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Lyndsay Dowd with Heartbeat for Hire

August 27, 2025 by angishields

Houston Business Radio

Lyndsay Dowd with Heartbeat for Hire

00:00 /

Lyndsay Dowd is a globally recognized leadership strategist, keynote speaker, two-time author, and podcast host with nearly 30 years of experience leading high-performing teams and transforming organizational cultures.

As the founder of Heartbeat for Hire, she helps executives and teams build irresistible, results-driven cultures that attract top talent, inspire collaboration, and fuel growth. Her award-winning Heartbeat for Hire Podcast ranks in the top 5% globally and won Best Business Podcast at the 2025 Women in Podcasting Awards.

In her conversation with Trisha Stetzel, Lyndsay shared her journey from a successful 23-year career at IBM to launching her own leadership consultancy. She discussed the importance of authenticity and vulnerability in leadership, as well as the value of delegation, effective communication, and continuous learning.

Lyndsay emphasized the role of strong mentorship and surrounding oneself with inspiring leaders. She also highlighted how platforms like LinkedIn can be powerful tools for networking and personal growth.

Her approach blends candor, charisma, and strategy to help leaders show up with confidence, clarity, and impact.

Connect with Lyndsay on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. You know, I love a guest who brings equal parts strategy and heart. And today’s guest does exactly that. I’m so excited to welcome Lindsey Dowd, a leadership strategist, founder of heartbeat for hire, award winning podcast host and unapologetic storyteller. With nearly 30 years in sales and leadership. Lindsey has built powerhouse teams, transformed cultures, and helped executives show up with confidence, clarity and, yes, a little swagger. She advises C-suite coaches, high level leaders, and delivers keynotes and workshops that challenge the status quo and actually get results. I’m almost done, Lyndsay. I’m loving this. Her podcast, heartbeat for hire, is ranked in the top 5% globally and recently won Best Business Podcast at the Women in Podcasting Awards. Lyndsay’s work blends candor, charisma, and strategy, and I can’t wait for you to hear how she’s helping others build irresistible cultures that people truly want to be a part of. Lyndsay, welcome to the show.

Lyndsay Dowd: What an intro. Thank you Trisha. I’m so happy to be here. We’ve been working on this for a little bit. So this is.

Trisha Stetzel: Yes, exactly. Well, and I, I love bringing bios forward because we don’t always take it in ourselves. And it’s not something we would say about ourselves, but it makes it feel pretty good, or us feel pretty good when someone else is saying it. And you’re amazing. I’m so glad to have you on the show, Lyndsay. First, let’s start with who is Lyndsay? Tell us a little more about you, and then let’s jump into the work that you’re doing with your clients.

Lyndsay Dowd: I would love to. Thank you. Um, so, yeah, I spent a whole lot of time in corporate America. About 25 years. And, uh, 23 of those was spent, uh, climbing the ranks at IBM. And my family put in 105 years of Big blue. So I literally grew up in that culture. My dad used to sell typewriters. I went to the office in Manhattan and would sit in the chairs and play on the typewriters and the highlighters, and I literally grew up in that culture, and I thought that that’s what business looked like. And at that time it was really diverse. It was, uh, very family oriented. And there was these things called branches. And so if you were part of a branch, you knew everybody’s kids. You got to rent out an amusement park for the day. You got to really hang out. So I thought this was business. I thought this was cool, um, and found myself there through an acquisition. I came in through Lotus, which, if you ask any Lotus person, they’ll tell you they acquired IBM, but I started in customer service and worked my way up to executive ranks and used to lead big sales teams for them and got to do a lot of first of a kind roles. It was a really cool, really decorated career, and I learned some great lessons along the way. And at the end of 23 years, I was ready for a change and another company sought me out and said, would you come lead a sales team for us? And I said, sure. And so I packed up my big blue legacy. Off I went.

Lyndsay Dowd: And any reasonable executive knows, it takes about six months for a new executive to find the bathroom. Um, that’s not how it went for me. And they fired me at six months and I was gutted, devastated. I thought no one would ever work with me again. I was sure I was the only executive to ever be fired on Earth. Um, and I really couldn’t even talk about it for the first couple of weeks. Um, and after a month of licking my wounds, I asked myself three questions. What am I really good at? What do I love to do and how can I help people the most? And I knew how to build modern leaders, and I knew how to create irresistible culture that drives results. And so I bet on myself. And I started my company, heartbeat for hire, which, by the way, my parents were not entrepreneurs. As you know, my dad was legacy IBM. My mother was a schoolteacher. So like entrepreneurship was very foreign, very scary, not secure. So didn’t really have a lot of support from them. Um, but I did it anyway. And so I started coaching C-suite and individual leaders. I wrote a couple of books, I started my podcast, and, um, today I’m keynote, I’m doing a little coaching. I just finished a stint as a CRO for a startup. And, um, I’m doing some executive workshops, some LinkedIn workshops. And how do you tell your story? So right now I’m doing a bunch of different things. Um, and I love it. And it’s terrifying and wonderful and exhilarating and fascinating all at the same time.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, Lyndsay. And that is exactly how we got connected, because we have IBM in yes, connections. And yes, I’m so excited that we found each other. And, um, I would like to know a little bit more about the clients that you’re working with. So would you mind sharing like who those people are or just describe to us who it is that you’re working with?

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah, I work with kind of a myriad of different folks. And, you know, when you start out, you have this idea of this is exactly who I’m going to be working with, and it doesn’t always happen that way. So you get these calls from people that have engaged with your posts and they’re like, okay, so I was.

Speaker4: A CFO.

Lyndsay Dowd: And now I’m a CEO and I don’t think my people like me. Can you help? And I’m like, oh yeah, I can help. Oh yeah. So we were gonna hone your voice. And so we use tools like LinkedIn, and we use all hands calls and things that are already happening in their business to really help her stand out. Um, that that was actually a really wonderful story. That leader was, um, to go from a CFO to a CEO is a really hard leap, because you’re really close to the numbers and you’re probably not the strongest people leader. Um, and she kind of was missing a little bit of that. So I just reminded her of her humanity. And, um, I would she was very, you know, buttoned up and very still and stoic. And I said, okay, okay, let’s talk like we’re having cocktails and we’re girlfriends meeting out. Tell me about your business that way. And she was still, like, really monotone. And I’m like, that is not how you talk when you’re having cocktails. And so I really kind of had to pull it out of her. Um, but I get to do that. I get to do a lot of, um, leaders who have never had to pay attention to their brand.

Lyndsay Dowd: Uh, they might find themselves out of a job. They might find themselves on the verge of losing a job or totally burnt out, and they know they need to step up. They know they need to build a network, and they’re kind of going, oh my God, I don’t know how to start. Um, and then I get to work with teams so very often, you know, you’ll have a really talented team, but they’re not working great together. Um, and so when you can kind of show them each other’s humanity, give them a reason to be interested in each other, you create those connections that make them more invested and more interested in learning, and you give them some what I think are really simple tools, but no one’s ever taught them, um, on just how to be a better leader, how to be more human, more authentic, more vulnerable, and, um, change the culture of their place. So that’s kind of who I work with. And I get some weird ones every once in a while that have nothing to do with any of those things. But yeah, that’s pretty happens.

Trisha Stetzel: They’re attracted to your energy, right? What you’re bringing to the table. So, uh, do The words imposter syndrome resonate with you at all, or even with the clients that you work with?

Lyndsay Dowd: Of course. I mean, I think they resonate with everyone no matter what you’re doing. And whether I was at IBM doing a first of a kind role, when you’re new to something, you don’t know everything. And newsflash, nobody does. So you kind of just have to learn to get uncomfortable, get comfortable being uncomfortable and that kind of status. I mean, coming up in tech, being the only woman in tech for about a decade, not the only woman in the company, but the only woman on the teams that I was on. Um, you are so accustomed to change. You’re so accustomed to things moving quickly. And just when you start to get something, they throw you a new acquisition, or they throw you a new team and you’re like, damn it, I was getting so good at that. Now I got to learn new stuff, but you just kind of get used to that pace and when you’re always used to that pace, you don’t know any different. So the difference when you’re on your own, it all falls on you. So that’s kind of like, oh, who’s gonna work with me? I’m not like, I’m not with Big Blue anymore. I’m, you know, I’m just a little heartbeat for hire. But somebody finds my story inspiring. Somebody looks at what I’ve done and they’re like, damn it, I can learn from her. This is. This is good. Um, so, yeah, I would just say, if anybody is starting something new, find the people that are doing it really well and go ask them, what did you do wrong? What should I avoid, and what are some tips for success? Um, because when you surround yourself with people who make you better, you’re just going to get better.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. I know you’re not alone. We’re all through it, and we continue to go through it as things shift and change. So, Lindsey, you talked about being the only one growing up in tech and being in the business that that, uh, that you were in. How has that played into this role that you are in now as an entrepreneur?

Lyndsay Dowd: Well, I said I was the only woman, and so that let me make that distinction. So first let me just say, back in the day when I was the only girl on the team, um, inspiring leadership meant, let’s talk about the play on the 30 yard line of the game that I did not watch, and I wasn’t inspired by that. I couldn’t relate to that. I didn’t care about that. And I felt excluded more than anything. And it was a it was an uninspired way to do my job. And I was always hungry for that connection, that someone who could see me and who could, you know, get me. And I’m, I’m I’m weird. I always called my my teams mavericks and hustlers because I wanted us to think differently. I knew I didn’t have all the answers. I knew there was other people that had done things that I had never tried and I always wanted to learn from them. So taking that spirit and then I, I was lucky enough to work for some great, great leaders, many of whom were women. And I had one woman who, um, her name was Adriana, and she promoted me twice, and she asked me the first time. She said, so how do you want to run the business? And I’m looking over my shoulder going, you want you want to know you. You’re asking me? And she was like, well, yeah, you’ve been in the trenches. You know what’s going on. So tell me, and I, I felt autonomy, you know, for really the first time in a leadership role that way. Um, I had another leader who, um, I was managing a huge account.

Lyndsay Dowd: Uh, it was Ernst and Young. I had $150 million quota. It was enormous. Lot of responsibility. There was 55 reps on my team. And I’m telling my new boss, this is my plan. This is what I want to do. This is how I’m going to approach it. And I’m about like 15 minutes into my presentation and she stops me and she goes, girl, I’ve got your back now fly. Oh, those words they took the the I mean, they made me gasp. I was like oh my gosh. Goosebumps. Then goosebumps still when I tell that story. But I took that energy and I turned around to my team and was like, you guys, we have an opportunity to do things differently. We’ve got a leader who trusts us. What do we want to do with this? And those two examples are such powerful examples of what good leadership looks and feels like. And so much of what I do is taking from those experiences, grabbing other experiences that I find, whether it’s on LinkedIn or on my show. I I’m always trying to teach through story. That’s how I keynote. That’s how I do my show, my podcast show. It’s what I’m doing here. Um, but yeah, story is king. And when I get to work with clients. I always remind them story over stats every day of the week. Um, nobody’s going to walk out remembering 83% of something, but they are going to remember, you know, how do you want to run the business or they are going to remember, you know, I got your back now fly.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that I got goosebumps too, by the way. So thank you for sharing that energy with me is coming through the screen. How exciting. Uh, I know it’s hard to believe we’re halfway through our conversation already, so if folks are ready and want to have a conversation with you or want to connect with you, what is the best method?

Lyndsay Dowd: Well, you can find all of my socials and my stuff at heartbeat for hire. Com um, please connect with me on LinkedIn or on Insta. That’s where I’m the most active I am on TikTok. I am on Facebook, albeit not that active, but I am there. Um, and of course YouTube. My my show is. You can also find the podcast through there, but my show is on YouTube and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. So, um, lots and lots of good stories about what good leadership should be.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, thank you. Lyndsay. And her first name is spelled l y n d s a y. Last name d o w d. As always, I’ll put all of the links in the show notes. So if you’re sitting in front of your computer watching or listening, you can just point and click. Lyndsay, I heard you say a few minutes ago that it’s important to surround yourself with the right people. What does that mean?

