Robert Murray is a representative at Home Warranty Association of America.
Connect with Robert on Facebook.
Kelly Habowski is a realtor with Keller Williams Realty Partners.
Connect with Kelly on Facebook.
Dereck Jensen is the owner and CEO at Jensen’s Precision Power Washing & Restoration.
Troy Morris is a Project Specialist with the Space Alliance Technology Outreach Program (SATOP), where he connects small businesses, entrepreneurs, and inventors with engineering firms to provide free technical assistance. Through SATOP’s 40-Hour Technical Assistance initiative and university capstone projects, Troy helps bring innovative ideas to life using existing technologies.
In his conversation with Trisha Stetzel, Troy shared how SATOP and its related SayTop program support small businesses by offering expert engineering guidance at no cost. They discussed real success stories from the program and the powerful impact of these partnerships.
Troy emphasized that the program—funded by the Texas legislature—is actively seeking new alliance partners and encourages businesses to take full advantage of this unique opportunity to accelerate growth and innovation.
Follow SATOP on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
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. I’m so excited about the guests that I have on today that was introduced to me by Amy Reed. You guys probably heard her show just a few weeks back, Troy Morris with, uh, the Saturday program, which is the Space Alliance technology outreach program. Troy is a project specialist with the Space Alliance technology outreach program. Um, he works with various engineering firms to provide free technical engineering assistance to small businesses, entrepreneurs and investors. Yes, you heard me right. This is administered administered through a 40 hour technical assistance program and through a university capstone program. Troy Morris, welcome to the show.
Troy Morris: Yeah. Thank you for having us or having me, I should say.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. I’m so excited to talk about this program when when you and I were having a conversation about. It’s been about a month ago. Uh, I was so excited because I’d never heard of it. And you probably get that all the time. Like, how do people not know about this program? So I said, Troy, you have to come on the show so we can talk about this program. Before we get started, though, I would love for people to learn more about you. So who is Troy?
Troy Morris: Yeah, so I’ve been with the program for, uh, a couple years now. Prior to that, actually, my background is in is in the tax business. I spent about ten years, uh, in Houston, uh, working with various, uh, engineering firms with their tax businesses and their tax models. And so I kind of got a foundation of the different, uh, firms, you know, Jacobs, KBR. All those guys and, um, kind of built some, uh, connections through there. And then, uh, kind of when that part of my career came to a close, uh, I learned about satop and, uh, what they’ve been doing because they’ve been around a while, actually. But, uh, prior to me coming on, I hadn’t heard of it either. And traditionally it was just in the, uh, it’s just been the Houston Bay area. Uh, but now Satop is a program is expanding across the whole state of Texas. So, um, really, what I’ve been doing is kind of leveraging my contacts with the various different engineering firms and, uh, using that to, uh, promote Satop as a program and how it can benefit all the different small businesses.
Trisha Stetzel: Okay. So give us the basics of the program, and then we can take a deeper dive into some of those areas.
Troy Morris: Yeah. So Satop is a program, like you said, it’s, uh, it provides free technical engineering assistance to small businesses. And we do it, uh, a couple different ways. So, uh, like I said, traditionally, Satop was just in the Bay area of Houston. Uh, but actually, it’s been around for about 20 years. And when it first started, it was a national program. Actually it was. We had offices in, uh, gosh, New York, uh, Florida, New Mexico. And one by one, each of those, uh, branches of the program just ceased to exist. Texas is really the area where it’s just continued to remain pretty stable. And, uh, there seems to be a need here for it, especially with the small business climate of, uh, the state. And it is, uh, state funded. So it’s funded by the Texas Legislature. And, uh, that money is used, uh, to bring aboard engineering firms to help small businesses and also to market and promote the program. So what we do is we leverage a network of what we call alliance partners. Uh, NASA is one of them. We have some larger engineering firms. We also have some smaller engineering firms as well, some of which are just one man shows who are trying to get their their name out there. So it’s a different variety, and it doesn’t cost the alliance partners anything to join.
Troy Morris: And they don’t have to work on any projects that don’t seem interest of interest to them because different, uh, engineering firms have, you know, different areas of expertise. And so, uh, with us, it’s about acquiring, um, pretty much as many alliance partners as we can to cover different areas because, um, there’s really no, uh, drawback for them joining because they don’t really have to work on anything that doesn’t make sense for them to work on. And so we leverage this network. And, um, what we do is we submit proposals to them that these small businesses are giving us and with their approval, obviously, first, we, um, send this to different alliance partners to work on. If they agree, then we coordinate a meeting between whoever the requester is of our program and the alliance partner so they can hammer out the details, make sure they understand what the scope of work is. Uh, just make sure basically, we’re managing expectations. And from there, uh, they, they will provide, uh, up to 40 hours of their time of free engineering assistance, whatever that might entail. These projects are all very different. So sometimes it’s, you know, material selection, sometimes it’s design, sometimes it’s quite literally just their, uh, technical input, their advice, their expertise.
Troy Morris: Uh, the idea is that these small businesses, um, either don’t have the resources to go pay a large sum to an engineering firm to try to hammer out whatever, uh, prototype or product they are working on or they, you know, don’t have the technical background to tackle that challenge themselves. So this is this program is meant as a bridge to connect them to the expertise at no cost to them. Um, and once that 40 hours has expired, that’s kind of the the end of that project. Um. Obviously nothing. Well, not everything can get solved in 40 hours. Some projects are just very large. So when we, uh, initially meet with these requesters, we, uh, kind of do an analysis of their project. We just, uh, you know, look at what all they’re trying to tackle. What’s a priority for them? And if a project is deemed very large, has multiple facets to it. Uh, we do have the avenue of university capstone program. And what that is, is where a team of, uh, senior engineering students at a university, usually it’s a 4 to 5 of them, uh, and their last semester or last two semesters of school will, uh, work on this project or whatever this prototype is as a capstone course and obviously under the guidance of a faculty member.
Troy Morris: They work on this project over the course of a year. Currently, the university’s we partnered with is A&M College Station. They’re the largest one we’re with right now. We’re actually I’ll be up there next month for their engineering capstone where they showcase a lot of these. We’re just got through wrapping up about a dozen projects with them. Um, we also partner with Texas State University in San Marcos. Um, with Sam Houston, State University of Houston-clear Lake, and also A&M Galveston as well. We have a few projects with them, and really, that’s a year long project. They spend two semesters working on it, and the small business owner, uh, will meet with the students, give them their overall vision of the product, what they’re kind of expecting. And it’s up to the students at that point to tackle the project. And it’s really cool because they get really, really into it. And the idea is that it gives the students real world, um, you know, experience dealing with a potential client in whatever engineering expertise they’re going to go into. And the requester, you know, gets to see what their, the overall product, uh, that they get out of the program is. And again, it’s a no cost to them.
Trisha Stetzel: That is that’s just amazing. Like my mind is just completely blown. I don’t know about it. And I’m guessing that most of the listeners have no idea that setup even exists. So I’d like to start from the beginning. An entrepreneur has a project. Talk to me about the types of people who are applying, or the types of entrepreneurs that are applying for these 40 hours of technical assistance, or even moving into the university capstone program.
Troy Morris: Yeah, absolutely. And what’s really the main kind of projects we handle is physical prototypes. Every now and then we’ll get some, uh, requester who will, uh, kind of reach out to us and say, hey, I already got a prototype. I need, you know, a thousand manufactured or something of that nature. And we’ll refer them to an organization like Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center or something like that. And what we’re, uh. What really what our aim is, is, uh, product development. And so if someone has an idea that they’re trying to get off the ground of some sort of prototype or product, uh, what we’ll do is we’ll, um, refer them to our website. Uh. And we have a request form right there, and it’s pretty basic. It’s like 5 or 6 lines and just their name and what, their, uh, challenges that they’re facing. Just a brief summary, and they’ll hit submit on our website, and it gets sent out to myself and all of our team. Uh, we have about five or we have about six employees on our team. So, uh, we’re all monitoring, uh, our emails, and we’ll reach out either the same day or the very next business day. We don’t make it any longer than that. And, uh, we’ll coordinate a meeting, either in person or over zoom and, uh, talk to them and try to get a little bit more detail from that meeting. Uh, we’ll have them fill out what’s called a request for technical assistance.
Troy Morris: And it’s similar to what they did on our website, just a little bit more in depth. Uh, you know, what’s your expectation for this product? What do you plan to do with it? And again, we just kind of hammer out what exactly the scope they’re trying to deal with is whether it be, um, some sort of design issue or they already have a design, but it’s some particular piece of that that they’re trying to get figured out. And once that form is submitted to us, we’ll draft what we call our proposal. It’s just a one page, uh, um, just a one page, uh, proposal we fill out. It’s, uh, brief summary of the scope of work, preferably the picture of a prototype if they have it, and with their approval first. That is what is distributed to our network of alliance partners. And from then on, one of our alliance partners will reach back out to us. Usually they do within a few days or sometimes a week. Some of the larger organizations take a little bit longer to reply because they have to distribute it to their internal network. So we try to give them a little bit of time to reply. And once they do, we uh, usually we have a few different, uh, firms or businesses replying to us. So we kind from then we vet through and look what makes the most sense.
Troy Morris: Who benefits the most in terms of both the business and the the requester. And so from then, we’ll coordinate a initial meeting with the small business owner and the, uh, whichever engineering firm is working on the project. And, uh, we’ll have them meet each other and they’ll hammer out the details of the project as well. Make sure we’re all on the same, same page. Uh, it is important to note, uh, the whole purpose of that proposal we drafted is. So we have something in writing that shows this is the scope you are working on. We’re not doing anything outside of that. Uh, just manage expectations here, and usually that’s not an issue at all. Uh, again, we get the small business owners, uh, approval on that scope of work first before we send it. But from there, uh, the engineer will, uh, spend 40 hours working on it. They can meet however often the requester would like. If it’s a university capstone program, will distribute that that same proposal to our network of universities. And we have a contact at each one and their engineering department. Uh, and I mean, they’re all awesome. They’re they’re great. They love getting these kinds of projects. So I mean, we love sending it to them. We just want to make sure that the scope of work makes sense for the students and that everything’s very crystal clear. Um, and they’ll reach back out to us and say, oh, yeah, we’ll send this over to, um, computer engineering, or we’ll send it over to our manufacturing, you know, engineering department.
Troy Morris: I mean, some of them are kind of smaller, but then in the case if we’re sending it to A&M College Station, I mean, they’ve got a gazillion departments there. They’re they’re just huge. But, um, from then, a faculty member will reach back out to us and we’ll coordinate a meeting between the faculty member and the requester. Um, with the university program, though, it is important to note, and we try to explain this to the small business owners first, that you are on the university’s timeline. If that’s the case, meaning whenever the fall semester starts or spring semester starts, I mean, it’s just it’s going to be a two semester project, and it’s whenever the semester starts because that’s when the students start the class. So once that starts, they they meet with the students, uh, usually once a week or once every two weeks, uh, over zoom or however they want to do it. And the students will just always come back and ask questions and they’ll say, oh, yeah, I kind of want this or this looks good, this doesn’t look good. And they’ll keep going. And with the university capstone program, the first semester will always be the they call the design phase. And then the second semester is actually assembly and prototyping of the project and everything.
Trisha Stetzel: Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. So, um, give me some examples of a 40 hour, uh, engagement. Like what kinds of things are entrepreneurs asking for in the 40 hour program? And, and then what are some examples of the the capstone university programs or. Yeah, projects.
Troy Morris: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, for example, we uh, had um, gosh, we’ve had a few this past year, but uh, one individual, without giving away too much information, was working on a, uh, it was a simple, uh, almost like a sun visor for an automobile and it attached to, like, the windshield. And when he first came to us, we were kind of thinking, really? I mean, why don’t you just put the, uh, little mirror down or something? But he had a he actually had a very big client base that was looking at it, a professional trucking industries were asking him about it because apparently when you’re driving in Texas, uh, and the sun’s coming through the the the windshield. You still get, you know, sunburned and everything. And apparently whatever’s in the trucks isn’t quite covering them. And he he already had his design. He just he noticed the material he was using wasn’t cutting it. It just wasn’t stopping or it was stopping it to a degree, just not what they were expecting. So we had one of our, uh, professors, uh, or I’m sorry, I’m saying, professor, because he’s a retired professor and he owns his own consulting firm now. And we had him, uh, look into it. And he did basically spend 40 hours researching different materials that, uh, the guy can use in his prototype. And it was successful. He, uh, he’s already started marketing it out to a different, uh, logistic distribution companies who have already been interested in it. In fact, we need to follow up with them again. But he yeah, he’s already had some success with that. It was one of those projects that was simpler than you would think. But, um, yeah. The professor gave him a very detailed, uh, gosh, I think it was like 75 pages of recommendations.
Troy Morris: Wow. Thrilled with it. And it was at no cost to him. Um, so, I mean, that was a great project. That was, gosh. Um, uh, last summer, uh, I think it last September, uh, uh, last August. But, um, that was a really great one. Um, with the university capstone program that’s been a very popular lately with these requesters. Um, because, I mean, they go with the understanding that, yes, it’s going to take a while, but what we’ve noticed is a lot of these small businesses have been working on these prototypes for years now. So another year they don’t seem to mind at all. Um, but they do go in with the expectation that these are students. Yes, they’re under the guidance of a faculty member, but these are students, at the end of the day working on this. It’s not, um, to be blunt, free labor. It’s, uh, you know, it still, it needs to be an academic experience for them. And you need to, be available to participate in meetings. And we explain all that to these guys beforehand. But, um, actually, we were very proud because, uh, uh, this last semester in, uh, yeah, in the fall semester, um, we just wrapped up a project with A&M College Station, and at each at the end of each semester, they have what’s called an engineering capstone, uh, showcase, uh, where all the different teams, uh, showcase all the products they worked on and everything. And, gosh, they have about I think they had over 400 this last semester, and one of our projects got second place overall. So we were happy about that.
Trisha Stetzel: Awesome.
Troy Morris: Uh, it was a couple individuals who have, uh, they created a machine that fills sandbags, basically is what it does, but it’s all automated. And they were having multiple issues with it, with the hydraulics in it and all sorts of mechanical issues. And so A&M took the project and they said, yeah, let’s give it to our, uh, mechanical engineering department. And I think they had a team of six students work on it, actually. And, uh, they worked on it starting, uh, spring of 2024 and then concluded in fall 2024. And those those kids really got into it. They did a they did a great job. Uh, I mean, they they had a full blown prototype by the end of it that was filling sandbags at, uh, I can’t remember the exact rate it was doing, but they were filling them very quickly. And those guys were, I mean, ecstatic about about it. Uh, they lived over in Waller, Texas, and the students were traveling from College Station to Waller to kind of to meet them constantly in person with questions. It was really cool. And actually, they just from what I understand, because I was just talking to this guy a couple weeks ago, they they just got a contract with US Army Corps of Engineers for, uh, a bunch of, uh, because they like their technology with filling sandbags, apparently with, uh, disaster relief and flood control. They were very interested in that. Uh, so they had a lot of success with that. But I mean, again, I’m going to keep saying this. It was at no cost to them. It was it was it was free. All it cost was their their time with the students. And um, it was great. And obviously we were happy because they won second place had like 400 teams.
Trisha Stetzel: Yes. That is amazing. So are there any qualifications that the these entrepreneurs or these business owners have to have pre requesting help from startup.
Troy Morris: They just need to operate in the state of Texas. Uh, it’s a state funded program. So the idea is that we’re investing the money that’s given from the legislature back into the state to help the overall, uh, economic landscape of Texas. The idea is to help these small businesses grow. Um, give them a leg up with these prototypes that they’re trying to get off the ground and running. And a lot of what we’re discovering is that, uh, a lot of this technology that these businesses are trying to figure out or trying to apply, uh, actually already exists, and these engineers are looking into it and saying, oh yeah, you know, there’s something with this that we used on this project, you know, six years ago here. And they would apply that as well. And, um, that’s actually how the program started, because NASA worked on a lot of these projects, and they applied quite a bit of technology from the space program and applied it into the commercial sector. Um, and I was I’ll give one more success story, if that’s all right. Uh, because it was, uh, it was a very, very early project. Uh, so it was actually before my time with Saturn.
Troy Morris: But I always loved reading about it because it was just so cool. But, uh, they, uh, it was, uh, it was actually for a hospital, and, um, it was for, uh, infants that were born prematurely and transporting them in ambulances. A lot of the turbulence was proving to be very troublesome, uh, potentially, you know, uh, very, very dangerous with transporting these infants, especially because they’re so tiny. And so they were looking for a way to either get rid of the turbulence altogether or drastically reduce it. And we actually had a two NASA engineers looking at it. And, um, on the International Space Station, they have a treadmill up there that the astronauts use. And, uh, they actually applied some of that dampening technology from the treadmill in the International Space Station to these, uh, transporters that they’re putting on the ambulances to transport infants to, you know, various hospitals or various different sections. And actually, they got rid of the turbulence altogether. That was probably like 15 years ago, but they’re still using it. Actually, Texas Children’s Hospital still using it today. And it was just so crazy because that it was a very simple project, very quick fix. But who would have known?
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Oh my gosh. So the website again guys is say top space. So go to space and you’ll find the application and the information that Troy’s been talking about. Troy, if anyone has any questions, what’s the best way for them to reach out?
Troy Morris: Yeah. If they have any questions, they can always go to that, uh, inquiry form on our website. Uh, that that Trisha just said. And just fill it out really quick. It’ll send an email to the entire team and, uh, we’ll reply with either the same day or the very next business day. If you want to reach out to myself directly, feel free. It’s Troy at Bay area houston.com. Um, we are a program that is administered by the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership. Uh, we’re just a street down from NASA over in Clear Lake. And, uh, up top, like I said, has been around for quite some time, but now we’re expanding across the entire state of Texas. So just to qualify, you just need to do business in the state of Texas. Uh, you don’t necessarily need to have a formal, you know, business license or anything if you’re just someone trying to get the ground up and running. We may look into maybe some DBA options for the business or something, but I do want to clarify that that’s certainly not something that would prohibit you from using our program if you don’t have a license.
Trisha Stetzel: Wow. Okay. You guys, if you didn’t catch it already, you get 40 hours of engineering assistance through these alliance partners and or depending on the project, maybe a full year from a university capstone program. All right. So we still have a few minutes left together. And I want to focus on the alliance partners, because there may be people listening who want to get involved or engaged from that perspective. So how do you you said you need more partners. So how if people are wanting to get engaged, what are you looking for in an alliance partner and how do they get engaged?
Troy Morris: So with the alliance partners, really, there’s, uh, yeah, there’s not really a constraint to apply. Now we’re pretty much open to anyone. We would obviously meet with them first to see what their, uh, you know, expertise is and what they would cover. So we know what kind of projects to, to send them. Uh, but there is no, uh, no limit to what they can work on there. There’s nothing in a contract or anything that says you have to work on this many projects, you know, for this year or something. They can work on whatever they want. And, uh, the requesters who work on this are informed of that as well, that this is essentially a. Relationship with us in the alliance partner. And they do not have to work on anything that obviously does not make sense for them to, to work on. Um, and they also are in the understanding as well that these engineers are, uh, they have their daytime jobs as well. Now with the Alliance partners, if they’re working on a 40 hour program, say, top does use the money to compensate them $100 an hour for the 40 hour program, and that money is used, uh, intended to be used back into professional development for the for the company. That’s, that’s using it. And so they can they can use that however they, they want obviously.
Troy Morris: But um, with alliance partners really they would just sit down, meet with us, uh, explain what their expertise is and, um, we’ll just, uh, see what kind of projects we have and if anything makes sense to send them their way. That’s what we’ll do. Um, it just depends, because there are so many different, um, you know, aspects, you know, anything involved with sensors that’s such a niche section of engineering or fluid dynamics. That’s another very niche set of sector. So, um, and it’s kind of it’s pretty cool because we, uh, you know, we have some bigger names like Jacobs and, you know, KBR and some of those guys in the area. But we also, uh, we just signed on an individual up in Austin, Texas. Uh, I met him, gosh, at an event in San Antonio, I think, uh, last year, but he owns his own engineering consulting firm up in Austin. He’s a one man show and he has been phenomenal. He’s he’s already taken so many projects and he’s done a fantastic job. And he loves working with these small businesses. So if anyone is interested, feel free to reach out. Again my email is Troy at Bay Area houston.com and I’d be more than happy to meet with you. We’re always looking to expand our network of alliance partners.
Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. So engineering firms, uh, even these solo, uh, engineering companies, consultants, universities, uh, any aerospace companies, any other industries that might be interested in being an alliance partner?
