What Success Looks Like | The Real Franchise Episode 45

Rhiannon Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Real franchise, the 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 Justin is one of our owners and our head of new businesses together. In this series, we tackle all of the big topics unscripted, unplanned and unfiltered.

No sales, no fluff. We just give you information straight out. Today’s topic is all about what does success look like in our network? Now, it’s probably not what you think. What we’re actually talking about is what are the characteristics of our successful business owners that we believe contributes to their success. And therefore, over the years, what have we learned about what we look for in somebody that’s coming into our network and working through the information process with Justin?

So, Justin, let’s kick off. There are a lot of things that we’ve learned over the years that really contribute to someone who is successful in our network. And there’s kind of three categories. The first we really think is skills. So can you talk us through what we’re looking for here? Are we looking for somebody who can already run a business who already has that skill set developed?

Is that what we’re looking for, or are we looking for some other things?

Justin Well, that can be a bonus, but it can also be a hindrance, because sometimes we find people who think that, you know, they’ve had businesses before. Sometimes when follow our systems and, you know, we’ve learned, I think we have a really good system. And we know that obviously we can get people successful. So it the skills we’re looking for are really just basic skills.

You know, the actual technical skills of doing the job. We can teach anybody. It’s really, I guess basic IT is probably one because we now run a paperless business. So, you know, you got to if you’re terrified of turning on a computer, well, you know, it’s probably not. Well, probably not the business for you. Yeah. Because we have a great system that, you know, will train you how to use and runs on Salesforce.

For those of you watching that now or have heard of Salesforce. So that’s probably the key thing. Other skills that are extremely handy and beneficial. If people have had an experience in their working career in a sales role, particularly customer service role, because we’re a service business where people are serving people. And so if you’ve been in roles before where you know you’re helping people and, and, and also talking through objections, you know, where, you know, if you’re trying to sell your service or sell a product to someone and how to work through the things that they might have concerns about, that’s a really valuable skill to have in a business like

this.

Rhiannon Yeah, we look for, communication, the skill of communication, you know, and, and whether that is in customer service, whether it is in sales, whether it has been just simply in administration support services in the past or something else, the ability to communicate with people cannot be understated. It’s so important, you know, there is a lot that we can teach, but there’s you’re just you’re step ahead already.

If you’ve got some background or some skills that will transition from whatever you’ve been doing that give you that jump in that communication space. It’s not to say that if you don’t have a background in sales or in admin or in customer service, that you can’t learn those skills. Just to say that one of the things that we look for, is does someone have those skills already?

If they don’t, we look for other things that send us a cue that you’re teachable. Are we going to talk about those in just a moment? So that’s probably it for skills, right? I take communication pretty simple, which is to demonstrate that skills in our opinion and also in our experience, frankly, aren’t the most important thing when we’re selecting our business owners.

So of the three kind of key topics that we wanted to talk about this morning, skills is right at the bottom. Yeah. The other two we’re going to talk about infinitely more important. So the second one just an ease attitude. What do we mean by attitude.

Justin Is two key things I think. And this one I think the big one is the absolute preparedness to learn to be like I always encourage people to be a sponge. You know, the wrong attitude I see occasionally. And these people we normally select that come in and go, it’s just cleaning. It’s just lawn mowing. How hard can it be?

Right? Well, that’s the task. And that’s a little tiny bit of running a profitable and successful business. And so, you know, the right attitude is we’ve got a great guy. I just started with this. I say he’s had nearly 20 years experience in, in, in the lawn and garden type, you know, looking after a fantastic property in the past and all sorts of stuff.

But he came in with this teachable attitude. It went away for training. He just loved it. He caught, you know, he’s fading back to me just and I just picked up so much stuff. And here’s someone that could have said, hey, I’m the expert already. Just give me the computer system and I’ll go off and do my business.

But he’s going to be successful because yes, he’s got that background, but it’s what’s the big important thing, like we’re saying right now is the attitude is, is he’s got the right attitude to really succeed.

Rhiannon You know, I think attitude for me also comes down to things like ownership and accountability is, you know, do you understand that this is a business and this is your business. So it’s wholly reliant on you getting out of bed every single morning, committing to delivering on all of the training that we’ve given you and going out and following our system and our processes to do your marketing.

To quote the way we quote, to liaise with the customers in the way that we ask you to liaise with customers to do follow ups, the way that we got to do follow ups, if you take ownership over those tasks and over your business and your mindset is one of a business owner as opposed to an employee, you know, business owner mindset is, this is my business.