Lyndsay Dowd: Oh, well, I mean, back to the I don’t know, everything. Um, I still believe that no matter how good you get, no matter how many awards you earn, no matter how many books you write, there’s still more to learn. And the day you stop learning is the day you’re in the dirt. So you know, to me, I always want to be around people that make me better. Either they inspire me. They teach me something. They, um, help me level up. They expose me to people I’ve never seen or met before. Um, and I think when you live with that kind of curiosity and you live with that hunger to be inspired and hunger to make your life better. Um, it just never stops. And so I, I collect people, some people collect spoons, I collect people, and, you know, I’m always adding people. I’m the person that sits at the bar. And we’ll talk to you in an airport and learn all these things about you. And before you know it, you’re either coming on my show or you’re I’m dragging you over to a community I’m in or something like that. Um, but I find people so fascinating and interesting and there’s always something to be learned.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. Or you’re introducing them to your network or. Right. I mean just.

Lyndsay Dowd: 100%.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I tell everyone if you’re not hanging around with people who are bigger, better, faster, stronger, smarter than you, you’re in the wrong room. And oh.

Lyndsay Dowd: Yeah, I never wanted to be the smartest person in the room. And that is a scary thing for a lot of leaders to say. Um, it’s funny, my my brother and I, we share really similar leadership philosophy, and he’s a VP of sales, and we laugh that we both say this and we walked into a room of of, you know, teams we were managing were like, I’m not the smartest one here. So, you know, let’s, let’s talk, let’s, let’s marinate on some ideas. And we had a good chuckle that we both did that. I thought that was pretty funny because, you know, we didn’t go to the same schools. We didn’t go to the same companies, but we shared that same same spirit.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. So there’s something you call power skills. And I think this plays right into the conversation that we’re having today around the things that we need to be thinking about, the people we should be hanging around with and what is. Let’s talk more about power skills. What does it mean? Yeah.

Lyndsay Dowd: So power skills are what I call soft skills. And the reason I don’t call them soft skills is they’re far too important to be called anything soft. So, you know, back when that was coined, um, they were associated with women and they were EQ and being sensitive and being a, you know, a thoughtful, nurturing leader. Well, yes, there are those things, but there’s a lot of power skills. So like one of my favorites is delegation and delegation. I wouldn’t associate that necessarily with with women. But when you use delegation properly and the way that you do that is you say, oh, Trisha, you’re interested in analytics. I have an analytics project I want you to run point on it, but I’ve got your back. If you fall down, that’s on me. But I want to give you a chance to shine. So let me help you. But I want you to lead this. Does that sound good to you? And you’re like, oh, wow, so exciting. I get to do something I’ve been dying to do. So yes, you’re getting things off your plate, but you are giving people a chance to shine. Which leads me to another power skill, which is lifting others up. Celebrating people. And the best leaders understand that they don’t need to keep all the accolades to themselves.

Lyndsay Dowd: Their team is a reflection of them. So when they’re constantly saying, oh, Trisha, will you please tell the story of how you won that deal? It was such a unique story. I think we could all really learn from you. Could you share that? Okay. I’m giving you the spotlight. You’re getting to tell a story. You’re hearing that I respect you, and everybody’s paying attention, so that looks good on you. It looks good on me and the the leaders that are constantly celebrating, constantly lifting others up. They’re the ones everyone wants to work for. And oh, by the way, the team is watching. So they’re seeing, hey, I want I want my name in lights. I want to be celebrated like Trisha. How can I do that? And they raise their hands more. They’re engaged more. They’re connecting with her with you. You know, this is this is a really great way to lead. And then, of course, there’s communication, um, which that’s, you know, table stakes. But, you know, no one’s a mind reader. And. Oh, by the way, if you think that your one time annual review is an appropriate way to lead, I’m telling you, it’s not. So stop that. You’re checking in with your people way more than that.

Trisha Stetzel: So yeah, I fantastic. And I love the idea of power skills versus soft skills, because that word really doesn’t have any intention behind it. Soft. That’s it.

Lyndsay Dowd: These are differentiators. Yeah. This is like, what makes a good leader a great leader. And having that humility, having that authenticity and admitting if you screw up. You know, I just had a girlfriend. Really great friend of mine. She’s a leader for a company called Cooler Heads. Um, they make caps for people going through chemo so they don’t lose their hair. And she actually did a post about this. She said, you know, I showed up on a team call. She’s in the process of moving. Her life is pretty chaotic. And she said she wasn’t her best self and she did not show up the way that she wanted. And she spoke very curtly to, uh, someone on the team. And the first thing she did was call and apologized. And then she addressed the whole team and said, I wasn’t at my best. I can do better than that. I’m really sorry you all saw it, but I hope you won’t see that again. Well, do you think all those people are now going, Courtney, what a lousy leader. No, they’re like, wow, that was really nice. And that was really scary for her to admit. And I make mistakes, too. And I’m going to give her more grace. And that’s really how it works. Um, so it’s a good lesson.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. And, uh, I wrote an article recently about that, specifically how, you know, if you’re a leader and you trip and you fall.

Lyndsay Dowd: We all.

Trisha Stetzel: Do. How do you come back from that? And it really is about standing up and saying, you know what, I made a mistake. And here’s what we’re going to do about it, right?

Lyndsay Dowd: Oh, I did it today. My my daughter knocked over a very precious glass from my grandmother, and it shattered in a million pieces. And it’s priceless. I can’t can’t be replaced. And it’s it was a heartache. And she was she she felt really badly. But she was yelling at me to get out of the room so she could clean it up, and I was. I responded with, you can’t yell at me if you’re sorry. Like you don’t yell at me like you broke something important to me. And we cooled down and I said to her later, I said, I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m sorry, but you need to work on what you’re really sorry. You can’t yell at the person if you’re really sorry. That doesn’t really work very well. And she’s like, mom, I just felt really badly. And you know, it was great. We calmed down, we addressed it and cleared the air. But I had to say I did it wrong. You know, that happens.

Trisha Stetzel: And as leaders, we should be acting the same whether someone’s looking or not. Meaning it happens in your personal life. And that’s exactly what you showed your daughter. So as a mom to a beautiful young lady, and I also heard you say that you had women who supported you as you were coming up in corporate. And it sounds like you continue to support women. How important is it for us to. I’ll call it circle the wagons, because while I’m in Texas and I would just say that, but how important is it as women to circle the wagons and raise up young women and those who are coming up and support them?

Lyndsay Dowd: So, so important to me, giving back, paying it forward. Call it what you want. I mentor a lot of young women, a lot of young women sellers who are trying to find their place. They’re trying to move around the world with executive presence. They’re not entirely sure what that looks like because maybe they haven’t had great leaders before. So I’m kind of a safe space because I’m kind of no BS. And you can come ask me anything, and I’m not going to tell you. You’re dumb. Um, so it’s really important to give back because I’m raising future leaders, and I have twins. I have boy girl twins. Um, so my son and my daughter both have to learn from these moments. They have to learn to be the best people. Um, because if we don’t fix that, and we had this whole, like, gentle parenting movement where we’re telling, no.

Speaker5: No, no, I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.

Lyndsay Dowd: No, no, no, I want you to feel uncomfortable. I want you to, you know, go through it. Problem solve. It’s okay. No one ever died from being uncomfortable. You’re going to be all right. Um, it’s it’s a really important skill set that I think this generation of kids that’s coming up right now, they don’t really have good tools to, um, to manage themselves. And that’s a big problem. So we got to fix it.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. I agree, uh, we’ve we’ve we have a son who’s going to be 34 this year. So at the top end of that generation that we’re raising, and sometimes they look around and go, did we do this to. Did did we do this? We were military parents. So we definitely didn’t do that. Um, but I see it right. And it’s it’s really hard to get past sometimes. It is. Um. All right. So as we get to the back end of our conversation today, I know this time went by so fast. So fast. What? Um, you know who my listeners are? Small to medium sized business owners. People who are entrepreneurs. They’re also leaders. They have teams, small teams, large teams. What would you want them to leave with today? Lyndsay.

Lyndsay Dowd: Well, first I would just say everybody can be a leader. Whether you manage people from an HR perspective or not. Anybody can lead and anybody can lift each other up. And you make that choice to do that. But I promise you, if you start celebrating people. And this could be passing someone on the sidewalk. You have a beautiful smile or gosh, you look great today or you know. I love how you talk to your son or whatever it is. If you start living in that space and you do it with your employees, you will change the culture around you. And those words might feel small, but they are extremely powerful. So please, if you get nothing else out of this lovely conversation, just go. Lead with heart. Go. Be kind. Go lift other people up. That always looks good on you.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that I saw a commercial the other day that said, just smile at someone. It can change things in an instant for both you and the person.

Lyndsay Dowd: Hundred percent.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. So, Lindsey, one more time. Tell us how people can connect with you. Because I am better. I’m a better. I’m betting that there are several people who want to connect with you. I hope.

Lyndsay Dowd: So. Um, yeah. Just come check my website at heartbeat for hire. It’s much easier than trying to spell my name. Um, so you can connect with me through there or find me on LinkedIn. I’m connected to Trisha, so that’s easy to find. Um, but yeah, I would love to be connected. Say, you heard it here, and, uh, I’ll know where you came from.

Trisha Stetzel: Love that. Thank you. Lyndsay. And by the way, Lyndsay’s a LinkedIn guru that I plan to learn from. I’m really excited about watching, uh, as you as you’re taking your journey, I’m going to follow behind you because I love what you’re putting out there.

Speaker6: It’s a really.

Lyndsay Dowd: Great tool that will set you apart. And if you’re a leader, even with a small company, that is still such a great way to represent yourself. And even if you think your business is just local, there is massive opportunity for you on LinkedIn. And I’m not paid by LinkedIn.

Trisha Stetzel: And not just.

Speaker7: Opportunities to sell something.

Speaker6: That’s right, beautiful.

Trisha Stetzel: Networking opportunities, which is how I found Lyndsay.

Speaker6: That’s right in the first.

Trisha Stetzel: Place, right? We had something in common and it’s a great way to get out there and network, especially if you’re sitting in your four walls for most of your day. Lyndsay, thank you so much for being on with me today. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

Lyndsay Dowd: Sam, thanks for having me. This was a blast.

Trisha Stetzel: That was very much fun today. Lots of energy. That’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation, share it with a fellow entrepreneur, a veteran, or a Houston leader. Ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate and listen. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours. Your business, your leadership, and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.

BRX Pro Tip: The Un-Conference

August 27, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: The Un-Conference

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BRX Pro Tip: The Un-Conference

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, I’ve come across this term before, but I want to hear more about your perspective and what you’re learning about this idea of the unconference.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, the unconference. I remember the first time I was part of one or even heard of it was early, early on the Business RadioX kind of birth, that a lot of the startup community and the tech space were having these kind of unconferences, and this is a way to kind of radically rethink what an event can be.

Lee Kantor: So, an unconference flips the script on a traditional event by prioritizing connection, participation, and kind of fresh formats over kind of your standard panel discussions and presentations, and a lot of prescheduled things with speakers and things like this. And the way you do this is instead of designing for just education, you want to design for interactivity.

Lee Kantor: An unconference isn’t a place where passive listening happens and somebody is talking to a big room. What you’re trying to do is facilitate small group dialogs, and you want to replace kind of those long lectures with roundtable discussions or peer-to-peer brainstorming, or I think they called it an unpanel, where every attendee can contribute, not just one person.

Lee Kantor: A way to kind of do this is you have to kind of lean into the chaos and trust the group that you’re putting together. So, you want to crowdsource the agenda. You want the attendees to submit session topics, questions, or problems that they want to solve in advance. And you let the community vote on which of the sessions that you’re going to be running.

Lee Kantor: So, by embracing this kind of anti-conference mindset and focusing in on participation, surprise, and action, you’re really going to create or you have a chance to create a really memorable experience that turns every community event into a catalyst for new ideas, new relationships, and more engagement.

BRX Pro Tip: Unbundling Your Brand

August 26, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Unbundling Your Brand

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BRX Pro Tip: Unbundling Your Brand

Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, you have some thoughts on unbundling your brand.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think a lot of times what happens in professional services or business coaching specifically is you just have a bunch of stuff that you offer your clients and you’re throwing a bunch of services and offers into that. And something to think about is to unbundle all the different services and products that you’re selling and see if it’s possible to kind of make micro offers for some of these services that you’ve just kind of lumped into one big thing.

Lee Kantor: So, for example, like say you’re a coach, and one of the things when you’re working with a new client is you do maybe an assessment or some sort of an audit or something like that, but that’s just built into your process. Is it possible to just pull out that one thing and make a micro offer for that thing, and try to sell that as a standalone thing as a way to kind of ease somebody into a relationship with you?