Troy Morris: Yeah. Well, uh, aerospace companies as well, whatever their, uh, engineering expertise is, uh, uh, what we found is, uh, a lot of these different, um, uh, products that we’re looking at. Uh, like I said, the technology already exists, and they can apply it from the aerospace area or the space program into these projects. Now, despite the name um, Space Alliance Technology Outreach program, these products do not need to be space related. I just want to make sure I make that very clear. That’s a question I’ve gotten very often. Um, we’ve done everything from medical devices to agricultural projects to beauty products. I mean, it’s it’s been all across the board. So it’s any kind of prototype that you’re looking at. We do cover all industries. And, uh, with the engineering firms, it is pretty much all areas of engineering. Uh, I mean, we’re in Clear Lake, so we’ve got all of these different, uh, we got, I mean, axiom down the street, Intuitive Machines, uh, Egis is another one of our alliance partners, and they’ve done some projects for us as well. And, uh, we do also have professors from community colleges like, you know, sand Jack down the street who who work on 40 hour projects for us as well.
Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. Troy, this has been amazing. Thank you for coming and talking to me about this program and for the listeners, I hope you guys got some really great value out of this. It is a program we need to take advantage of. So if you’re struggling or if you’re starting up, this is a great place to go. If you really need some help figuring out this product, right, that you want to put in front of people. So again, if you want to contact Troy, it’s Troy at Bay Area houston.com. Or you can go to the website at the top. I’ll put all of that in the show notes so you can point and click if you happen to be sitting at your computer. Troy, thank you so much for being on with me today. This has been fun.
Troy Morris: Thank you for having me.
Trisha Stetzel: That’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another amazing episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.
Nicky Billou is a business coach, consultant, and expert in helping coaches, consultants, and entrepreneurs scale their revenue.
Known as the world’s leading authority on podcast guesting, Nicky has appeared on over 650 podcasts and teaches others how to use this platform as a powerful marketing and positioning tool. He believes that entrepreneurs are society’s greatest heroes and encourages them to see sales as an act of love and service—not something to fear.
In his conversation with Trisha Stetzel, Nicky shared his personal background, passion for entrepreneurship, and belief in the power of storytelling. They discussed the impact of lockdowns on businesses, the role of language and confidence in sales, and the effectiveness of podcast guesting for visibility and growth. 
Nicky also highlighted his programs that help entrepreneurs become thought leaders, sharing success stories of clients who’ve transformed their businesses using these strategies.
Connect with Nicky on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
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. It is my pleasure to introduce you to this amazing guest that I have on today, Nicky Billou. And he has spent the last 20 years figuring out the mindset of champions. He’s worked with athletes and entrepreneurs at the highest levels, from Olympic gold to billionaires. Nicky will ignite your passion and push you to go further than you think possible. He’s a two time New York best selling author, host of an amazing podcast called Thought Leadership. Excuse me, Thought Leader Revolution. And he’s a podcasting guest expert. Why else wouldn’t I want Nicky, Nicky Billou on my show. Welcome.
Nicky Billou: Trish. It’s an honor. A pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to getting into it with you.
Trisha Stetzel: Me too. All right, so I gave you a really great introduction, Nicky, but I am sure that I missed a few things. So what would you like the audience to know about you, Nicky?
Nicky Billou: I’m actually originally an immigrant from the Middle East. I’m a Christian from Iran. When I was 11 years old, the Islamic revolution took place in Iran. And, uh, my late father and my mother, you know, God rest my dad’s soul, they could see the writing on the wall, right? There was gun battles in the streets. And this was not going to be a place to raise a Christian family. So they made a plan, and they were able to get us out of Iran and to the west. And eventually we settled where I now live in the great free nation of Canada. Now, at the time I was a kid, I didn’t want to leave my home. I didn’t want to leave my friends. But looking back now, I could see that this was an unbelievable selfless sacrifice by my parents. They left behind everyone and everything they knew to go into the unknown. On the chance, on the hope to be able to create a new life in a land of freedom for themselves, for me and my two brothers. And as I got older, I could appreciate the nobility of what they did, and I just became so, so grateful to them. I believe, Trisha, that inside every human breast beats the living heart of freedom. Every man, every woman on this planet yearns to breathe free, to march to the tune of their own drummer, to chart their own course. And for those of you who’ve only known freedom, you cannot appreciate what a great and precious gift your forbearers have left you, because you’ve never known not having it. For people like me who were raised in tyranny, this precious gift is so important.
Nicky Billou: It’s what moves and drives me and everything I do. I got into business because I wanted to help entrepreneurs create a legacy of freedom for themselves. My dad was an entrepreneur. He’s the greatest man I ever knew. He was the kind of man. Trish, if you knew him, you were his friend and you were trying to buy yourself, you know, get yourself a job. He’d sit you down in his office, he’d call all his buddies. He’d ethically manipulate them until one of them hired you. If you were trying to start a business, he’d sit you down and he would give you his best advice, because he was a very, very, very accomplished businessman. And even if you were a so-called competitor, he’d still do it because he didn’t really believe in competition. He’d give you access to capital, to clients, to friends, resources, get you going. And if you were trying to buy a car or a house and you didn’t have quite enough money, the bank wouldn’t give you all that you needed. He’d top you up with a loan, and if you ever tried to pay him back, he’d say, come on, get out of here. And if you tried to say, why are you doing this? It was alone. He’d say, no, you pay it forward to the next person. Okay. But that’s what he would do. And my dad would look at people every day and he would try to help them. He would go out of his way, be a generous spirit, a generous heart. And I’m a kid and this was my example. This is the man who raised me, and he taught me, son, life is about people.
Nicky Billou: Nothing else. Not money, not numbers. Even business, he said, is about people. And I was a kid. I’m going. What do you mean, dad? But without money, there’s no business. He goes, that’s true, son, but without people, there’s no need for money to do business. All business is. Imagine a Venn diagram is about solving problems for people for a profit. You solve acute problems for amazing people. You make an awesome profit. That is the whole awe inspiring purpose of business. And I got to tell you, I got into business because I wanted to serve people. I wanted to be like my father. My dad would say to me, believe in people. Everyone needs someone to believe in them. Nicky, you, me, everybody. Because there’s moments where our self-belief wobbles. We need that little spark of belief that can turn into a roaring fire. And then we’re off to the races. So what I do for a living? I’ve helped dozens of people make millions of dollars. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’m the best in the world at podcast, guesting and teaching it. I’m one of the best in the world at thought leadership and helping people become thought leaders. And I got to tell you, I’m somebody who’s written 11 books, six of them collabs. Two of them have become New York Times bestsellers, one of them endorsed by none other than President Donald J. Trump himself on Truth Social. So I’m an accomplished man with a serious resume. But I got to tell you, what I’m most proud of is I’m Napoleon Bellew’s son, and I’m a professional believer in people I love.
Trisha Stetzel: And I feel that, like today, so much. But even in the conversations that we’ve had before you came on the show, I could feel this, uh, love for other people and the way that you even interacted with me personally. So I look forward to carrying on our conversation beyond what we’re talking about today. Um, Nicky, you mentioned before we started the show today that you’ve got something on your mind. So tell me what’s on your mind today. And then let’s jump into how people can connect with you and what they can connect with you for.
Nicky Billou: So right now in my home country of Canada, an election has been called. The last nine and a half years, we’ve been under the rule of a tyrannical, uh, so-called liberal party. I think they’re they need to change their name to the new Fascist Party, because that’s really what they’re like. What they’ve done is they have, um, deliberately embarked on a policy course to remove rights and freedoms from Canadians. They did that during Covid. Uh, they did that to the truckers that were trying to, uh, protest against the vaccine mandates. They sent salt. They sent, uh, armed police, uh, on police horses against grandmothers with walkers. That’s the kind of people that we were dealing with. And, um, they became very unpopular. Justin Trudeau became very unpopular, and he was forced out. Now, another man who was his primary advisor and Were worse than him, in my opinion, because he was his primary adviser named Mark Carney is the leader of the Liberal Party. And unfortunately, because Trudeau’s gone, um, he’s risen in the polls and right now he’s a little ahead of the opposition conservatives under Pierre Poilievre. This election is an existential election. We either in Canada are going to vote for, uh, the traditional Canada, a free Canada, or we’re going to vote to continue with the policies of tyranny, which I believe will send Canada down a very dark path from which we may never recover. And as such, if there’s any buddy listening to your show who’s a Canadian or knows Canadians, I want to encourage them to not be fooled by Mark Carney, to not be fooled by this lipstick they put on the liberal pig, and to make sure that they understand that this is just a way of fooling them, to try to get these people that have wrecked Canada over nine and a half years in power, and they should be voting for the conservatives under Pierre Poilievre, who’s a very impressive man and who has promised to do much to take Canada in a direction.
Nicky Billou: Of prosperity. One of the things he’s going to do is he’s going to allow. Us to do oil and gas refineries in Canada, which basically the liberals outlawed. It’s one of the reasons that we’ve been forced to sell all our oil unrefined to the United States. If we have refined oil and natural gas, and we built pipelines because they have an anti pipeline law, we can send that to Europe, and then we won’t have so much of an issue with the United States. I’m a big fan of the United States. I love President Trump. He’s a great guy but not not happy with the direction he’s taking with the tariffs. And, uh, honestly, we need to not be so reliant that have that we have 75% of our exports going to the United States. We need to diversify. That means we need to make sure that we sell a bunch of our oil and gas to other countries, and all of that’s important. It’ll make both of us better neighbors, in my opinion. And, um, I have this to say, if you’re a Canadian or, you know, a Canadian, vote for Pierre Poilievre and the conservatives. Or make sure that you speak to your Canadian friends and you see what they’re going to do. And if they’re considering voting liberal. Still, after all this craziness. Do everything in your power to persuade them not to do that. This is an important existential election, and I believe we need to have all hands on deck to make sure that freedom prevails and tyranny dies.
Speaker4: Thank you. Nicky.
Trisha Stetzel: I you know, we’re all human beings, right? And because of the place that you come from. And thank you for sharing your story. This becomes really important to you and really important to others. And so I appreciate you sharing that. And as human beings, we have to get out there and share the way we feel and not get mad at others because they’re sharing the way they feel, right. Uh, so thank you for that, I appreciate it. Let’s talk about what Nicky does. So when I met you, you, uh, I, you were introduced to me as the best guest or the number one guest for being on a podcast. And I was like, what exactly does that mean? You must be on my show then if you’re the number one guest. Uh, and then I learned that you actually teach people how to do that same thing that you’ve been doing. So if it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk a little bit about that. And then some of the other things that you’re doing for the, um, entrepreneurs and business leaders out there.
Nicky Billou: Absolutely. So, um, about three years ago, uh, Canada was still under lockdowns and, um, my business took a half $1 million hit because we weren’t able to do in-person meetings anymore. And, um, we were trying to get around that. But, uh, after a while, we weren’t able to do that anymore, and I was freaking out. You know, my business is me and my beautiful lady. So half $1 million is a lot of money to us. And, um, I went to my business mentor and coach, Mark von Mauser, and I said, Mark, freaking out over here, man, I gotta replace this income. How do we do this? He said, let me think. And he’s one of these fellows. He’s Buddha likes when he thinks he can’t say anything to him because he’s got to think so. He sits there and he thinks and he goes, I got it. I said, okay. He said, I want you to go be a guest on other people’s podcasts, but not, you know, just to get, you know, likes and and exposure and all the stuff you normally do. I want you to go and be a guest on other people’s podcast to get leads, sales and clients. And I said, okay, great. How do we do this? I was willing to try anything. I was desperate, right? And he gave me the single best piece of coaching I’ve ever received from anyone at any time. And I’m going to quote it to you verbatim, because it was that powerful and profound and impacted me. So he said, and I quote, I have no freaking idea, but we’ll figure it out together.
Nicky Billou: I’m like, okay, crap. All right, let’s go. So here we go. Mark and I, we start putting me on shows using a, a platform, um, called Pod Match. Now, Pod Match is an incredible platform that uses an AI algorithm to match hosts with guests, and there’s like 15, 20,000 shows and guests there. So I very quickly was getting booked on shows because of pod match. So every day I had 24 shows that I could pitch 24 shows a day. So I didn’t pitch that many every day, but I pitched quite a few and I started going on a lot of shows. So Trish, here’s the deal. At first I got no leads, I got no sales, I got no clients. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I sucked at that part of it, you know, great conversations and all. But but here’s what was amazing. Mark is a former military man. He trained to be a Navy Seal. And after every show we did an after action debrief. We looked at what worked and what didn’t, and we made adjustments. We kept doing this for a hundred shows with no leads, no sales, no clients. But after 100 shows, it all clicked. It all came together. Have you ever had one of those moments when things click? You don’t know why they click, but they click. They make sense and you run with it and they work. So show 101. I got my first lead, my first sale, my first client, and I’ve been on 700 plus shows probably right now approaching seven 3740.
Nicky Billou: And here’s what I got to say to you. I have generated for myself nearly a half a million part time, 2 to 5 hours a week by being a guest on other people’s podcasts part time. I do other things to make money. I speak on stages. I’m a very accomplished speaker. I also have a, um, warm market and referral strategy, which is very strong, uh, as well. And we’re about to launch a LinkedIn strategy. So there’s a lot of other things we do to get business. But this was something anyone could do. You didn’t need to like, invest in starting your own podcast. You didn’t need to be some tech expert. You didn’t need to know how to sell. You just need to be honest and articulate and have something to say and do your talk the way I show you to do it, the way everybody else does it. Does it. You’ll make no money. So I started to teach it to people. I had clients on who did it successfully. And everybody goes to me. They go, Nicky, man. So listen, it’s all great and all, but you’re this, like, force of nature. You’ve got energy up the the yin yang. I’m like you. I can’t go on a show. I can’t put on a show like you do. I’m not Nicky Ballou. I go, okay, let me introduce you to my friend Michael. Michael was a tax accountant. Great guy, great humor, no charisma, no big energy. None.
Trisha Stetzel: Michael’s listening to the show. I’m just saying.
Nicky Billou: It’s a fact. It’s a good friend of mine gone to dinner. My lady and his lady and him. Great. And, um. So Michael did our program, and then he did some follow on work with us, but he never spoke. He came to everything. He took notes, never spoke. So I’m like, I’m gonna talk to this guy, you know, because he’s coming around. But I don’t know what. He’s what he’s doing, what he’s got. So I said, hey, Michael, how you doing? Thanks for taking some time. So, how’s it going? You’ve been in our program. You’ve done our work. What’s going on? He says, well, I did your workshop, Nicky, and it was great. He said, did everything you taught me because, you know, he’s very methodical, detail oriented. Right? Tax accountant. Right. Not charismatic. First show I went on, he said the host and I, you know, we hit it off. The topic was something she was really interested in. And at the end of the episode, she said, Michael, I think all of my clients need your expertise. Would it be okay with you if I gave you some referrals? Now, Trish. Trish, would it be okay with you if I gave you some referrals? Would that be okay? Would you would you have a problem with that? Yeah, of course not. Yeah. Michael said he got 15 referrals in three weeks.
Trisha Stetzel: Wow.
Nicky Billou: He signed up at least five of them and made thousands and thousands of dollars. No charisma, No big energy, so that’s not a requirement. Are you listening to this? You’re going. Okay, Nicki. All right, all right, all right. But listen. Write like you’re articulate. You’re a good speaker. I’m not. I’m not articulate. I’m not a good speaker. Okay? I can’t do this. And they go, oh, all right, well, some other people even say, listen, English isn’t my first language. No, excuse me, but English is not my first language, you know. No, no, no. I’m like, listen, no, no, no, no, I’m going to tell you about my client, Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew is Belgian. His nickname is Belgian. Jesus because he’s tall, like Jesus. He’s got the long, flowing hair and beard. Like he looks like Jesus. I mean, it’s like uncanny. It’s wild. Belgian. Jesus. Matthew English is not my first language. It is not even his second or third language. It’s his fourth language. His first language is Dutch. His second language is French. His third language is German, German, German. Think about this. English. He goes on all the shows. He goes on are in English. And Matthew first show he goes on. He made a €3,000 sale, which is like, wow, 600 USD per show. And in 90 days he joined this 90 day, 90 day, 90 days challenge that I run. Still doing the stuff I taught him. He made €124,000 in 90 days. That’s English, not his first language. Okay. All right. So here’s the other one. Nicky, you look like you could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo man.
Nicky Billou: You look like you got the sales. Gab and gift. Come on. I got no sales skills. I don’t know what I’m doing. Let me introduce you to Sharon. Sharon is a grandma. She’s 76 years old. She has never sold a thing in her life. She was a teacher all her life. Does not know how to sell. Sharon. The grandma. Sweet old lady. Sharon. Second show she was on did everything we taught her. Sold a $5,000 coaching program. Sweet old grandma with no sales. But she was honest. She cares about people, and she’s articulate. And the only reason I’m good at sales is not because I got some slick persona and techniques. It’s because I’m honest. I care about people and I will take a stand for you until you say yes to yourself or you say no to yourself, but I will not let you down and say no to you, because I’m afraid of what you’re going to think of me around the sales conversation. Sales is an act of love. Sales is an act of deep love and caring. That’s what I believe. So when I sell, I’m showing my love to someone. So I love to sell because sales and love. Same thing as far as I’m concerned. So this is me, Nicky Belew. This is podcast guesting. This is how anybody can do this. And it’s super, super important because in 2025 Trish podcast guesting is a thing. Five years ago it was Facebook ads. You know before that it was blogging. It was whatever. Every marketing method has its day.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah.
Nicky Billou: But it also has the day end and pass. Six years ago if you spent a dollar on Facebook, you’d get 20 back. Today you spend a dollar on Facebook. You’ll get $0.30 back. That’s a fact. That’s a fact. I’m not making this up, but podcast guesting today, the way I do it, nobody else does it. Nobody. No, no, everybody else goes on shows to have a great conversation and to get likes or exposure, and hopefully someone will reach out to you. Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. It does not.
Trisha Stetzel: Yep.
Nicky Billou: The way I do it, you will get leads, you will get sales, you will get clients. And you don’t need to be somebody with big energy. You don’t need to even have English be your first language or be the most articulate person in the world. And you don’t need to be a slick salesperson.
Trisha Stetzel: All right, Nicky, I am sure that some of the listeners are already interested and they want to reach out to you. What is the best way that they can connect with you?
Nicky Billou: I have a link to my calendar. It’s called E academy.com/appointment Ecircle academy.com/appointment. You can book time on my calendar and you will have a call with me. This isn’t with my team. I’m giving you my calendar link.
Trisha Stetzel: Beautiful. Uh, by the way, as you know, listeners, that link will be in the show notes so that you guys can just point and click, especially if you’re sitting in front of your computer. Nicky, thank you for all of that amazing information about being a great podcast guest and how you can get sales from doing that with your program. I want to talk a little bit about circles since you mentioned it. Uh, I know that you have an E Circles Academy mastermind, uh, and you just mentioned that in part of your, um, your calendar invite, if you will, uh, or your calendar link. So can we talk a little bit about that? What is e circles Academy mastermind?
Nicky Billou: So the E Circle Academy, the E in E circle stands for Entrepreneur Circle. So the Entrepreneur Circle Academy mastermind is really designed to help you as an entrepreneur, um, be able to be seen as the go to authority, the thought leader in your space. So imagine being the Elon Musk, the Steve Jobs, you know, of your space, right? Um, here’s the deal. Elon Musk is bigger than Tesla. He’s bigger than SpaceX. Steve Jobs was bigger than Apple. He’s bigger than next. He was bigger than Pixar, right? People begged to buy their products, to work for those companies and to invest in those companies because these people had a thought leader brand. So that’s what it’s all about. And people go, okay, well, I’m not Elon, I’m not Steve. I’m not going to have something that big. You don’t need to be. I’ll tell you a story of a client of ours, um, a woman. I’m going to call her Doctor Vicky. So, Doctor Vicky, not her real name, was a functional medicine doctor. She did well. She did six figures a year. It was good, but she wanted to do better. And she had a big why.
Nicky Billou: Her father, who was her hero, was dying of brain cancer. Geo. Blastoma. Horrible disease. And six months later, he died. Unfortunately, she wanted to honor his memory by becoming as good an entrepreneur as he was. As He was a very successful entrepreneur. She came to us and she really didn’t know a lot about business. And first thing we did was we said, so thank you. What do you do? Who do you help? She said, well, listen, I’m, you know, functional medicine doctor. I can help anybody with any health problem. And I said, I can see why you’re not doing so hot. She said, why? I said, because your message is vague. You’re trying to be all things to all people in the arena of health. That’s not going to work. And she says, well, how do I fix that? I said, well, let’s do an exercise called the Ideal Client exercise. And with your permission, I’m going to show you something about the ideal client exercise, because I think it’s simply fantastic. So let’s see if I can find this for you in my wonderful notebook. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doot doo doo doo. Doo doo doo.
Nicky Billou: Because the ideal client exercise is a fantastic, great exercise.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah.
Trisha Stetzel: And what a great place to start as you’re thumbing through your workbook there to find, um, how you coached her. That’s I think anytime we get into this marketing space or we want to create authority, we have to know who we’re talking to in the first place.