I’m in control. If it’s to be, it’s up to me. If we have someone coming through our information process with that attitude, we absolutely know they can make this work. It’s I think it’s like the one of the most, if not the most critical things that we look for is that ability to take ownership and accountability. Accountability also means if something’s not going right, you don’t sit there pointing fingers at everybody around you, blaming everybody else for the situation you’re in.

You go, okay, this isn’t ideal, but what am I going to do to get myself out of it? And then a franchise network. You’ve got a whole support team to help you move through a tough situation, but you’ve got to be the one that actually reaches out to that support network and then accepts the guidance, and you’ve got to be the one to implement.

So ownership and accountability for me is absolutely forefront in what we’re looking for in people.

Justin Yeah. Yeah. And that employee mindset for many of us we just don’t realize how ingrained it is. You know, we go again most Aussies would love to have their own business. But I’m just saying look, I’ve we’ve had business owners. I’ve had submit holiday leave requests to and it’s like like I thought it was quite funny, but I had to bring this particular lady up and she’s going, yeah, yeah, well, you’ll be you’re the boss.

Then I’m like, no, you’re the boss. This is your business. You know, you’re in a franchise. Yes, but you don’t have to ask me when you’re taking holidays like in that. Just. And she’d been with us for a year at that point, and it’s like, yeah, there’s some real shift that has to happen. And the sooner you can make that shift in your own mind and realize, yes, I’ve got this support network, but I love that phrase.

You know, if it’s to be, it’s up to me. So you’ve really got to take control of the reins of your business and, and drive at the direction you want it to go. You’ve got a system, you’ve got support, you’ve got all the marketing, you’ve got the training. But at the end of the day, it’s you that puts the rubber to the road.

Rhiannon Yeah. Often, you know, you are you are the one that that takes all of our inquiries through the information process. But on occasion, when you’re on leave, I will I will fill that role for that short period of time. And what we both know to be true is that the minute we have somebody in that initial call who’s saying things to us like, yeah, I understand that it would be my business.

And I’ve really got to work hard at this. Yeah, I understand that the harder you work, the more likely the outcomes that you get a positive ones. We just it’s like the biggest waving green flags for us. It just that’s what I’m excited that we’ve got the right kind of person on the phone, because we really do need people who take that really seriously and understand that it’s a business, and that they are the one in the driver’s seat squarely.

Justin Yeah, yeah, one of the big ones for me that I’m seeing more and more important in people coming through is having that ability to be solution, focus less, problem focused. You know, one of the things that, you know, it really holds people back in a business if they have what I call a victim mentality, you know, and often when I’m talking to people, you’ll pick up that every job through their life or all these terrible just one off and all the circumstances and and I fail at this because of this.

And this didn’t work out because of this. And it was just, you know, and yes, life can be tough at times, but it’s what do you focus on? You know, there’s always something to get out of a situation. And how long do you dwell in the problem versus jumping into solution mode. And, and if you’re going to have your own business, yeah, you can it doesn’t matter what your business is.

You’re going to take knocks. How long is that going to take for you to absorb that and then get into solution mode, into finding a wipe through and round and over? Because when you’re the boss, it’s up to you, right? And in your own business, you’ve got to you’ve got to, you know, come back from those knocks.

And that’s one of the characteristics that I particularly look at that resilience.

Rhiannon Yeah. Yeah. Actually resilience is a good word to I think that it deserves a proper mention. Resilience for me means that you can carry yourself evenly or as evenly as possible through the majority of situations. Resilience is when you when you get a lot of no’s, you can still keep moving forward. So listening to a podcast recently and the conversation was around, can anybody be a business owner and when the host asked that question, I thought, oh, this is really interesting.

I’m keen for the answer. And the answer was yes. But also no. Business ownership is really just a measure of how much pain can you tolerate.

Justin Yeah, yeah.

Rhiannon And I thought, oh, that’s really insightful. And so resilience is how much pain can you tolerate. Because starting a business is hard. We know this is the real franchise. We’re not here to sugarcoat things. You know we have a wonderful system that works when it’s followed. But there’s also days that feel hard. And there are days where you get no’s and you lose quotes or you know, something doesn’t work out for you with the job that you did, or you have to chase a customer for payment that you thought was a really honest customer.