Lee Kantor: For SaaS companies that maybe they feature specific subscriptions or custom integrations, or single use data reports, or even onboarding workshops, like for a coach or consultant, we talked about assessments, but maybe there’s like a hot seat session or a quick workshop or an accountability check-in. If you can pull out kind of one thing that’s important to your clients that they’re going to get value, like overwhelming large amount of value from this one thing, this can lower the barrier for first time buyers. You know, it’s less risk, less commitment, and it gives you rapid feedback on what the market values most.

Lee Kantor: So, this can fuel customer trust, it can pave the way for higher ticket conversions down the road. And this enables that kind of low cost fast experimentation that we talked about previously in previous tips when you’re kind of trying to break into a new area or kind of explore a new segment.

Lee Kantor: So, by systematically breaking down your big offerings into focused micro offers, you might make your brand kind of irresistibly accessible, you could gather market intelligence quickly and create a steady stream of new buyers and new advocates before they purchase kind of the big thing that you’re selling.

From the Barracks to the BBQ: A Veteran’s Path to Flavorful Entrepreneurship

August 25, 2025 by angishields

Veteran Business Radio

From the Barracks to the BBQ: A Veteran's Path to Flavorful Entrepreneurship

00:00 /

In this episode of Veteran Business Radio, Lee Kanter talks with Jason Murff, founder of Grill Your Ass Off. Jason shares his journey from military service to building a successful gourmet seasoning and jerky business. He discusses the challenges of entrepreneurship, the importance of humor and community, and how his brand supports veterans and first responders. The conversation highlights Grill Your Ass Off’s growth, unique product lineup, and mission to foster camaraderie and mental health awareness within the veteran community.

Grill Your Ass Off is on a mission to make your food the best tasting thing you have ever put in your mouth. CEO Jason Murff served in United States Army as an Infantryman (11B), as well as in Specialty Unit: The Old Guard in Washington, D.C.

After serving, Jason came back home to Texas and utilized his GI Bill to begin his collegiate career. While attending college, he started blending his favorite flavor profiles and ultimately created a product that he knew would appeal to anyone for anything they are cooking.

After many months of flavor tasting and branding, Grill Your Ass Off was created. Since the company’s creation in 2016, we have been on a wild roller coaster of unprecedented growth! CEO Jason Murff has built Grill Your Ass Off into one of the fastest growing Veteran Owned seasoning companies in the USA, while at the same time giving back to the veteran community.

During his transition from the military into the civilian world, Jason hit a low. As most veterans also experience, he struggled with finding his purpose past service. Growing up Texan, Jason always had a passion for cooking.

If you ever grew up around the kitchen and experienced the joy that bringing people together around some good tasting food brings, then you’ll definitely understand. Our top mission at Grill Your Ass Off is to providing continued camaraderie through good ASS BBQ.

You can see this displayed on every product we create, each item is designed with a military theme so it can give you and a friend a good laugh or bring back a great memory. Every bottle is made in Texas with pride so you can Taste the Freedom.

As a Veteran Owned Company, we take pride in every point of the journey, from manufacturing to when the product reaches the customer’s hand, ensuring that it is the highest quality and the best service.

Each product sold proudly supports a true non-profit veteran organization or event. For more information, visit www.GrillYourAssOff.com.

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn and follow Grill Your Ass Off on Facebook.

Episode Highlights

Transition from military service to entrepreneurship in the food industry
Development and launch of a gourmet barbecue seasoning company
Challenges faced in product development, manufacturing, and branding
Importance of humor and camaraderie in the business mission
Community building and identifying core customer base
Product lineup designed to resonate with veterans and first responders
Growth and expansion of the brand into retail locations and direct-to-consumer sales
Navigating regulatory and logistical challenges in food production
The role of targeted media and sponsorship in brand visibility
Advice for veterans considering entrepreneurship, emphasizing patience and community support

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Veterans Business Radio. Brought to you by ATL vets, providing the tools and support that help veteran owned businesses thrive. For more information, go to ATL vets. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of Veterans Business Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today’s episode of Veterans Business Radio is brought to you by ATL vets, inspiring veterans to build their foundation of success to and empowering them to become the backbone of society after the inform. For more information go to ATL vets. Today on the show we have Jason Murff who is with Grill Your Ass Off. Welcome.

Jason Murff: Hey, thanks for having me on.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Grill Your Ass Off. How you serving, folks?

Jason Murff: Uh, yeah. So grow your ass off. Wasn’t ever anything that I planned on doing. But after being medically separated from the military and, you know, losing that passion and drive and having to make a hard career adjustment, it ended up blossoming into something that has greatly benefited me. And now, uh, is serving others. And this was something to wear whenever I was medically separated from the military. I ended up trying to go down the college route, and I started going to school to actually become a commercial airline pilot, and found out going from the infantry into flying a school bus in the sky was pretty boring and started mixing, uh, seasonings inside the garage. And next thing you know, were taking off. I’m dropping out of college and jumping in two feet with Grill Your Ass Off. Really? The the mission and the purpose with that was humor, because humor got got us through our darkest times of service and food. Food always brought us all together, which gives you our mission statement, which is continued camaraderie through good ass food.

Lee Kantor: So were you always kind of somebody who grilled or dabbled in the kitchen, at least.

Jason Murff: Just here and there? Um, you know, my family, we have a line of entrepreneurs in our family, and most of the time it was just making a quick snack meal or eating out because there wasn’t enough time to, you know, really cook at home. So I wasn’t ever a chef, didn’t go to culinary school or anything like that beforehand. I was a mechanic. I owned firework businesses and served inside the military. So, you know, owning a gourmet barbecue pro, um, business was not not on the roadmap.

Lee Kantor: But you were in Texas, so there’s a lot of barbecue and grilling happening.

Jason Murff: 100%, you know, being stationed in Washington, D.C. you really learn quickly coming from Texas, that there’s a severe lack of flavor up north.

Lee Kantor: And then what got you, like, how’d you kind of come up with that first rendition of a rub?

Jason Murff: So a lot of those first, the original four seasonings, which is our chicken, steak, pork and our Cajun seasoning came from really what I loved utilizing and kind of mixing together with multiple different seasonings growing up my whole entire life and then being stationed in D.C.. Friends and family would send up different seasonings up to me. And so with them sending that up my way. We actually had, you know, multiple different ideas of doing stuff and kind of looking at it and trying to replicate my own, but there was never any thought process or idea of like, hey, let me go start a seasoning company.

Lee Kantor: Right? But at some point, that thought did enter your brain.

Jason Murff: Yeah. And that was whenever I was going to college, so I was flying. I had just gotten my private pilot’s license. I was getting ready to start my instrument rating. And, uh, I was actually back home in Houston, um, and I was staying at my parents house for the weekend because I was doing a motocross race while I was in town. And, um, I was, you know, sitting down and having a drink with my dad. And we started going over, uh, you know, joking back and forth about different ideas. And he’s actually the one that came up with the name Grill Your Ass Off. And I kind of laughed at it and was like, yeah, well, I don’t know how well that name would do. Um, sat on it for just a little while, and then after, uh, having a few drinks, uh, one night I paid a guy 15 bucks on fiber and, uh, Venezuela to draw me a donkey on a grill, grilling its ass off, and that, uh, that pretty much sparked it from there forward. And, you know, the original ideas of the names of the products were calling the guys who I served with what most were still in to figure out, you know, like, what do we call our pork seasoning, what’s called infidel? What do we call ma deuce or steak seasoning. Let’s call it Mall Deuce, because it’s got the heaviest granulatus out of all of the original seasonings.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re going to do your first seasoning, like, was it just throwing things together, or did you have in your head like, okay, this is what I like. And let me see if I can replicate that in kind of a unique way. Like like what was kind of the. At some point you’re throwing spices together and, and tasting us. So what was that kind of experimentation like?

Jason Murff: Uh, a lot of it was just kind of going back on, you know, growing up, what did my dad always use that I liked? What did I start to use once I started doing more of the cooking that I liked, and then just kind of road mapping all of that together and then doing R&D. Like what? It’s so good in Montreal. Steak seasoning. How can I make that better? Um, and just picking apart what are the main winners from these, you know, very successful Seasonings. And then how can we make a spin on it to make it? And what my opinion is better.

Lee Kantor: And then at some point you’re like having to measure stuff and write it down like I need, you know, some pepper, I need some paprika. Like, I need an exact amount. Right? Like you’re in order to replicate this and have the same flavor each time for sure.

Jason Murff: And that’s what, thankfully, you know, coming straight out of the gate, we went and worked with the facility that, um, I had a mutual friend that I didn’t know at the time until we got into talking about it that was actually using to bottle some of his seasonings on the side. So I actually went directly to a facility right out of the gate and had their help bottling and kind of finishing off the flavors, because I’m sure, as you know, once you get inside a business, there’s a whole lot of tools out there that you have no idea exist until you’re in the business. And it’s the same thing with the seasonings. There’s a lot of seasonings and different methods of doing things that you have no idea exist until you’re in it.

Lee Kantor: And so how was that learning curve? Was that something you were like, oh, this is so cool. Like, now it’s, you know, my like there’s so many options, so much opportunity here. Was it kind of overwhelming where like, oh my God, there’s like a million moving parts.

Jason Murff: Um, no, I mean, a lot of it was just like, it’s so cool. And that’s one of the things I love about being an entrepreneur is like, you know, you have those, uh, you have a lot of bad days, but on your good days, you’re doing stuff that you you don’t know how to do. And if you can self educate and have that hunger and have that drive of learning something new, it’s it’s a blast because you’re learning a whole entire new subject that people spend, you know, four years going to college for. And you got, you know, a couple days or a week to be able to try and figure it out to get it going. So it’s always a challenge and a objective to be able to overcome, which makes it a blast for me.

Lee Kantor: Was was coming up with seasonings. Is that a different skill than coming up with like condiments or sauces of salsas that are more kind of liquidy like, is it different but similar? Like, what’s the process like in that it’s different?

Jason Murff: Um, but similar, um, you know, some of the things that, um, you know, a lot of people who make hot sauces at home or certain liquid products will use it from, you know, for instance, our hot sauce, we actually get all of the peppers, um, and flavoring for it, dehydrated and actually ground. So whenever we’re going to create it, we’re rehydrating all of those peppers so we can control the heat level and have it the same across the board. And like that was something I never had any idea. Um, that was the thing, you know, I was fermenting different peppers and trying all sorts of stuff at the house and creating like these amazing hot sauces. But whenever it came to doing like a production run, um, I had no idea until we started working with the correct people to help us, you know, formulate it and get it. Get the product where we wanted it to be.

Lee Kantor: So that’s one of those things where you don’t know what you don’t know until you’re actually in it.

Jason Murff: Yep, 100%. And then, you know, the the other fun side comes with, you know, being away, not working with the government or working for the government anymore, and then finding out some other three letter agencies or four letter agencies that, uh, you got to start working with again.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And that has its own kind of rules and fun and games with that.

Jason Murff: Oh, yeah. You think the, uh, the hurry up and wait and all the, uh, the fun stuff we got out of, you know, serving in the military was gone until you started doing dealing with them.

Lee Kantor: Now, how did the jerky come about?

Jason Murff: The jerky. So whenever we actually launched our jerky. Um, the place that I found to make the jerky for us because I didn’t want to go through standing up a entire facility that was a USDA approved and inspected facility. Um, I actually had reached out to jerky that I received in a care package, and it was some of the best jerky that I had had, and it was just a small mom and pop style business and said, I said, you know, hey, guys, like, I’m looking to do my own line of jerky, you know, kind of. What are your thoughts? Um, and they basically just responded back and said, no, we’re not interested. And, you know, that was super early days. And then, um, I had a few more conversations with them. They still weren’t interested. And then, um, once we started really taking off online, I just sent them a screenshot of our previous month in online sales, and I said, hey, I’m reaching out one more time to try and do business with you. And they called me shortly after receiving that email. Um, and that was one to where we jumped on the phone. We went over recipes. We went over different. You know, this is what we’re looking for in flavor, uh, profiles ideas. And they were help us to they helped us, uh, tremendously on being able to pull off those flavors and activate it, and have a killer line of beef jerky.

Lee Kantor: So when they saw that you were legit and thriving and you didn’t need them that much anymore, then all of a sudden it changed.

Jason Murff: Exactly. And, you know, sometimes that’s the way it is. Like, people don’t want to, you know, hey, we’re good. We don’t need any extra business. But, you know, if you can push them over the edge, give them a little nudge and say, like, hey, we’re not we’re not doing okay. We’re doing really good. Um, you know, you can become one of their biggest vendors very quickly.

