Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Joshua Malik and he’s with Joshua Tree Experts. Welcome.

Joshua Malik: [00:00:43] Hey, Leigh. Thanks for having me on, brother.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Joshua Tree experts. How are you serving folks?

Joshua Malik: [00:00:52] We continue to be in the tree sector, lawn care and pest control that involves doing pruning, removal of tree, insect and disease management spray and trees and shrubs fertilizing. We also have a department that does complete lawn care applications fertilizer, weed control, aeration and spraying. We do indoor outdoor pest control along with mosquito, flea and tick.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:17] So is this kind of a recession proof industry? Because some of it has to do with kind of safety and these are must have kind of needs that you’re kind of dealing with. Has that been the case?

Joshua Malik: [00:01:29] Yeah. You know, our mantra of making home environment safe, healthy and beautiful, even through the recession, you know, our target demographic type person, they want to continue to beautify their home. They definitely don’t want to have any incidents in regards to safety. A lot of them have younger kids themselves. Maybe they’re elderly. They need to have the type of work done that we service. So we you know, we’ve proven over the years the green industry alone. And when I say green industry, that’s what those three services fall under. They have been proven to be recession proof as we were an essential business during COVID. We continue to grow and build our brand during this recession.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:11] Now, what about kind of the ability to attract franchisees? Has that been growing as well?

Joshua Malik: [00:02:18] It has been. I think there’s been some issues in that sector all along, only because of recession and people holding on to money and some things that are happening in the market. We continue to gain tons of traction in the different states that we’re gaining. Those are the ones that we’re actually doing a lot of marketing in to continue to gain interest.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:37] Now, any advice for emerging franchisors out there when it comes to attracting the right franchisee? Is there anything you’ve learned? Have you cracked the code on how to find a pipeline for these folks?

Joshua Malik: [00:02:50] Man, I wish there was a code to crack on that. I think working with the right marketing firm, identifying that type of persona that you want in a franchisee, working with the right broker groups and having the right person represent you, that can really weed out the people that aren’t going to fit your values. And culture is probably going to be the most important thing. I think you’re going to see a wide variety of people that can come through that maybe are trying to chase a pipe dream with little effort involved in it. And you’re going to have those other people that are going to fit your values and really become that brand ambassador for you and represent the brand in the way that you expect them to do it.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:31] Now, have you figured out a way to kind of sort out those, too?

Joshua Malik: [00:03:35] You know, I think it’s true. You know, I like doing like this profile testing, finding out what their personality is, is like and really finding out what their values are and what attracted them to their brand to begin with. I think it’s really important to know when people want to join your brand and they really want to expand with you. Why is it them? Why is it now and why is it your brand? I think those are really important parts to cover.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:04] Now, are your franchisees having a difficult time with employees? Because I know a lot of the country is struggling in that space.

Joshua Malik: [00:04:14] You know, a good recruiting effort is really important, attracting the right people by being able to understand what your vision is, communicate that vision. Providing a clear career path for coworkers is important. That’s what we noticed is very effective in recruiting employees. For the for Joshua Tree, we have a really good we allocate funds just like marketing funds. We allocate funds to recruiting because we know it’s an ongoing effort. So keeping that door open at all times and when you see the right person make it happen.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:51] So now where are you at from a number standpoint? How many franchises do you have going on? Right now?

Joshua Malik: [00:04:57] We have five total units in place right now and we have about two dozen in the pipeline that we’re working with.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:04] Have you been focusing on a certain part of the country?

Joshua Malik: [00:05:09] You know, we like to start regionally where we’re focusing more in the Pennsylvania I’m in the Lehigh Valley of the north east of Philadelphia area is where we emerged. And we have gone nationwide recently and are really gaining traction in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:34] Now, are the folks that are attracted to this, are they already doing kind of work around the home and they’re adding this to maybe their services that are offering or are they people that are, you know, hitting this for the first time and becoming entrepreneurs for the first time?

Joshua Malik: [00:05:50] We’re seeing more people that are becoming entrepreneurs for the first time. It’s really that corporate type mindset that is sitting down behind the desk wondering what they want to do. And, you know, why does everybody want to get into business? They want to grow their wealth. They want to be able to have more free time with the proper systems and processes in place that we’ve developed. We’re attracting that corporate type mindset to come in. We’ve had a lot of interest from other industry professionals in the landscape, not specifically the tree care, but the landscape where they can utilize this service as a as another offering to their current clientele, which is really smart to be able to build off of that. Most of the traction that we’re seeing, though, is more on that corporate type person that wants to get out from the desk, really be able to get into owning a business and growing that business.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:43] Now, is there a typical kind of first service that introduces Joshua Tree to the consumer, or is it something that it just depends on whatever their need is?