There are going to be hard days. How much of that pain can you tolerate if your tolerance level is high, then that positions you more likely over the longer term to be able to confront what you need to confront. Find solutions for it, and keep moving forward. That persistence is what builds your business over the longer term. So I really loved I really loved the answer to that, that, anyone can be a business owner, but the likelihood of success is entirely commensurate with how much pain you can tolerate.

Justin Yep, yep I went I had a great I went to a guest speaker, Sam chan. That was his whole theory at a conference I went to a couple of years ago and it’s so true that the if the level of tolerance of pain and being able to weather the storm. Yeah, will be commensurate, like you were saying, with your level of success through life.

Yeah, yeah. Because life happens. Tough stuff happens. How do you respond to that?

Rhiannon Yeah. And and inanimate works. Sometimes it’s not pain as in, you know, things are going absolutely terribly and and the whole world is ending pain. Just saying you’re going to have to work hard for a consolidated period of time in order to see momentum in your business occurring. And you might feel in the first 12 weeks of starting your business, what we hear often is, oh my goodness, I haven’t worked this hard for a very long time.

And so that even that in itself is pain. And so if you’re coming into this with that mindset of I am prepared to work as hard as I need to work, I am prepared to do what I need to do. I am prepared to take on board all of the training that’s offered to me, and then implement it in my business, even when it feels uncomfortable to do so.

If that’s your mindset, then that’s a really good indicator to yourself and also to us that your pain tolerance is already pretty high. Yeah.

Justin One of the things I want to touch on, because I’ve seen a lot of this this week in the people I’ve been speaking to coming through is particularly when you’re starting a new business, any business you have to be in the business involved in the business. All right. I have a lot of people that are looking for this mythical business that they want to invest in, a business not working at all.

You know, and just have people do the work and obviously they live off the profits. You know, we would all love that. But particularly when you’re starting and I would say any business like that’s just not reality. So, you know, some of the attitudes, you know, the gentleman I spoke to yesterday was, you know, he wanted to take on a business.

It was happy to take it on for the whole state, for us. And he had an unlimited number of students he could employ that would all work subcontract for him, and he would just take care of it, you know? And, you know, conceptually, for some that might be a great idea. And yes, we have big businesses that employ lots and lots of stuff, but you can’t start like that.

You know, you’re building a business, you’ve got to build a customer base. You’ve got to you’ve got to learn so many different things. The actual skills of running a business, to be successful. And so, you know, if you’re listening to this podcast in our business and I would say pretty much any other, if you’re going to take on a business, you’ve got to be involved, be prepared for a period of time to get in.

It’s almost like an apprenticeship. You know, where you got to get in, learn the ropes. Learn what? How to control the dials of that particular business. You know, to get the income going the right way, to keep the costs the right direction, all those sorts of things. You’ve got to be involved, have that attitude of involvement. You can’t be remote and just hope that you’re gonna just received bags of money every month.

Rhiannon Yeah, not in our model. The the exception to that rule obviously is where you’ve bought an existing business and you’re just simply an investor. But I think that there’s a very good point here in that our businesses are businesses that you can simply invest in and expect to receive a passive income from. Unless you’re buying one of our existing well managed, well operated and highly profitable businesses.

And there are those in the the network and they do sell from time to time when the owners want to pass them on to someone else. But if you’re buying a business in our network where you’re starting that business from scratch, having that investor mindset isn’t going to see you successful. In our experience. You know, the third category is, it’s a relatively new one in terms of how we’re catching it, but it it involves a whole heap of stuff that we’ve been talking about for a very long time, and we’ve been looking for for a very long time.

So it’s none of the actual things we’re looking for a new. But the terminology is, to us at least, what terming it the will the customer love them factor and so Justin, talk us through what do we mean when we say that in our potential business owners, we are looking for the will the customer love them? Factor?

Justin Yep. Well, like we said earlier, we’re a people business serving people and so you know, most customers well all of us make a judgment on someone within. What do they say eight to 20s generally, right. Most of us will make a judgment call. So the people that do really well from the get go in a business like this is someone that comes across genuine, someone that can communicate well, you know, just a genuine individual that has a genuine desire to help.

We call it the laws of exchange. You know, if if you’re in the right laws of exchange and genuinely trying to help someone in successful exchange, you’ll then receive back, you know, a suitable reward for that, exchange. And so, yeah, it’s one of the we yeah. We’ve identified this as more and more of such a, a key.