Trisha Stetzel: Right.
Nicky Billou: Okay, here we go.
Trisha Stetzel: Great.
Nicky Billou: So here is this model. So it looks like this. First of all, who are the clients you get the best results for?
Trisha Stetzel: Okay.
Nicky Billou: And then who are the clients you enjoy working with the most and who are the easiest to do business with? Okay. So this is this is this unique tool we developed. And then, you know, over here I’m going to cover the names, but you start making a list of the clients you help get the best results for and then your favorite clients, you make a list of those and then you make a list of those that are easy to do business with, right? Like they pay you in full. They give you lots of referrals. So she went through this exercise and I said, who of these clients lives in the ideal client zone? Now you look at this. There’s a there’s a space where all three intersect. So who lives there? So she made a list of who lived there, and we started to see what they had in common. Well, first of all, Trish, they were all women. They were all married professional women over the age of 45 with children, successful careers, successful families, successful marriages. So you go, okay, these gals seem like they have it all together. So why the hell are they seeing Doctor Vicki.
Trisha Stetzel: Right?
Nicky Billou: Well, there was one little thing. Now, listen, Trish, I’m not a woman, so you’re gonna have to excuse me, but you are, and you can correct me if I’m wrong here.
Nicky Billou: But I’ve heard somewhere that women love to feel special and beautiful. Is this true?
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, it’s absolutely true. It’s true, of course.
Nicky Billou: So a lot of these women no longer felt special, but they felt that time had passed them by. They were not as pretty. They were not as slim, as desirable as. And they were really not happy about it. Really not happy about it. So I said, okay, Vicky, I’m thinking we got us a winner here. He said, really? I go, yeah. And I said, tell me what you do for these guys. She says, well, she said, listen, I teach these ladies that while getting older is inevitable, I mean, the number is going to be higher next year than it was this year. You were 50, you’re going to be 51, etc.. Right? But aging now that is optional. You can look and feel just as good in your 50s 60s even 70s as you did in your 20s and 30s. And I’m like straight up right? She says, well, look at me, I’m 50. And she was, how do I look? And I said, you look stunning and it’s true. And my, my lady who’s, you know, also over 50, um, looks stunning because, you know, she’s taking care of herself. And I like a good man. I did all of this in front of Theresa, my beloved. You know.
Nicky Billou: Of course you got to be above suspicion, you know, like Caesar’s wife, right? Above suspicion and all that.
Nicky Billou: That that’s important to me to make sure that my, my lady is respected enough. That in these situations, we all we meet together.
Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely.
Nicky Billou: Yeah. 100%. So, um, well, she said I can do this for and have done this for lots of people. I’ve got case studies. And I said, great. So we are going to have all your marketing be around this and we’re going to call your program, get Your Sexy Back if you like that name Trish.
Trisha Stetzel: That’s awesome.
Nicky Billou: Good name. I thought so. Good name. I’m Nicky. This is what I do. So, um. Anyways, within a year, she doubled her business. Like, that’s that’s an incredible result, right? You double your business in a year. And then she doubled it again next year. And in three years, she doubled it again. She went from six figures a year to six figures a month, a month.
Trisha Stetzel: Amazing
Nicky Billou: And all because she had a big why she allowed us to bring some powerful intellectual property her way.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah.
Nicky Billou: And she she was coachable. She did what she was coached to do.
Trisha Stetzel: That’s beautiful. Get your sexy back. Everyone needs Nicky to help them build a program like that I love it. Thank you for sharing that. We are I know already at the back end of our time together, which means you and I are probably going to have to have another conversation because there’s so much more to Nicky than Then what we explored today. I appreciate your vulnerability. Thank you for telling your story. I’m really excited about being a guest on podcasting and what that looks like on the other end. So if anyone is interested again, uh, to connect with you, Nicky, would you give them that link one more time?
Nicky Billou: E Circle academy.com/appointment e Circle academy.com/appointment.
Trisha Stetzel: And you get Nicky.
Trisha Stetzel: You get Nicky, not his team. Nicky thank you so much for being with me today. This has been so much fun.
Nicky Billou: Trish God bless you. It’s an honor.
Nicky Billou: Thank you,
Trisha Stetzel: Thank you.That’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another amazing episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.
Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, we have a new word here around the Business RadioX Network, and it’s not daily, it’s daily-ish.
Lee Kantor: Yeah. Daily-ish is a concept I’m trying to get going. It’s a habit I have where I set goals for myself, or I like to have tasks for myself that I do every day, and for me, every day usually gets more things done than, you know, every other day or a few times a week. Daily-ish kind of gives me some grace. Daily-ish means that I intend to do this every day, but I’m not going to kind of obsess about it or beat myself up if I miss a day because something happened, life happened.
Lee Kantor: And what I found is that when I set rigid every single day goals, it makes me feel bad when I don’t do it, or I’ll cheat to do a half-assed version of it, so that kind of was stressing me out and I was actually getting burned out because of that, because if I missed a day, I would feel bad about myself.
Lee Kantor: Daily-ish to me means just be consistent. You want to do this every day. You want to be relentless when it comes to certain activities. But you have to be flexible because, like I said earlier, life is going to happen, things are going to happen that you can’t control. And this way you’re focused really on the progress without really focusing in on the perfection. And perfectionism is not a good strategy over the long term.
Lee Kantor: So, this kind of daily-ish concept, it helps you build and create the habits you need to succeed, but you don’t have that pressure of never missing or keeping that streak alive forever. So, you’re going to be able to have the momentum, but it’s okay to skip a day here or there.
Lee Kantor: But daily-ish does mean daily-ish. It doesn’t mean weekly-ish. It doesn’t mean monthly-ish. It doesn’t mean annually-ish. So, it’s something that you really have to focus in on doing the work pretty much every day, but not every day.
John Erlandson is the Co-Founder, President, and Chief Revenue Officer of Youth Athletes United, a leading youth sports franchising platform that encompasses brands such as Soccer Stars, Amazing Athletes, TGA Premier Sports, JumpBunch, and Little Rookies . Since its inception in November 2021, Youth Athletes United has expanded to over 280 locations across 36 states and two international markets, aiming to impact the lives of over one million children annually through sports and fitness education.
Before co-founding Youth Athletes United, Erlandson served as President of Amazing Athletes. He also held prominent roles at Authentic Brands Group, including Chief Revenue Officer and Executive Vice President of Sports, where he played a key role in scaling the company’s revenue from $100 million to $8 billion over seven years . His earlier career includes leadership positions at Product Central Software Inc., Sportcraft, Fitness Quest, and Horizon Fitness, focusing on product development, marketing, and sales.
Erlandson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Kinesiology from Temple University . He is known for his passion for youth development through sports and his commitment to empowering children by teaching them the fundamentals of athletics in a fun and inclusive environment.
Connect with John on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio. Ready to revolutionize your franchise with AI franchise now empowers franchises with advanced AI solutions, automatic processes, and enhanced marketing strategies. From personalized customer interactions to predictive analytics, we help you harness AI to drive growth and efficiency. Transform your franchise with the power of AI. Visit Franchise Now to learn more and take your business into the future. Now here’s your host.
Rob Gandley: Welcome back to another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, the podcast where we spotlight the brands, brains and breakthroughs shaping the future of franchising. I’m your host, Rob Gandley, and today is no different. I want to welcome John Erlandson, and he is no stranger to building beloved brands. He is the co-founder and chief brand officer at Youth Athletes United. He’s helped lead a portfolio of purpose driven youth sports franchises that combine national scale and local impact. And we’re going to jump into that today. I can’t wait. But with a background that blends corporate, brand building and entrepreneurial spirit, John is on a mission to positively impact 1 million kids annually through fun, foundational sports experiences and other positive events. His leadership focuses on franchise empowerment, community connection, and digital first marketing strategies, all the while maintaining strong values and strong values based approach. So with all that being said, John, welcome to the show.
John Erlandson: All right. Thanks. It was a big intro. I feel like, uh, like Muhammad Ali.
Rob Gandley: You are the intro.
John Erlandson: Titles there.
Rob Gandley: And for anybody that hasn’t, it can’t see us right now. He was up there shaking his body and his hands out. He was ready. That’s supposed to be a good thing for you to do. But anyway, listen, the first thing I love to ask, and you know, it’s always a great way to frame the conversation, but, you know, how did you get here? I know your journey was interesting. I know I’ve taught you a little bit about it, but I’d love the audience to hear more about how did you wind up in this place? And I know you’ve got a little bit of a history that got you here, so could you share a little more?
John Erlandson: Yeah, absolutely. You know, a lot of times people, people start with, well, my background was this and I was doing this for years. But, you know, the genesis of this story kind of starts with hurricane Sandy. And I just I’ve been in a company called Sport Craft for probably six years, and I was in my background was in fitness and games and physiology and product development. I did a lot of sales along the way, so I was making treadmills and things like that. Loved, you know, exercise, sports, all, all things, you know, kids, families. And I’m at that company. I’m doing great. I’m executive vice president and the company goes bankrupt. Didn’t see it coming. I just bought my first house, had my first baby, and I literally am out of a job. No health insurance, I have no money. I don’t have family with money. There was no one I could call. I’d put all the money into the house, and I’m scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. And all of a sudden, hurricane Sandy comes through new Jersey and six massive trees fall on my house. And I’m like, at the low of the low of the low of my life, in my career and everything. And I had this boss tell me it was a good mentor of mine. Guy’s name was Mike Nalley. He was probably my first real business mentor.
John Erlandson: He’s like, listen, always do what’s right. And I had just screwed all these Chinese factories over, telling them that they were going to get paid. And I just didn’t know the bankruptcy was coming. I wasn’t on the board and so I just started calling and apologizing to every one of these factories and saying, hey, you know, I I’m sorry. I was just there. I didn’t lie to you. And all of the owners were like, listen, John, we trust you. Just out of curiosity, if this company is bankrupt and no one’s watching the trademarks, can you start calling retailers and selling all this inventory I have? And I was like, I don’t know, give me five minutes. So I started dialing up, uh, retailers. I’m like, all right, I sold 5000 footballs. You know, I can pay the car payment this week. You know, I got 20,000 ping pong balls. And so through that kind of entrepreneurial scramble, I ended up at a company where I met my business partner, now called Authentic Brands. And I was very lucky because that company went from 0 to $8 billion. I was the chief revenue officer, and I worked alongside serial entrepreneurs, and I always had this passion about being an entrepreneur, and I wanted to do it on my own, and I just didn’t know how to do it, which is a lot of the story of many, many franchise owners, right? They work these career jobs.
John Erlandson: They always wanted to do something entrepreneurial. They, you know, families, they haven’t saved enough money. And so my journey mirrors so many of our franchisees journeys. And so while we build up authentic brands, early stage employees had stock options, did very well there. A lot of it was fashion. And you know, I just don’t care about women’s handbags. Like it just didn’t get me out of bed in the morning. And one day, Adam and I are in Japan. He’s my business partner now. And we came up with this idea for youth athletes United on one fundamental principle. What could we do where money is a wonderful byproduct of changing somebody else’s life, right? And so we started asking that question and just going, okay, well, well, there’s kids sports. We both have exercise physiology degrees, which are pretty useless degrees in case anybody’s kids out there are thinking about it. Talk it out. Talk them out of it. Um, but, you know, that was our passion. That’s what pulled me out of bed every morning. And so we started looking at the youth sports space noncompetitive, focused on kids under eight. And we realized there was amazing content, amazing brands, amazing people, but not a lot of really sophisticated business skills. Not a lot of investment in technology.
John Erlandson: And so Adam and I were like, man, this this just feels like we could put all this together. And so we founded Youth Athletes United as a platform. And, you know, take the year and a half of Covid out of it. We hit 90% of everything we said we were going to do in that initial business plan we’ve done. And it’s all rooted in let’s get an incredible group of people together that have this ideological passion that still have to make money, but they believe that money is a wonderful byproduct of changing somebody else’s life. And so we are having an unbelievable amount of fun doing this. Like, it is just so great. I’m working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and I love it. Like I can’t stop, you know? And so yeah, I mean, that’s that’s kind of my story. It started from just this train wreck of a being in the basement, wife screaming, baby screaming. Trees were falling everywhere. You’re thinking the house is going to collapse to. You know, what has been the peak of my business career and you know and that that story plays out over ten years. It feels like an overnight success story with ten years of just grinding. But the grinding was was kind of magical because it wasn’t about money. It was just about doing something you loved.
Rob Gandley: Yeah. And I you know, we were talking recently about energy. It was a recent episode, and it was like the one attribute of an entrepreneur that needs to be there. And you have it. I can feel it, right? But but that energy comes from your conviction and belief to and kind of when you tell that story, what I feel like is we all hit those crossroads in life where you could look back and say, this happened to me, right? These things happened to me. Or you can look forward and say, how am I going to fix it? Right? What what is what is the opportunity put in front of me? And also, I love that you did the right thing and it produced the opportunity to fix the problem, right. Even if it may not have been perfect, it wasn’t what you expected. But when you called those manufacturers that put it the seed in your mind to move forward and solve a problem. Yeah. And, you know, and it’s because you wanted to do the right thing. Right? And just telling what was going on. But I just love that.
John Erlandson: That skill is stuck with me. So I call it being an ostrich. So one of my things is every time you feel you’re in a negotiation, a tough conversation, an email where you’re batting the ball back and forth, a text message, and you just want to ignore something and put your head in the sand. You need to fight that urge. It is so easy, especially like if you do a lot of deals where you’re negotiating with somebody, it’s so easy to be like, oh, that person just forgot about that point. Let’s not bring it up and I’ll slip it in the contract and we’ll deal with it later. Right. And that’s just putting your head in the sand. All that’s going to happen is it’s going to come back to haunt you later, or not wanting to have a tough conversation with an employee or a franchisee or you know you did something wrong or something isn’t working, and not just raising your hand and just taking the beating now and getting it out of the way. And so I found, like, there are some people in life that they just have every skill. The the second mentor I had, Jamie Salter at Authentic Brands, really taught me how to be like a real scrappy entrepreneur. And he went on to be a billionaire and, you know, one of the point one percenters in life.
John Erlandson: But what I realized is nobody could replicate that. You were born like that. But 90% of the mechanical things he did, you could teach to anybody. And one of those big mechanical skills I learned was like, listen, just take the beating. Now get it out of the way. Go have the fight now. You’re kidding yourself if you think it’s not coming later. And what that allows you to do is just build a lot of trust with people. Even if you’re not always having fun conversations, you’re having productive conversations. And people love that. People want to be around other people they trust. They know you’re going to get things done and you know you’re going to get to the next result even when it’s hard. And so that that tool has served me very well. I try to teach it to all our young people. And, you know, I think it started with that lesson of calling the factories because, man, I that was that was the hardest thing to do because they’re all in China, right? Like you could easily have disappeared. And I just, uh, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So and again, I’d say it changed the entire course of my life.
Rob Gandley: I think that shows a lot about your character, man. That’s why you are who you are, though, too. That inner, that inner, you know, voice said, you gotta let these people know. And that was a good that was a good.
John Erlandson: But you know what for for everyone listening out there and trying to, you know, take some a learning away from it, even very rock headed people that seem like they always want to do stuff like that, deep down, they really don’t. Like, you’re still you’re still fighting yourself internally every day. And the difference between person makes stuff happen and the person that doesn’t is you get through that fighting yourself first before you go out and kind of, you know, challenge the challenge, what you got to do in the world. So yeah.
Rob Gandley: Exactly. To have the inner game is key. So so I wanted to kind of just frame your brand, your platform company and you know, so that is youth Athletes United. And then you have three brands. I wanted to just the audience to be very clear about what you’re running here. And it’s three distinct brands. But there is a unified sort of strategy. And you’re the chief brand officer. It’s one of the hats, right? You’re the co-founder, but.
John Erlandson: I’m more the chief revenue officer. So that that the marketing side really sits more with my business partner. We we co-run things very, very well. Um, but he is the marketing brand visionary. I always say, listen, left to my own devices, uh, we’d be bankrupt. So, like, we’re yin and yang in that way, where I’m always the revenue. What’s next? What’s the. I never saw an idea I didn’t like. And he’s always like, think through this, like, you know. So in that push and pull, uh, we’ve actually been pretty productive.
Rob Gandley: So that’s great. Well, so like when you are a platform company and you have, uh, these different brands. And so tell us a little bit about the strategy of that. So what that means and how, how do you keep a brand ethos sort of intact when you have this platform strategy?
John Erlandson: There’s upsides and downsides to being on a platform. I say it every day. And so everything in life is a weighing scale. Nothing is good or bad. Usually most things are not good or bad. It’s just you stack up all the good things and you stack up all the bad things and one side wins. So when you’re on a platform. We felt like if you looked at the industry that we focused on noncompetitive youth sports, especially with kids under, let’s call it the age of eight, is the majority of our revenue down to like one year old the the size of the business. Because if you look at the number of kids that are available per unit of time, per unit of geography in any given marketplace, it’s just not the same unit economics as like a McDonald’s, right? Because a one year old and a 99 year old can eat a cheeseburger 24 hours a day, right? Where that’s not the case when you’re trying to take a one year old and a parent in soccer class, you got like two hours in the day when that works really, really well, right? So our thesis was for somebody to revolutionize this part of the industry, you needed to stack a lot of revenue so you could reinvest in tech and intellectual capital. Right. So we could get we could get more sophisticated marketing people, business people, branding people, entrepreneurial people, and we could dump a ton of money into tech so we could have an Amazon type experience for mom and for our franchisees.
John Erlandson: Well, the only way to do that and to solve that problem is to stack a lot of royalties, right? And if you only focus on one brand, it’s a lot harder to get that level of scale and those level of unit economics. Soccer is probably the biggest of our brands, so youth Athletes Unite is the parent company. Soccer is our fastest growing brand. It’s called Soccer Stars. Uh, started in New York City. It is the largest operated soccer. So think of like the units I own soccer company in the country. Then we have, uh, amazing athletes, which is the largest, call it preschool PE program in the country. It’s about 2000 plus locations. And then we have play TGA, which is one of the very few companies that brings tennis, golf and pickleball. We do some other athletics, but the majority of the revenue sits with golf and tennis. We bring real clubs, real hitting, max play safe ball, and we teach golf in a noncompetitive and a non-intimidating environment. I like going to a golf course is a very hard place to learn golf. It’s intimidating. Yeah, right. It sucks. And so to for us to be able to do that at the school level. So every one of those businesses shares a lot of the same ideology and a lot of the same, um, back end operations.
John Erlandson: They’re all mobile businesses. We don’t own facilities. We don’t run facilities. So very low initial capital investment. We borrow space. So wherever there is kids time and money, we go to there and we deliver the content, we deliver the sports. And they are all content first brands, meaning we don’t send a coach out to come up with their own curriculum. We are very, very particular. I joke all the time on the franchise calls. We’re the In-N-Out burger of soccer, right? Like the content is so juicy and it’s so good and it’s so well thought out, like for, you know, on this podcast, you can’t see me, right? I’m a bald guy with a beard. To a three year old, I might as well be a serial killer, right? Like, total stranger danger. So I got on the field to coach for the first time. And one of the senior, you know, um, executives in our company, Dean Simpson, pulled me aside. He’s like, listen, just do this eye level. Get down on your knee. Sunglasses off. Smile it at the at the kid. Go. Hi, buddy. What’s your name? I’m Coach Marshmallow. As soon as I do that with any three year old, they burst out. They takes a second to process because they’re expecting you to say I’m Coach John. And then they hear I’m Coach Marshmallow. They burst out laughing. And now I’ve got a friend in the class.
Rob Gandley: Oh that’s.
John Erlandson: Great. Thousands, I mean thousands of those little techniques we have built something that that is just very unique. And everybody asks, well, I could just go buy sports equipment and start coaching this, right? And it’s like, yeah, you could, but to scale it, to do it at the highest, highest level of quality, very hard because it took people 20 years to come up with all these little innovations. And so the future of our platform, we are laser focused on owning the mobile space and watching the child because kids move through sports, right. Go through this journey with youth athletes united every step of the way for any sport they want to play.
Rob Gandley: That’s so. So let me connect it with a question I was dying to ask, which I love that you have this goal of a million kids, right? Impact. And so tell me more about that goal. And how has franchising in this experience. And I don’t know when that goal came in. Like I know that was very at the beginning. Or as you started scaling and realizing the impact. But how does franchising give you that platform, I guess, to achieve that type of audacious type of goal.