Joshua Malik: [00:06:54] Great question. I we do offer general tree care, plant health care. When you go back to the general tree care, it’s the pruning removal. It’s the type of equipment that we have selected that a franchisee, when they come on board, they launch with that type of equipment to provide that full service. And then we really focus on what they call plant health care. That’s the tree and shrub spray in the soil, health conditions of fertilizers, different types of systemic insecticides that you put in the soil. We like to focus on that because that’s the recurring revenue. We know the type of value of what recurring revenue does year over year. As you sell that service, you perform it. The year you sell it, you’re performing the following year. We know the average life cycle of that client and we know what type of value that brings. And not only does it bring value to to you immediately as a business, it brings it down the road for the overall value of the business. Green industry is really you get multiple earnings much higher than you would if you’re only doing a one off type of tree removal service. When you get into that preservation type service, that is when you really start building the value. Once you get to a certain KPI and we see that you’re hitting certain indicators and we’ll utilize a scorecard for that, that will lay out the three different functions of the business sales and marketing, operation, finance and admin. When you hit these certain numbers, then we want you to role in lawn care. Again, that’s all recurring revenue. You’re selling that this year to a client you’re repeating and again the following year and the year is after and then you go through another set of KPIs on that scorecard that’s going to have you hit that pest control and you’re just really growing the wealth in the business at that point.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:36] So they have to kind of earn their way up the ladder.

Joshua Malik: [00:08:39] Yeah, we do. You know, the one thing we really want to function on is growing the brand properly and we want to be able to to help develop franchisees and their business model in performing a service to the level that Joshua Tree performs at right now. And that is great client expectations. We want to over deliver under promise and we want to continue to help them build their staff that has a lot of retention on their employees that can represent the brand real well. And ultimately, that’s what really keeps very high client retention.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:19] Now, you mentioned I think you’re five in right now and have a bunch in the pipeline. Is there anything you’ve learned today, you know, based on having five up, up and running that has kind of changed things a bit? Or is it pretty baked at this point and you’re just kind of tweaking around the edges?

Joshua Malik: [00:09:38] We’re tweaking around the edges. Our systems and processes are so tight. Back in 2019, when we knew that we were going to get into franchising, I took on a full time co worker, employee at the time that became advanced up and we really developed on documenting all the processes and systems that we have. We have a full table of contents that are so well developed. I remember my consulting agency saying, you are so much more further along. On and franchisees that we’ve launched that’s been in the in the space for five years, we know as long as we can manage those systems and processes, the rest of it just follows right behind it.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:20] So now for the folks that are thinking about franchising their business, how did you go about that documentation? What made it so thorough?

Joshua Malik: [00:10:29] We’ve tested it. We’ve tested it at our home office that we have in Lehigh Valley. And it’s through that testing that we’ve done with our own clients, our own in-house processes that we knew as we documented and launched them through. That’s the way that we want to represent the brand. You know, when I talk about managing those systems, it’s going back and tweaking them just so lightly. When we see improvement and we see a little bit of an issue there, we want to identify that issue. We want to discuss it. We want to solve it. We want to improve that system, and then we want to roll it back out.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:02] Now, when you were doing the documentation, was that something you just told everybody, okay, I want everybody to document everything, or did you have a third party come in and kind of look over everybody’s shoulders to document it?

Joshua Malik: [00:11:14] Now, we knew when we talked about. Providing this for the Joshua Tree experts and going down this path. You know, when I decided to franchise, it wasn’t a very quick decision. It took me about a year and a half to do some research on it, really get us to the point where we could launch successfully. And one of the biggest things that I’ve learned through all that research was how are we going to be able to support franchisees and how are we going to be able to provide the training and. I wanted to do that in house. We’re a good sized company with 70 employees currently. I knew that we had the talent to do that in-house. One thing I really believe in is developing, having, providing professional development for my coworkers right now and moving up within the company. And this was a position where this one individual had a very unique ability on identifying and documenting, putting on paper in a way that could be organized and understood. And we ran with it in house. And I’ve got to be honest, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:25] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Joshua Malik: [00:12:30] Well, I’ll tell you what. There’s if there’s anything that I’ve ever learned in here, it’s it’s again, it’s sticking to your own thought processes. Being being a trailblazer, I think within this industry, you can get a lot of static from a lot of different folks, which isn’t bad, but it can really confuse you or making some very, very important decisions. I probably would have started the marketing content much earlier than then than I did waiting until I was completely done and ready to launch, because marketing in this sector does take a little bit to start getting some traction. So those are some of the things that I have learned in my short stint so far.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:11] So what’s next? Are you focusing on certain regions now or the world, your oyster? You’ll take on all comers.