Lee Kantor: Now, what was it like to go from kind of online to to try to get into stores? Because that seems like a different animal too.

Jason Murff: So that was actually, uh, it was reverse whenever I first launched it. Um, you know, coming from my family having a, a hardware store and knowing a handful of people with hardware stores, um, just from growing up in that industry, I was like, okay, cool. Like, you know, selling it to stores is going to be super easy. And once you run out of that, you know, close family, friends, Rolodex for me, um, I realized really quick that people don’t care that you started your own line and they have no idea who you are and that they don’t want to carry your product. So it was a lot of, uh, just getting rejected all the time and then realizing, like, hey, let’s establish a brand and have that brand recognition. So whenever I do come back to them, we’re going to blow them out of the water. And so a lot of it I kind of stepped away from the B2B side. And then I started going B2C online. And a lot of that was just social media, um, just going crazy on social media, not even running paid ads, just posting fun and engaging content that people will love.

Lee Kantor: And was it were you getting a lot of military folks as first customers, or was it kind of just free for all?

Jason Murff: Um, it was a free for all at first. And then we started really getting in a groove with the military demographic, the first responder demographic. And then that’s whenever we started, um, you know, we went out on limb, um, didn’t have a bunch of cash flow coming in at the time, and, uh, I, I remember it to this day, you know, uh, my dad, who’s a very successful entrepreneur, um, I sat down and talked with him, and I was like, hey, I got a little bit of money saved up. I think I’m gonna drop it into sponsoring a podcast. They have a crazy good customer base of listeners, and it’s. I have a good feeling it’s my direct, you know, uh, my direct audience. And he told me that he would not do that and that that was not a smart idea. And I went against his will and, um, the initial investment in sponsoring it for that month, we made back in two hours. Um, and that was whenever I was like, oh, crap. Like, there’s some power behind these podcasts, like, let’s go. So, um, that was one of the big, big kick offs because they actually launched the episode, uh, about 12 hours before they had initially told me so. I remember just sitting there and then all of a sudden I had, you know, Shopify hooked up on my phone and I had the notifications on for sales, and my phone just started vibrating like crazy. And I’m like, what the heck is happening right now?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. When you stumble onto the right channel, it’s amazing what can happen.

Jason Murff: Oh for sure. You know, and, um, you know, uh, about three, I think three years ago now is whenever we had our first opportunity for major earned media and we got on Fox News, and, um, you start coming across things like that, and it’s it’s insane the amount of power that some of these platforms have.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And it’s one of those things where, again, you don’t know until you, you do it and then it becomes obvious, you know, which are the, the right places for you to be.

Jason Murff: Yes, 100%. And that’s what makes it fun to it’s it’s the trial and error. And then once you do find what works. And then starting to scale that and just seeing everything, all the pieces fall into place until you have that wrench thrown in it, and then you get to have fun being an entrepreneur.

Lee Kantor: It’s not for the faint of heart.

Jason Murff: No.

Lee Kantor: Now, any advice for other veterans out there that are thinking, you know, aspiring entrepreneurs like you, you know, the day before you became, you know, and threw your hat over the fence and said, I’m in. Well, you know, any advice for other people who are contemplating this? But, you know, feeling a little unsure, um, you know, some of your do’s and don’ts maybe, or what it was like to, to just say, okay, you know, screw it. I’m going to go for it.

Jason Murff: Um, I mean, I think a lot of it is, uh, patience is golden. Um, a lot of us want to chase that shiny object. And I know a lot of people jump into entrepreneurship because they think that they’re gonna quit working for the man. They’re going to be able to take vacations whenever they want, work anywhere in the world that they want. Um, and they go over that. They chase that shiny object when in all reality, you’re becoming your own boss. And unfortunately, uh, that boss is going to be working 24 over seven. Um, so I would say, you know, have patience with it. Uh, anything that’s worthwhile, um, that’s going to be around for a while. It’s it’s going to take time to grow. Um, don’t expect things overnight. Um, and just like in the military, you know, we had some days that, you know, you take it meal by meal. Just saying, you know, if I can make it to breakfast, I’m good, and then I can make it to lunch, and then I can make it to dinner on those just bad, bad days. Um, you can do the same thing here. And the entrepreneur space. Um, and, I mean, I think that’s the best thing that I got for him. Um, and other than that is, uh,, you know, one thing that you can’t automate is community. And if you’re if you’re going to grow, you have to have a community behind you. And along with that, a team behind you. And I always try to remind people, don’t forget about the amazing leadership you had, but also don’t forget about the horrible leadership you had and don’t replicate that.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, and when people say they want to be an entrepreneur because they’re tired of working for the man, the the first thing they have to understand is that every one of your customers is the man. Like, you’re now working for each one of those customers. So the man never goes away.

Jason Murff: Oh, yeah. And you’re thinking, you know, you’re going to have all this time off and everything like that. And, uh, one thing that, um, people forget is reps make the talent, and talent doesn’t make the reps.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And there’s no shortcut.

Jason Murff: No. Not whatsoever.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. They’re all looking for that. Oh, I just do this one thing, and then I sit back and the cash flows in. It’s just I it just doesn’t work that way.

Jason Murff: Now I’m still waiting on that. Yeah. If you find that, please let me know.

Lee Kantor: So you mentioned the importance of community. How did you start knowing that? Hey, I’m going to be able to build a community around this brand.

Jason Murff: Uh, really, you know, uh, in the early days, identifying our why. And then as soon as you identify your why, you can very easily target who is your core customer. And thankfully for veterans and first responders and people who just love America and love cooking, that’s a very easy, um, you know, audience to gain into once you earn that recognition of having a quality product. And so as soon as we identified that, we started building groups around that. So, um, and then building the products around those groups. So if you look at our labeling, it’s to tie in and attract veterans, first responders, people who love humor because, you know, we have Madu Steak seasoning. Anyone who served in the military knows what an M2 Browning 50 cals nickname is. And that’s the madhouse. Um, you look at our hot sauce, fire chief. Hot sauce. So you’re instant, you know, you’re going to get recognition with the firefighters out there. And then we have other products like our donkey balls, which are green olive with the habanero stuffed inside of it. So ironically enough, that’s our best selling product inside of hallmark stores. So you can buy grandma birthday card in a jarred donkey ball.

Jason Murff: So, um, and and again, like, the biggest thing for us is just, uh, the goal with it, whenever deep down inside my head was, you know, we had guys that, um, we had one, uh, soldier who, uh, you know, attempted suicide. Um, we had guys that did attempt suicide. I’ve had friends since getting out attempt suicide. And my thing was, if I can just get one person to pick up the bottle, get a laughter, brighten their day. Um, that could save their life. Um. Or, you know, if they can pick up the phone and be like, oh, man. You remember whenever we were downrange and this happened, let me call, you know, Lee, real quick and and see what he’s doing. You know, you could be on that edge and that one phone call or. Hey, buddy, come over. I just got this new gunpowder seasoning. We’re gonna cook some steaks tonight. Like, that was really the goal behind it. And as soon as we started doing that, it’s just like the community came around it. And it was very, very easy to build that.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And food is a great place to build community around. I mean, everybody’s got to eat. So I mean, and and by leaning into it with that, uh, the specificity of the language of the people you’re trying to attract and talking to them in words that only they understand. It just bonds people closer together. I mean, you’re not trying to be something for everyone. You’re something for a certain group of people, and they appreciate it because they want to feel special, because they are special.

Jason Murff: 100%. And you know, with that, at the same time, you also have to be careful not to make the product too much dedicated just for them, because then you start confusing the civilians that really have no idea. Um, and we found that out the hard way because they used to have nomenclature on every single bottle that, uh, ended up getting us in some trouble on certain places that we had to remove a little bit later on down as we continued to grow.

Lee Kantor: But, uh, it sounds like things are going well for. Grow your ass off.

Jason Murff: Yes. Um, you know, we’re getting close to hitting 1400 retail locations across all 50 states, including some international, that carry the product. Um, you know, we’re we’re getting closer and closer to having 300,000 direct to consumer orders with us. Um, we have an amazing team of veterans, first responders, military spouses, um, civilian, um, on our team. And I couldn’t be more happy, uh, to have built the organization, the team and our customers that we consider family that we have.

Lee Kantor: Well, congratulations on all the momentum. Uh, for folks who want to learn more, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Jason Murff: Uh, websites, grill your ass, Ofcom. All the social media is going to be at Grill Your Ass Off. Um, and check out everything there. I mean, we have awesome products. We got awesome recipes on the website. We got a store locator on the website. So if you want to shop local, um, if you want to support the, uh, you know, the giant if we are on Amazon, um, and yeah, no thank you. Thank you again for having us on here. And, um. Yeah. No, it’s been it’s been awesome. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: Well, Jason, thank you so much for sharing your story, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

Jason Murff: Awesome. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Veterans Business Radio.

How Franchise Organizations Can Leverage Digital Marketing to Thrive in an AI-Driven World

August 25, 2025 by angishields

Franchise Marketing Radio

How Franchise Organizations Can Leverage Digital Marketing to Thrive in an AI-Driven World

00:00 /

In this episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, Lee Kantor interviews Steve Buors, CEO and co-founder of Reshift Media, about digital marketing strategies for franchise organizations. They discuss balancing brand consistency with local customization, the growing impact of AI on search and SEO, and best practices for attracting franchisees. Steve shares insights on using franchise portals, targeted advertising, and the importance of expert guidance to adapt to evolving digital trends. The conversation highlights how franchises can leverage scalable digital marketing and AI-driven strategies to stay competitive and effectively reach both customers and prospective franchisees.

Steve Buors has over 20 years of digital marketing experience and has earned a reputation for being at the forefront of emerging digital trends.

As the CEO of Reshift Media, Steve specializes in crafting digital strategies that help businesses attract loyal and repeat customers, expand brand awareness, and ignite innovation.

A tenacious and innovative powerhouse, Steve is a sought-after consultant and speaker. His knack for uncovering hidden opportunities and driving growth is unparalleled.

Follow Reshift Media on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Episode Highlights

Digital marketing strategies tailored for franchise organizations
Balancing brand consistency for franchisors with local customization for franchisees
The impact of AI on SEO and search behavior
Best practices for emerging franchisors to attract franchisees
The role of franchise portals and brokers in franchise marketing
Importance of integrated websites for franchise systems
Adapting marketing strategies in the evolving digital landscape
The significance of paid advertising for local customer acquisition
Optimizing content for AI-driven search results
Targeted advertising strategies based on demographic and psychographic data

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have CEO and co-founder of Reshift Media, Steve Buors. Welcome.

Steve Buors: Thanks, Lee. Happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Reshift Media. How are you serving folks?

Steve Buors: So we’re a digital marketing organization that specializes in franchise organizations. So we do everything digitally. You could think of social media search, we build websites, we build apps, and we also do franchise development in terms of finding new franchisees for your organization.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Steve Buors: Myself and my business partner, Kirk. I started the agency about 12 years ago. We saw that there was a gap in the market in terms of franchise organizations and having someone that really understands their business model to be able to serve them better from a digital marketing perspective. And we started with a couple of franchise companies, started solving some problems, and 12 years later, here we are.

Lee Kantor: So what attracted you to the franchise industry?

Steve Buors: Honestly, it’s it was an underserved market, and there was just so much complexity that the big platforms weren’t solving for them. So if you’re a franchise organization, you run a one or you want to run meta advertising or Google advertising across all your locations. It’s actually really tough because it’s really manual and you’re creating multiple campaigns and, you know, it’s a lot of sweat equity. So we ended up developing software and processes to solve those problems at scale. So franchising is all about scalability. And so we created the ability to scale digital marketing for franchise organizations.

Lee Kantor: And in your work before that, were you working just with regular brands, and then you got a client that was in franchising and that’s where the opportunity arose. Or like, how did you kind of dip your toe into franchising for the first time, or were you always working with franchises your whole career?

Steve Buors: No, actually it’s interesting. One of our earlier clients was the UPS store, who’s obviously a franchise, and their president, who’s, you know, still a client of ours. We were working with them to solve his problems, and we were like, man, this there’s there’s a lot of complexity here. And as we started to figure out ways to build scale from a digital marketing perspective for for him, he said, look, you got to come and come to these CFA being the Canadian Franchise Association, the IFA, the International Franchise Association, and share what you guys are doing. And next thing you know, um, we were the franchise digital marketing people and we’re now winning awards. We’ve been named world’s best franchise marketing firm by the Global Franchise Awards three years in a row. We’re number one in entrepreneurs category for franchise marketing firms. We were named disruptor of the Year by International Business Awards. So it’s really. It really just was because we had that one client. He steered us in the direction and now now it’s our thing.