John Erlandson: So if you think about it from a standpoint of we originally didn’t have a big franchise vision. We had an operating vision. And so you start to like, logically think through the problem and you go, okay, so I’m going to create a workforce that to get to a million kids, we probably would need about ten. I’m guessing 5 to 10,000 coaches. Right. It’s a massive number spread across 40 states. And so you go is that logistically possible to from New York City manage a workforce that large that is part time when, you know, 90% of those people are just almost like gig workers and they have to not just show up and drive a car. They’ve got to deliver an incredible piece of content to another human being, to a group of human beings. They have to be able to interact with the parent that is in charge of the child. And be able to interact with the location manager. Who is the preschool director or the elementary school director. Do we really think sitting in New York City, I can hire somebody that makes 25 bucks an hour, that’s going to do that at the highest level of quality. And we tried it. And the conclusion we came to is the reason why no one’s ever done it is because the math doesn’t work. You need somebody who has an ownership link in the market that that lives and bleeds their community and will go above and beyond, and they can do all three of those things.
John Erlandson: They can take a lot of young people in coaching and teach them life skills and build a community, take them out to the bar, do a kick around on the weekend, like build that that culture because that culture is what makes your product unbelievable on the field. Then they got to build relationships with all the directors, all the schools, right? Because the schools and the parks control all the space. So we got to go work with those guys, and then they’ve got to be able to walk on the sideline, talk to mom, talk to dad. How’s Billy doing? Take a customer service call. You were never going to get that level of sophistication trying to hire, you know, regional managers all across the country. We tried it, and it just. You couldn’t get people that were bought in enough. Now, there are some regions where we have been able to get enough scale in cities. So we still own four regions. So we have New York, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco. Those units have so much scale that the four people that are running, those are seasoned executives that are living and breathing the business and delivering on that level. But but it was built over 15 to 20 years.
John Erlandson: I didn’t build it. I bought it, right. And so to rebuild that and go through that journey in every state in the country, it just wasn’t economically feasible. And so when we bought Amazing athletes, it was already franchised, fell in love with the concept of franchising. I loved the franchisees. I love the people I like as much as I love kids in sports. What gets me out of bed every morning is helping an entrepreneur go on that same journey that I went on, maybe minus the trees falling on their house and the hurricane. But everything else, right? Like, you know, like all that. All those other parts of like, man, you know, you start that business, you come out of the gates, it can go really, really well. But no matter how well it goes, you think it’s going to be on paper. There’s always something where you’re like, oh man, you got to solve a problem. And to me, when when we’re done solving problems, I might as well be dead. Like, what’s the point? Right? It’s kind of like you go on vacation in the Bahamas. By day, you’re like, all right, what am I doing on Earth? Like, this is a great use of my time on this planet. And so I think that that that part is really what gets me excited, you know, about business. That’s my.
Rob Gandley: That’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. And so here’s a good follow up then. So like in the marketing or sales side of things, you’re dealing with one audience that are these folks that really want more purpose and meaning in their life. And they also want obviously Potentially to earn as well to be able to earn and have financial freedom. Um, so you’re talking to that audience, and then you’re also in a position where you’ve got to build a business model where these same people build trust with parents and children. So or at least. Well, I think pretty much all the models. Right. So so you got marketing on one side that says we want to recruit the right kind of people for that model. So they have to represent this trust link with these parents. But your marketing and all that wrapping around the branding. How do you do that. Like that’s the two big things you got to do. You got to show them show we want people that care about. Yeah making money. But making an impact has to be the first, the leading of that. But you probably don’t when you recruit. I got to believe you don’t talk to people that say they hate kids, right? That’s the first thing.
John Erlandson: No. And I’ll tell you what. If somebody gets on the call and the first thing they go is, you know, how much money can I make off these kids? We’re generally like, this isn’t the right business for you. We’re going to end the call, right? We do. Right? Like we’ve been very fortunate enough. You know, myself, my business partner. Like our houses are paid off, right? So, like, I don’t have to do anything for money, I don’t care. Not that I could retire either, but, like, I don’t want to do anything that’s in the life. Too short column to add people to this platform that are that are not sharing the same mission. Now, that being said, do we relentlessly focus on people making money? Absolutely. You got to make money for a business to be successful so you could do good things, right? But it’s all about that ideology of the underlying kind of philosophy. From there, as much as the brand is the brand in the market, we expect the entrepreneur and the owner to also be the brand in the market, because this marketing is still very like 1975. A lot of it is going out to a playground with a flier and a business card, knocking on the local coffee shop door.
John Erlandson: Can I put this stack of brochures here? And talking to your local preschool, we do door to door sales, which most people that come in have never sold anything and they hate it. They think sales is a dirty word. And the more we start. That’s where I spend a lot of time during franchise training is I teach a whole 3 to 5 hour course on sales. And basically it’s like throw everything out of your mind of what you think sales is. This is about just being human and making sure that that person likes you, and telling your message in a real passionate way and starting a conversation. And the minute we get people to do that and they realize, like, this is the brand is radiating off of you. That’s where we start to see that magic happen. And after they get over their nerves for the first 4 or 5 of those calls, they’re like, wow, this is amazing. This is awesome. I’m building my business. The the movie montage that was in their head when they bought that franchise is actually starting to play out, right. And that’s that’s pretty cool that that gets me out of bed every morning I love it.
Rob Gandley: Yeah. Well, that’s amazing that you framed it that way and explained it, because I feel like that is a key to success for a business owner, for a new franchisee to get to that place. Right? First of all, you do a good job in the beginning recruiting, telling, being transparent, being clear about what the opportunity holds. Uh, but they create that vision in their mind, which you want them to create, right? I mean, that’s part of sales and marketing. But then when they come in, if you can achieve where they start to feel it and see it happening unfolding in front of them, to me, if you can do that in a certain period of time, in the beginning your success rate would be extremely high because that is the spark, right? That’s the also the disconnect. I feel right in a lot of brands where I’m here six months later, I feel like I had a breakthrough at 90 days. It’s not what I thought or see, you know, and that’s where the momentum gets lost and that’s where the challenge can be for certain brands. But that was brilliant. The way you phrased, is that how you guys look at it too? Like, let’s get them to see that.
John Erlandson: More upstream with the person. So what has been shocking to me in franchising is the number of times. And as we get in, um, community groups and we get to know other franchisors, Cause how often people will kid themselves in life and we all do it. I’ve done it to myself a million times, right? Like you, you believe in your head. You really want to own a business, and you want to get out there and you want to work it, and you love the details of it. And then we watch every now and then every 6 to 8 months, we’ll watch an owner buy a business and never show up. And they don’t want to do any of the hard work. They don’t want to knock on the door. They don’t want to do anything that makes them uncomfortable. And so early on when we were selling franchises six years ago, you know, when we were on these, these, uh, interview calls for franchisees, you know, I came from a sales background, so I assumed we should be doing a lot of selling today. I do a lot of trying to talk you out of it. And the reason is, we are not. It’s not like I’m your boss. We’re in a car together.
John Erlandson: There’s a seat sitting next to us. Right? And the whole team, the. Your team is driving the car, and that seat is empty. And we want you to get in the car. But I don’t want you to complain when the car goes 100 miles an hour, because I told you we’re going 100 miles an hour. This is where we’re driving. We’re pulling hard left turns. We’re pulling hard right turns. Right. Like we’re going on this adventure together. And I want to talk you out of it. Because if my words scare you, then you ain’t right for this. I don’t. I don’t want you bitching the whole time you’re in the car seat next to me, right? And so we explain that now, the other place I watch people kid themselves. And this is just like a public service announcement. If you were thinking about buying a franchise, even it has nothing to do with mine. Don’t kid yourself that. If you have a marital problem, a health problem or another business problem, that this is going to solve it. Because when you are getting started, you are the salesperson, the accountant, the coach, the manager, the CEO, the the, you know, the equipment manager. You have to do it all. And so if you were being distracted by life’s challenges, it’s like having a baby thinking it’s going to save a bad marriage.
John Erlandson: And you will watch people on franchising kid themselves like that all the time. And so we’ve gotten very good at really trying to talk people out of it. And at the end of me talking you out of it and I say the same thing, listen, weigh all the good and the bad. Here’s all the hard parts about this business. Here’s the things that will give you so much joy about being in this business. And it’s worked really well, man. The group of people we have in the system, at the speed that we have grown, private equity firms, um, other franchisors, other consultants in the industry are just shocked. They’re just shocked at the level of success we’re having. And our FBR review’s franchise business review, it’s an anonymous survey that they put out independently or through the roof. Now, are we perfect? Absolutely not. We screw things up every day, but it’s not bad intentioned. It’s usually because we’re trying to do too much, too fast. And most people that are in a franchise system, they can deal with that as opposed to a franchise owner that’s asleep at the wheel.
Rob Gandley: Exactly. Yeah. You know, no one expects perfection, but it is some degree of that, that vision in your head playing out. Right? No one said it would be perfect, but it is playing out and and it is moving forward. And I think that’s the key. Um, and I love the way like your it is near impossible to, to solve certain problems like on a national scale if you don’t have the right level of talent. And so another example of a business model is in the senior care space, very much a similar idea where you’re you’re getting a lot of benefit in helping people, making a big impact in your community, helping families and such. And it’s very much about that. But you look at the ways that people get help in that space. Without a franchise model, it’s very hard to get the help. You don’t get the hand-holding. You don’t because there is no one you can hire to do that type of work at the level you need them to do it, just like you said about the coaches. If you try to outsource the coaching, that’s you just can’t do it. Yeah. And so franchising is the solution. Like you couldn’t do it without the franchise model and the distributed ownership model. Right. That’s what I’m saying. That’s amazing. And you guys saw that. But you saw it.
John Erlandson: It comes back to the people though, I gotta tell you, we have the most wonderful, wonderful group of franchise owners like it is. I feel incredibly lucky by the fact that, like, they’re just good people. They are people first before they are business owners. And it allows you to solve problems. And I will I will tell you the best system in the world. The best system in the world will fail. If you have bad people on the other end, or you have the wrong people on the other end. And so what we have worked relentlessly in this to to create these systems. We have this philosophy of just get the right person, take a lot of notes because they’ll tell you what they need, right? Like everybody’s like, you know, what was your vision when you came in and took over? Amazing athletes. I’m like, I have a vision. I sat down with a notepad and said, bitch to me about everything you hate about this system, wrote everything down, right? Took all my notes. I’m like, all right, I got my five year plan. Thanks, guys. Like, we just bucketed it in and we just started executing, right. And so you build a little bit of trust and you build a little bit more and they’re like, oh wow, these guys care, right? My cell phone, my business partner, our executive team, they’re all in our in our email signature.
John Erlandson: I tell people I am available till midnight on Easter time. And then after that I’m probably asleep. And if you want to talk to somebody at 6 a.m., call my business partner. He’s the morning guy. But like, we are always, always available. We’re always on. But it’s not like it’s work. We’re just we’re having a blast. Like it’s just great. And so but it’s only great because you have people that are aligned with the vision And that that is what makes it fun. That’s what makes it possible to roll new things out, screw them up, get them fixed, get a lot of mulligans from your from your franchise system because everybody sees this, this North Star that we’re all driving towards, that you know you’re never going to get to. But that’s that’s part of the fun, right? The fun is the journey up the mountain. Like you’re at the top that it’s fun for about five seconds. You’re like, well shit, what do I do next? You know, like so another mountain.
Rob Gandley: Yeah.
John Erlandson: Yeah. Right. And that that’s been the secret sauce here so far over the last six years.
Rob Gandley: I love it, man. I love I thank you for sharing. I, I just love the way you articulate that, that idea of alignment. I feel like, again, like you’re saying things that most people don’t see, like. Yeah, recruiting great people. People are great. Yeah. No doubt. And I know what you mean. Exactly. Like franchisees are some of the best people in the world in every way, right? It’s like you couldn’t hire them and they’d be too expensive from that point of view. And then just the quality of the person. Right. But the idea of alignment is, again, you said that really quick, but I feel like, my goodness, if you get alignment, you can get a lot of average people doing really well, like the whole brand, just like the rising tide lifts, lifts, all boats. I just felt Lyman has a lot to do with that, where everybody is in that similar mindset of kids first, right? You have a franchisees first. I wanted to ask you about that philosophy. I think you kind of articulated it a little bit. So before I go down there, I do want to have some time to talk about technology though.
John Erlandson: Well, so.
Rob Gandley: Before you have before. Yeah. Go ahead.
John Erlandson: One kind of thing. I actually learned this from our private equity guys. So we raised money to start this platform. And, uh, we were we were negotiating because you have to negotiate with those guys on your deals, your terms, all these things. And there’s a lot of negotiating while you’re negotiating to buy the first company to get started. So I like to call it the cycle of misery because it’s just highs and lows when you’re trying to get something closed, right. You got to just put your quarter in and ride it and enjoy the ride. But, um, it was really interesting where we got to a place where we were kind of disagreeing on something, and one of the senior guys at our PE firm, he was just like, you know, do you feel like we’re aligned on this? Because I totally disagreed with with whatever point. I don’t remember what the point was, but I do remember him vividly asking me, go, does this feel aligned to you? Like, we both win if this happens and if this happens. And the minute he said that, I was kind of like, no, you’re right. And I’ve used that as a tool in the toolbox. Again, we can’t all be born Steve Jobs, right? Like it’s just not going to happen. But there were a bunch of mechanical things that these really successful people do that you can take those, put the tool in your toolbox and use it to some degree. And so every time I’m negotiating with an employee, right, maybe on a salary, on a raise, on a bonus.
John Erlandson: We ask the question of like, is this aligned with the company and the mission? Same thing when I’m negotiating with a franchisee who’s asking for special treatment, or they’ve done something really unique and we want to figure out how to partner on it. And that tool has been one of the most powerful tools I probably have used over the last six years. It’s really, really good. And and I would highly recommend everybody to use two. There are two mechanical tools that I feel like reset me mentally whenever I’m, you know, if you’re you’re debating anything, you’re arguing anything. It’s all over the board. There’s too many variables. So the alignment tool is number one I use. And the other one I use is ask yourself where you are trying to land the plane. So you get a room of 20 people debating something. And there’s arguments that are really good, but they’re they’re kind of all around like they’re all in like a circle, but nobody ever stops and goes, hang on, guys. Somebody just answered me where we are landing this plane and we can work backwards, because I don’t think we’re all trying to land it in the same spot. Are we debating how we fly into the landing zone, or are we debating where the frigging landing zone is? Right. Like, let’s start there. And so those two tools we use all the time in this company to kind of reset those debate conversations and it’s really, really good, really productive.
Rob Gandley: I love it. I think I think those two tips are brilliant because I know how that plays out in conversation and in decision making. Right? And it is about having that confidence and knowing, you know, this is the way we should go. This is this is what I need to do. Um, and you’re right, you could spend and we’ll talk about technology now. And that’s one area where you could spend so much time going in circles. It’s like, wait a minute, we all want to do this. Why are we talking about this over here? Like the color of the plane? Like we just want to land it, right? So.
John Erlandson: Yeah, the tech side has been interesting, right? It’s, um. It’s really, really hard when you get started and you start just plowing money into tech. Sometimes you put more CapEx in than you had Ebit to come out, and you could sit at those board meetings and just go, man, we could redeploy that capital into acquisitions. We could redeploy that capital into dividends. We could we could, you know, there are so many things we could do that do with that money. And we have watched some competitive platforms come along. And their view is I’m building a conglomerate of things and that doesn’t make them right or wrong. But their view is I don’t care about a seamless tech experience. I’ll let every one of these little things kind of run in their own tech bubble, and we’ll kind of just mine the data and we’ll use that for marketing. And they they’ve blown past us in terms of size. But I truly believe and I fundamentally believe the game we’re playing is the long game. It’s kind of like looking at Amazon early on and going, you know why they could have made so much more money if they stopped building distribution centers and they stopped upgrading their tech and just that relentless, Less relentless focus on what are basically our two customers when it comes to tech, the franchisees experience. We say we want more green time and less screen time. That doesn’t just apply to our kids, right? That applies to the franchisees. And we are also looking at it from, you know, is mom getting the Amazon experience? I don’t want to look at my competitors websites and hold that as the standard.
John Erlandson: I want to look at the best technology in the market and the best consumer experience and say, how do we model that? Right? Well, I don’t have $1 trillion to go invest in something, right? So how can we at least steal five ideas from the Amazon checkout experience and put them in here? And then you get them launched, you fix them, you make some bugs, you make some mistakes, you upgrade them and then rinse, wash, repeat, rinse, wash, repeat. And you just do that over and over. And what we have seen is every time we and we release tech features every three weeks. Every single time we release more technology features, we just watched the organic growth grow and grow and grow. And so it’s been incredible. Now, would we have taken on this journey if it was just, you know, uh, you know, myself and Adam? No, we had a we have a two other partners, uh, that are in the business that kind of came in as the initial for one of them has a degree from MIT. He’s a chief technology officer. He had built software in sports prior to coming here. So he was he was really the secret sauce that allowed us to kind of do this. Um, and, and it’s been it’s been spot on. It’s really made a difference. And, and there’s some new problems that have emerged as you’ve scaled tech. And I can talk about those in a minute, but it’s, uh, it’s been good.
Rob Gandley: Well, you know, one of the thoughts I had was, you know, obviously technology is there’s a lot of buzz around it right now with AI, obviously, and many other disruptive technologies. But I’d say AI is probably the most in the front of most consumers and people nowadays. And, and you know, so I mean for you guys it is still about alignment. I love that. Right. You just come right back to that thought like is this tool, is this capability aligned for vision of impacting a million children. You know what I mean. Is it getting us there and is it getting obviously you keep improving that right. You keep raising the standards as high as you can take it. So like how do you make those decisions like and right now, are there any places that you see that really like this from what you can see now would be, yeah, that might really help what we do, that piece of technology that really might enhance what we’re doing. Is there anything like that that you can point to or talk about?
John Erlandson: What’s super interesting is when you’re building your own tech stack. And I saw I went and I always look at other systems, and I was looking at one the other day and they’re, you know, multi multi-billion dollar conglomerate. And I was shocked at how clunky the interface was. I couldn’t believe it. And then I went back and I looked at our interface, and I realized what happens to a lot of tech companies as people, just continually it’s a never ending black hole of features that people ask for. And so the problem is, what starts out as a great, simplistic idea ends up with this infinite number of variable menu options, which starts to make it very complicated to find things. And so what happens is over time, you lose that pizzazz of like having time to really redesign the user interface. So it’s sleek, it’s modern because now all of a sudden there’s all these friggin submenus. And you end up with the exact opposite of the dream of where you started, which was more screen time and less screen time. Now I have double the screen time because I’m clicking all these freaking boxes, right? And so I think before we start talking about AI tools and bots and some of the things that are going on out there, and we’ve tested some of those We probably are at a place where we’ve where millions upon millions of lines of code.
John Erlandson: We’re going to probably take a quarter or two, pause and go back and re scrub the whole interface for speed and convenience. And why isn’t this obvious? Because I think if you don’t clean out your closet once every year, you just end up with a mess and you can’t figure out kind of what to wear. Right. And that fashion analogy I stole from somebody else’s podcast, but I thought it was great. So I’m using it here. And so, um, then you go, okay, now that the foundation of the house is perfect and the closets are clean and the house is organized on the inside. Now, how do we build two new things that are rapidly emerging technology, which is a combination of AI bots, really, uh, and a genetic AI, which are a little bit different. If you think of the bots, the bots are basically just asking questions, right? We’ve all dealt with the customer service bot An agentic AI bot can do a lot more. It can perform complex tasks on the back end, but it can also think through situation A and situation B, right? If the invoice doesn’t come in perfectly, it knows there’s an address somewhere on the invoice so it can read through the invoice, find the address, type it into the system. That’s the future.
John Erlandson: That’s where it’s going. I think what we found is the couple times we’ve tried to integrate AI, you almost have to look at it like bullets in a gun, right? So we’re being charged by a thousand zombies are coming and charging our position, and we only have 800 bullets, right? So you can’t just fire at every zombie. You see, you have to be smart about the ones you attack. And the problem is, that’s what AI is right now, is the expense of just figuring out the never ending landscape of AI can actually bankrupt you in a never ending black hole of spending and spending, and then it changes, and then you spend again. But as a small business, you can’t keep up with that. So what we found is, is we deployed a bot, we call it soccer bot, and it was supposed to do customer service just for the franchisees. Was it only answered about 50% of the questions. And it just kept every day creeping up and getting more and more and more expensive. You’re like, this thing’s going to kill us. So we shut it down. I think that the for a small business under $100 million like us, um, I think a little bit of a wait and see approach. Well, you use some very, very, very sniper shot off the shelf AI tools. So, for example, uh, a video editor that can do faster video editor editing, make it look more modern, but it’s 20 bucks a month, right? Um, just things like that.