Joshua Malik: [00:13:21] We will. We’re going to we’re focusing across the country here and we’re just focusing on the right person. We want to get the right people to come in and represent us. We want them to be very goal oriented. We want them to have high emotional intelligence. Everything from communicating with us to communicating to to their employees and coworkers and vendors are really important. So as we continue to grow, we want to continue to to represent the brand the best that we can in our own region. We want to be able to say, hey, follow the system with what we’re doing, see how successful we are at the Home Office, and you can just be as successful yourself.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:02] Now it says tree experts in the name, but you need kind of people experts to be the franchisees, right? This is a people business, not necessarily a tree business.

Joshua Malik: [00:14:13] It is. You know, and I think anybody that’s a business owner, you know, gets to the point where they might comment to say they’re in the people business and not within the business sector that they’re actually in. You know, developing people is really important to me. And being able to identify the right people that you want to you want to work with. One of the biggest. Things that you have as a boss, as an owner, as you get to pick the people that you work with. You get the hire. Then you get to terminate them. Ultimately, though, it is up to you to be able to pick on who you work with and when you can identify. And that’s part of our training, identifying the right people, you know, being able to have those recruiting efforts in there that are going to allow you to grow, allow them to do their job properly, and help you continue to work on the business, not in the business. You know, that’s the developing that we want to provide and we want to be able to teach people.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:09] So if somebody wants to learn more, what’s the website?

Joshua Malik: [00:15:13] Jt Franchising dot com, that’s our franchise website. If you want to learn more about the the business the consumer that’s Joshua tree experts dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:24] Well Joshua thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Joshua Malik: [00:15:29] We appreciate the time, man. You have a good day, brother.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:32] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

Intro: [00:00:07] Welcome to Franchise Marketing Radio. Brought to you by SeoSamba comprehensive high performing marketing solutions for mature and emerging franchise brands. To supercharge your franchise marketing, go to seosamba.com. That’s seosamba.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Joshua Malick with Joshua Tree experts. Welcome, Josh.

Joshua Malik: [00:00:42] Hi Lee. Thanks for having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Joshua Tree experts. How are you serving, folks?

Joshua Malik: [00:00:50] We are in the green industry. We provide general tree care, which is pruning and removal services. Plant health care is insect disease management on trees and shrubs. We also have another model which is lawn care, fertilizer, weed control, aeration, and we also do indoor outdoor flea, mosquito and tick, which is our pest control department.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:11] Now, how did the idea come about? What was the initial thoughts when you launched this?

Joshua Malik: [00:01:18] Well, I’ve been in the industry for 30 years. In 92, when I graduated high school. I got right into doing tree care at a local tree care company within the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania area and developed them skills in the field for about eight years. Found an opportunity towards the Philadelphia region for sales and management. Did that for five years and just really had the passion that I wanted to be my my an owner of a business, develop my own team. So in 2005, I launched Joshua Tree Experts out of my three car garage with a 100 square foot of office space. So it’s been it’s been a heck of a ride since that time.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:57] Now, when you launch, were you always thinking, oh, at some point I’m going to franchise this? Or was this like, hey, now this is my own empire I can build here in the area and we’ll see where it goes.

Joshua Malik: [00:02:07] Man what a great question. If I look back at my business plan from 2005 when I launched, I was happy to get to a seven employee company service in one general tree crew of plant health crew and really small office staff. And when you really start learning how to develop people and take in people strengths, it’s really energizing and incredible on how much growth you can accomplish.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:37] So what was the switch that flipped that said, You know what, we might have something here that can be replicated and we can train other people to to do this and provide this service at this level and create those, you know, predictable, repeatable processes. How did that idea come about? Because that becomes a different business now, right? It’s different than, you know, being in someone’s yard now. You’re training someone in the market nowhere near you to do what you’re doing.