You know, to show the other side of the people that struggle in a business like this. More likely the ones that are super short, you know, that that cold fish saying, you know, can be lovely individuals, but you’ve got to take the time to get to know them. And the challenge in a service business is your customer doesn’t have that time and doesn’t give you that time.

You know, they need a job done, that they’ve reached out, or you’ve stepped into their world and they deciding whether or not you’re the one to do you know what they need done. And so if you’ve got to come across in a good manner, be able to relate with people.

Rhiannon Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some other sort of terms that we use every now and then things like does somebody feel warm. Yeah. Do they feel kind? Do they feel caring. Presentation is really important also particularly in our cleaning businesses. If you think about it, you’re offering to clean someone’s home and present it clean and tidy. So it helps a lot if you are personally well presented.

Your vehicle is clean and tidy. That’s very helpful. If you’re considering a cleaning business for our lawn and garden care guys, you can get away with a little bit more. But being well presented still sets you apart from your competition, who are running around in thongs and a singlet. So that’s definitely what our brand is.

So, yeah, warm, caring, kind. The other thing that I look for is will they take time to actually build for and a relationship with the client? Will they take time to ask the client questions about what the client really needs from them, and will they listen to those answers so that the quote that they’re drawing up and the service they end up delivering?

It really is an exact match for what the client’s looking for. Because if it’s not, we’re not actually fulfilling the client’s needs. They’re not going to ask us to come back. They’re not going to turn into a regular client. So we’re looking for all of those sorts of things.

Justin Yep, yep yep. Yeah, I think yeah, that sort of really wraps it up with you don’t have to be a guru. You don’t have to have had, you know, heaps of experience. You got to have the right heart, the right attitude and genuinely care for people and those sort of people. I look at some of the biggest business owners.

Sorry if some of the some of our business owners who have the biggest businesses in their network. Yeah, and they might describe them to people who think of a couple at the moment like Mama and Papa bear, you know, they just really care genuinely and go out of their way, you know, when they have a hailstorm, go through the suburbs, they’re out in the middle of the night doing stuff, helping put tarps over roofs for their customers, like, you know, you’re not going to do that all the time, obviously, but that’s they hot, you know.

And well, I have a massive business. And it’s those little things, the little things in business make the big difference. It’s just showing genuine care. Yeah.

Rhiannon Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re looking for we’re not looking necessarily for, a well developed skill set in being able to operate a business. What we’re looking for is the heart, the the willingness to learn from us and to implement our guidance and our system. We’re looking for the ability for someone to take ownership and accountability over their business.

We’re looking for somebody who has, that high pain tolerance. But the ability to be resilient, the the ability to get up every morning and put one foot in front of the other, even when you don’t feel like doing it over time, that will build a successful business way faster than the knowledge of how to build a business.

And then we are looking for will the customer love them? Warm, kind, caring, helpful. They’re to serve the customer. Those are all the sorts of things that we look for now, this is not to say that if you’re most of those things, but not a couple, it can’t work. This is just an overall list of this is kind of the dream list, really.

You know, these when when we think about our successful business owners in our network, those are the sorts of qualities and characteristics that they all share. And so when we have someone in our information process also displaying those qualities, we absolutely know that we can help them build a solid business in our network. And we know that they are more likely to be successful than someone that doesn’t present with most of those kinds of characteristics.

Justin You know, one quick one to add in resilience that I think is really important for anyone listening to understand these are physical, demanding business. So you have to be physically able, you know, for example, I’ve had some guys come that have got seriously destroyed backs and they want to do a lawn and garden business and it’s like if you physically can’t do it, it’s, you know, the chances of success a hugely less, so you have to physically be able to do the tasks in the beginning to you build it to a stage and then maybe you can employ people and all of that, but you’re going to be the one on the, on

the tools for the first few months particularly. Yeah.

Rhiannon Yeah. You need to just consider your fitness for work. Can you do the physical task needed to be done?

Justin Yeah, yeah.

Rhiannon That’s a very good I think that that is an all encompassing conversation around what it is that we’re looking for. I hope that that’s been helpful for anybody listening. Maybe as you’ve been listening, you can identify parts of yourself with what we’ve been talking about. And if that’s the case and if you’re thinking about a franchise network, then that means that you’re probably very likely to be somebody that we would get very excited about.

If you choose to inquire. So let’s leave it there. I hope that you join us for another episode of The Real franchise very soon.