John Erlandson: Like, you know, using ChatGPT to write, not just emails is everybody’s doing that. But, like, we’re in a meeting, you and I, and there’s all these action steps. And so what do you do? You write all the action steps down. You get distracted. You come back at night, you go to type it all into your CRM, and then you have to remember what you did right. So while we’re taking the meeting notes, we copy that. We’re like, oh, we need to send a letter to the franchisees. So we copy what just came up in the transcript or we’re writing it. We drop it in chat. The letter is done in the meeting right there. Yeah. Right. Well, that’s free to do. So those types of little techniques are where we’re implementing AI every step of the way. And we’re all learning it a little bit at a time. And it’s a very low cost high return way to to to go after it. And that I would recommend anybody that’s in a small business that doesn’t have a lot of bullets to shoot in terms of capital to apply towards this, that’s the best way to get in the game. And it’s working.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean that’s what we see. I think that, uh, the first step is looking at your people, looking at your people, your teams, and seeing what you can do to equip them better. As you said, like it could be these tools that just make them do their job way better than they were before. And that’s step one. If you do that well, I think you’re in the right place because, um, I do think that sort of thinking, if you’re not doing it, what if the other folks in your industry are. So at some point it will be more commonplace for employees to all be upskilled with various tools, right? So I love that analogy, like the video editing analogy. So that’s amazing. So we’re coming towards the end here. I know we set aside a certain amount of time and I know you’re you’re busy, John, and I appreciate the conversation so far. I feel like we could probably just sit here all day. Really. I think both of us love talking, so I know it’s our background, right? Um, so. But like, in terms of vision, I’m just. I’m just wondering, like you had mentioned earlier in the conversation about climbing, you know, kind of climbing the mountain. And a big part is the climb, right? It’s the journey. And there is that payoff, though, of the vision of seeing the top right. And that’s an amazing feeling. Um, I, I do, I do climb mountains. I live in Colorado and I do get that feeling, and I do love that feeling. And oftentimes I feel like there’s nothing else in that moment. Right? Like, that is the pinnacle. And so you want to keep recreating that feeling. So but tell me about your vision because you’re that you’re sort of you’ve climbed the mount, you’ve climbed a couple mountains, now you’ve seen some nice views. Tell me about your vision for this platform company. Where where do you see things going into the future, given the world we live into with all this change? What is your.
John Erlandson: Yeah, I think our executive team, all the leaders feel like the opportunity is infinite. And I think our franchisees do too. And this is why children are moving the old days of just your parents throwing you out in the fricking yard and being like, hey, come back when it’s dark. Like those days are gone, right? And so it’s it’s just not reality for any of us anymore. And so kids are just doing structured things nonstop and they’re kids, so they’re going to try an infinite number of things. And so there’s all these obvious things in sports tennis, golf, soccer, multi sport, cross whatever you want to do. Then that same child is trying the same thing in Stem robotics, science, fashion design. You know medical learning like money management like there’s an infinite number of contact content packages. And we like to say the brain is the biggest muscle in the body. Right. And so like why are we not having mom and dad bring their children through this trusted ecosystem every step of the way, lowering the marketing cost of acquisition for a customer for our franchisees. Right. Using that data not to shill. Right. They used to work the WWE a lot, and one of Vince McMahon’s big things was we don’t want to shill, right? We like we want to sell. We want to provide value, but we don’t want to shill. Right? So where’s the value for mom of her getting a text message that says, hey, Billy left the preschool.
John Erlandson: He’s now in elementary school X, Y, and Z. Did you know that his progress report said he was great at golf when he was five? We have a TGA class. Here’s a 20% coupon. We’d love to have Billy come try TGA and test some golf. Right. That’s the future of where we’re going. And we’re probably only about 12 months away from that being automated. Um, and everybody wins. Again, we talk. Let’s bring it back to where we started. Alignment. Is mom aligned in getting a value and is it something she wants? Yes. Is the franchisee aligned in terms of a customer moving from one franchisee to another? But they both win? Yes. Because they weren’t in a competing brand anyways. Is is the franchisor aligned in that investment and technology? Because ultimately they’re going to receive a royalty off of every one of those kids. Yes, absolutely. Is the school aligned because you took the kid off the teacher’s hands for a little bit, and the teacher is now happy and we take care of the facility. Yes. There’s no losers in this. It’s not like I sold you a lemon and you drove off the lot. And so again, when I go back to there’s like five core tools that you can use in every situation to bring your yourself back to center. You know, zero point attack this goal, make this happen and achieve your vision. And it is awesome when you get in that rhythm. And that’s what we’re doing now.
Rob Gandley: I just love that you’re sharing that because it there’s two things. One, it’s the knowing of it. It’s knowing to look for alignment knowing to think win, win, think what’s in it for the other party. Right. How does it impact them, and why is that good or is that bad? Is that aligned or not? Yeah, but you thought you thought about it through the whole network of folks, the stakeholders in the whole, you know, in that whole example. And I love it. It’s knowing that, but it’s also being willing as a business leader to run your business that way? Yeah. And because you can know a lot about all this stuff and still choose. It’s all about profit, right? And I know we live in that world to some extent. I’d like to think it’s a little different than maybe when I was younger.
John Erlandson: But even that I would tell you there’s nothing wrong with that either. Right there. I mean, friends that are in the industry that own, you know, um, I don’t know, plumbing franchises or home service franchises. And there are some, like, building out a garage. You could be really passionate about finishing a kitchen, you know, doing plumbing. You could be passionate about the industry and stuff. But it’s not like if there was no money, would you still do it? The number of people would go way down. Right. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We’re in America, right? And there’s a certain type of person that should absolutely buy that franchise first. Our system we want you to like, if money wasn’t a thing, if the robots take over and we don’t have to do any work, would you still show up and do this every day? Then this is the place for you, right? That’s what has made this so special. And I actually we find that very easy. And if you do all the right things because the system is really good, the profits will come, right? They just come and do this. You do that. Profits pour out of the machine. And so it’s, uh, it’s just about how you, like, set your core methodology that really determines every single thing that you and your teams do day in and day out.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, absolutely. Now, I mean, it just comes down to, as you said earlier, the kind of model it is and being transparent upfront and and again, you’re in that model and I you made a comment about um about robots taking over. Well I mean, in my world I’m in the tech, you know, and I could tell you you’re passionate about it too, but it’s like, that is a real sort of idea, but not like, here’s what I think. I think the relationship jobs of today, like your business, like your brands, where you’re really connecting with other people, making an impact in their lives. Those are the they. They ain’t going nowhere. We’re still we have needs. We still are going to fulfill those needs for each other. Hopefully, it just means a lot of the grind of life that we had to do to just survive can be removed, and we can focus more on business models like yours. Like you said, there’s no real end to picking the phone up and adding value and helping a franchisee help a kid, right? I mean, that’s pretty much what you’re doing. And I think the future is still the future. That’s still the future, even with robots around. So that’s the cool thing.
John Erlandson: Yeah. We’ll we’ll be last in line to to. Yeah. I mean robots coach. You know, young kids soccer. But you know, if it ever gets to.
Rob Gandley: Maybe an assistant.
John Erlandson: Yeah. The whole the whole world’s in trouble. So.
Speaker4: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Rob Gandley: No, that’s that is key. So it’s been a pleasure, man. Thank you for spending the time. Um, yeah.
John Erlandson: Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
Rob Gandley: And, yeah, the the insights were tremendous. I would recommend people relisten to some of these, uh, these answers you shared. I loved it. Thank you. Because I know when I walk away feeling like I learned a ton, which is most of the time, I must say, but not I gotta tell you, I just love. Last few interviews have been unbelievable. Um, I feel like I’m just. I’m getting the benefit of of of your coaching and consulting indirectly. But it’s really good stuff. And that’s why that’s why the brand has done so well. And and I want you to tell the listeners, where can they get in touch with you guys, with your brands, with your platform, with you. You seem like a great place to start. You you know, you’re the chief revenue officer, but how do people reach out if they’re interested in making an impact?
John Erlandson: You can look at youth athletes. United.com. Uh, it’s a good place to start. It’ll tell you all about the franchise system. Um, and then also you see us on LinkedIn. Um, I highly recommend doing your research. Right. There’s a lot of podcasts out there with us. There’s a lot of, you know, industry research ChatGPT us. I did it the other day, you know, what does the world have to say about John Erlandson? Right? Adam Geisler, you know, Dean Simpson, Carman, Khalil, all you can see our executive team, they’re all out there. Annie. Um, you know, so all of the the core people that that have really founded these businesses. So what is so cool is when you look into the history of our business, you know, some of the names I named and, you know, another executive, Bob Gibson, founded, like, just founded this business. They were the first people on the soccer side that started 20 years ago in the business. And they’re like the core founders. And to have all those people still surrounding us is pretty freaking cool. It’s really cool. It says a lot that we came in and we weren’t money guys. We really understood the value of human beings in this. And like, what this is, is like human Netflix for kids, right? We got to deliver that movie every week. You pay your subscription, everybody enjoys the movie, but you’re getting healthy and active. And at the end of the day, that doesn’t happen without incredible humans around you. And so, yeah, I mean, I would say start at youth Athletes United. Look us all up on LinkedIn chat GTP us. You know, go look at other franchisee podcasts. And if you’re interested, we’d love to talk to you. If not, you know, take these tips. And we made the world a better place. Whether we’re helping kids or we’re helping people. That’s great. Right. So beautiful. You know, that’s, uh, that’s who we are.
Rob Gandley: It’s about doing good work and helping people and being an awesome business at the same time. So I think that’s amazing. It’s good stuff. I just want to thank you again for your insights. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in. Please share this if you find it helpful. This is insightful, impactful stuff. Please share it and keep tuning in. And bye for now.
Cliff Nonnenmacher began his career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. After leaving his Wall Street career in 2003, he acquired a Master Franchise for New York and Connecticut, diving headfirst into the franchising industry.
Since then, Cliff has owned and operated various franchise businesses, including Cartridge World, Personal Training Institute, PuroClean, and Maid Right, as well as non-franchise companies. He has also developed well-known domestic and international brands like Four Seasons Sunrooms, Contours Express, Island Fin Poke, and Krak Boba.
With over 25 years of experience in franchising, finance, and business, Cliff has been involved in every aspect of the franchisor-franchisee relationship. Cliff now uses his extensive knowledge to assist corporate executives in building generational wealth, diversifying their investment portfolios, and navigating career transitions through franchise ownership.
Connect with Cliff on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio. Ready to revolutionize your franchise with AI? Franchise now empowers franchises with advanced AI solutions, automatic processes, and enhanced marketing strategies. From personalized customer interactions to predictive analytics, we help you harness AI to drive growth and efficiency. Transform your franchise with the power of AI. Visit Franchise Now to learn more and take your business into the future. Now here’s your host.
Rob Gandley: Welcome back, everybody to Franchise Marketing Radio, where we spotlight brands, leaders, game changers that are shaping the future of franchising. Today is no different. My guest is a powerhouse in franchise consulting and the franchise consulting world. He’s been on both sides of the table as a multi-unit franchisee. As a franchisor executive and now as the founder and CEO of Franocity. And basically, he is redefining how candidates find their perfect franchise fit and how franchisors recruit high performance owners. He’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CBS, moneywatch. Cliff Nonnenmacher, welcome to the show. Good to have you.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Yeah, man, thanks for having me. I’m happy to be on. Well, no, you got well known, well known show in our industry that I’ve never been on, so I’m really happy to be here.
Rob Gandley: Very cool, I appreciate that. Well, I’m trying to keep making it known, so make sure you’re sharing it out there if you enjoy the conversation. I usually wait till the end, but I wanted to say that. So it’s great to have you listen. One of my favorite questions to start with is always. And for those listening that just kind of sit on the fence for a while about, you know, starting a business, you’re not only helping people get into franchising and start a career as an entrepreneur, but you are one. And so you had to do that thing. So tell me a little bit of how this all started and how did you wind up where you are today?
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, a lot of my clients are not, let’s say, lifelong entrepreneurs. They were in corporate America. I happen to be I was born a business person. Quite frankly, I knew as early as you can know what you want to do that I wanted to be self-employed. I started at a very young age, raking golf balls out of country club ponds and selling them and cleaning them and doing all random things. I actually started literally right out of high school. Uber Eats before Uber Eats even existed. So 1990, 1991 I created a food delivery company on Marco Island, which is three miles by six miles, and I delivered food using cell phone, pager technology and then ultimately cell phones. I say ultimately cell phones, because in 1990, 1991, you were between a dollar and $2 a minute to use a cell phone, and it was the size of a of a of a handbag. It was large. It was right. But but I actually had it. Believe it or not, my little island had a tower on it. So I don’t know if you know Marco Island. It’s just south of Naples, Florida. Yeah, you look like you know it. Okay, so I did that for years. I delivered hundreds of deliveries a day, I do believe, and I’ve said this publicly, that I’m the first subcontractor for McDonald’s in the US.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: I had a dedicated cash register just to me, uh, to that’s how many deliveries we were doing. Approximately 100 a day just for McDonald’s. We were doing 300 total. We deliver for Little Caesars. I made Domino’s Pizza change owners, I think 3 or 4 times while I was doing it, because remember, their whole value proposition is delivery. Well, when I was delivering, that’s not a value prop anymore. Remember John’s commercial today is, uh, remember, uh, grab a bucket. Remember the commercial with, hey, we’re speedy. Grab a bucket. The guy throwing a house fire and the and the firemen are like, hey, grab a bucket, grab a bucket. Well, guess what? With Uber Eats, there’s no more value proposition in delivering. So I started doing it 1990, 1991, started delivering auto parts, delivering prescription drugs. And then I got involved in the water sport industry because I was delivering to all the hotels and the Hilton and the Hilton Grand Vacation asked me to put in bids for parasail boats, beach concessions. So I started doing that. For years I had operations on the new Jersey, uh, the Jersey shore, which would be Long Beach Island, LBI. I had operations in Marco Island Hilton, and I had operations at the Hilton Grand Vacation and rented fleets of jet skis, catamarans, you name it, sold sundries. Uh, I mean, literally everything that you could possibly do at a beach.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Parasailing was one of our big, uh, operations because it’s just more involved. That evolved into making money at a young age, which evolved into trading, which took me into investment banking. And then from investment banking, I had an experience in corporate America. That’s my real first experience in corporate America. I’m now 25. Um, I’m in a group. We’re managing around 250 million. I’m with a group of guys called Comprehensive Wealth Management that operated within Salomon Smith Barney. Today is Morgan Stanley. And, uh, I had a moment with a boss, and it was kind of a weird moment where I asked him for a printer on our side of the building and said, if you want one, you buy it. So I bought it. It cost me $250 to buy a cartridge for it. So I figured out how to refill the cartridge for really pennies on the dollar. And then and then I found a company in Australia that reverse engineered printer consumables. The inks replicated anti-coagulation agents anti-corrosive agents. Gents chip resetting technology, where you put a little device on a chip on a cartridge and it would reset head, faking the printer into believing it was an OEM original original equipment manufacturer. Right. And I ended up buying the rights with a partnership to the entire state of New York and Connecticut.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: So I began my my my entrance into franchising began as a master for the state of New York and Connecticut. And then, of course, I owned my own locations. And then I scaled 36 locations and then sold it, moved to Florida and did it over again and started buying failing. Now my now my focus shift with my my now business partner Justin. My focus now shifts to buying blood in the street. I want to buy failure. Right? Because being an investment banker, listening to, let’s say, Warren Buffett, you buy when there’s blood in the street and you sell the bugles. So I’m like, you know what? I’m going to start looking for really fundamentally sound Franchise concepts that are bleeding, and I will pay them pennies on the dollar. I’m going to turn them around and I’ll sell them for a multiple. And that’s what we did. My business partner and I started buying gyms and then we bought restoration companies, water, fire, mold and biohazard, and we continue to scale from there. And then at that moment, Rob, we looked at each other and said, do you realize that we are buying businesses from people who had no business owning them to begin with? They think about that. It’s actually profound. And it was a moment in our career where we realized people do not have any adherence to due diligence.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: They lack discipline as investors. They are highly emotional and illogical. And and I say this not to be sarcastic, but it’s a it’s a term that I’ve come up with, which is this most people are broadly ignorant and narrowly intelligent. They’re really good at what they do, but outside of that, they’re kind of clueless. And I use the term ignorant, being uninformed, not stupid, right? So if you actually break down what I’m saying, it’s not to be mean. Most people are broadly ignorant, broadly uninformed. Right? And narrowly intelligent. And that’s what we learned. And then we realized we’re going to become we’re going to create a consulting company. We are not going to have commission breath, and we are going to advise people properly on how to navigate this process, even if it includes talking them out of it and saying, you are not a fit, you’re not a fit. And we we do that more. Unfortunately, I guess it’s the upside of being wealthy. We do that more than talking people into it is talking people out of it and saying, look, you’re not a fit. Like you don’t even have a voicemail recording. I mean, how do you you don’t even not only do you not have a voicemail recording, your spouse’s phone says voicemail is not even set up. Like, how are you? How are you? How are you doing this?
Rob Gandley: Yeah. How do you live that way in this world?
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Seriously, I it always blows my mind when someone wants to become a business owner and I’ll call them up, either a voicemail full or the subscriber you’re calling doesn’t even have a voicemail set up. And I’m like, what kind of business owner is this? Anyway.
Rob Gandley: That’s that’s classic.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: That’s my cliff note version of my journey. Rob.
Rob Gandley: That’s an amazing journey. Worth, uh, worth the answer. Thank you for for that. It’s amazing. I think I remember early on I told you my journey started in the 2000, and I think one of the concepts, I remember being very familiar with those concepts that would replace the inks and how powerful that was. Fairly new then. But, I mean, you sound like you might have been the first, like hooked up with the first group.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: I was.
Rob Gandley: But anyway, it was big.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Then tip of the spear. Yeah, I was I was a very early adopter of that technology because I, I personally I like to invest in two things solutions to problems and good feelings. My Paris up boats, my jet skis, my all that stuff. Like that’s all good feelings. You’re on vacation. Spend, spend, spend and enjoy life, right? And then there are solutions to problems, which is I literally just spent $100 on a black inkjet cartridge. It’s like, can this really be worth $100? And the answer is no. It’s like it’s like 90% water. Yeah. I don’t know if you know this. If you ever extrapolate black ink or or toner or, you know, uh, cyan, magenta and yellow inks, if you actually extrapolate them, you’re paying more for an inkjet cartridge than Chanel number five. Dude. It’s crazy.
Rob Gandley: It’s ridiculous.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: It is.
Rob Gandley: Ridiculous. Why? They just kind of arbitrarily set that market right. Those manufacturers are smart guys. They they wanted to make sure they had a nice little cash stream in there. Thus the problem. And you solved it. Love capitalism. Um, but, uh, yeah. So so you said something at the end of the last part of your answer that I think is kind of tease up my next question, and I want you to kind of I want you to share a little bit of what makes you guys unique at, you know, the way you approach, uh, the process, both from a franchisor angle. So when you’re talking with a franchise brand, your approach when you’re talking to them, this is why it’s important. And then when you’re talking to a candidate, as you said, your approach is unique for them and it revolves around the fit, right? It’s getting the right people in the right position. And so how does that work and how do you explain your unique process?
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Yeah, I would explain it. I think experience matters. And I think that our industry has a very low barrier to entry, where you could just say that you were a displaced, you know, corporate executive, and now you’re going to become a consultant and begin advising people on how to buy a business, when in fact, you’ve never owned a business yourself. You’re not entrepreneurial. You’re really don’t understand investing, right? So when you really unpack all of that. You’re like, wow, that person really isn’t qualified per se, to advise me on how to create wealth or how to create a legacy for my children or grandchildren, or really understanding even how to put the deal together. Rob, with my investment banking background. Right. Which was really extensive, and my entrepreneurial background and the fact that I’ve owned about 12 companies to date and currently have investments in two, uh, both in the food and beverage space. It’s it’s just a force multiplying effect for our clients. Like, wait a minute, man, this is great. You’re talking at a level that I haven’t even heard from other consultants. And all you do is ask questions. It’s seek to understand before being understood. Like you just keep asking questions to understand. What are my investment objectives? Why am I here? Do I have a working spouse? Do I have cashflow? What’s my financial situation? What’s my risk tolerance? Right? I mean, it’s so important. Where do you live? Where do you want to operate? What are the demographics of that community? Let’s look at discretionary spending. Nobody’s doing what we’re doing. Risk mitigation strategies, exit strategies, liquidity events. How many little birds do you have chirping in the nest versus being an empty nester investor? These are these are game changing questions that the average person unfortunately is not asking.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Here’s a perfect example right before today just meeting with you. It’s a perfect example. I met with a guy and he’s like, yeah, no, man, I, I’ve already spoke to like three consultants. I’m good. I’m like, well, you haven’t spoken to me yet, so let’s discuss what you’re trying to do. So he goes into he’s like, I already know what I’m doing. I’m buying this pressure washing brand. It was presented to me by a broker. I mean, really cool. They do some bizdev, they generate leads. I go, who’s involved in this business? Tell me, let’s just level set for a minute. He goes, oh, it’s me and three other guys. I go, so it’s four people. He goes, no, no, no, it’s three people. I go, okay, it’s three investors. And do you guys want to make a living? He’s like, you know, he laughs at me. I go, what is your earnings history? What what lifestyle are you accustomed to? He goes, all of us make 150 minimum a year. I go, okay, so the three. Yeah. You just went off camera. So the three of you are going to pool your resources. You’re going to invest in the lowest barrier to entry business called pressure washing okay. Which is a commoditized business mainly based on price, which means low price wins. Low price wins equals low margin equals good luck. And he’s like, Holy shit, I go, why don’t you be disciplined and say this as a starting discipline? Uh, as an investor, we are only going to look at businesses with a $1 million minimum item, 19 in the home services space like that right there is.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: I know to you, it may seem deceptively simple to you because you’re in our industry and you’re like, there’s nothing there’s no revelation there, Rob, To the average investor, that’s the difference between failure and creating wealth. Was that little bit of advice to say time out, slow down, stop talking about brands, and let’s start talking about you and what you want and what you like and what you need to earn. And it was like, I can’t even believe it’s like, I’m so glad I took your call. We had a very lengthy conversation after that about what’s trending in the United States, what he should and should not be looking at, and why. I like certain things and don’t. So experience, right? We live in a time now where millennials want to graduate college and be CEO. Like that’s what the time we live in. There is so much to be said for experience. I love a gray haired doctor. I love someone with battle scars, I love wisdom, I love life experiences and. And what’s that worth? You know, to me it’s it’s invaluable when you’re getting advice from someone that actually knows what they’re doing and is going to keep you and your family out of trouble. Yeah. So, Rob, I could do. I could make an episode out of the value that we add. I have a ton of experience negotiating commercial leases. And when it comes to brick and mortar brands, I could tell you that there is a gaping hole in brick and mortar lease negotiation in our industry. It’s actually disgusting. It’s disgusting. I go ahead.