Joshua Malik: [00:03:07] Yeah, it is. And you know, when we launched Joshua Tree Experts, I think one of the biggest opportunities was within our service area. We really focused on providing you know, everyone says, hey, they want to give excellent customer service, right? But we really focused on that from the initial call to the follow up. We under-promise, overdeliver. It’s been a big factor of even hiring our coworkers on that, you know, sharing that clear vision with them of what we want to do. And training is huge. We’ve always we always knew that we would have a competitive edge by having certified arborist on staff. Having industry certifications that can really focus on employee development, you know, which helps them professionally and personally develop and. Over the last few years, we’ve really developed our processes and systems down to each function of the business of operations, sales and marketing, finance and admin. And we’ve really built out a table of contents that really shows, hey, this is how you operate this business when something happens. This is how. This is the action plan that you have to take place. So we really focused on on building those out. And we’ve done the team has done a really excellent job at doing that. So we knew that we could develop and replicate this system anywhere within the country.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:37] Now, once you decide to do that and you say, okay, we have something here, we got it, you know, we created this playbook for success. Now you go out to the world and say, okay, hey, do you want to open a Joshua tree experts in your market? Are you looking for the Josh’s like you were? That person that had been in the business had kind of got the lay of the land and is maybe struggling or is frustrated or just doesn’t know the ropes as well as you do. And here now you have a playbook that’ll make take whatever you were doing more to be more successful. Or is this somebody who doesn’t necessarily have to have that kind of experience you have had of, you know, working in people’s yards and working with trees and doing all that stuff.

Joshua Malik: [00:05:19] Sure. You know, ideally we would. Take on the right person to fit this seat and want to expand and improve their lifestyle from where they’re currently at. I know from my own experience getting individuals that have 20, 25 years experience, it’s hard for them to break a cycle that they’re in, whether it’s a process that they’re doing. They might have some really strong beliefs on the way that they perform the work and might not be flexible or like minded on the way that we’re performing it. We really believe, as I picked up the training part. I love getting industry professionals that don’t have that type of experience within our industry. Maybe they have work experience, but they understand that they can be developed or learning the proper way of doing something from the get go. So I would lean towards the people that are maybe business minded, have some really good communication skills, emotional intelligence, have the drive to want to succeed or able to follow processes. And I think I would find that more in that executive style person or someone that is in quite within the tree care industry currently.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:38] Because at the end of the day they’re more in charge of the operations and the sales and then they’re going to hire out the people that are going into people’s yards.

Joshua Malik: [00:06:47] That’s exactly it. We’re looking to focus on people that are going to have the drive to work on the business and not so much in the business. I know from my own experience, when you first launch, you’re pretty heavily hands on, maybe with the first six months to a year, but then when you get the right people in the right place, you develop your team, you got your equipment out there. You got your clientele. Your sales and marketing is working. I want you to start thinking about the big picture and really driving those unit economics.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:17] Now, you mentioned a variety of services when you become a Joshua Tree expert franchisee. Do you have access to all of those lines, those revenue lines, or is that each one its own individual brand?

Joshua Malik: [00:07:31] It is its own individual brand. I’m really glad that you asked that. When I launched in 2005, I launched as a general tree care plant health care company. I developed those 13 years of skills performing that service. And we’re heavily the equipment and vehicle, you know, invested to go perform the service that we’re doing. And in regards to training. It’s much easier to not just train on the brand, but also to train on the industry, to focus on general tree care, plant health care. That’s going to be the launching service. We have developed a scorecard of KPIs that are numbered and tiered that will help you get into the lawn care industry when you can launch that and then the pest control. And we really put that back on the franchisees lap to say, hey, to get to the lawn care, you need to develop these skills. We need to hit the scorecard and the KPIs at this level. Then you can roll in lawn care and then it would be the same thing for the pest control. When I launched in 2005, I didn’t launch lawn care until 2017. We launched pest control in 2020. We’ve just learned. For developing that marketing plan and hiring the right people to run those departments on how to launch that properly now.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:51] So the ideal situation is somebody goes in initially as kind of the the tree person and then earns their way up to these other brands based on their performance rather than somebody saying, Hey, I just wanted to do pest control and I’m going to just jump in and start at pest control.

Joshua Malik: [00:09:09] That is correct. We have three models in the one brand, and we want we want our franchisees to offer that. And our base is absolutely without a doubt, has always been general tree care, plant health care. That’s where my 30 years experience comes from. We know how to develop that brand and find those clients very easily through that. When I say find those clients, the consumer clients like that, and then we would develop that team of professionals to launch our franchisees, helping them get the equipment, searching their subcontractors if they need that, getting their vendors hooked up with them. And then once they hit those KPIs and it’s developing in the lawn care, then and then offering the pest control.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:55] So what how many do you have right now?