Lee Kantor: Now, one of the challenges I would imagine, when working with franchise is like from a franchisor standpoint, they want the brand, they want more franchisees. But the franchisee in the town just wants more clients from the town. So they want hyper local where the brand may want, you know, a broader reach than that. How do you kind of marry the two?

Steve Buors: I love that question. And that is one of the number one challenges with with franchise digital marketing. The franchisee wants to own their market and do their own thing. They’re an entrepreneur in their market. That’s that’s why they’re a franchisees, because they want to run their own business. Meanwhile, the franchisor obviously is looking for brand consistency and scalability. So That is actually what we spend all of our time solving is that exact problem. So what we’ve done is we’ve developed both software and processes where we’re able to create a standardized campaign that could be Facebook or Instagram or Google or TikTok or Google Performance Max. We create that campaign so it’s scalable and that adheres to brand standards. And then what we do is we publish that to the franchisee to be able to customize for their own needs. So that could be local, targeting their own local budget. Maybe they want to put their own local offer in, um, you know, maybe they want a slightly different terminology in there in terms of how their location is described. And we programmatically serve all the ads off of their local Instagram handle off of their local Facebook page. So what’s happening is you’re getting the best of both worlds, where you’re getting the scalability and brand consistency that the franchisor wants, but the franchisee can now customize it for their market. And the beauty of the whole process we’ve put together is it uses machine learning and it uses automation to reduce cost. So we’re able to run campaigns across thousands of UPS store locations, as an example, at a fraction of the cost that it would typically be to manually create all these campaigns and manage them.

Lee Kantor: And then the franchise owner just passes that cost down to the franchisee that’s built into their marketing spend they have to do.

Steve Buors: Yeah, it’s usually most franchise systems are paying for the software and for our campaign creation through the marketing fund, and the franchisees are paying for their own ad spend. And in some cases, the franchise owners are, you know, charging franchisees directly. And in some cases, we work directly with the franchisees to really give them that white glove customer service, and the franchisee would usually pay for that.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you feel that from a franchisee standpoint, that they need to invest in paid ads in some way, that organic is just too difficult to do for them in a hyperlocal manner.

Steve Buors: Well, we we do a lot of hyper local SEO as well. And obviously with all the AI advancements in search, we’re doing a lot of that. So you can get pretty far from the organic perspective. But it’s it’s not enough, right? Like you need to advertise your business in your local market. So hyper local, uh, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google search ads, that’s how you break through and that’s how you get new customers. Um, they’re going to do their research and they’re going to, you know, search for you locally. Maybe they’re looking for your local hours of operation, maybe they’re looking for your services. But you need to create that impression first, and you need to make sure that they’re even aware you exist before they’re they’re searching for you. So, um, I think it’s both is the real answer. You need proper local SEO to be competitive, but in terms of actually attracting new customers and making sure you get your fair share of business at your local market, you have to advertise.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned AI and obviously that’s a hot topic today. How are you seeing it impact SEO? We’re seeing a lot of people talking about a very large drop in organic search traffic because of of AI. Are you seeing that as well?

Steve Buors: Absolutely. So Google has implemented their AI overviews. So instead of people using the the lists right. The hyperlinked list that traditionally search would have, people are getting the answer they need right in that AI overview on Google. Or they’ve just gone right to AI search. They’re using ChatGPT or Gemini or Cloud or Perplexity or one or the other. True, you know, generative, um, search experiences. Uh, so we are seeing clicks to client websites declined from an organic search perspective. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re not getting visibility. And that’s that’s kind of the big thing we’ve been talking with our clients about is we’ve actually had clients say to us, how do I make sure I’m not in that I overview because I want the click, and that is absolutely the wrong way to think about it. You need to be optimizing to get into those AI overviews and get into ChatGPT and into Gemini. Otherwise, you’re missing out because this is the way search is going in the year two years search won’t even look anything like it does today. We’re the whole, uh, how search works and how we as consumers use it is undergoing a fundamental shift that we haven’t seen since Google was launched, if I’m being honest. Right. Google changed the game when they first launched, and, you know, they used to be Excite and Lycos and all those other search engines that went by the wayside were at that point again, where search will be so fundamentally different that if you as an organization are not optimizing for AI based search, you absolutely will be left behind.

Lee Kantor: So how do you recommend your clients optimize for AI?

Steve Buors: Yeah. So there’s there’s two angles we’re taking. One is optimizing for the eye itself. Um, and kind of a change in mindset where it’s not so much about winning the click, it’s about getting visibility. It’s actually funny because search has always been about getting traffic right. I want to show up as high as I can in the list, and the higher I get in the list, the more clicks I get and the more traffic I get. Um, whereas now search is becoming more of an awareness play in some ways because, um, they’re giving searches, giving you that one answer. So your job as a brand now is to get into that answer. So what that means is you’re creating content that the AI search engine can actually use, and you’re shifting from kind of a thought process around targeting keywords instead targeting useful content. Um, that is more conversational that the search engine can use. So that means things like creating a great FAQ on your website that directly answers questions. Creating how two guides. Product comparisons are great because people are like which products better? Compare these features to these features, providing real opinions and insights. Not just not just fluff, right? Like actual insights and content with actual factual value. And it also means you got to you got to think a little bit off your own website, because obviously your website is a great source of content about your company, your products, your services. But the AI search engine is crawling the entire web to give answers to questions.

Steve Buors: So you need to start thinking about how can you be represented on, um, other forums. Uh, Reddit in particular is is well used by the the generative AI to find information. Core is another one, uh, making sure that your Google business profile is completely up to date with information. If you have a Wikipedia listing, fantastic. If you can be on Wikipedia, you know not every company you know merits a Wikipedia entry, but if you have one, that’s amazing. Social mentions. User generated content is huge. Uh, influencer generated content is actually even more valuable in this, um, in this sort of context, um, and listicles, which is basically, uh, other content creators creating lists saying like, you know, who’s the who’s the world’s best franchise marketing firm as an example and listing your company in there. So it’s it’s a lot of different things to be able to index for the I o reviews. And then at the same time, we have a whole, um, a whole process we’re following to help franchise systems rank even better for local searches, which tend to not be as AI overview generated uh, response centric uh, which does elicit a click. So local search is still a thing. People finding stuff in their in their area and clicking. There is a whole thing that we’re doing to be able to still get clicks, but at the same time you need to optimize for the the AI overview, otherwise you’ll be left behind.

Lee Kantor: Does it matter if the brand, like the franchisor, has a website, and the franchisees website are kind of a part of that franchise website, or does every franchisee need their own kind of unique space that isn’t touching the franchise owners? Um, website?

Steve Buors: Uh, the best approach we’ve found is to actually have one integrated website. So where you got a single domain? Again, if I use the UPS store as an example, right. Um, you don’t want to have UPS store. Com and then UPS store, you know waco.com and Dallas com. Because what ends up happening is the search engine doesn’t necessarily connect all those dots per se, that that’s one company and one set of content. It’s actually more powerful to have a single URL the UPS store. Com or, you know, slash phoenix. Um, and what’s nice about that then is kind of a sense of a rising tide lifts all ships. So if all of your local microsites in this case are well done, so they should have lots of content, they should have differentiated local content. So it’s not that your franchisee shouldn’t be doing anything for SEO locally. In fact, they should be doing a lot. But they do that in part of your network, part of your website, because then each of those local sites that’s strong in their own right, they all help each other. And one of the big selling propositions you have then is a franchise system is, hey, if you join our franchise and we create a microsite for you, as soon as we bolt you onto our network, you’re already having a better chance of ranking than if you’re trying to do this on your own. It becomes actually a bit of a selling point for people to join your franchise, quite honestly.

Lee Kantor: And then they just create content under that microsite and that benefits them locally, plus it benefits the the totality of the franchise.

Steve Buors: Absolutely. And the franchisees benefiting from the strength of the other franchisees. And they’re benefiting from the strength of the overall company website. So it is really a symbiotic relationship. All of those local microsites with people creating content, the franchisees creating content helps the company and the company. Creating content helps the franchisee and the franchisees are helping each other. And it’s that kind of scale and trust and authority that you’re building with search engines that that really helps from a franchise perspective. In fact, it’s in our opinion, it’s one of the franchise organization superpowers that you really can’t do with a lot of other business models. So it actually is one of the key things we recommend to our clients to really have a, I call, an unfair advantage in terms of ranking for searches.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with your clients, are they typically B2C or B2B? What is a typical franchise client for you nowadays?

Steve Buors: Oh, we work with all kinds of franchise systems. So B2B, B2C, it’s it’s amazing. There’s a franchise for everything. We got a franchise system. We’re working with the where they they do batting cages. We got one where they do dumpster rentals. We got pet services, we have insurance, we have financials. So we work with all kinds of franchise systems. We work across across the world. We’re in 22 different countries with more than 200 different brands. So what’s interesting is the fundamentals of the franchise model are always the same in terms of the scalability and the opportunities, but the implementation is always different, right? Every every different sector has their own challenges, competitive set, consumers, etc. so it keeps life interesting, but we are able to add value on almost every type of industry we we come across. That’s a franchise.

Lee Kantor: Now any advice for that emerging Franchise or that is trying to attract franchisees. Are there some do’s and don’ts that you’ve learned over the years that help them, you know, effectively launch?

Steve Buors: Yes, absolutely. So, um, get your fundamentals right early. So I know it’s tough because you’re you probably don’t have as much cash as you like. You just spent all your money getting your legals in order and you’re just trying to get franchisees. Um, but have a great website. Uh, franchisees look at that. Right? Because they’re buying into your system and they’re buying into your brand. So it’s not just about having a great looking store and touring them of your local store and showing them how awesome it is. Oftentimes, the first thing your customer, your potential customer is going to see is your website. And so the franchisee knows that and they’re looking at the website. Is it good? Is it something I want to buy into? Do you have this thought out. How do you rank for searches? What’s your digital marketing approach? Is there some sort of technology I’m using that makes my life easier? So one of the best pieces of advice we always give, and we do work with a lot of emerging brands, is let’s get this right from the outset. And that way you now have a repeatable, scalable model that you can implement going forward, and you’re not trying to change things and improve things once you’re at 50 units, because when you’re at 50 units or 100 units, sure you have more money and you’ve got more ability to do things, but now you’re trying to change all these locations and trying to change how you do things. You’re just introducing more pain for yourself later. Get it right in the first place. Set yourself up for success, and then you can point to that when you’re bringing franchisees on to say, look, we’re ready to go. We have a great website. We’ve got a firm here who’s doing all this great SEO for us. You join us and we’re going to take off.

Lee Kantor: Now, have the tactics shifted from when you’re searching for a new franchisees because of AI, is there a different strategy you have to deploy? Um, you know, from that regard?

Steve Buors: Yeah, for sure. So we do a lot of franchise development advertising and SEO, and the same sort of issues that are occurring on the B2C side are definitely occurring on the front dev side, where you’re not getting as many click thrus, but people are doing their homework. So again, it’s it’s a bit of a mind shift where you have to recognize that the purchase journey for a prospective franchisee is almost entirely self-managed now. It’s not a matter of they have very little information and they’re just reaching out to franchise systems. No, they’ve done their homework. They’ve looked at your competitors. They’ve thought about their lifestyle. They’ve thought about, you know, what sort of sector they want to be in. And they’re doing all that research when you don’t even know it. They’re looking at your website, your competitor’s websites. They’re looking at whatever comes up on the search engine from an AI overviews or whatever ChatGPT or Gemini are telling them. So it’s so important to be active at all levels of the purchase funnel. Don’t just sit there and run search ads and try and get people right at the point of conversion. Yeah, that feels good because your cost per leads lower and your conversion rate is probably higher. But I guarantee you you are missing out on all those people who earlier in their in their purchase journey, didn’t even know you existed. And so you never entered their competitive set. So you need to be active in creating content. In being mentioned in articles, being on lists of top franchise orders, just making sure that your presence on the web as a place you know the people should want to buy a franchise is is very visible because you need to be in those eye overviews. You need to be in those ChatGPT results. Otherwise, you’re going to miss out, and people will just bypass your brand altogether and buy someone else’s.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you feel about all the portals and the franchise brokers and things like that? Is that is should that is that a complimentary piece? Is that replace some of the marketing and advertising spend?

