ask him for the numbers.

Ask him with, you know, we’ll give you the numbers we’ll share. And we’re open and transparent. And so that’s what I love about this video. And and thank you for that caveat because we do have to be careful. The other thing we’re going to do is we’re not going to mention that because, for most of our franchisees, we haven’t spoken to them about this.

So we can give, you know, broad numbers that say, yes, as you mentioned, I try and keep in touch. It’s getting harder and harder to keep in touch with everyone because we’re starting so many people. Which is exciting. But yeah, this week in particular, I’ve been ringing people, talking to people and obviously on the reports on, on, on our system, watching how our people are progressing.

And it’s been really exciting. That accelerated startup program is just having an astronomical effect. You know, we haven’t changed our system. You know, we’ve just brought, as we shared in the last episode, we’ve just brought forward what we do, and we’ve got a lot more focused with our our business coaches have a much more structured plan over those first 12 weeks.

We’ve learned it’s the first 12 weeks that really make or break, you know, and if we can get you up and running successful, successfully earning, you know, decent money in those first 12 weeks, things just go ahead from there. If you’re not earning good money within the first 12 weeks, then it’s only going to go the other way.

And so today’s episode I think we want to look at the numbers. So what have been the results. You know, I think you said 25 of them, which started in the last. Was it five months, 4 or 5 months that are been up and running? Yeah. So you’ve got the numbers in front of you. So back to you really what have been some of the results?

But how’s it going?

Rhiannon Yeah. So, so the next few minutes I’m going to be sort of looking off to the side and, I’ve got a second screen that I’m looking at because I did actually sit down and do some analysis this morning and pull some reports and dive into the numbers a little bit. This is this is my idea of fun, to be honest.

Marketing and numbers. I’m a complete person of contradiction. I love marketing, but I love numbers. So there you go. So, I’m so heartened by what I’m looking at, to be perfectly honest. And the biggest number that stands out to me, that’s a metric we’ve really been focused on improving over the last three financial years now is our, it’s this measure how quickly, on average, do our business owners hit $1,000 a week now, two years ago, that wasn’t happening until somewhere between week eight and wait 12.

And then we brought it back last financial year. That happened around week. On average, it was happening around week six, but some of our high performance were hitting that by week three and week four. In the current financial year, our new business owners are hitting $1,000 a week on average. This is everyone high performance, low performance. Everyone that we’ve started in the last five months, on average, are hitting $1,000 a week at week three, which is wild to me because that means and I’ve got I’ve got about 60% of people have earned an income in week one.

And then on average, we’re hitting $1,000 a week at week three. I do also break our group into high performance and low performance because they are some really stark differences. And I’ll explain a little bit in a minute why we break them up into those two categories. Our low performers. At week three, are only averaging around $300 a week.

Our high performers are averaging like $1,300 a week. I love that question. Yeah.

Justin I know you mentor our business coaches, so what is it practically that you see it as oversight that makes the difference between someone becoming a low performer and someone being a high performing?

Rhiannon Yeah. There are three people in our low performing category, in the last six months. And I can categorically tell you with 100% confidence that none of those three people got out and started marketing like we asked them to. They didn’t participate in the onboarding process like we suggested. They didn’t start their marketing before training. They didn’t do continue their marketing efforts through training, and I sat on their hands until they got all the way through onboarding, all the way through training.

And they got to day one of their trading week, and then they still didn’t get out there in market. And when I say get out there and market, we’re marketing for them, right? We’re generating lots of leads. And these three people, actually, these very campaigns for our low performers generated, above average lead volume. So our low performers received, on average, more leads from us, but they still haven’t been able to get off the ground quick enough.

One, because they didn’t go out there in market and generate their own lead. And two, they aren’t closing quotes at the quote appointment. And I know that that’s really detailed to dive into, but it’s one of our core strategies that we teach new business owners. You must close the quote. You must close on the job at the quote appointment.