Rob Gandley: Go ahead. No, I was just going to comment on, on I, I you had said a little earlier that, you know, it’s probably pretty obvious to me, right. Kind of thing. And I’m thinking, no, man, it the way I always I think math, the simple idea of understanding math and then being honest, like you said, you got three people that need to make a certain amount or would guess that you’d be more comfortable making and not the same amount. If you’re going to start a business, there’d better be some serious motivation there, because making the same amount will never get you through. Not in my experience, if that’s the goal. So like just understanding the math, and then you’re saying, okay, then that’s pretty straightforward. When you look at it that way, then you need $1 million business that that is, you know, and here’s an industry that is typical for that. And so brilliant the way you frame that because it was true. And honestly, you could fight that if you want. Uh, but you’re not going to you’re not going to be satisfied in the end. The broker that was brilliant.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Yeah. The broker is getting fired, right. The other broker is now fired, and it’s like they’re going to hitch their wagon on our firm, and we’re going to take them, hopefully to the finish line and advise them prudently and be good stewards. And I oh, I’m not a fiduciary, as you know, but I always act like a fiduciary because as an investment banker, I don’t know any other world to live in, but to behave like a fiduciary when you’re dealing with other people’s money, investments and advice. So that’s kind of how we act.
Rob Gandley: And it’s one of those rules that was invented for, you know, to to protect people doing the wrong thing. It’s not like you shouldn’t do that anyway. Like you the way what that means is you’re just really good at your job and you’re helping think for your clients. And and I would say, you know, no, I don’t when I interview or meet people in your space doing what you do. Not many have that background what you’re talking about.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: No, I agree with you and I’m happy to be able to share our story. Thank you.
Rob Gandley: And I do have a finance degree from from my undergrad. And so I did I did think about that pathway. I should have known you. I should have gone your route. I’m more like like your DNA. Not not a guy that sits around in front of a computer all day and I just go to Wall Street.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: You’re a beast. You’re the jack of all trades, man. You’re involved in everything.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s how I. That’s why I’m an entrepreneur, right? Anyway, you start to figure yourself out as you get older, and it does take some wisdom to actually get it right. So anyways, um, alright, so wanted to get your feedback, you know, you know, my background a little bit just in talking to me briefly is in technology and obviously a lot’s been going on in technology. It just seems to be, you know, propelling and increasing in momentum, whether we’re talking AI or get into all kinds of other technologies that could be disruptive. Um, and so and technology itself has been kind of a thing to think about in the 2000. Right. It was sort of, you know, building a little momentum. Maybe you’re thinking you need a website by the 20 tens, maybe some of the brands that we better get websites for the franchisees and so forth. Right. And then social media comes and mobile comes. And tell me about AI from your point of view, like you’re and, you know, as an investor, as a business owner, from every perspective you can think of, how do you properly filter the noise? How do you know where to focus that? Because we know it’s happening. We know that you got to be innovative, but how do you do it right? And what are you looking for when you look at a brand when you when you think of that.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Okay, so I love AI. Let’s start there as a blanket statement I love AI. It’s game changing technology. But I’m not going to be clueless to the fact that it’s going to displace hundreds of millions of jobs across the planet. There’s no doubt about it. Um, I am now using. So our industry uses a term unskilled labor. You’ve heard this term a million times. Unskilled labor. It’s used everywhere. I actually use the term skilled labor. And I’ve been using it for years. And people get caught off guard when I say de-skilled and they’re like, you mean unskilled? And I’m like, no, I mean de-skilled unskilled labor doesn’t mean that it’ll be replaced by AI or a humanoid or a robot. D skilled labor means exactly that. I’m buying into a franchise. Let’s say the head count is five. D skilled employees. That means in the future. The future is now. I have the opportunity to replace five employees with AI automation. Routine task. Humanoids. Uh, Tesla. Uh, Optimus bots. Et cetera. Et cetera. There’s a big difference between between saying, well, I trim trees. Right. That’s unskilled labor. So you have a guy that climbs up a tree, uses a chainsaw, and he’s.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: And he chops it down. I don’t see a runway in the next five years where Optimus is doing that. I just don’t see that happening yet. Right. So there are there are businesses that I look at where I truly feel that when you buy it within the next 36 to 60 months, you are going to grab operational efficiencies by replacing people with AI. Look, it’s another reason why we have a president that wants to bring all the jobs back. You know why he’s doing it? Because he knows no human beings are going to be doing most of the work. He knows it. That’s why he’s not worried about paying 14,000 for an iPhone, because it’s never going to happen. See that that that what’s happening right now and it’s not a political discussion. I don’t want to go there. But that move right there tells you that there is no expectation of human beings filling in those roles on manufacturing. They know it’s going to be automated, they absolutely know it. And we’re going to start to see that automation in franchising. Look at outbound, look at scheduling. You could do scheduling. Oh come on. They they speak.
Rob Gandley: Obvious.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Yeah. Rob they speak 120 languages. I mean can you imagine dialing the phone. And I say Rob, it’s Cliff. Hey, by the way, do you speak? Do you speak? Fill in the blank and you go I speak 128 languages. Please let me know which one you want to speak. That’s where we’re at. Scheduling confirmation. Basic things like giving an estimate, all this stuff. Now you’ve got. Instead of guys climbing on a roof, you have drones doing it. So there’s all sorts of efficiencies that are coming. Here’s what I tend to look at with my clients. I tend to look at businesses, Rob, that I believe have at least a ten year runway and anything involving the use of a tool, a tool held in a hand with some type of hand. Dexterity. Right, like HVAC, HVAC. I don’t see that being replaced. And I always refer to an optimist bot because I think he’s really close to having that thing pull up, and I really do. I think Elon, with his optimist, is very close to having a Tesla vehicle pull up in front of your house in Colorado and fix something in your house. I really do, I think we’re we’re we’re kissing the reality of that. So I’m looking for tools, HVAC, things that are more involved require some, you know, maybe some human, you know, involvement and decision making, uh, reasoning skills, communicating with the homeowner. I do like anything beauty, vanity, anti-aging. I love that category. I love anything involving, uh, the humanization of pets and animals. 150 $60 billion market cap. Whether it’s grooming, boarding, you know, training, daycare I. The silver tsunami I’ve heard on your show a million times.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: We all know what’s happening. I’m. I’m aging your agent. We’re all aging. But guess what? Our parents are older, and they need these services right now. And you and I will need them later. And again, there’s an industry that will. I guarantee you, I guarantee you that this age as well, there will be a humanoid that will show up to my house in the future to make sure that I’ve taken my medication to deal with a wound vac, to make sure that I’m getting up and I’m doing physical therapy or rehab. It’ll be a humanoid, no doubt. We don’t have the workforce today to deal with this issue. You don’t have caregivers, CNAs, Lpns RN’s. People don’t want to be doctors. They don’t want to become CPAs anymore. They’re all being replaced by AI. I mean, it’s it’s this is just happening. People don’t want to. They always want to, like, straddle the fence with this AI stuff and build like both arguments. It’s going to be okay. It’s not going it. It’s going to be very different world. And I think it’ll be the first time that we are living in a deflationary environment. Because products and services are cheap. They’re cheap. It’ll deflate. The kids will be able to buy a house, kids will be able to buy cars. They you know, it won’t be this whole story about $9 eggs, like all that stuff is going to change. So I think we’re at the peak of inflation. And I think as we introduce AI, robotics and humanoids and and oh, we didn’t even talk about quantum computing. And I won’t even go there.
Speaker4: No, no.
Rob Gandley: We have to come back.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: That’s exactly, exactly. So mind boggling is my prediction. Deflationary is my prediction. Focus on five categories. Anything involving the use of tools, anything involving the war on men. I put it in the same category. I call it the feminization of men in America. They can’t use tools. They have low t low sperm. Right. So disaster franchises, backfill solutions, anything involving the silver tsunami, anything involving the humanization of pets and animals, anything involving anti-aging, biohacking, peptides and testosterone therapy, and anything involving youth enrichment. I’m all in. I’m going along, and I think you have a ten year runway before you’re disrupted.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, that was beautiful. Thank you. I think we need to write. Write some notes down if you’re listening. Summarize this bad boy. Uh, but that that that really does sum it up. I’m. I’m paying attention to what you’re saying, and I it resonates with me 100%. It’s very much about relationships. When we think about, like when we think about franchising. And I’m going to ask you a follow up question here in a second. But when we think about franchising, it really is about this person, this idea that you want to do more right with your life. There’s a purpose. You have something you want to create, right? Something inside you. I feel like the future is you’re not going to have a choice. You’re going to have to figure that out. You. Because. Because you won’t have to do the work that. Is that the kind of work that most of us don’t want to do to make the world work, right? There’s all these types of roles we have to make the world work. Doing things that a lot of us don’t want to do so those things can be replaced. That seems obvious. The real question is what would be someone’s purpose? What would be the thing they do with the extra time? Or if there is a new economic structure where there’s money coming in and now you have more time, what will you invest in? Well, we still are people and our fundamental needs won’t be any different. That’s right. So we’ll have time to give back to that. Whatever that looks like. It will be an entrepreneur’s Paradise because it will require some great creativity. But we’ll have it. We’ll have the resource. So I’m excited, but it is a little unknown. I don’t know what it’ll look like, you know, but I wouldn’t hold on to those certain jobs. I always think, why would you want that job anyway? You know?
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Oh, totally. Yeah. I had a guy want to a tax accounting Franchise to put in class C space in a strip mall. And I’m like, man, you know? That like, that profession’s dead. It’s dead. Yeah. Like, I mean, TurboTax was just the beginning. The final nail in the coffin is going to be quantum computing meets a humanoid. Says, I could do your taxes and save you more money. Do it. Do it perfectly the first time. Like, literally perfectly accounting is a. And that’s why no one wants to get in the profession. It needs to be perfect. You I could I could misquote a word. I could misquote something. I could make a mistake right now on this call. Right. And then I could recover from it. It’s not a big deal. And it doesn’t hurt anybody. Accounting it like it needs to tick and tie back one plus one equals two. It needs to balance out. Accounting is a grueling profession. I have the utmost respect for people that enter that profession. But it is not an easy profession. And unfortunately, everything we’re talking about today is the first time in history that technology is not attacking a blue collar worker on an assembly line. It’s going after the smartest people in our society doctors, lawyers, CPAs. And I feel bad if you’re a teacher and I feel bad if you’re a professor. I mean, because I’m telling you, you’ve outlived your usefulness for about five years already. Honestly?
Rob Gandley: Yeah. It’s, uh. I love how I learned today. I I’ve always been a self learner, obviously, like yourself. And, you know, you kind of, you kind of learn things and figure things out as you go. And the internet created this opportunity in our lifetimes. Right. I got out of school, uh, in the early 90s. I won’t say exactly, uh, say 92. I’ll just date myself. That’s fine. But there was no real. Oh, there you go. So? So, like, there was no official internet. Really? Uh, when I left school, we weren’t using it like we were using, you know, computer processors to write papers and print them. And so here you go. As soon as I get out, we’re we’re now in this world of wireless and the internet emerges. And it was just it was for for someone who wants to learn and evolve. It was beautiful, right? And now I takes that to a level I can’t even. It’s amazing to me how much I can learn in such a short period of time really will benefit all those that know things. So people are our age, really have an advantage if they open their mind to it.
Rob Gandley: That’s what I share. I agree with you is that because it makes you smarter and but you got to kind of bring your own smartness to it still, and that helps create even better results. But anyway, big fan of it, but I wanted to circle back uh, to because you guys really you said earlier, you know, just because you’re a corporate executive doesn’t mean that maybe it’s still not a fit, right? There are some attributes, and I know for me, I learned it the hard way because I did get into the corporate world. I was in tech. I enjoyed that, but at the same time it was still a corporate job and I was in sales and a lot of those types of positions. So it was more of a do it yourself thing, but it’s not the same as business ownership. So it took me some time to kind of figure that out. Tell me when you’re getting to know a corporate executive or someone coming from that space, what do you try to find in themselves? What do you help them kind of see so that they know they can make the right decision?
Cliff Nonnenmacher: This this is probably one of the most popular questions. I’m sure you would agree on anything involving franchising and business ownership. The flip side to this would be how do you know how to hire people? Right. It’s always about people because it’s business people, product process. You just described business. So when I and I’ve listened to a lot of these podcasts, Rob, and it’s interesting that everyone really has the same answer. Follow a system. You got to be coachable. You have to be all these things. I’m going to tell you something I learned years ago reading a great book by Jack Welch, who I’m a huge fan of. Uh, Jack Welch has probably groomed and created more CEOs than any single person in corporate America history. He’s a beast. I love his teachings. I love his era and the way he ran his companies. This this is interesting. And I think the audience will will benefit, you know, from from this conversation. People have asked him, what do you look for when you hire someone? He goes, it’s simple. I look for the 4E1P principle. The first E is do you have energy? Do you know how many IT executives I speak to on a daily basis that can’t even finish a sentence? And they have sweaty palms just talking to me because they really don’t like talking to people, right? Yeah. They’re making a buck 50. Writing code for Amazon.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: They have zero energy. Zero. When you have zero energy, it brings me to the next e. How do you energize your staff if you’re low energy? So you need to be energized. You have to have the ability to energize others. You have to be able to execute. That’s the coach ability. That’s the follow the model piece. You got to execute, execute flawlessly. Here’s the blueprint. Here’s the roadmap. Follow it. Don’t change it right. Next is edge. Can we live in a time where we have silenced the intelligent? To not offend the stupid? You have to have edge. You have to be able to make difficult decisions. You have to be able to tell someone what if they’re not coming to work on time? If they’re not doing the right job, you have to be able to make difficult, edgy decisions in business. And last is P for passion. People, employees and others follow passionate people that speak with conviction they want. They will follow you off of a cliff and you to be a good leader, to be a good franchisee. It actually drives me nuts to listen to podcasts where industry professionals you need to be coachable. You need to follow a proven system. It’s like it’s like hiring a consultant. What was that famous quote? Even a broken clock is right twice a day. That’s like the broken clock thing, right?
Speaker4: I love it. You gotta.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Be coachable. Yeah. It’s like, no, you got to have energy. You have to energize your employees. You have to be able to execute flawlessly. You have to have edge. You got to make difficult decisions sometimes, and you got to be passionate. To me, that’s everything that that’s. I wish I created it, I didn’t. It comes straight out of the book winning by Jack Welch, and I’ve lived my life by it.
Rob Gandley: I think he is probably, at least in my lifetime. He probably was the most famous CEO, and I know a lot has evolved. Now we’re getting older. But when I was a young guy, you know, he was the guy.
Speaker4: So yeah, I know amazing about him. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Rob Gandley: And I but my goodness, like, I don’t think you need to hear anything else than what you just said. And the question would be that first one, if you don’t have the energy, maybe. Why? Why is that right? And that answer tells you if you can move forward. Because you got to change that, that one thing. And if you can’t change that, maybe you’re not interested enough. Maybe you’re not willing to take the risk. But you got to know, will you have that energy? And will you have that energy when you’re faced with the adversity of starting a business right the day to day.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Do you know how many times we we will refer a client to a brand? The brand will call us back. Hey, listen, I just spoke to Blank man. Not a fit. What happened? Really? Low energy. No questions. It seems like complete disinterest. Okay, you just heard what I said. Ready? We call the client. How did that call go with brand A? Great. Wait a second, I. I never understood this quote. These two stories can’t be true until you get in this business, right?
Speaker4: Yeah. So.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: So I’m like, wait, so you think it went great? Oh, I thought we had a great call. I scheduled my next call for next week I can’t wait. Listen, they think you have no energy. You have no enthusiasm. You ask no questions. Now we’ve got to coach this guy. And the. But here’s a here’s a lesson to everybody. The buyer’s attitude is wait a minute, I’m the buyer. Like, if I want to buy their franchise, I’ll buy it. I’m like, no, no, this is a mutual evaluation process. You’re looking at the brand, and the brand is looking at you. You’re looking for fit. The brand’s looking for fit. And so far they want to close your file and never talk to you again. Right. So when I tell you how often we have this conversation, it’s often because the people live in this consumer attitude where the customer is always right, the customer is always right, okay, that doesn’t exist in buying a franchise. It’s their brand, and they want to award a franchise to the most qualified person. So jack up your energy levels, show some enthusiasm, do some homework, do some research, and ask some really good questions to show them that you have a relative degree of business acumen and you can manage this thing. And it’s amazing how many people just go into this like I’m the consumer. He who has the gold rules. Wrong. Wrong answer. Yeah, man.
Rob Gandley: Totally totally wrong. And and and I’d still question why. Why are you there? Like, it’s hard for me. I always joke when I’m on the show. I’m, like, usually by the end of the show, if I’m ready to buy the brand, you know what I mean? Like that’s normal. I feel like this is an awesome business model. Like, I love talking to the CEO or whoever it might be because they’re fired up about their brand. I mean, you got to figure out, why aren’t you there? I just and I know the coaching can still be necessary for a lot of folks. That’ll be fine. But, man, you should almost have it out of the gate. And certainly you’re not going to affect anyone around you. And that’s a very difficult thing. In sales. It’s all about confidence. And as you said, you know, until someone proves until someone does make a mistake, most will listen and believe in you. Right. If you are confident and you can have that energy. Right. At least give you the chance to go a little deeper with with your conversation.
Speaker4: True. I used to tell my team.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: All the time, the prospect can’t get any more excited than you. It’s impossible. You set the tone. You’re setting the energy level. They know when you really like a brand and you really know what you’re talking about. And the prospect also knows when you don’t like a brand and you have no interest in it, and you’re uncomfortable presenting it so the prospect can’t get any more excited or disinterested than you. The the the friend dev director sets the tone. The broker sets the tone on the brand presentation. So I completely agree with you.
Rob Gandley: That’s so cool. Um, that’s what it’s all about. That’s why I’m in this business. I like energy. I need either need to get it or give it, but I do like to be around it. Um, so so with that thought in mind, you know, when you think about emerging franchisors and there’s probably a loose definition of that, I would say under 100 units, let’s.
Speaker4: Say.
Rob Gandley: You know, certainly there’s the kind that just getting started and that’s a certain equation. But what just keeping it however you want to answer in terms of emerging, but what do the emerging brands have to think about with sales and marketing to ensure they’re doing what we’re saying? They’re finding the right fit. They’re building the brand early on, right to get the right momentum. But what how do you advise franchisors when they’re hiring you to kind of partner with them? What are you looking for to make sure it’s someone you want to recommend and, and how do you kind of deal with these emerging guys that might be somewhat new, uh, to to what they’re doing?
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Are you talking about acquiring customers or acquiring franchisees?
Rob Gandley: Franchisees? Like when when you’re talking about franchise expansion and getting more franchisees. And they’re kind of in that, that that phase where they’re not quite all the way. They have to keep bringing in franchisees to keep things running. They’re not they’re not, uh, sufficient with just operational, uh, revenues. Right. So they have to recruit. And so there’s a little bit of a pressure there, right? And so but they have to. So what do you advise them on and what are you looking for before they’re in your portfolio. You know.