Steve Buors: Another great question. So to me, um, there’s there is a place for the listing, uh, organizations where, you know, you pay them to obviously list your franchise and they’re advertising essentially on, on your behalf to draw traffic into their portal. So if you’re an earlier franchise and you don’t have a lot of search visibility, you don’t have a big budget for creating content and trying to get a footprint. That’s a great way to get into consideration. Set right. If someone’s looking for a pizza franchise and you know you can get on that listing, uh, in your a newer, uh, pizza concept, then you can get in someone’s consideration set just because they’re using that particular portal. Uh, and they happen to be looking for a pizza franchise there. So particularly for newer stage, um, franchise organizations, I think that there’s real value there as you get big enough on your own. And if you’re able to actually create a large enough footprint on your own, uh, being a digital footprint, I mean, if you have enough to be able to invest in some advertising, make sure your SEO is up to snuff. That becomes less important, I find, because you really want to convert the people on your own, on your own website. And if you’re kind of one of the bigger companies in your industry, you don’t really need the listing engine quite as much anymore, because all someone’s going to do there is see some of your smaller competitors that maybe wouldn’t have done as well of you as you in the search engine anyway. So I think a lot of that depends on where you are as an organization and how much. Um, I’d say visibility and notoriety you have. And every again, every franchise is different. A lot of our clients actually aren’t on those listing engines anymore, because we’ve been able to build up their SEO and build up their marketing to the point where they’re getting good deal flow without it.

Lee Kantor: Now, what about if you’re a brand that is kind of unique? Like, I could see where a pizza place, you know, they want to be in the conversation. They don’t want to be, you know, just kind of left out. But if you’re like that batting cage company where there’s probably not a dozen competitors. Um, is that more or less important than to, uh, you know, be in those kind of, uh, portals and lists?

Steve Buors: Uh, again, it depends on the concept, but yeah, if someone’s just more generally looking for a franchise, they don’t quite have their concept figured out yet, then for sure. And particularly if you can be featured on one of those portals, you know, you pay for whatever the platinum sponsorship and you, you get some visibility. Absolutely. There’s value there. And again, particularly if you’re, um, an unusual franchise concept and maybe you’re in a, uh, early stages of your growth. I see value there for sure. Now, having said that, you know, if you have specific areas you’re looking for, you can do outbound advertising quite cost effectively to try and increase awareness of your concept, um, and target people who might be interested if they fit a certain profile. Um, but I would say as a general statement, I would see more value in the portals in that scenario.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. To me, it’s a tricky situation when you’re trying to sell a franchisee, a potential franchisee. It’s almost kind of a a needle in a haystack situation. Like how do you find the right fit for your brand as opposed to, you know, because they don’t know what they don’t know yet? And, um, do you recommend for emerging franchise franchise brands to target specific geographies to find that needle in the haystack that’s the right fit for their brand or do kind of macro? Let me just evangelize the brand, and then the right person will pop up wherever they happen to pop up.

Steve Buors: They’re a great question. So, um, the it depends on your growth aspirations. So if you have a smaller budget and a lot of franchise systems, you want to be able to grow Row nearby because you got your distribution there and you have your supply chain handy. Like as an example, if you’re on the West Coast, you don’t necessarily want a franchise location on the East Coast because it’s gonna be hard to service them. So if if you’re newer and you’re looking to expand within your area and you only have limited budget, then absolutely. And we do that quite a bit where it’s here’s the best pockets of people where we want to match a new franchise location based on the demographics or psychographics of potential customers. Um, that works great. And what I love about that is your advertising can be so specific where it’s not just, hey, come get a come get a pizza franchise. It’s like, hey, do you want a pizza franchise in Portland? And it actually very much increases the quality of the leads. You get the propensity for conversion, and you’re able to kind of outcompete other brands who maybe aren’t being quite so specific.

Lee Kantor: Now is a typical franchise Buyer. And in today’s market, are they kind of open to anything? They’re just looking for the right kind of lifestyle, financial fit for themselves because, um, I interview a lot of franchisees and a lot of franchisors, and it seems like there’s a good percentage of franchisees that hadn’t heard of the brand before or hadn’t considered that brand before they purchased, but it wasn’t after they were made aware of how it works and what their responsibilities would be. Then they then they added it to their consideration set. And like, what’s the mindset of this aspiring franchisee?

Steve Buors: It’s a great question. So everyone’s different. So so some people, they know they want to own a bakery franchise right. And they they love baking and that’s their passion. Et cetera. Etc.. But there is absolutely a group of people who are like, I want to be in business for myself. I like the franchise model because, you know, I get a proven system and a proven approach. Uh, we watch, uh, search volume for franchising quite closely, and there are a lot of searches that are quite general. Buy a franchise franchise opportunities. Best franchise to own that don’t have any sector in there. And those searches are incredibly high every month. And so there is a lot of people who kind of start with a mentality of, I want to be in business for myself. What’s a good business that provides me a sort of lifestyle I want and is in an area I want to I want to live and work. Um, now there’s obviously people, like I said, who very much say I want to be a baker, and I love baking and I’m going to do that. But we’ve had really good success kind of targeting that top of funnel to help shape the person’s journey to a degree where, hey, this is a great franchise system that fits your lifestyle. Um, and then they kind of go through their process and rate into consideration set from day one.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, it’s a it’s an evolving market. And it’s just interesting how AI is kind of now permeating this. And and the different pivots that franchise brands have to be aware of and franchisees have to be aware of in order to kind of take advantage of these new opportunities.

Steve Buors: Well, absolutely. And it’s funny because, you know, your general consumers, a lot of them are being exposed to AI searches through through Google because the AI overviews is is very visible. And obviously Google being the number one search engine in the world, but you’re getting more and more people who are using the free versions of ChatGPT or Gemini or Perplexity, where it’s a very different experience. It’s almost more like a conversation as opposed to a search. And we are certainly seeing more and more opportunities on those types of searches. And again, that’s that’s the future of search. No one knows exactly what it’s going to look like, but it’s certainly going to look something like that. It’s going to look much different than the list of blue links that we’re used to seeing. And so from a consumer perspective, a franchisee perspective, just how we as humans find information, products, services, business to buy, that is changing quite fundamentally.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I agree 100%. I think that what’s happening is we got kind of taught by the Googles of the world that if, you know, I ask Google a question, it pulls up a bunch of links, and I have to then go to those links to find the answer. And now I is just answering the question so I don’t have to go anymore. I have the answer that I want. And from a consumer standpoint, that’s a lot easier. And it’s a lot closer to what I my expectation was initially, but it changes the game for any of these businesses that were putting out content or paying for ads in order to be seen by these consumers.

Steve Buors: Oh, absolutely. Well, in fact, when you say it like that, it sounds kind of ridiculous, right? That that’s how search worked. It’s like, hey, where can you know who’s a great plumber near me? It’s like, here’s a list of links. You go figure it out, right?

Lee Kantor: Right. That’s what it was. That right? Wasn’t that. That’s what search engines were.

Steve Buors: They were exactly. Yeah. At the painstakingly click every link and oh no, this isn’t what I want or oh yeah, I guess that’s it or whatever. Right. Whereas now it’s like, here’s the answer. Um, from a consumer perspective, it’s it’s tremendous. I’m I’m a huge fan. Everyone you talk to is a huge fan. It’s the businesses where this is a massive problem because you said it right off the top of this conversation, traffic is declining. Organic search traffic is absolutely declining because people don’t need to click through. So businesses are struggling with how do I turn visibility in an AI overview or a ChatGPT search? How do I turn that into business for me? And that’s the mind shift that’s happening right now.

Lee Kantor: And that’s why you need a marketing specialist to help you, because the marketing person is trying to solve this. That’s their livelihood at stake here. Where you as a consumer or a business owner of one thing, you just care how it impacts you. But a marketer, this is all they’re thinking about 20%. They have to solve this or they go out of business.

Steve Buors: Well, yes, we have been working on it a lot. You’re exactly right.

Lee Kantor: Right. But that’s why they should hire an expert in this, not just, you know, kind of read a blog post and think you figured it out. I mean, this thing’s changing minute by minute.

Steve Buors: It absolutely is. And nobody knows who’s going to win. Right. Like it’s so cheap. Chatgpt obviously made a huge splash when, you know, kind of suddenly everyone was talking with generative AI and suddenly Google and everyone else was, was pushing their own AI out the door. We don’t know as, as a consumer base, exactly what the winner is going to look like. And we don’t even know what the winning medium is going to be like. A lot of this search is still happening through through text, on a keyboard, on your on your phone or your desktop. Stop. But voice search is taking off like crazy. And so if you look at people under 20 years old, they don’t they don’t type on their phones anymore. They literally talk to the phone. Hey, Siri, you know, where’s the best place for me to get some pizza? Well, think about that in the context of generative AI and the single answer you’re getting like, Holy moly, it’s no more about here’s a top three pizza places. It’s like, this is it. This is the place you should go. And it’s going to tell you that verbally, as opposed to reading it on a screen like it’s crazy. Just when you start to think about how far this is going to go.

Lee Kantor: Right. And you mentioned that the young people who are kind of AI natives or digital natives, they’re using it in a different way than maybe the more affluent business owner who’s older in a different generation is using it. So there’s a large disconnect where the older person who has the funds is spending money, as opposed to how their consumer is really using the thing. So again, this is why having an expert on your team is critical, so you kind of understand the blind spots you might have or the biases you might have when you’re dealing with this, because those young people are not using these tools like the older people are using these tools. So you need an expert by your side in order to do this.

Steve Buors: Well, I completely agree, of course. And it is true. You know, you talk to the business owner or the head of marketing and you got to be careful because because their bias is coming to play. And we as business people spend, you know, a good chunk of our day in front of these big monitors doing work. That isn’t how the vast majority of people interact with your website. That isn’t how the vast majority of the people interact with the internet. They’re doing it on their phones, and more and more, they’re doing it with their voice through their home speaker or in car or just even on their phones. Again, like I said, you watch someone under 20 if they want to do a search on their phone, they don’t type it. They say it and that is indicative of where this is all going.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff man. I can talk to you all day about this. It’s fascinating and it’s ever changing. Uh, if somebody wants to learn more about your services or get Ahold of you or somebody on the team to improve their chances of being found, uh, what is the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Steve Buors: Uh, website is medium.com. And if you ever want to connect with me, I love having these conversations. You can get me at Steve at Medium.com. That’s my personal email. Happy to chat with anyone anytime.

Lee Kantor: Well, Steve, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Steve Buors: Thanks, Leigh. Appreciate you having me on the show. And I really enjoyed the conversation.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

BRX Pro Tip: Why Podcasts Are So Popular

August 25, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Why Podcasts Are So Popular

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BRX Pro Tip: Why Podcasts Are So Popular

Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, I am not complaining even a little bit, but why do you suppose podcasting has become – and podcasts – are so popular these days?

Lee Kantor: I think that what podcasts do, it really aligns well with what listeners are valuing today. Today’s listeners value content that’s tailored to very specific interests and identities. And when you’re listening to a podcast, it feels more like a community than just kind of a media. This fosters connections over shared passions, and listeners feel like they’re active participants, not just passive consumers.

Lee Kantor: People are so hungry for this authentic human connection. And just think about how they’re listening, they’re usually with headphones, they’ve usually blocked out all the other things that are going on. And they might be doing something like walking on a treadmill or going for a walk, but what’s in their ears is the podcaster talking, whispering right into their ear.

Lee Kantor: So, podcasts are typically more conversational, they’re unscripted, they’re intimate than other media. The format lets the host share stories or struggles or expertise in an authentic voice. This type of intimacy is making listeners feel like they know the host, this builds trust and builds connection. And when the content aligns with a passion or identity, you know, this can feel like a lifeline to some folks, especially for first generation entrepreneurs.

Lee Kantor: So, podcasts are on demand and personalized. The listener controls what, when, and where they listen. It’s a gateway to real relationships. Podcasts are so popular today because they go beyond delivering content. They build community.