Now, I know that that’s a little bit salesy lingo. If you’ve never heard any of that before. All it means is when you go and do the quote appointment face to face. We’ve got a strategy. We’ve got a process that we walk you through that allows you to walk your customer through the quote and all the way to agreeing to the job and scheduling a time for you to come back and do that job.

So that basically when you walk out after doing the, quote appointment, you’ve got that job locked in. Now that’s a critical component to the success. The early success of our new business owners. And the three that I’m looking at here didn’t do that. Yeah. As it felt uncomfortable. It felt confronting. It felt unfamiliar. They didn’t want to do it.

They had all of those sorts of reasons. And no matter how much the business coach practiced with them on that strategy, they didn’t implement it. And so that’s why we’re saying what we’re saying. The ones in a high performing group, I can categorically tell you that that is the absolute opposite scenario. If they got out there and they started marketing right from the very first minute, their business coach first introduced this concept of, hey, go and knock on your neighbor’s door, tell them you’re starting a business and ask if they need your cleaning services.

All ask if they want their lawn mowed. Talk to your friends and family. Posting to your local Facebook group. From the moment the business coach first said that the business owner is in a high performing category, went out and did it, the difference is that conviction. I’m just going to do it, you know? Nike got it so right in their slogan, just do it.

Frankly, that’ll go down in history as one of the best business slogans ever. Just do it. Just do it. And so our high performance just did it. They just followed the system. They just implemented the guidance of their business coach. I didn’t make excuses. They pushed against the resistance and the the feeling of discomfort, and they just did it anyway.

And that’s what makes a fast start in our network. When you follow the system and you just do it so we’re hitting that on average $1,000 a week by week three, everybody is averaging $1,000 a week in week five. But then interestingly enough, our low performers really pulled back after that. They slipped by like, you know, a few hundred dollars a week and they’re just sort of sitting at that 700 to $800 a week on average month from week six, pretty much all the way through up until week 12.

And it’s there that our high performers really start to pull away. And by week 12, our high performers are averaging closer to $1,700 a week. And in that a lot of business owners, what I’ve got here in the detail is that by the time we hit week six, we’ve got at least half of our network is doing in the twos and in the $3,000.

Justin Yeah.

Rhiannon So there’s some pretty cool numbers, the numbers we haven’t seen before, the numbers that definitely tell us that our accelerated startup program is working. Our onboarding program is working, and our business coaches are experts at what they do. And it also is a really good indicator that, our selection process through that information process is working as well.

You know, if you get to a stage where you know, you’re sitting opposite Justin in a meeting and he’s saying, hey, look, I don’t think that it’s the right thing for me to offer you a business in our network. It’s because we are assessing that you are likely to be a low performer based on what we say, based on the data that we have.

Justin Yeah, yeah. And sadly, well, not sadly, at least for this. Have a lot of those conversations. Yeah. You know, and we’re upfront and honest as we’ve shared right through these episodes because it’s not good for you. It’s no good for us if you’re not. We want everyone to be a high performer and so yeah, I guess this is all about numbers and results.

So we rolled out this accelerated start up program 18 months ago.

Rhiannon Yeah. We started we redeveloped. We we were developing it from about 18 months ago. And I think we rolled it out officially just over 12 months ago.

Justin Yep, yep. Now many franchises won’t share their failures and their success ratio. Yeah. And that’s why I get so many people asking. So would you mind sharing what are our results been since we really implemented that.

Rhiannon Yeah. In the last 18 months we’ve started. Well, I don’t have the exact numbers, but it would be close to 50 new businesses now in the last 18 months. And, all of those that we’ve started in the last 18 months, we have had one that hasn’t made it, there.

Justin Are.

Rhiannon There is, as it always is, a melting pot of reasons why that business hasn’t made it. And it’s also it’s a really bittersweet moment. It’s only occurred this week. I mean, it’s been unfolding for quite some time, but the final decision, and and actually, I’ll share that we have offered a very lenient mutual termination agreement to this business owner.