Joshua Malik: [00:10:00] We we just emerged. And when I say that we just completed our RFP late last year, we just got, you know, little minor touches on it renewed. We have some people in the pipeline, but we have not landed our first sale yet and we are so close and so excited and doing it. So when I say we’re just coming out live, we are we are just emerging.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:22] So this is a great opportunity for folks out there that are in that same kind of space that you are right now. You have a successful company and that has been proven successful in your local market. And now you’re emerging and you’re kind of trying to get those first ones on the board. What are what some advice you can give other people in that boat, whether they’re in the point of, you know, approaching that and saying, hey, you know, we want to do this. What are some of the, you know, do’s and don’ts and what are the things that you have found to be most successful thus far when it comes to kind of, you know, getting those first ones in the pipeline?

Joshua Malik: [00:11:02] You know, I would say I think one of the biggest things, Leigh, is that. You know, defining your own path in the franchise space, I think is really important. And when I say that is. A lot of people within this industry can can give you a lot of advice, which could kind of make that road instead of going straight. A lot of intersections that you come through and you start making a left turn and you start making a right turn again. You know, define your plan early and stick with it. You might be a trailblazer and start doing things a little bit different than everybody else. And that’s okay to do that. It really, really is. But it’s got to be your own belief on which path you want to create and which which way you want to go down. When you do start developing, we have a franchise sales organization that we’re working with PINNACLE. We just launch with five different broker groups and working with them closely and kicking some stuff off of them, but still making that decision on your own and defining on what you want to do and creating that plan. It’s ultimately up to you and you got to make those decisions for yourself. So that would probably be my my key take away from that is that you can get very confused within this industry fast, but have your strong beliefs on what you want to do and keep your keep your nose down and just keep moving ahead.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:27] Now, when you decided to do the franchise path and you got all your documentation, all that stuff, did you at first try to do this on your own and just say, hey, we can figure it out, we’re smart. We’ve been doing this for a while, you know, how hard could it be or did you immediately get expert help?

Joshua Malik: [00:12:46] That’s awesome. You know, we’ve developed when I tell you about Joshua Tree experts, currently, we’re we’re a good sized firm within our area. We have over 60 employees. We just launched our second location last year in March 1st of last year. So we’ve just completed our first year and our second corporate location. We knew getting into the space, the franchise. Franchising and selling franchises that, hey, we weren’t experts in it. I studied and did some research for about a year and a half, two years. So it wasn’t a quick decision. We knew, again, developing that plan of what it was going to be. I launched and hired. Smb is a consulting group out of Philadelphia. Steve Belman and his team, and they have been awesome to work with. They helped us develop our operations manual. They hook this up with an intern, Nicola Law Firm out of Jersey, which helped create our PhD and we have a really solid pieces there and having them to to bounce ideas off to talk things through network with other franchises they launched with mature and emerging has been absolutely wonderful and we knew that was going to be important. I’ve talked to some people that have gone on this that their own. It’s taken them a lot of time. It’s taken them a lot more of an investment and they never really got to where they wanted to be. I feel like we’re after a year of working on it and we really did start about a year ago that we’re in a really good spot and a really good space to really project now.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:21] So now are there certain markets that are better than others? Like what is kind of in your mind the ideal Joshua Tree export market? Like what are some of the qualities of that market?

Joshua Malik: [00:14:33] Well, we just we definitely want some some demographics to be good. We’ve got to think about. The topography of certain places, you know. Some places in the southwest, probably one the most extreme places for us. Northeast, East Coast, Midwest places even on the West Coast are good. We got to think about tree size. We’ve got to think about vegetation as in what lawns currently look like. Pest control is something that is basically we can do anywhere but and we’re launching as a tree care. We got to think, you know, my ideal spot for us to get our first couple sales wood would honestly be locally to the region that we’re at Pennsylvania within a five hour radius of us. That would be key. We can give some excellent support. The topography is very close. The demographics are very close to what we’re working with right now. Geography is very close. We have our ideal consumer client target profile would be someone in their 40 year old plus single dwelling home half acre plus. That gives us home values of 350,000 and up, gives us the ability to to really cross-sell our services. We might get calls for tree work and it could be a tree removal job. It could be a tree pruning job. We go out there, we’re able to cross-sell and upsell our other departments that we have so different areas of the country that we can find that opportunity. They got trees, they got the landscape care that they need. They got the pest control. We get to offer them all three brands.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:12] And if somebody wants to learn more about the opportunity, what’s the website?

Joshua Malik: [00:16:17] Yeah. Joshua tree experts dot com. They can go to the consumer website there. There’s a tab top right there for franchising that’ll take you to JTI franchising dot com and they can fill out a submission form and we can go from there.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:32] Well, Josh, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Joshua Malik: [00:16:38] Leah. I appreciate the time, man. Have a good day, brother.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:40] All right, this Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.