Disrupting the Roofing Industry: David Bitan’s Vision for a Better Customer Experience

August 24, 2025 by angishields

Franchise Marketing Radio

Disrupting the Roofing Industry: David Bitan’s Vision for a Better Customer Experience

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In this episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, Lee Kantor interviews David Bitan, founder of Bumble Roofing. David shares his journey building Bumble Roofing into a standout brand by focusing on “white glove” customer service, local ownership, and operational excellence—rare in the roofing industry. He discusses industry trends, the pitfalls of private equity rollups, and the company’s innovative use of technology. David also highlights the importance of thoughtful franchise growth, strategic partnerships (notably with Empower Brands and Lowe’s), and maintaining a people-first culture to ensure both customer satisfaction and franchisee success.

With 16 years of experience in home and residential services, David Bitan is the driving force behind Bumble Roofing, a company that has transformed the roofing industry over the last five years.

David’s passion lies in bringing fresh, innovative experiences to traditional industries and turning customers into lifelong raving fans. After successfully establishing Bumble Roofing as a household name in the Los Angeles market, David partnered with Empower Brands to expand his vision nationwide.

Today, he is dedicated to helping franchise owners achieve their goals, while continuing to fulfill homeowners’ roofing dreams through the Bumble Roofing vision.

Connect with David on LinkedIn.

Episode Highlights

Overview of Bumble Roofing’s commitment to a “white glove” customer experience in the roofing industry.
Discussion of the fragmented nature of the roofing market, dominated by small to midsize local companies.
Examination of the trend of private equity firms acquiring and consolidating small roofing companies.
Analysis of the drawbacks of private equity rollups, including loss of local ownership and customer service quality.
Emphasis on the importance of local ownership for delivering exceptional service and customer satisfaction.
Description of Bumble Roofing’s customer service fundamentals and how they differentiate from competitors.
Introduction of innovative technology, such as AI-powered satellite imagery for accurate roofing quotes.
Insights into the challenges and learning curve of expanding Bumble Roofing through franchising.
Profile of the ideal franchisee, focusing on community involvement and diverse professional backgrounds.
Overview of Bumble Roofing’s strategic partnerships and the benefits of being part of the Empower Brands franchise platform.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have David Bitan. He is with Bumble Roofing. Welcome.

David Bitan: Hello Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Bumble Roofing. How are you serving folks?

David Bitan: Well, we’re serving the white glove experience, something you don’t find in that in the industry. Uh, much too often, uh, specifically in roofing. We’ve been in the business now since 2019, myself, since about 2008. And one of the things I noticed early on was that homeowners aren’t getting the the experience they deserve. And as time went on, you know, spending some time as a salesperson in the industry, as a product manager, I noticed more and more and more that that piece was missing. And so I decided in 2019 to launch Bumble Roofing out of Los Angeles, California.

Lee Kantor: So just kind of give us a lay of the land of our roofers, pretty much kind of small to midsize companies in, in most local markets. Is that how it typically runs?

David Bitan: Yeah, I would say so. I think, you know, you’re noticing now a lot more PE backed firms coming into the roofing space. You have the franchise owners, you have, you know, firms that are doing roll ups of small mom and pops. That’s where it’s headed. It’s a very fragmented trade. Hasn’t been touched by PE other than the last couple of years prior to that. Even now. Right. The majority is small mom and pops. Uh, they may do great work, but they’re not providing the experience to customer service.

Lee Kantor: So when you got into it, was your intention to franchise all along, so you built it to be a franchise or was that something? After doing it a while, you’re like, you know what, I have a pretty good system. I can replicate this.

David Bitan: Yeah. So? So no. So the intention was never to franchise a couple different reasons. One is I wanted to build this thing on my own and and see it grow organically too, which is the primary reason is I have no idea. Franchising was was a thing in the in the home service space. So I thought franchising like most people, was fitness and food and a small little box. Right? And so after spending about four years in the industry, or really about really about three, I decided, let’s take that next step. Let’s have some more locations. Again, franchising was not even a thought in my mind. And as I was doing that and started talking to colleagues and peers of mine, I came to realize that franchising was a thing. Since I had an old buddy of mine by a restoration firm franchise out here in LA, and that’s when my eyes kind of opened up. I started doing some research. I got really excited. I think franchising is not just a great opportunity for the franchisee, but for a founder like myself. I’m not a big fan of these pea rollups, and the main reason is there’s no ownership in every single location. And I think ownership is the most important aspect of a local service business, right? When you’re on the ground, when people know that the business owner lives in their market, understands their market, understands the demographic and makes it much bigger difference. And they have, you know, at the at the end of the day, they have they they have a piece of that pie. Whereas with these PE you know, with these PE firms, backed firms, they’re opening a bunch of locations. The ownership group, the management group, they’re usually sitting in some nice office suite in some big city. And so they don’t understand what the customer actually wants. And as I mentioned early on, right, we’re all about the white glove experience. We’re all about the customer experience. And you can’t get that unless you have somebody who truly cares on ground floor.

Lee Kantor: Now for the listener who isn’t maybe as familiar as you are about these kind of roll ups, can you explain, um, why they’re happening or where where these, um, private equity firms are seeing the opportunity because, uh, I don’t know if everybody as, uh, as knowledgeable about this subject as you are.

David Bitan: Yeah. So I’ve been noticing it over the last five years or so. Uh, more so on, on on the HVAC side, the plumbing side, the electrical side. You’re starting to see it a lot more now in roofing as well. Um, so what these PE firms are doing, right? They, they they come and they buy these mom and pop shops for very low multiples. Um, you had a lot of, um, you know, baby boomers that are getting ready to retire and they have nowhere to pass their businesses down to. So they’re getting, I wouldn’t say pennies on the dollar. A lot of them are making, you know, pretty nice exits, but, um, they wouldn’t be getting what usually the business is really worth multiple wise. And so these bathrooms are coming in. They’re buying these companies for one to, you know, to three, maybe four x. Uh, and then they’re putting it all into one portfolio, putting everybody on one system, under one umbrella, under one brand. And the goal is, you know, usually between 4 to 6 years later to go and sell that as one company.

David Bitan: The problem is, is where the problem lies. And I seen a lot now, um, with, with, with the HVAC industry, the problem is that all of the founders, all of the GM’s, they usually get a nice paycheck. They end up leaving. Right. The difference between that and franchising is that you have ownership on ground level. So when you have this PE firm coming out and buying 100 HVAC companies across the US two years from now, all of those founders are gone. All those presidents are gone. All the owners are gone for the most part. And so what happens? You now have, you know, a management group running these locations remotely, and you’re not getting a level of service, the level of customer experience that you actually need in order to be successful. And so that’s where you’re seeing a lot. Not to say that, you know, there’s a lot of firms that do very, very well. And they run a tight ship. Uh, but most, most of what I’ve seen, um, usually ends up failing in a couple of years in.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Uh, it seems like the the folks are the ones who typically win. So, um, you keep talking about kind of this white glove service, this super service. Um, how how does your service kind of distinguish itself and differentiate itself from your competitors when it comes to roofing, where a lot of folks just say, hire somebody and then, you know, then it’s done in a couple of days.

David Bitan: Yeah. You know, I love that question because first of all, we could probably spend two hours on the phone talking about the difference between Bombo Roofing and Traditional Roofing Company. I always like to tell people it’s it’s it’s it’s not rocket science. It’s it’s answering the phone in time. It’s showing up. When you say you’re going to show up, it’s cleaning it up at the end of every single day, offering a power wash at the end of your project and making sure you’re there when, when, excuse my language. When shit hits the fan. Um, that’s that’s that’s what it really takes, right? Little things. Uh, answering an email, um, sending an estimate the day you’re on your, you’re on the job site or the day you leave the home, um, those little things is what ends up making it work. I’ll give you a quick story. One of my first franchisees that came on board, uh, we went out to visit him in his first couple of months. And during our site visits, uh, we’ll do everything right. We’ll, we’ll we’ll go to job site visits. We’ll go on appointments. Uh, you know, we’ll do deep dive marketing. We’ll knock doors, whatever needs to be done. Whatever that franchisee, uh, thinks, thinks is, uh, is going to be a good use of our time. And so we went out a couple of appointments, we went out to a bar restaurant, um, and we show up, um, you know, we take our measurements, we sit down with the owner of the bar restaurant, and within 30 minutes, guys signing a contract. And I had to ask him because, you know, 30 minutes pretty quick. I had to ask him, like, why? Why did you end up going with us? And he says, I called.

David Bitan: I don’t remember if it was 6 or 8, but he said, I called about six companies. You were the only ones out of the six that showed up and gave me a proposal out of the other, the other five, one other one showed up. It’s been two weeks. He’s never sent me anything, he’s never communicated, and the other four never even got backed. So again, when I say what makes us different, it’s what most consumers believe the standard should be. Um, but obviously there’s a lot more to that, right? We have accreditations. We are a platinum preferred roofer, which only 0.7 percent of roofers across the nation can say they are art with Owens Corning, one of the leading manufacturers. Shingles. Uh, we are Lowe’s Pro provider, which only 1% of contractors can say that they are. Meaning we do business with Lowe’s. We’re background checked by Lowe’s. Any person that comes into your home running our Lowe’s Bumble badge, you can rest assured they’ve been through a background check. We are at RCA members, the National Roofing Contractor Association. We are a top 500 remodeling for five years now, running with qualified remodeling. This year we are number 251. This is not just roofing companies. This is all remodeling and replacement companies throughout the US. A very prestigious list. So the list again goes on and on and on. I think from the sales process, the customer experience standpoint, um, the post, you know, post sale and post project, there’s a lot of things that we bring to the table, but I think pre project is where most consumers and owners have their cards up.

David Bitan: And what we do differently is we offer a very easy sales process. One, you can go online right now. Lee, I’m not sure where you’re located. Uh, but if we do have a market, uh, inside of where you live, uh, you can go onto our website. Put in your address. Within seconds, you’ll receive a quote on what your roof will cost you. Uh, via email. And we do that free through AI and satellite imagery. Will measure the roof via satellite through AI. Uh, within, as I mentioned, a couple of seconds of finishing that that, um, that AI powered, uh, satellite roof measurement, you will receive a quote via email. So those little things is what makes a huge difference. The cons of communication, the consulting piece have only come out. We’re not there to sell people. We’re there to educate them on what they’ll need. I’ve logged into several appointments throughout building Bumble Roofing, where we walk into a home where most roofers will say, hey, yeah, we’re going to sell you a $30,000 roof. And we walk out and say, hey, all you needed was some sealant on your pipe. We took care of that for you when we were up there. And in ten years from now, when you really do need a roof and new roof, we’ll be sure you give us a call. So, uh, it’s really that that’s that’s what we mean by white glove. Customer experience is not screwing people over. Roofers and contractors have a very, very, very bad rep. And we just want to be the ones that that change that rep.

Lee Kantor: So when you were developing the concept, and I’m sure at first, um, you were on roofs yourself at some point, but at the, at the point of inflection when you said, okay, we’re going to franchise this and we’re going to, you know, kind of document all of our systems. We have our ideal customer profile. We know what a good franchisee would look like. What, um, what was it like getting those first few franchisees? Can you talk about kind of the launch phase of this, uh, franchise?

David Bitan: Yeah. Uh, and and I’d love to be as transparent as possible. Um, so, uh, when we first launched franchising, we had one location under our belt. We had the Los Angeles location, the company owned store. Uh, and so all we knew is what I knew, right? Uh, which is pretty much the Southern California roofing market, which is, uh, as I’m sure you could probably guess, much different than the rest of the landscape across the US when it comes to roofing. We get, if we’re lucky, two weeks of rain out here. We do get the Santa Ana winds, but still much different than what you see across the map. And so when we launched, we’re now opening locations across the map. My number one biggest fear was like, okay, is this thing going to work? Like we have systems and processes in place, but is it going to actually work? And so when we got a few projects under our under our franchisees belt that, that that felt really, really good. Um, and uh, you know, show showed that this thing can work. Um, what we ran into, though more often than not, in our first, I would say 8 to 12 months, um, are a lot of things that we didn’t know we needed. Uh, for example, Los Angeles is not considered a considered an insurance or a stolen market for obvious reasons.

David Bitan: Uh, we started opening up locations, these insurance markets, and we realized, oh my God, we need to figure out how to write up contingency agreements. We need to figure out how to use exact amount. We need to know how to talk to these public adjusters and to these insurance claim adjusters, and to have to and read policies. And so those type of things, in the first 12 months of franchising, I would say it happened a lot. Um, it didn’t happen very often because there was a lot of playbooks and systems and processes that we had missing. What I love about the platform that we’re part of, the parent company and power brands, is that when they say we are here to empower our franchisees, we want to see our franchisees success, success. Uh, they actually mean that. Um, and so I’ve always had the opportunity as a brand president, uh, as we were growing to go out, seek whatever playbooks we needed, seek whatever technologies we needed, uh, seek whatever consultants we needed in order to ensure our franchisees have all the systems, processes, and tools in their toolkit to be the most successful in their market.