And, they have accepted it, graciously. And we are parting ways on exceptionally good terms. The business coach and I have both received incredibly kind, worded emails from these business owners thanking us for the time that we have invested in them and the opportunity that we gave them. And it’s really bittersweet for us because we were so proud of our record that for 18 months we hadn’t seen a new business that hadn’t made it, 100% success.

It ended ours streak, of all successes. But there are some really great lessons out of it as well. And I think that it would be a really good thing to do is to dive into that in another episode with an absolute air of transparency, frankly, because like you said, there’s no other franchise network that’s going to be sharing this kind of stuff.

But over here, we do it differently and we do it real. And, not making it is something that happens every now and then and, yeah. So let’s do another episode where we dive into what happened. Honestly. What happened? And, you know, the sort of lengths that we went to so that this isn’t the outcome that we got, and just the contributing factors so that if somebody is listening to that episode and wondering, oh, goodness, could that be my business?

Well, you can make an assessment as to would you take those same steps that that business owner did. And, I think sharing that information is really, a healthy thing to do. It’s terrifying for us. But I think it’s a healthy thing for us to do.

Justin Yeah. And I think the people that are watching this now, to go back to your caveat and representations, you know, we can’t make a represent two representation, but this is what will happen to you. But what we can do is show you actual figures. And I guess the point I’m trying to make here is we have developed over years of hard work, a really good selection process and information process that will take you through.

We then have developed this onboarding process and part of that that makes up our accelerated startup program. And over the last 18 months, 98% of people, have successful businesses, growing businesses. Still with us. And so, you know, we can’t make a representation. But if you get in and do what these people have done before you, I think you’re reasonably you’re in reasonably safe hands.

You know, we’ve got 98% success over the last eight, eight months. And as you said, just the one has just been this week and such a lovely couple. And yeah, we’ll go into the melting pot, in another episode. But, it’s something I know we’re both proud of. Is this the results our business coaches are making? With the selection process, you know, it is.

What’s known personally because I take people through that process, it is hard luck. I’ve got a couple of meetings today with people who are so super Kane. Yeah, but, that type of type of it, we’re not the right business model for them. What they want is not what we’re offering. And so my role is to just try and show that to them that this is what we’re offering.

But this is what you’re saying you want. That’s not what we’re offering.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Justin And and so that’s why the information process is so important. Engage in it. If you want to get out of that rut in life and have something different, engage, find information, dig deeper. Don’t just take the answers. You know other companies, ask them. They figures. Ask them if they’ll ship these sort of numbers because you deserve to know that.

Yep.

Rhiannon Got another interesting step that I looked at too. As you know, one of the things that we measure is breakeven. And our goal, the goal of the accelerated startup program, is that we get every business owner to their breakeven point by week 12. Now, this requires a tiny little bit of explanation for anybody listening so that you guys understand what breakeven.

Because typically in business, a break even point means where the business is simply paying its own costs. When we say breakeven, we mean that the business is paying its own costs, including the franchise and subscription fees. And it’s also paying whatever portion of your life expenses aren’t already covered by another income to your household. So if your husband or wife or other half, etc. is working and they are earning $1,000 a week, then we’re taking that into consideration.

If you’re the sole income provider, then we look at your business and say, in order for your business to be successful, it’s not only going to be profitable in and of itself, but it’s also got to be able to pay all of your life expenses and your bills. Otherwise, you’re going to be dipping into your savings all of the time to pay for your life.

So we calculate somebody’s breakeven. Honestly, by the time somebody gets into their business management training with their business coach, that business coach already knows their breakeven point, because we know what it costs to run these businesses in the first few weeks. Right. And on the way in and through the information process, all our candidates provide you with their a statement of assets and liabilities and a personal budget, because that also helps us to be able to know what their breakeven point is.

Now, if somebody’s break even point is wildly, wildly high, and we assess that, it’s going to take us a long time to actually teach them the skills they’re going to need to run a business. Then we think about that when we approve them or otherwise. So the breakeven points really important for us. The goal of the accelerated startup program is breakeven by week 12.