Speaker4: Yeah. I mean.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Right. I’m not under a hundred. I’m okay with. I, I have concerns with brands with less than 20. I think that, you know, there’s huge flags there. Most brands will never as you know, most brands will never see 100 locations operating in their lifetime. Um, a lot of brands will never see it. Like, ever. There’s just too much attrition. They’re just on a treadmill. It’s it’s five in. It’s seven out. Right. So a lot of brands will never get there. But if a brand has 20 locations, let’s say, and they’re scattered about the US. So we have different markets, different demographics, different climates, and we have proof of concept, which is another thing I’m looking for, which is proof of concept telling me you have a great brand and, uh, you know, Southern California with household income of 250 and a surrounding five mile radius, that that’s not exactly proof of concept that’s going to work anywhere in America. And I see these brands popping out. It’s like, yeah, we operate. We’re doing 2.5 million with massages in California. Yeah, put that in Illinois and you’ll drop down to 600,000, you know. So it’s like these certain markets, they just are not replicable across the United States. So I’m looking for brands with with tight leadership. I’m looking for brands that get it. And you know when someone gets it you could have a couple of conversations. And you know that these people are in franchising for the right reasons. And many people become franchises for the wrong reasons. You have to have an undying devotion to not only the brand, but to people who put up their life savings to buy it.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Right. It’s you should be sleepless at night when you have franchisees that are failing, literally sleepless. If you’re not, you don’t care enough because. Because here’s the difference. Franchisors that obsess over their royalty collection and top line, they need to pivot and start obsessing over the bottom line of the franchisees. And that becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy. And that’s when, you know franchisors get it. When it’s less promotions, less driving revenue. Revenue is great. Bottom line is better, right? I don’t need to do 10 million a year and net 100 grand, right. Give me a million with a 20% net and I’m happy as hell. So a lot of these brands just keep driving. It’s like you’re not focusing on efficiencies and all that stuff, which means you don’t have a tight ops department. You really don’t know what business you’re in. You only own one corporate store. You’re still not in the trenches. I love brands that eat what they cook, which means they own and operate the business that they’re selling. Nothing drives me crazy. Then when I meet a franchisor and I’m like, well, well, my place is 6000ft². Feet. Okay. What are you telling franchisees to do? A thousand. What is your revenue? We’re doing 2 million at a 6000ft². Right. And it’s like, what are they doing? Well, they’re doing for 4 or 500, but they’re ramping up. I don’t like brands where you’re selling something that isn’t what you created and doesn’t resemble how you’re making 2 million.
Speaker4: Yeah.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: I don’t like weak financials yet. And in this case, never. Um, I don’t like weak financials. I think a lot of new franchisors, uh, they’re not properly capitalized. Some of them are worse capitalized than franchisees that are coming in. The financials are audited. It’s on full display in the FD. And they’re weak. And they need to really go out. And someone needs to educate them on you’re going to need to get some cash and do a funding round, uh, because you don’t have enough money to add the infrastructure you need to add. As David Barr quite rightly says, you are in franchise hell from 0 to 100 locations. It is a very difficult place to be as a franchisor, and you better be properly capitalized to get through that, uh, that growth phase, right, where royalty collection starts to catch up. So, I mean, there’s a lot of things that we unpack just the, the executive team, the ops team, the training. And you want to know something, Rob, where we get really the best information is a term you’ve heard called trust but verify. So I’ll trust the executive team. But I’m going to verify everything they say with their franchisees and find out is this system healthy. There’s only 20 people to call in this example. Are these 20 people happy? Are they validating? Are they recommending people buy this franchise? Validation calls are some of the most powerful due diligence calls you could ever make. When you exit the franchisor, the system will tell you with blinding clarity and honesty how healthy the system really is. And I love that.
Rob Gandley: Absolutely. And that’s one of the challenges, right? Um, and that’s why what you said earlier is so blunt and so obvious and so right. And that is, if you’re in that, you’re in that stuck mode where, okay, there’s some mistakes and maybe some of your franchisees didn’t perform as well over the last however long that was. You have to invest in the business, right? To get over that hump. You have to innovate. You have to put the investment in and show the network that you’re doing it, and then tell the new candidates that’s what you’re about and move forward. Right? You can’t get away from that. Right? Because it is so obvious if things are going in the wrong direction. It’s very it’s very much amplified to anybody that’s coming, coming towards you. And it becomes very hard. But it just comes down to, you know, and I’ve been involved with brands that have turned themselves around because they invested. And, uh, that’s the bottom line. You just got to make it better. And if it wasn’t perfect, you can say, well, we weren’t perfect. We’re going to make it better. But you can’t just stay. If you do, then you’re one of the ones you’re mentioning. And that’s that’s good advice to be able to sort and sift the right ones for your candidates.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: So have you interviewed John Ritchie? Have you interviewed John Ritchie from Fran? Fran Worth?
Rob Gandley: I don’t I don’t know if I did I don’t know if I have.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: He said something years ago at a convention I was at, he was a panelist. And he said in my corporate office, I have a picture of every franchisee wrapped around the perimeter of the wall. He goes, and it breaks my heart. If I ever have to take one of those pictures down. And the way he said it, it was genuine. He obsesses over the success of his franchisees. It was eye opening to me and it’s like, that’s the attitude. If you want to become a franchisor, you want to get in this business. That’s the attitude you have to have. That really stuck with me. John is a great guy, great company, has surrounded himself with great people. Um, you should have him on your show. He’d do a great interview.
Rob Gandley: I’d love to. I’d love to. Sounds like he’d be. He’d be, uh. Again. Just enjoy the conversation. Um, but most of the guys I do interview, it is in their heart, like they’re one of the best upsides of becoming a franchise brand. A franchisor is the the the gift of helping other people change their life and do that thing, that gift that we just talked about coming from the corporate world into business ownership. That is a big deal for folks, right? Not to just talk about the financial side, but it’s a big deal and what they’re trying to do with their life. And so the franchisor should love that. And it should be one of their favorite things is when they see successes and breakthroughs and and yeah. And it pains them to take a picture down. So very cool. So as we wrap things up, I appreciate you. And I told you we’d keep things to an hour. We could probably talk for hours. So do enjoy it and we’ll have more of these. Um, but I wanted to kind of talk about your podcast, and I know that, uh, you know, you have some interesting guests on the show, and it’s, uh, I want to make sure I get the name Pursuit of Profit. Right? That’s right. And I wanted to just kind of say, you know, out of all the guests you’ve had, is there anything that you just picked up and thought, man, I love that. It was one of those. Anything you could think of that you want to leave with our audience? Uh, that just kind of. I’m sure there’s a lot of them, but.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: There is a lot of them going through my head. There. There are some standouts, you know, where, uh, I don’t interview franchisees. I interview, uh, founders or C-suite franchisors. If a franchisee comes on the show, they have to be like ten X-ing the item 19 earnings claim. Okay, so you got a visual. I have an opportunity to bring this couple on the show. I am I’m blown away by these two. They’re with express personnel, as you know, probably one of the best multi-billion dollar staffing franchises. These folks are doing 70 million a year. 70. And I have both of them on camera on the show. They are as. And I say this respectfully. They’re as ordinary right as you can get. It’s not like. Yeah, that’s because they’re from Goldman. Oh, that’s because they went to Wharton. Oh, that. No. These are regular people that that evaluated some franchise concepts. She she was already in staffing. She actually met her husband because he was an employer. And she would bring him donuts and stuff like that. And it’s like, how did you scale the business? And it’s like, the franchisor covers our payroll for 90 days. A lot of people don’t know this. It’s one of the reasons why most people in staffing fail. They can’t front the payroll to their entire organization and then carry the account receivables, waiting for the money to come in from the law firm. The accounting firm, the engineering firm. Well guess what? Express personnel fronts all of your payroll for 90 days so that you could get your invoices out. Yeah, that. And it’s like with that, we were able to scale our little business.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: I want to say there in Michigan, it was either Michigan or Illinois, uh, 70 million. And here here’s the assumption I go, I go clearly you’re number one in the system. They go, no, we’re not. We’re number two. I’m like, get the I go, get out of here. They go, yeah, there’s actually someone bigger than us. So people investors come in. I don’t want to pay more than 6% royalty. You’re looking at this all wrong. Price is only an issue. In the absence of value, I will pay a 30% royalty. If you could get me to 70 million a year as a regular husband and wife team, grinding it out somewhere in middle America. Come on. This is the greatest business methodology ever invented to create wealth. It is the single greatest model to collapse time and to create wealth without inventing anything. Nothing. You’ve invented nothing. You go from your corporate America job. Hate it. Boss Underpays you two hour commute round trip, you slip into a franchise. You have all the answers to the test and start scaling it. It’s the best. This is the best life ever. It is. It is the best life and best business methodology ever devised. And I echo your comments on capitalism and franchising and free market. I mean, come on. And I love my I quote and I know I people listen to me like you say this all the time, but it’s the truth. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, if you think becoming a millionaire in America is difficult, you haven’t tried. Period.
Rob Gandley: Yeah. And I love his quotes. Um, but, you know, to me, franchising is like America, right? It’s the American dream. It’s the middle class. It’s the, you know, uh, really most of the most of the economic output is from small business, right? We think it’s big corporate, but it really isn’t. It’s it’s the small business and franchising such a big chunk of that. But I can’t think of another way to get into business that actually works, right? Where you’re things like that, where they say, we know cash flow will be a problem in this business model. If we can solve that problem, give a 90 day float, solve that little innovation. I don’t know if that was from the very beginning. It doesn’t matter. But the point is, it’s innovative. But they knew that would be the stumbling block. That’s the beauty of franchising. And I always say it not only the innovative business models where they already know what problems you have to solve, but it’s also the network of people around you. And I know you’ve probably you’ve been in a lot of groups, a lot of business people. You’ve learned from a lot of people. It’s not free to get coaching or to be in a mastermind, or to learn from another guy that does similar things or can help you to be in a network like that with that kind of talent and to learn from it. Again, that’s what it takes to be a business owner. That’s what it takes to be successful. A lot of it is just baked into franchising, which I like because I like that people have a great shot. Again, if you haven’t tried, if you if you think it’s hard, you haven’t tried. So and work with a guy like Cliff because you do need to find the right model because it can be extremely hard. But if you do find the right one, there’s no better way than franchising, that’s for sure.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: I agree.
Rob Gandley: So all right, well, I want you to just if you could share with the audience, uh, how to get hold of you, how to get a hold of your brand, if they’re interested, uh, in taking this journey.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Yeah. You could reach me at go to our website. Com f r a n o I t y. Com and I’m Cliff Nonnemacher. I co-founded it with my business partner, Justin Guevara. Um, and if you want to just play in traffic and listen to different shows. The pursuit of profit. It’s similar to what you’re doing, and I think this is an outstanding show. And I went through a lot of your episodes. Uh, you have phenomenal guests on and I think this this this is a great you do a great job on this show, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to be on it. I think it’s excellent. So I appreciate you letting me plug my show. And I hope people do reach out because we could definitely help you navigate this process. I don’t know if we mentioned Rob, the services are free. Nobody believes free. So I do say it twice. We work. We represent the buyer for free. We’re paid by the seller at the seller’s expense. So the services are free. You’re not obligated to anything. And, uh. And I would not do this alone. It’s 4000 brands in this country. Many of them are not worth buying. You know, align yourself with a professional advisor to help you navigate it.
Rob Gandley: Exactly. It is the best industry in the world, but you still got to navigate. There’s there’s certain we we explained it earlier. So that’s right. I highly recommend it. I really appreciate you being on the show. I echo what you said. It was very. It’s fascinating. And whenever I walk away from conversations smarter and I absolutely did, this time in a big way. I appreciate you, man. Thanks for the work that you’re doing and thanks for giving back, because you could probably do a lot of things and you decided to kind of invest. And that’s why don’t be confused with the word free, because the value of talking with a guy like you is it’s not usually accessible. So take advantage. If you get a chance to talk with Cliff and his team. I appreciate you being on the show.
Cliff Nonnenmacher: Thank you Rob.
Rob Gandley: You got it. And so thanks to our audience again, if you found it, if you found the episode helpful, please share it and we’ll talk again soon. Thanks for tuning in. Bye for now.
In this episode of Association Leadership Radio, Lee Kantor talks with Stewart Smith, president of the National Information Officers Association (NIOA). They discuss the crucial role of public information officers (PIOs) and NIOA’s mission to support them through networking, education, and professional development. Stewart shares NIOA’s history, its annual conference, and the importance of continuous training. He also reflects on his personal journey in public safety and the qualities that make a successful PIO. The episode highlights NIOA’s efforts to expand membership, especially in underrepresented regions, and the value of building a supportive community among PIOs.
Lieutenant Stewart Smith began his career with Troup County Government in October of 1997 as a Communications Officer with Troup County 911.
In July of 1999 Stewart completed the Law Enforcement Basic Mandate Course to begin his law enforcement career.
In late 2000, Stewart returned to Troup County 911 as a Senior Communications Officer responsible for training new employees and serving as the Supervisor in their absence.
In January of 2013, Stewart was appointed as the Public Information Officer for the Troup County Sheriff’s Office under newly elected Sheriff James Woodruff, a position he has held since.
As the Public Information Officer, Stewart serves as the Sheriff’s Office official spokesperson with the media and public, manages the agencies social media accounts. Stewart also serves as the External Officer for the Troup County Emergency Agency during times of disasters and critical emergencies.
In August of 2024, Stewart was sworn in as the 30th President of the National Information Officers Association (NIOA) representing over 1,000 Public Information Officers nationwide. This August he will preside over the NIOA national conference held in Clearwater Beach, Florida before passing the gavel to the next President.
Prior to being elected Vice President (President Elect), Stewart served as the NIOA Region 4 Director and he is the first NIOA member from the State of Georgia to serve as President of the organization.
Stewart is recognized as an Advanced Public Information Officer through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and in March of 2024 he completed the Media and Public Relations Course through FBI-LEEDA.
Follow NIOA on Facebook.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Stewart Smith, who is the president of the National Information Officers Association. Welcome.
Stewart Smith: Thank you. Lee, I’m glad to be here.
Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. For folks who aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about NIOA? How are you serving folks?
Stewart Smith: Yeah, absolutely. So the National Information Officers Association, we’ve got about a thousand members strong nationwide. And it serves, uh, those that serve as public information officers who work in the government sector, uh, law enforcement, public safety realm, you know, EMS, fire, emergency management, government schools, uh, medical field. Pretty much anybody that works in the government sector that does not work for a private entity whose job it is to get information out to the public and also to their employees. And so that’s kind of what we encompass. So like I said, we’re about a thousand members strong across the country. And we’ve got uh, some international members as well.
Lee Kantor: So what was the genesis of the idea? What was the need that came about where folks decided to, hey, let’s organize as an association and really serve this group.
Stewart Smith: Yeah. So this started back around 1989, when a group of public information officers who saw some other smaller state organizations and they felt the need to start a national organization, and that started around 1989. And then a group of them decided to meet in the Chicago area a couple years later, and I think around 40 or 50 members, luckily and surprisingly, showed up. And that was kind of the catalyst for Nioa. And it’s been meeting ever since. We primarily meet yearly in the summertime in August in beautiful Clearwater Beach, Florida. And then, uh, about every 3 or 4 years, we will change it up and go up around the Nashville area just for kind of a change of scenery. And we will have, uh, usually we average around 550 members. And this year we found a way to maneuver and work our magic. And so we have increased our conference enrollment up to 650 members. And we are about 200 seats shy of filling this thing up. And I have no doubt it will fill up in the coming weeks.
Lee Kantor: So what do you attribute the ability to get such a high percentage of the members to show up at an event? A lot of people would be jealous to get that level of engagement.
Stewart Smith: Yeah. So one of the strengths, I believe of the organization is the networking. And we have four full days of learning. We bring in speakers from all across the country. The agenda this year is very diverse. We’re talking about hurricane relief. We’re talking about, you know, terrorist attacks. We’re talking about mental health. You know, we’ve got a session for our new members to bring them in to, you know, encourage them to teach them about the organization. And I think it fills up so much just because we offer a variety of a agenda for people. And it’s one of a kind. There’s not a lot of conferences out there. I think we’re the only one that, you know, specifies or specializes in public information officers. There’s others out there, but, um, ours is just a large organization that focuses on that. And we are PIOs are unique individuals in the fact there’s not when you look at police agencies, fire agencies and those other specialties are named. You know, you may have an agency that has one Pio, and they may have 200 officers that are specialized in other things, like my home agency, where I work here in Lagrange, Georgia, for the Troup County Sheriff’s Office. We’ve got, you know, about 170, 180 employees. And I’m the lone public information officer. And that’s very common around the United States. You may have 1 or 2 PIOs max for an agency. And so, um, the to get all those people together is very special so they can learn from each other.
Lee Kantor: Now, throughout the year, what type of means do you have to communicate in terms of helping each other? And I’m sure, um, you know, you’ve run across issues where you’re like, well, let me call somebody else here that might know how to handle this because I’ve never seen this before.
Stewart Smith: 100%. So and that’s where our networking is one of the strengths of our organization and we have the ability we do a bi monthly newsletter. We also do bi monthly webinars where we are doing we’re bringing in a speaker like we do for our conference, but they’re going to teach and kind of like a zoom environment, if you will. And sometimes we’ll have 50 or 60 members log on to that. And they’re showing a PowerPoint they’re teaching. And like I said through the newsletter, the the organization is broke down by regions. We have different regions throughout the country. And each of those is assigned a region director, and they stay in contact with their members throughout the year. And so there is that continual engagement that goes on through the year. And the membership is so strong that, like you said, when somebody needs something, when they get into a tough time, they know their friends that they can call up, they can send a text message, they can send an email, and they’re going to respond right back to them. Because a lot of what we do in our industry is not original. Uh, somebody has dealt with that situation or had to create that speech, that graphic or something. Um, already. And so when you reach out to your friends in the business, it certainly helps you along the way.
Lee Kantor: So, um, what drew you to this line of work? What’s your backstory?
Stewart Smith: Yeah. So I started in public safety and, uh, way back when, in 1997, I was, uh, not long out of high school. I started as a communications officer or A911, uh, dispatcher that’s commonly referred to as, uh, here in Troup County and always had a dream and desire to work in public safety. And then I was able to go to the police academy in Columbus, Georgia, in 1999 and worked as a deputy for several years here in Troup County, and then had the opportunity to go back to 911. Um, I think in early 2000 in a supervisor training role, and did that for several years. And then in 2013, a good friend of mine, uh, James Woodruff ran for sheriff here in Troup County and won that election. And he was putting a staff in place. And he and I had some conversations about the way his administration wanted to look. And he, uh, brought me on board at his as his public information officer. And I’ve been in that seat ever since. And so that that’s kind of my back story of how I became a Pio. And I’ve done it ever since. He’s allowed me the grace to do that. And then a friend of mine who was a also a local Pio for a fire department introduced me to Nikoa, um, back, uh, several years ago. And then I joined at that point, and I’ve, uh, been with it ever since. It’s kind of that, um, slogan you hear sometimes I’m not just the president, I’m a member also. And so, uh, but it’s been a very good organization to be a part of.
Lee Kantor: So for folks who may not have ever considered a role like this, what are some of the kind of qualities you find in people who are good as a public information Officer.
Stewart Smith: Yeah. So number one, you need to have the support of your, uh, chief, your sheriff, your, uh, chief executive. You need to be, uh, you know, when I first started this work, long, long time ago, I was, uh, hesitant to be a public speaker. That was not my strength. And then as I got into it, I learned the job a little bit. You’ve got to have good writing skills. Not excellent writing skills, but you need to have good creative writing skills. And a lot of us in this role, we are a natural kind of introverts, if you will. But this role kind of pushes you outside of that introvert role, and you become an extrovert when you’re on the job and just just someone that that can adapt very quickly. You need to have a creative mind. You need to be able to, uh, work with your peers. How to, uh, need to know how to work with bosses, work with those around you, and just be a creative person. There’s a lot of young people that are coming into this roles, and they are hungry to learn from those like myself that are kind of veterans of the business. And so it’s up to us to kind of bring them on board and kind of really show them what has worked for us, where we’ve had hiccups, where we’ve had bumps and bruises along the way. And you know what kind of made us better as a person? Um, and made our department better.
Lee Kantor: So you mentioned a background coming from law enforcement. Is that something that’s essential, or was it like like how did that add to your ability to do what you do on a daily basis?
Stewart Smith: You know, we see a lot of those that work in our industry that, uh, do. So as a civilian, they’re not necessarily a sworn police officer or sworn firefighter. They’re coming in in a civilian role, and some of them have a media background. And I would say those that have worked in the media and they have transitioned over to PIOs on this side of the camera, if you will. They do very well in the industry and a lot of times we learn those of us that didn’t come from that media background, we learn a lot from those that have worked in the media business. And I make it a point to, uh, get to know a lot of those in the media that I work with on a regular basis, and we have a great working relationship. And that’s one thing we encourage PIOs to do, is have those great working relationships with people in the media, like yourself, who are just trying to get out there and tell a story, because if we’re working well with them and we need our story out there, they’re going to be the ones we call on when we’re not doing it ourselves, such as on social media. So just really, um, you know, a successful Pio is one that just kind of, um, is able to honestly adjust with the times as well.