Lee Kantor: So, um, what was kind of the profile for that ideal franchisee? What does a candidate look like to you?

David Bitan: Yeah, it’s really, you know, someone who’s who’s who’s driven. Um, I always, you know, whenever I have prospect calls, I always tell them, hey, this is not easy, right? Regardless of what business you open, you’re still opening up a small business. I don’t care if there’s 20 locations, five locations or 500 locations. It’s still going to be hard to put your name on the map and your market. And so what that takes is a lot of drive, a lot of hard work, and a lot of hours in your first 12 to 24 months. And so for me, it’s and this is, this is how I’ve kind of held my standard for, for for job interviews for, for, for, you know, franchisees prospects coming in. It’s really just the gut feeling that I get. If I feel like someone’s going to put in the work every single day and still want to do this after I’ve instilled the fear in them of what a small business is, the roller coaster that they’re about to go on emotionally, financially. Um, right. For those first, I would say 12 to 24 months, uh, if they still want to move forward. That, to me is the type of prospect that we’re looking for. Right. And on top of that, somebody who’s willing to get. Into the local community. Someone who’s willing to go around, join networking groups, show up at your local realtor’s office, uh, cold, cold call and cold outreach via email, uh, to to local GCS, property managers, insurance companies and really get out there. And we always say that it’s like your your goal is not to put Bumble Roofing on the map. Your goal is to put David on the map and to go to roofer and not market. Bumble roofing just makes it easy from a system standpoint and operation standpoint and planning standpoint, a marketing standpoint. But you want everybody to know everywhere you go that you are the local expert when it comes to roofing and bumble, roofing just makes it a little bit easier. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Now where that is your franchisee, one of those mom and pops that are saying, you know, I want to be with a brand that has more systems and, and is, you know, maybe more organized than I am and maybe can fill in some of my gaps. Or is there somebody who’s never been involved in construction or roofing?

David Bitan: Yeah. So, um, we we’re happy to entertain both. Uh, we have had a lot more luck with people who know nothing about roofing. Um, so most of our leaders, uh, are corporate, you know, leaders, um, some come from tech, some background engineering. Uh, I would say other than one. Um, nobody’s had any experience in the roofing space. And so we take them from not knowing anything to being able to sell roofing within a couple of months.

Lee Kantor: And are they the ones on the roof? Are there? You teach them how to find the right person to be on the roof?

David Bitan: Yeah, it’s a mix of both. We have we have our operators and our owners who want to get on the roof, who want to get dirty. When I say on the roof, they’re not installing shingles, but they like to perform inspections. They like to handle the sales. We do teach to bring about required, you know, part of our requirements to be a sales person from day one. So the goal is not to have them on the roof. Our model is 100% subcontracted, which is how most roofing companies work anyways. So you do not have to physically be on the roof, uh, if you do not want to. Uh, I would say it’s probably about 5050 of the franchisees that come out of the franchise, etc..

Lee Kantor: Now, how difficult is it to find those subcontractors in today’s climate?

David Bitan: Yeah, surprisingly not difficult at all. We, uh, I thought I thought that would possibly be one of our biggest hurdles that we’d have to get over when we started Bumble franchising, because I know how difficult was it for me in LA to at least find good ones? Uh, but through through our national suppliers, uh, supplier relationships, we’ve been able to, uh, basically open up the Rolodex of every local rep, uh, in any market we opened and get our franchisees connected, uh, with, with subcontractors in that market. Uh, there are also other avenues, like third party, um, hiring sites, recruitment sites that we find subs on there. But literally out of all of our franchisees, not one has had any issues finding subcontractors.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, do you have a story you can share, maybe a success story? Do you have enough track record that, um, you’re starting to see, uh, some of the success of people who are working your systems in a local market?

David Bitan: Yeah, there’s there’s there’s plenty. I’ll share. I’ll share one and maybe one more. We’ll we’ll jump off as and as I’m talking about this one. So, uh, our franchisee, um, out in Richmond, um, about three months in, uh, secured an HOA roof replacement, uh, for a large gated community, uh, for about $850,000. The biggest project sold, uh, to date at that time in Bumble roofing history. The biggest project before that, uh, was about 400 grand out in Los Angeles. So that was a big feat, especially three months in, uh, surprisingly. Um, you know, I was shocked. I was pretty scared to to have him take on a project that early on, but he had a great subcontractor that finished a project, just like any big project. There was a few hiccups here and there, but they finished it. The customer was super happy. Uh, job came out beautiful. No major issues whatsoever. So that was to me that that that was one of the greatest success stories we had early on. Uh, and then I can’t really get into the numbers if it’s not our FTD yet, but we do have a couple franchisees, uh, that have almost three. Their initial, uh, ramp up, uh, projections. So that that to me is another great success story.

Lee Kantor: So I’ve been doing this show for a while now, and I’ve run into a lot of what I’m calling them, kind of, um, clusters of franchises that, that, um, franchising is being turned into kind of where a person can buy one franchise, but they can buy like kind of complementary franchises in and around their brand. Um, I know that you guys are working within the, um, Empower Brands, uh, platform. Can you talk about how that’s been? Because it sounds like their model, uh, kind of aligns with that thinking around home services.

David Bitan: Yeah, I think with us, you know, one, um, we have several sister brands. Uh, we’re a total of ten, uh, that all cover the same verticals. So we’re we’re all we’re all in the home. We’re all selling home services everything from windows to insulation, fencing, outdoor living, uh, outdoor lighting. Um, uh, we have restoration services as well. Uh, as well as some irrigation and landscaping services. And so, um, there is always the opportunity. We do have a couple of owners, uh, inside of the bungalow roofing system that do own some of our sister brands. Uh, one of them being a koala installation owner and a conservator irrigation owner. Uh, and two others being superior fence and rail owners that came into our system. Uh, being that we are early on and we are a younger brand. Uh, we want to see you succeed first in Bumble before we saw you more, uh, we’re not in your franchise or the 1030 territories and say, okay, thank you for the franchise, but you go figure it out. Uh, we we make it difficult to buy more than more than three, right? So four is our max. Our new Bumble Bumble roofing franchisee. You better come in with a a very good business plan if you want to get four. Uh, the sweet spot. It’s usually around 2 to 3, but we’re not going to tell you more. And we’ve had, you know, prospects that came in and they wanted to bite off a lot more than they can chew. And tell us that’s a red flag, right? Like we want people to be realistic, down to earth, understand what this takes. And I don’t care how much money you have, buying 20 territories of anything is not a smart move. And so we’ve realized that time and time again, uh, we’re lucky to be part of a of a platform like Empower Brands.

David Bitan: Um, I have several mentors that, you know, help me and help me understand the, the landscape of the industry. Um, part of what we do as brand presidents, uh, as we connect to once a month and have kind of like a, a meeting of the minds and share best practices. Share trade secrets, share different technologies and softwares that may be beneficial for the other brands. And we share our partnerships and vendors as well, which I think is the coolest part of it all. Uh, I mentioned earlier in the call, you know, we have, a partnership with Lowe’s. Uh, we are a close provider. Uh, every single location becomes a Lowe’s provider. Uh, from day one. That would not have happened without our sister brand, koala insulation. Uh, I can’t tell you how many cold emails and cold calls I’ve made to all the emails I’ve found online for Home Depot, Lowe’s. Uh, you name it. Uh, over the years, and nobody would respond. And then finally and become part of the power brands. Uh, and we become this franchise system that’s growing pretty rapidly. And all these doors start opening. People are now coming to me. Right. And so, uh, again, one of those stores being Lowe’s would not have been opened if it wasn’t for the, uh, for the relationship they have with our sister brand. So all those type of things, you know, kind of fall back on, on on the entire big picture. Uh, and, and talent and power brands. And it would not be Bubba would not be where it is today if it wasn’t for the for the entire platform.

Lee Kantor: Now, did you start out at Bumble? Um, without partnering with empower. And then you realized, hey, I’m going to be better served if I join forces with them?

David Bitan: Yeah. So I started Bumble Roofing on my own, uh, in 2019, out in Los Angeles. Just one location that we’re playing in the franchise. And then, uh, when I started looking into franchising, the original plan was to, uh, do it on my own. And I realized that I know a lot about roofing. I know a lot about home services. Uh, I know nothing about franchising. And while I may be able to do this on my own, maybe it’s smart to seek out a partner. So, uh, that’s what I did. Uh, I reached out to the broker about, uh, who helped facilitate the acquisition of my last home service business. Uh, and he brought, uh, a couple of different groups, uh, to, to to the table, uh, one of them being in power brands. And, uh, the rest is history. Uh, and power brands, for me, was really love at first sight. Um, the, the offers were all pretty much aligned with each other, but, uh, I knew I wanted to stay wherever I’m at. I didn’t want to just hand over the keys to Bumble Roofing and see it become what I know it can become on its own. Uh, and, um, ultimately, I’m glad I made that choice. I say love at first sight because every other company I met went, and I see this now. In hindsight, uh, they were all about the financials, all about the spreadsheets, which to me was normal. Right? I thought that was common with PE backed firms. Then power grants comes in. I meet Scott Z, the CEO, and some of their other team members, and they just care to get to know me.

David Bitan: Uh, obviously the financials came up at one point in the conversation, but the first couple of meetings it was just let’s get to know, David, is why his passion and vision behind Bumble Roofing, where he sees Bumble over the next 5 to 10 years and where he sees himself over the next 5 to 10 years. And to me, that was extremely important because I grew up in this industry. I knew nothing else. I dropped out of college back in 2007, moved back home to L.A., didn’t know what I was going to do and fell into this industry. Uh, and I love what I do, but what I’ve learned over time is that most the majority, at least the majority of companies I worked for, I don’t want to say it all, but you you hear this across, uh, you know, across the entire industry. Most companies are just out to make more money, right? In the home service business. And the companies who had their mission as Benjamin Franklin, as I like to say, right. The $100 bill at the top of their mission, those companies are the companies that ended up failing, the companies who had people, in this case, their franchisees at the top of their mission. Those are the companies that ended up thriving and being successful. And so for me, that was the most important factor in choosing a partner is who do I feel good about? Who do I feel has a good culture and actually cares about the people and just not doing this just because of the money?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, and it sounds like that their culture aligned with yours and and the values aligned. And that’s the culture and values you’re trying to, um, you know, kind of, uh, encourage your franchisees to, to live into. Um, and then that’s what makes a successful system.

David Bitan: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, connect with you, um, or somebody on your team, what is the website?

David Bitan: Connect with me. Uh, you can find me at David at Bumble Roofing. You can also go online and Bumble Roofing franchising.com. Uh, or you can go to, uh, Bumble Roofing. Com as well as empower franchisees.com.

Lee Kantor: Well, David, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

David Bitan: Lee, thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

Leveraging Lost Customers

August 24, 2025 by angishields

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BRX Pro Tip: Why Real Life is Better Than Online in Building Relationships

August 22, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Why Real Life is Better Than Online in Building Relationships

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BRX Pro Tip: Why Real Life is Better Than Online in Building Relationships

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, we have the benefit of some pretty powerful entry into both worlds in real life and online in the work that we do. What’s your take on the value and the place for – in real life and online when it comes to building and sustaining relationships?

Lee Kantor: I think that the most powerful reason why building more relationships in real life face to face is better than building more online relationships is that because when people are sharing on social media online, they’re just sharing information. They’re showing you where they are or what they’re doing, and you get mostly dry, factual information.

Lee Kantor: But when that same person is talking to you in person about the exact same thing, you are learning more about how they feel. You can see their body language better when they say something. You can see if they’re smiling or frowning or leaning in when they’re sharing their story.

Lee Kantor: The investment in time for face-to-face interaction will accelerate and deepen your relationships dramatically. You’re going to better understand their feelings, hopes, and dreams rather than what they are superficially just trying to show the world.

Lee Kantor: So I am a big believer in the power of face-to-face relationships, and I think that you have to be investing some time in generating more face-to-face, real-life relationships with human beings in person, even though it’s harder to scale, even though it is more difficult to execute. But you’re going to get a better ROI on those relationships than you will with a bunch more online superficial relationships.