And in of all the business owners that we’ve started, this financial year, and all of the business owners that have gotten to week 12, I’ve only got one who didn’t make it. I’ve got a couple that were borderline and that like in the next couple of weeks, they really did take over that breakeven point. And now they’re stable over higher than breakeven.

But I’ve got one, and that’s, you know, that person is in the low performance category. I’ve got one that’s still a few hundred dollars off their breakeven point. So that’s pleasing. I mean, not pleasing for that one. We’re obviously working very closely with them, but across the board to have had everybody else reach breakeven either at week 12 or within those next few weeks.

And now we’re just simply working on consolidating that with them. And, and we really do now into growth zone because when, when we talk breakeven, basically, we mean in order to survive, you have to make this number every single week in your business. And until we get you there, we’re not taking a deep breath. We are making sure that we’re doing absolutely everything in our power to help you to be turning over that amount of money in your business, because in a practical sense, if you’re not making that amount of money, you’re dipping into savings every week to pay your bills.

Now, there’s no business in history that you start, and it pays all its own expenses and your life expenses, you know, by week three, a week four, that’s not a realistic goal. And frankly, even for us to say that by week 12, the business is covering its own expenses and your life expenses, it’s also kind of pretty wild.

And actually, I don’t know, but it would be an interesting task to do is actually look at how quickly our our businesses covering their own expenses. I mean, looking at these numbers, I would suggest on average we get to $1,000 by week three. I would suggest by week three these businesses are covering their own expenses, which is wild to think that you’ve started a business absolutely from scratch.

And by week three it’s covering all its own costs. That’s wild.

Justin Yeah, but Bella just had a call yesterday with the gentleman who’s, got a significant business and looking at helping his son get established. And he said to her, it’s 3 to 4 years before you can pull your own wage successfully out of your own business.

Rhiannon Yeah.

Justin Yes. Well, these businesses, I mean, they just shed.

Rhiannon Weight.

Justin Within 12 weeks.

Rhiannon Yeah, exactly.

Justin We’ve only had 1 or 2 that, like, that’s the beauty and, you know, and the businesses he’s talking about cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to get into. Yeah. You know and it’s it’s what I love about the business model. It’s such a low cost entry, particularly with a subscription model. It’s next to nothing. Yeah. And then we’ve got, you know, within 12 weeks you’ve replaced what you need to survive and, and you know, so.

Rhiannon Yeah, just finally the other thing I wanted to share was just some standout wild numbers. Right now there’s a caveat to this. These are standout wild numbers for every high number I’m about to give you, there’s a low number that somebody else has done that way. You know you’ve got an average guys. That’s right. So I’ve shared the averages.

But I’m also going to share what’s possible when you follow this system. You give it 150% of your effort and you just do it. No excuses, no rationalizations, no justifying why you didn’t get out and do the things you needed to do. You just did it. This is what’s possible. We had a business owner, lawn and garden care in Brisbane, and in week three they made over $4,000.

We had another one, also busy in week three, made over $3,000. We’ve got a whole swath of business owners in week six that have made 4000, 2000, 3000, 100. And then by the time working week seven, we’re saying multiple business owners in the 2000. And then I’ve got one, I’ve got one real standout one, who did 5000 in week eight.

And then there was another one that we started. He’s not on my list. He we started him earlier this year, but I was going as I was going through this report this morning a couple of weeks ago. He’s only been going for about maybe six, maybe six months. And a few weeks ago he did. I think it was $24,000 in a week.

Justin So for.

Rhiannon 24, 24 now that those were some really big jobs in there, I think there were just three monthly jobs that he did in there for real estate agents and things like that. But, I mean, that’s the high end of the scale, right? To balance this out, the low end, I’ve got numbers that I’m looking at that are $300 a week, $260 a week.

I’ve got $525 in a week, $210, 210, 265. What I will say is that the message in this is you have a choice. Yes, you have a choice. You have a choice whether you sit in a high performing group or a low performer group, because I’ll tell you that the people sitting in a high performing group just do it.