Lee Kantor: Now, as part of the conference you mentioned there, networking is so important. Um, how important is kind of education or continuous education and training? Is that something else that the Nioa, um, invests in?
Stewart Smith: Yeah. So we we we don’t do like, yearly trainings outside of the webinars, but we do make an a a, uh, we make it very important decisions to look at our speakers that we’re getting for the webinars and making sure they’re coming from very diverse groups. But there’s also other groups out there like, uh, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They offer a lot of courses throughout the year. There’s a group called FBI Leeda. They offer courses throughout the year, and I’ve been able to take a lot of those courses. You’ve got a lot of state agencies that offer pilot trainings, especially for new PIOs. It is very important for new PIOs to get in there and learn the job through professionals. And one of the agenda items that that we’re having this year is, like I mentioned, the new beginner’s class or the new members class, but we’re also offering kind of like a Pio 101 One for new members that really have not been in the job for a long time, and a lot of our veteran board members and members, we’re going to just kind of teach a class on how to be a successful Pio and kind of just feed them, you know, through a fire hose for a couple hours. It’s not going to give them everything they know, but it will at least get their feet wet and give them a chance to ask those that have been in the business a long time, some Q and A’s that they may have already before they get down there.
Lee Kantor: Now, is it possible to be a member of, uh, nioa without being an actual public information officer? Is it something like can I if I was aspiring to be a public information officer, would it benefit me to be a member just to meet people, kind of learn, get the education and then look for an opportunity?
Stewart Smith: Yeah. So right now, the, uh, for membership, to qualify for membership, you need to be actively employed Void or on a part time basis with an agency, you can actually be retired also. We’ve got a lot of retired Pos that are still members, but if this is a job that you’re interested in, you can certainly, uh, reach out to an IOA and we can certainly point you in the right direction and find someone, um, on our membership that may be in the general area where this particular person may be interested in working in, and we can certainly connect them with that person, and they can help guide them and potentially be a mentor along the way.
Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you? Do you need more members? Do you need, uh, more speakers? What do you need more of?
Stewart Smith: So when we look across our, uh, member roster, we, uh, we we know when we look at our member roster, we’ve got, like I said, roughly a thousand members. And some of those are, you know, um, couple of people from the same agency maybe coming to our conference. We may have, you know, out of that thousand, we may have 10 or 20 that are, you know, duplications from the same organization, if that makes sense. And so we know we have a lot of public safety agencies out there, uh, healthcare industry out there, government entities out there that have PIOs or, you know, whatever the official title is, it can be Pio, it can be, uh, chief Communications officer, whatever that title is. But they are charged with giving the message to their community. And so we know there are, uh, you know, probably hundreds of other PIOs out there that are not plugged in to our group. And so we would love to have those PIOs out there that especially the ones that are those, uh, shops of one, as we call it. And we would love to just have them come on board with us, especially, um, we have we are very heavy on like, the east side of the country with PIOs and kind of that west side of the country, like out, you know, the California way, the Nevada way, Washington state way. We don’t have a lot of members out that way. And, uh, we really don’t know why, but, um, we would love to certainly grow our membership base kind of out on the west side of the country. And, um, you know, that’s one thing we we are, um, really pushing for. We’ve got a lot of good region directors out that way who know of agencies that have PIOs, but they’re not plugged in. And so we would love to have those PIOs contact us if they need, uh, kind of getting their chief executive on board to persuade them. You know, we can certainly do that with a phone call or an email or a letter.
Lee Kantor: So if somebody wanted to learn more, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect with you or somebody on the team?
Stewart Smith: Yeah. So they can, uh, Google the national or, you know, Yahoo, whatever your search engine is. Um, they can just look up the National Information Officers Association. I’ve learned if you type in Nioa sometime, it might get you somewhere else. There are a couple other, uh, abbreviations out there, but if you just type the whole thing out, uh, National Information Officers Association, it’s going to take you to a website, and it’s, uh, it’s a brand new website. Uh, we’re very excited about it. We went live with it on April 1st. It has some great information on there. Um, it’s got our board on there. It’s got conference information on there. You can even click on that as a non member and see kind of like what the conference has for you. And so if you look that up it’s going to give you some contact information. It’s got all the board listed on there, their names where they work. We’ve got phone numbers emails. The uh the website is uh like I said, it’s brand new. We’re very excited about it. And it’s a great resource of information for our organization.
Lee Kantor: It must be such rewarding work. Is there a story you can share about maybe something that was impactful that you’ve done or learned, uh, since being the president?
Stewart Smith: You know, I took the gavel in, uh, August the the role of president. It’s a one year term, but it’s a three year commitment. You’re you are elected as a vice president, and you serve that role for a year, and then you roll up to president. And then after that, like this coming August at the last day of the conference, I’ll pass the gavel to our new president, who’s actually the sitting vice president right now. Her name is Chelsea Crest, and she is from, um, Texas. And so I will pass the gavel to her. But the rewarding thing, uh, to me, Lee has been, uh, being on the executive board now for two years and just going through this planning process to plan this conference. It is unless someone has ever planned a national conference with, you know, an attendance, uh, projection of 650 people. You really don’t know the level of work that goes into it. And so the rewarding part has been, you know, getting the agenda finalized, getting a new website rolled out, getting the conference rolled out and all that kind of come together within just a few days, um, of rolling out the conference and the agenda and just getting the positive feedback that we’ve gotten from our members. When we went live with the conference registration, we were about halfway full within the first few days. And so that that just kind of tells you the level of excitement that’s out there and the anticipation to get back down to Clearwater in August.
Lee Kantor: Yeah. And the and the work is so important. The impact is real. I mean, your work affects communities all over the country. I mean, it’s yeah, it’s so important.
Stewart Smith: Yeah. And that’s the thing we like to teach people because those in our business, they’re charged with getting the right information, you know, to their communities at the right time so that they can make the right decisions. And that’s one thing we like to teach these people, because we’ll have members that have been coming for years and years and years, and they just keep coming back. And it’s almost like a it’s almost like a, a large family. When you get down there, it’s almost like a family reunion that you get together once a year. And I’ve got a lot of people that I’m just in communication with through text messages on a almost daily basis. You know, I’ve got friends from, you know, Georgia to Virginia, Texas, California and all points in between. And I think it’s because of this organization, I’ve been able to make those relationships and build that networking of friends. And that that’s one of the large benefits of this organization is just the friends that you’ll make. And they’re lifelong friends for me.
Lee Kantor: Well, Stewart, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Stewart Smith: Yes, sir. Ken, I appreciate you guys having us on and sharing the message of an IOA.
Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on the Association Leadership Radio.
In this episode of Women in Motion, Jennifer Norman, founder and CEO of The Human Beauty Movement, joins host Lee Kantor. Jennifer shares her extensive experience in the beauty industry and her transition from major brands to establishing her own mission-driven organization. The discussion highlights The Human Beauty Movement’s holistic approach to beauty, integrating mind, body, and soul, and its commitment to social and environmental responsibility through B Corporation certification. Jennifer also emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and wellness, both personally and professionally, and discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on her business.
Jennifer Norman is the Founder of The Human Beauty Movement, a Certified B Corp that promotes diversity, inclusivity, and mind-body-soul well-being through its products, media content, and unique wellness programs. She is also the Founder of Humanist Beauty, a clean skincare & conscious lifestyle brand.
An award-winning author of SuperCaptainBraveMan children’s books, podcast host, philanthropist, and disability advocate, Jennifer is a Korean-American adoptee whose personal and professional experience has catalyzed her compassionate mission to advocate for all humans — regardless of ability, race, beliefs, age, skin tone or gender — on their paths to manifest the most beautiful version of themselves. 
Jennifer holds a BS degree in Marketing Management from Virginia Tech and an MBA from Georgetown University. She lives in Los Angeles with her son.
Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn, X and Facebook.
Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women in Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Jennifer Norman, who is the Founder and CEO with The Human Beauty Movement. Welcome.
Jennifer Norman: Hi there, Lee, it’s so great to be here on the show with you.
Lee Kantor: Well, I am excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about The Human Beauty Movement. How are you serving folks?
Jennifer Norman: Absolutely. Well, I started The Human Beauty Movement about five years ago after being in the beauty industry for about 25 years. And I just thought, you know, it’s the time of my life personally, professionally to start focusing on beauty from within. And so, that’s what The Human Beauty Movement does, it really helps to connect mind, body, soul into a more holistic approach to a beautiful life.
Lee Kantor: So, what types of services and products do you serve to your customers?
Jennifer Norman: Absolutely. So, first and foremost, The Human Beauty Movement is all about mindfulness and wellness. We believe that health is wealth and it is also beautiful. So, we want people to live their most holistic, beautiful self from within and without. And so, we conduct a lot of workshops and stress management programs. We have several grants from the LA County Department of Mental Health, where we help to provide these services locally for where we are, we are based in Los Angeles. And we also do have a very mindful skincare line called Humanist Beauty. And I also do a podcast of my own called The Human Beauty Movement Podcast.
Lee Kantor: Now, are your customers individuals or do you sell this into corporations?
Jennifer Norman: Yes, our business does actually sell B2B in terms of our service. So, workshops, corporate wellness programs, things like that are done B2B. But we are also B2C when it comes to our product line and some of our individual workshops that we conduct and have open to the community.
Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned having a pretty long career in this industry. Did you start out as an entrepreneur or did you work for someone else at first and then decided to go out on your own?
Jennifer Norman: Gosh. I started back in about 1997 with L’Oreal. And so, yes, I started, you know, after I received my MBA from Georgetown, I was recruited by L’Oreal, then also worked for Victoria’s Secret in Manhattan. And then, I was recruited by Neutrogena, and so I worked with Neutrogena for about seven years. And then, after that, I did various types of marketing and product development strategy work for a number of different cosmetic and beauty brands within the industry. And I did that for a really long time before starting The Human Beauty Movement.
Lee Kantor: So, did something happen that was like, okay, I want to do this on my own. I have my own vision on how to do this more holistically than maybe some of these larger enterprises.
Jennifer Norman: Yeah, I absolutely loved my experience in the beauty industry, and I want to start with that because I met the most wonderful people. I really enjoyed the work. I love playing with cosmetics and beauty products. And so, it was certainly a joy.
Jennifer Norman: But the thing that I noticed time and time again was that, as with any beauty or any business, I should say, you know, sometimes people who are really, really good, make not such great decisions because they are beholden to the bottom line. And so, it creates some dysfunction because of the capitalistic model, which is it’s really very profit-focused. What are we going to do to anniversary and grow year over year, beat the competition, et cetera?
Jennifer Norman: And I was finding that it ran counter to some of the values that I held and started to adopt, which was how are we really going to care for people in a better way? How are we going to care for the environment without creating so much waste in a better way? And that’s when I discovered the amazing community in what we call the B Corp certified movement. So, I wanted to start my own company and hold myself accountable to the highest standards of social and environmental impact, and that’s why I founded it and quickly certified it as a B Corporation.
Lee Kantor: Do you mind sharing with our listeners a little bit about what makes a B Corp different and special, because a lot of people aren’t familiar with that designation?
Jennifer Norman: Absolutely. I know that a lot of people aren’t, but it is a growing community of conscious capitalistic companies. So, not necessarily for profit – sorry – nonprofit, because we know that the government and nonprofits can’t do all this work by themselves. And it’s going to be best if private industries actually adopt what we call stakeholder values in order to make the world a better place.
Jennifer Norman: And so, the B Corp movement is a certification which is very, very stringent, you are held to very high standards in order to qualify and to be vetted in order to be able to even receive a certification. And so, these are things like, Do you have a mission? What are your values? Do you have a vision that is very beneficial for people and planet? What does your governance structure look like? What does your supply chain look like? Do you vet your supply chain and your vendors to make sure that there are no unfair practices within their organizations? Do you have enough proper benefits that really help and aid your employee base? Do you look for diversity in your employer base? Things like that and it goes on and on and on.
Jennifer Norman: There are hundreds of questions that a company needs to answer and then also be held accountable to, because once you receive certification, it’s not like one and done. You have to recertify in order to be able to maintain your B Corp certification over years. So, it is very stringent. I definitely encourage people to find out more about it. You can go over to the blab.net website to find out a little bit more about it.
Jennifer Norman: And, also, if you see a B Corporation certified logo on any products or services, definitely look into supporting them because those are the ones that really go above and beyond to make their companies shine as far as making business work for good.
Lee Kantor: Now, do you mind sharing with our listeners a little bit about being a leader of an organization like this, this mission-driven organization. Is there any advice or tips you can share on how to build the team in order to achieve what you’re trying to achieve?
Jennifer Norman: Absolutely. I always think that it comes from a place of love and concern and wanting the best for the world. And so, I know that there are a lot of people that get into business and they’re like, What can I do to make the most money, be most successful? And so, it’s really just a recalibration of what success really means to a person and what kind of legacy that they really want to leave behind.
Jennifer Norman: And so, you know, certainly making money we don’t vilify that at all. I mean, it’s very important and we think that that’s great. But we want to do so in a way that is beneficial for everybody that is involved in your company. So, thinking about the individuals that you are hiring, knowing that they are signing up for wanting to work for a company that really puts people and planet first. I think that people are really starting to get much more attracted to those kinds of organizations that do have a strong value basis and are mission-driven.
Jennifer Norman: And then, if you are a service company thinking about bringing what we call our stakeholders, so it’s not just our customers, but it’s also the employees, the shareholders, the vendors, giving everybody a seat at the table and an opportunity to really weigh in on what kinds of programs and what kinds of elements go into your service.
Jennifer Norman: If you are a product-based organization, thinking about who you’re actually sourcing from, how things are made, ensuring that the quality and the testing and the standards are high for your products so that they do no harm and that they are actually being good. They’re not extractive to the planet. They’re being very mindful of the environment.
Jennifer Norman: Also, thinking about end of life of your product. So, what happens once it does hit the waste stream? Is there a way to build in some regeneration? Thinking about your giveback programs, thinking about how you are volunteering, giving your employees time off, or enabling volunteerism, thinking about giving a certain percentage of your profits to organizations such as charity and benevolent other kinds of nonprofits, things like that.
Jennifer Norman: So, really just being extremely mindful with your business and how you’re leading from the heart and with more soul and with more passion.
Lee Kantor: Now, earlier, I think you mentioned this mind, body, soul wellbeing that’s throughout all of your products and through kind of the mission of your organization. Is there any advice or tips when it comes to an individual in order for them as an individual to live more mindfully? Is there some low hanging fruit that somebody might be able to do something right now just by listening that they can live more mindfully?
Jennifer Norman: Yeah. Lee, that is such a great question, because I will say that for the longest time I wasn’t living very mindfully. I think when we’re young, and we’re just like looking at the media, we’re looking at other people, our peers and whatnot, and trying to be like them, or thinking about other people as competition, you know, that wasn’t really very mindful. It was very much like almost a disempowered kind of life.
Jennifer Norman: And so, you end up buying a whole lot of things that you really don’t need, to impress people that you really don’t like, working in jobs that you really don’t like in order to make that money to buy the things that you don’t need. So, it’s just a cycle of almost like self-victimization, I would say.
Jennifer Norman: And so, living more mindfully, I think, is probably the most empowering thing that you can do. And it does require a little bit of work, because, the reason why, is that you kind of have to step away. You have to step away from the life that you’ve been living and really take that time to develop some quiet space.
Jennifer Norman: Now, we all live such busy lives. There’s so much to do. We have so much responsibility, especially if you are a female entrepreneur, goodness knows how busy we can be. And so, the idea of taking, you know, five minutes, ten minutes a day just for yourself seems like an inordinate sort of a challenge for us. But it does lead to a recognition and awareness of how you’re feeling of getting back to, well, what are the needs that I have? How can I better care for myself?
Jennifer Norman: And then, when I’m caring for myself better, when I build that into my daily practice, then that becomes a lifestyle and it becomes a ritual, and it becomes a way that you are better able to pour into others. But you got to do it for yourself first. So, I always say, we’ve got to start from ourselves and make sure that we always put ourselves first and really care for ourselves, our own health, our own mind, bodies, and souls so that we can inspire others to be their best selves too.
Lee Kantor: Now, what was it like kind of creating your own clean skincare brand, the Humanist Beauty. Can you talk a little bit about what that process was like to have it in your head and then to actually make it come alive on a shelf?
Jennifer Norman: Yeah. I will say that, because I’ve been in this beauty industry for so, so many years, I know a lot of the ins and outs of what it takes to get to market with a product. And there is a lot of rigor that goes into it. But I also have seen a lot of shortcuts being taken in order to get to market quickly.
Jennifer Norman: And that’s one thing that I didn’t want to do with Humanist Beauty. I really wanted to be very careful and select each of the ingredients, really determine where they were coming from, make sure that they were organic or that they were fair trade ingredients, make sure that they were sourced very carefully and with regenerative practices involved, make sure that once they were formulated that the formula was tested so that it was stable, that it was micro tested, so that it was CBD tested to make sure that it was as efficacious as we were saying that it was.
Jennifer Norman: And so, also thinking about the packaging, making sure that for me, I try to minimize the amount of plastic that is being used in packaging, because it does lead to a whole lot of waste. And I try to minimize the footprint, especially the reliance on petrol type chemicals. And so, are these types of packages recyclable or refillable? Those sorts of things become important questions.
Jennifer Norman: And so, mindfully going through every single step from formula to packaging, to sourcing, to how it’s being marketed, making sure that even the marketing is not misleading, that we don’t do retouching on any of the models, that the messaging is one of inspiration, not of you’ve got a problem here, this is the answer to fix the problem that you have with yourself. Making sure that it was really cultivating an essence of care and self-love from start to finish.
Lee Kantor: Now, when you launched, when did you start having the feeling like, “Hey, I think I’m on to something? Really, I’m getting traction and this is gravitating. People are wanting to buy this stuff and get involved, learn more.” When did you kind of get that tipping point moment where, hey, I think we’re going to be able to do this?
Jennifer Norman: Yeah. I will say there had been a couple of moments. And now, I launched The Human Beauty Movement the year before COVID started, and I launched Humanist Beauty during COVOD. And so, I automatically knew, I mean, I had to scrap my initial forecast and all of those plans because the world just changed very, very quickly. And so, I gave myself a bit of grace, and I gave the organization a bit of time to give back.
Jennifer Norman: And so, rather than going into a hard sell mode right from the beginning, I really wanted to be a little bit more helpful to those that were going through really hard times at that moment. And so, I did a lot of giving. I actually think and know – I shouldn’t say think, but I know it’s like when you give before you receive, that’s when the universe really blesses you.
Jennifer Norman: And what I found was that even just last year, The Human Beauty Movement hit an inflection point by receiving these grants from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, where we were able to provide really wonderful artistic and wellness services to the API community. And this year, we were just granted two more, and I was like, wow, we are really on to something.
Jennifer Norman: And then, with Humanist Beauty, just this year, we actually were able to get distribution through nordstrom.com. And so, again, I didn’t want to rush into things. You know, sometimes people are like, “Oh, after year one, if you’re not hitting a certain amount of volume, then it’s probably not successful.” But I think that when you’re doing things more mindfully, you’re on a different timeline.
Jennifer Norman: It’s just doing things where I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t burning myself out, that I was doing things what I would consider the right way, and I was taking the time in order for it to really just build and evolve from there. So, give yourself that. If you do have that runway, if you are able to invest in the company for those times, rather than rushing into a knee jerk reaction to try to chase a competitor or follow a market trend, for me, this is the best way to live because I’m really designing my own life and my organization in a way that I feel is sustainable.
Lee Kantor: Now, why was it important for you to become part of the WBEC-West community? What did you hope to get out of it and what have you gotten out of it?
Jennifer Norman: Yeah. I love being part of women’s organizations, and WBEC-West is one of the preeminent ones in the country. I really love the fact that everybody cheers everybody on. You know, in an industry like the beauty industry, where there can be a lot of like mean girl attitudes, to be honest with you, it’s so refreshing to be able to have women supporting women, and being able to be connected to so many resources that can help you in your drive for success.
Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, where should they go? What’s a website? What are the socials? What’s the best way to connect?
Jennifer Norman: Yeah, we can be found anywhere. If you just look up The Human Beauty Movement or Humanist Beauty, you can Google us, you can go to thehumanbeautymovement.com or humanistbeauty.com. And those are also our social handles, The Human Beauty Movement and Humanist Beauty.
Lee Kantor: Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Jennifer Norman: Lee, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on your show.
Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor, we’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.