They follow the system, they follow the guidance of their business coach. They trust in what we’re asking them to do, and they just dive head on into every challenge, every fork in the road that gives them two choices. They choose the harder one that feels more confronting and more uncomfortable. They choose the thing that’s going to take a little bit longer and feel a little bit less certain.

They choose hard every single time they challenge their comfort zone, they don’t make excuses. I get out of bed every morning, and even if they had a door slammed in their face the evening before, they get out of bed and they get back up and they go do the things I know they’ve got to do to grow a business.

When you get out of bed every day and you make those decisions in your life, those are the stupid sort of numbers that you can be saying in your business very quickly. When you get out of bed in the morning and you make excuses, you decide that you’re going to have a slow day. You rationalize with yourself that you worked really hard yesterday, so you get to take it a bit easy today.

You’re going to take those few notes that you got in the last couple of days, and you’re going to let that spiral and you’re not going to do the things because you’re fearful of another. Know when you’re making those choices, you end up on my screen as a $200 a week kind of business. So,

Justin There’s lots. I just can’t say that enough. If you’re listening, that don’t sit on your hands. You know, I spend every day talking with people who were grilling me with questions as to, in a sense, summarizing, what are you going to do, James, to make me successful? And we’ve, as we’ve shown with, with.

Rhiannon So much.

Justin We’ve done and I say to the people, you know what the biggest single risk in doing this is, the biggest single risk is you, you that are listening to this. If you get in and apply, it’s a system. It’s like you get into it. If you’ve got a flash car in the garage, you get in. You expect when you turn the key, something’s going to happen.

That’s what a good system does, so long as you turn the key. Yeah. You know. Yeah. If you sit inside in the lounge room and whinge that your car won’t go well, you’re sitting on your hands, you’re not doing anything. And it’s the same in this. You are the single biggest risk in this. I have so many people worried about my area.

You know, I think I don’t think this is a good area. I think, you know, two suburbs over is the place to be or the CBD is where all the businesses and it’s like, that’s. But there may be slight fluctuations in areas, but the biggest single factor that’s going to make the difference is you. Yeah. If you can’t follow the system in your area, it’s going to work.

Rhiannon I look at my report right. And you can see the standout ones. And I’ll tell you it’s not area that makes them the standout ones. It’s an issue. Yeah. It’s attitude. It’s willingness to commit. It’s willingness to get up every single morning and do the thing that feels hard and confronting and overwhelming. Just do it. It’s that it’s not.

I can because I know all of these people, you know, we talk to them. I have so much to do with them, even if not face to face. Personally, through their business coaches, I get to understand the attitude that this these people approach their businesses with and the stand outs. To me, I look at the name and I think it’s all attitude.

I think this is a good, natural place to sort of start to bring this episode to a wrap, but I want to share one more thing before we, we do that I saw on social media the other day, somebody giving like a motivational speech to a room of, entrepreneurs. And the guy was standing up the front and he said, you want to know what it takes to be successful in business?

And everybody was like, yeah, yeah, we want the secret. Come on. Obviously, that’s why I’ve paid hundreds of dollars to be here. We want the secret recipe, and he takes $100 bill out of his wallet anyways, it in the air and he says, who wants this? Obviously, everybody raises their hand and he stands there and he stands there and he waves it.

And he says, who wants a. And eventually, after about 15 seconds, which feels like forever, 15 seconds, a woman from the audience gets up, walks down the stairs onto the stage, and she takes it from his hand and he shakes her hand and he says, you will be successful. The rest of you just sweat. The biggest lesson there is in business, if you want something, you have to go and get it for yourself.

Justin Yep. Perfect. Exactly. Yes.

Rhiannon Let’s leave today’s episode right there. We hope that we’ve given you something to think about. Something to consider, something to ponder, and I hope that you’ll join us very soon. In another episode of The Real Franchise.